Reflections and hopes during Hispanic Heritage Month

Caravans of American cars and trucks cruising down Roosevelt Road; the handsome red and green of the Mexican flag shining in the September sun, slapped to the hoods or flowing from the back of late model pickup trucks; the heroic golden eagle clutching that sinister green serpent tight; a procession flowing through suburbia, like a colorful river penetrating the sea of sprawl, making its way to the lake.

Or Lake Shore Drive.

It was Mexican Independence Day, Friday afternoon, Sept. 15 into 16 - it's debatable which day is the "real" day of celebration so we'll take both!

Everything seemed so "padre"/ cool, the weather so warm, the weekend so long, the tamales so savory, even the for the first time in many a year the Mexican President AMLO was not so much the arch-criollo reactionary of yesteryear.

And never had it felt so real that conservative, old DuPage, a bastion of suburban escapism, the Republican elephant there to protect aging homeowners from city life to the east and certainly the rest of the American continent to the south, had been given some spice. Though I'm not the biggest fan of the Latino-spice analogy, with brown-skinned youth draped in Mexican colors dancing passionately in the streets of Melrose Park, the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl flying in the sky of West Chicago and white-suited mariachis marching in the streets of Bolingbrook cooing and howling, from this Hispanic heritage you can feel the Latino suburban heat.

This Hispanic Heritage Month with Latino festivities even at white middle class bastion the Morton Arboretum, lucha-libre theater inspired theater at the Goodman, bags of walking tacos enjoyed on the streets of Wheaton by blonde haired youths, even the Mandalorin revealing that under his helmet he comes from a land down under. The border that is. Yeah, it's been clear, the impact of Illinois' and the rest of the nation's Latino community on the collective cultural life. GOOOOAL!

Mexican writer Octavio Paz once wrote in his classic "The Labyrinth of Solitude" that if the Yankees perfected economic life, the Mexicans perfected cultural life - the foods, the festivals, the music, the suspiciously pagan Catholicism. This after hundreds of years of "meztizaje" or syncretism with institutions of church, education and state blending intentionally and otherwise Indigenous Spanish and African traditions into the new vibrant "American" culture.

"Maybe our new wines are of plantains, but they are ours and in that, better than the grapes of theirs," said the Cuban José Martí referring to the new "Americanism" of the 1800s vis-à-vis the old Spanish regime he sought to overthrow.

As noted above, many of those celebrating Mexican Independence Day were youths, many of them being born here, not technically Mexican but like Martí searching for authenticity in the face of many obstacles. And we need something to latch onto in this crest of uncertainty that is modern U.S. life.

Latinx youths struggle with the increasing subordination of the soul to technology - behind the screens a million unshed tears - as a West Chicago teen recently told me: "COVID kids" struggling to express themselves with their peers, and of course the reality of racism if not against them, historically and actually against their fathers and mothers.

It's been said Mexico is a land of happy children and sad adults. And even as the kids celebrate, there has not been so much to celebrate for the hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers in the suburbs who remain undocumented even after 30 to 40 years dedicated disproportionately to productive, essential work, especially in the food industry. Warehouses, manufacturing and construction were hit five times harder by COVID - one in five with long COVID are experiencing the highest rates of depression and anxiety that go with the low wages and zero benefits in all-too-often temp agency jobs nursing serious health issues after years of working in the shadows without health care.

With all the love the Latino community has given to the U.S. historically - out there picking vegetables and fruit for our store shelves as we speak - let's give some of that love back in the way of pressuring our local legislators to move (and not just their mouths) on just and comprehensive reform and give some substance to the symbolism if not this, to celebrate next Hispanic Heritage Month.

I want to see those abuelas out there and our mamás también!

• Cristóbal Cavazos, of Wheaton, a member of the Daily Herald editorial sounding board, is co-founder of Immigrant Solidarity DuPage and an activist for the Latino community in Chicago's Western suburbs.