Skip to main content

Passports, Identity and the Expiration/Renewal of Each

Support Provided By

For most of my elementary and teenage years in San Diego my Mexican passport was the most important document I owned. The multi-colored, stamped U.S. visa was the only way to get back into this country. Then, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Amnesty in 1986 those passports became obsolete. All the value I'd put in them - my identity as a Mexican and as an undocumented outsider in the U.S. - began to dissolve like a sandcastle into the ocean. The exclamation point came eleven years ago when I took the oath of U.S. citizenship. I haven't renewed my Mexican passport in seven years. What's the use? Aren't they objects of constructed nationalism? The passport's green cover and its Mexican coat of arms doesn't do it for me anymore.

agl-091311b

My mother saved five of these passports and told me about the hardship she'd gone through to secure each one of them. My friend Roberto Leni Olivares also has five passports. His were issued by Chile as he and his family arrived in the U.S. as refugees from the Pinochet dictatorship.

I sat down with him a few days ago to share our passport stories. The above video is of our game, "Passport Hold 'Em." We wrote the poem below.

All the passports I've ever loved before

Mi pasaporte
Verde
Azul
Mi sangre
Vuela
Viene
Llega
Se va
Y vuelve a volar

Circula errante en la tierra
Y me enferma
Como a veces
En otras rio
Corre el agua entre las paginas visadas
No escurre la tinta

De Viña del Mar
Hacia Todo El Mundo
La promesa
Of the bureaucrat

Mejor loco con algo
Con sombrero
Sin alas ni vuelos
Mejor Val-paraiso
Mejor el mar
Y sin pasaporte

Toda la vida
I have a passport
Therefore I am
Always a passport
To be in this country
Always a passport
To stay
Always a passport
On my chest
The eagle
And green, thorny flesh
Now faded

Mi mama kept them all
Don't know for how long
Until she gave them to me
& U & I & We have them all
For you
For me
For them

Each one a painful walk
Each one in the darkness
Of a tunnel
Each one a light
Once in her hands

Nos podemos quedar
Hacer nuestra vida
Gozar
Luchar
Llorar

Y las fotos de cada uno?
Y como es que la huella digital
Fue cambiando?
Pero no tod@s podiamos viajar

We are
Don't leave

Poet and Journalist Adolfo Guzman-Lopez writes his column Movie Miento every week on KCET's SoCal Focus blog. It is a poetic exploration of Los Angeles history, Latino culture and the overall sense of place, darting across LA's physical and psychic borders.

Support Provided By
Read More
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.
A Black woman with long, black brains wears a black Chicago Bulls windbreaker jacket with red and white stripes as she stands at the top of a short staircase in a housing complex and rests her left hand on the metal railing. She smiles slightly while looking directly at the camera.

Los Angeles County Is Testing AI's Ability To Prevent Homelessness

In order to prevent people from becoming homeless before it happens, Los Angeles County officials are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict who in the county is most likely to lose their housing. They would then step in to help those people with their rent, utility bills, car payments and more so they don't become unhoused.