The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler-174-end

“You’ve got exactly seven hours and seven minutes to change the fate of the world”

Here Herrera is still mocking American culture and its game as he did with his own game show. How they image in the most impossible things because it is the most entertaining to us. They ask the weirdest questions and have the weirdest results. No one can really change the fate of the world but because like to believe that so they tell them they can, and soon after everyone will forget it happened.

“I confess, I buried the chiles from Food City, three blocks from Huerta Street- it was a father thing”

Here Herrera finally tells us the real meaning of the title of the book, why he smuggles chiles even though it isn’t illegal. It represents his heritage as a Chicano and that it is passed down to him. This is his way of showing how he must smuggle himself into the country as a Chicano and to hide it a bit in order to fit in.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 151-174

"Of course chicken don't talk- this was the first piece of common knowledge that had to be discarded."

This quote is referring to a family that owned a chicken farm. The son went to Stanford and got a B.A. and changed the family business to corporate business. This quote brings some humor into the situation I think. He is talking about how the son went of to college and learned to much, that know he much teach his family. First thing is that he must change what they have known forever. They have always been a small family raising chickens, but know they have to change and learn about corporate America. They have to drop what they thought. They thought chickens don't talk, but there son has taught them different, they do talk, and it all seems crazy to them

“A TV game show (a mix of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, somewhere in the Post-Macho Southwest, slouching through the twenty-first century).”

This is Herrera description of American culture television. And its macho status that comes form it. How both the Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy have to do with winning. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy both are games were you wager money, he wages other things that have to do with mexican and american culture. He is making fun of these american games.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 131-151

“A writer with maids. Not in my book, buddy. Never in my book. My mother was a maid in El Paso, Texas, long enough. Are writers maids, now? Who do we cook for carnal , carnala?”

Herrera got his inspiration writing from his mother, who wasn’t well of at all. He doesn’t think that writers are people that live with maids, the ones that do it for the money and fame, but rather the ones who write from the soul and not through popularity. They write from their past. But he also contradicts himself. Does that mean that all writers now have to be poor to have troubles to write about? Or can some writers not have troubles and be well off? Does someone’s past tell weather or not they are a writer? It shouldn’t.

“I am that paper, I am those words now, that ink burns pyres in every cell.”

Herrera has become his writing. He writes everything he knows and has known. What comes into his mind goes on paper. What makes him who he is all written out. So there for what he is, is on the paper. The ink burns into every cell and he will for ever be on that paper, and that paper will represent him.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 106-130

“Perhaps the notion of being American is off center- there is no center, I guess that’s the thing.”

Here Herrera is writing a letter to Victor, his Chicano activist friend. He is talking about how America doesn’t really have a backbone. No set ground that everyone has in common. There is no center where everyone meets on a common basis. Everyone talks about America being so great and the land of the free, but there is no real sense of community with everyone so different and no center to meet on.

“Ain’t nothing better, than pulling over- after the pizca in Fresno, on the way to the next one in Delano.”

Here Herrera is driving in California and loves the aspect of pulling over and just letting go. That in California its so nice you can pull over on a drive and just watch and feel free. He is on the road so he has no obligations, he is just driving and has pulled over for a break to relax and just breathe the Californian air.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 81-105

"Fifteen years later at another institution in a much smaller room at Zapata lounge, a Chicano dorm: no special lights, just an expensive mike." (83)

He is describing a typical Chicano club. The lights are dim and they don't focus on the looks of the singer or speaker but rather what they are saying. They aren't these fancy club with shinning lights and people shouting, its quieter and they just relax more. But at the end of the page he says "but, who listens?" He thinks it as changed. Those lounges are no longer the same people less people because everyone has left for the other American "institutions"

"the earth that moans from pollution, quakes from its own tectonic blast? The earth divided? The earth abandoned, the earth reclaimed through armed struggle, through one more war? Power through ledges, thru words, thru flesh.” (97)

In this poem he touches on political, war, environmental, and racial issues. In this quote he talks about the earth, and what we have done to it. How we have made it moan because of our pollution and how our war as split it up and fought for it with flesh and blood. And how we over look that as we just go along with it. The earth struggles as we tare it apart.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 55-80

"Things Religion Makes Me Do

Sit back, cross my legs, and cry." (61)

He writes a list of "things religion makes him do" and none of it is very good. The last one alone makes it sound like he doesn't like religion and the things it does to people. Some of it is very weird and not what you would think, but he is trying to portray that religion can make people do weird things because they believe it is ok in God's eyes. That even though strange, it has a purpose.

"I was invited to give a commencement rap a few weeks ago for the English Department at San Jose State University. A women asked me what writers influenced me, who did I read? I said, my mother. Lucha Quintana. Have you heard of that writer? The women's neck twisted. No, she wanted to know "what writers!" She wanted to ask the usual worn phrase. Ginsberg, Artaud, Nervo, Lorca, Neruda, Popa, HIkmet, Rodnati, Walker. These are the shadows-I should have told her." (69)

Here you can tell that he doesn't do what people expect of him, and he knows it, but still does it. He sticks to what is close to him and his heritage. He was inspired by his mom, not some well-known writer that everyone reads. He doesn't like that everyone does that, they all read the same group and expect that professors and everyone to be impressed by that. He sticks to his past and what’s close to him to make his writing more personal.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 30-55

"A sad-eyed blond women drives a flashy red-orange Audi thru the chasm of a basement parking lot underneath.."

This represent the typical American person that that is unhappy with their wealth and situation. Everyone always seems unhappy with their lives even though they have the nice cars and accessories. She is driving a nice car, but has a car ticket and is clearly sad and stressed. This flashy car is not what can make her happy.

"As Chicano artists, we have always pulled out our images, landscapes and symbols from the gut to the page, from the bile to the open forum; historias terribles of our people, our time; historical suffering in vitro" (43)

He is distribing how Chincanos find their artist drive from there sufferings. Thier past isn't pretty but that is how they do art and it doesn't have to be pretty to mean something. They find their troubled pass what makes them and that is what they use to drive them.