Book Review: Barrio Boy

Barrio Boy by Ernesto Galarza, University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend, Indiana, 1971

This book sat on my bookshelf for years before I finally took it down to read it for this project.

I wish I had read it years before. While, in some ways, it is outside the timeline of this project (Post World War II), in other ways, it is a perfect book for an ESL audience.

Ernesto Galarza spent the first few years of his life in the tiny Sierra Madre village of Jalcocotan, in the state of Nayarit, soon after the turn of the twentieth century. It is a small close-knit community where everyone looks after everyone else. The relationship between Galarza and his mother, the indomitable Dona Enriqueta, who teaches the young Ernesto to be “Buena gente,” and not “mal criado” is very touching. Galarza creates a strong sense of place , with his portrayal of the family’s rooster, Coronel, serving as the alarm clock for the village, his dog, Neron, the watchdog of all, and Relampago, the village’s donkey who teaches Ernesto patience. This small world, though, is not removed from the wider world. The federales coming into the village are the first signs that the Mexican Revolution is affecting everything. The family finally has to separate, with Ernesto, his mother, and his two uncles eventually, after first moving to Tepic, then to Mazatlan, and finally arriving in the barrio of Sacramento.

Galarza quickly learns the ways of the barrio and, with the help of his teachers, easily masters English, so much so that he becomes the translator for those who have to deal with the autoridades.

I found myself wishing that Galarza had continued his autobiography, as it ends just as he is beginning junior high school.

After I finished this book, I realized that Galarza has a strong San Jose connection. On the corner of Fourth and Market, there is a monument to Galarza by Kim Yasuda, entitled “Man of Fire: Dr. Ernesto Galarza.” This monument connects Galarza’s work in academia, as a union organizer, as a poet, as an educator, and as “jefe de familia,” a family man.

Galarza’s moving autobiography is written in a very accessible manner, and could be used as a reading for upper levels of ESL or in English classes. I doubt that even most Mexican students know about how life was lived in rural Mexico one hundred years ago or about an immigrant’s life in California. It would also be easy for students to go to view the monument to Galarza.

In advanced classes, there are many options for research projects centering around the book and Galarza’s work.

Possible Research Topics

-the Mexican Revolution, the rule of Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero

-American intervention in the Mexican Revolution

-International Workers of the World

-the 1919 “Spanish” flu epidemic

-the Bracero program

-Farmworker organizing in California