Even after living in the U.S. for 23 years, I find the professional experience in this country exasperating. 

It is like the collective psyche of the U.S. society has two basic modes for dealing with Mexican immigrants with a betraying accent. If you show a modicum of competency, you must be a whitexican; the product of elite private schools and early indoctrination into the linguistic priesthood of the colonizer’s language. If you remain quiet and only speak when prompted, you must be struggling to piece together two intelligent sentences in your underdeveloped brain. Not a few times I’ve had colleagues talk to me in a paused and loud voice like they are asking me for directions to the beach in exchange for 5 pesos.

I cannot say it is a complete disadvantage. On occasion, I have used that cover of dumb blessed upon me to hit hard and carry on as if nothing happened. I might even write about some of it here one of these days. But it mostly drains my energy. 

For most of my life in this country, I worked in a labor organization that tried to become progressive but whose structural problems were too entrenched to manage. Imagine an organization made of (mostly) white men and women who work low-paying jobs, some in backbreaking conditions. They all climb up the ladder of union leadership through cronyism and nepotism schemes but manage to convince themselves their skill and ability made them lucky enough to leave the shop floor. And, of course, many are skillful and able, even exceedingly smart in many cases, but that was not what made them outstanding. If smarts were the measure of success, labor organizations would thrive and reshape the capitalist experience, if not rewrite it. For most of the biggest labor organizations, loyalty and adulation are the real tools for upward mobility.

In an organization where functional illiteracy is a virtue, I once had to report to a middle-aged white man who told me “I do not read” in response to my clarification that I sent him an email about whatever he was asking me. Shortly after, I discovered he, in fact, had problems with basic reading and writing skills. Now, the critic of the western worship-for-the-written-word in me would be more than happy to accommodate a non-western-centric method of communicating, planning, and executing of whatever programs we were tasked with carrying out if it was about lifting unheard voices from the working class. A mediocre middle-aged white man empowered by a small group of mediocre old white men was not my priority. I reported verbally but continued to write emails leaving a paper trail of my activity until my timely departure from the organization. Even in the last few weeks before my departure, a skilled bureaucrat from the mothership sent me a verbal message through my direct supervisor. “Writing notes about our meeting on correcting problems in X pension fund,” I was told, “when facing discovery, would demonstrate that [the mediocre white males we are trying to protect] were made aware of the issue.” Well… duh! 

I now face different conundrums. Representing “woke English majors,” as a dear friend labeled my work with media professionals, at least I don’t have to worry about sounding too articulate. If anything, reconciling the pens that perpetuate capitalism and the logic of imperialism and white supremacy with the need for collective action and class consciousness to obtain ink, bread, and roses, is a more entertaining exercise in futility. 

And that is why I started this blog. I am no longer sworn to mediocrity and its sacrosanct demands for secrecy. I have chosen to speak my mind about everything; if some of it resonates with anyone’s experience, great; if not, that is great too.

I have chosen a pen name to honor the endless parade of white people visiting our worlds and writing eruditely about our backwards ways. Traven Marut is not even a hard name to guess. I am not playing riddles nor expecting my identity to be a sworn secret. Some stories will be revealing enough to piece things together. But the delight of mocking U.S. society in its own style nobody will take from me. I’m not even a fan of the Hemingways of the world. I take my literary cues from the bitterness of Poe and the sarcasm of Twain, but not many more.

I use this space to answer the questions nobody asked me, but I wish they did. I write this with certain people in mind. The colleague who once justified himself to me by saying, “I went to public schools,” or the former supervisor who told me, “Not everyone got to study in good private schools,”  held assumptions of my background not even minimally grounded in reality. I will provide, at some point, a tour of the Caritino Maldonado Perez elementary school in the Galeana neighborhood of Chilpancingo, a place where the faculty doesn’t even have a college-level degree. Or the Diego Rivera middle school in the Xoco neighborhood of Mexico City, where my evening classes competed with the blatant gun and drug trade happening under faculty noses and where street muggings at our 8 pm adjourning time were commonplace. 

I am not here to romanticize or condemn growing up in abject poverty. I neither wear my experiences like a badge of honor nor shy away from them. Nor is the Spanish or English version of this site a mere translation of each other. I don’t even think that is possible since, like many bicultural people, I am Dr. Jekyll in one language and Mr. Hyde in another. I am not here to find anyone’s approval.