Originally Posted: June 13, 2018
What does it mean to live in the hyphen? Two Mexican-Americans spent an hour Monday night tackling the question in the second round of “Duets,” the quarterly event series hosted by the Arts & Life team of The Dallas Morning News.
Alfredo Corchado, Mexico Border correspondent for The Dallas Morning News, was joined by Luisa del Rosal, executive director of Southern Methodist University’s Tower Center for Political Studies, to talk about his new book, “Homelands: Four Friends, Two Countries, and the Fate of the Great Mexican-American Migration,” and about living life as both Mexicans and Americans.
Corchado and del Rosal’s own histories exemplify why a term like Mexican-American doesn’t tell you much on its own.
Born in Durango, Corchado came to the United States out of economic need. His father was a bracero, an agricultural laborer, who worked fields across the Southwestern United States.
“I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in California,” Corchado said. “I’m a high school dropout. My mother later bribed me to go back to school by telling me, ‘if you go back to school, I will help you buy that dream car of yours.’” READ MORE