Two Languages, One Soul

THE NEW MEXICAN desert: austere, stripped, inhospitable and unforgiving--an enigma to all but its inhabitants. It dares men to tackle it and survive; the "Old Ones" accept the challenge and win the necessary sustenance from this grudging and barren host. Their faces wrinkled and cracked like the adobe they have stolen from the earth, these Chicanos lead a life radically different from that of most Americans. Here churchbells are prefered to the telephone's ring, John Chancellor is voted down in favor of radio music, Sundays are for praying and old women pick up trash by the roadside. Necessity is the drive behind existence.

Robert Coles's latest book, The Old Ones, is about life in the New Mexican desert, as described by five elderly residents. Alex Harris's photographs bring us a people with faces carved by the wind, eyes burnished by the sun; a people who look directly at us, burning their way into our memory.

Coles, a child psychiatrist and staff member of University Health Services, interrupted his work on the third volume of The Children of Crisis to give his readers a new vision of senescence. Pursuing his studies of underprivileged children in the United States, Coles went to Alberquerque, N.M. and explored how Hispanic traditions and mores are handed down through the generations in a bilingual, bicultural society. With The Old Ones, Coles counteracts an era of media expressionism which portrays the elderly as indigent, helpless and desolate.

The children, he found, could be best understood by first speaking with the grandparents. What they believe, the children will soon believe. Parents are the go-betweens, handing down beliefs from the very old to the very young. In sharp contrast to the current American preoccupation with youth, this elderly population revels in its years. The sagacity of age is valued more than the vivacity of youth. Psychologists often depict these people as brutalized by modern America and robbed of their self-esteem, but these Hispanic-Americans feel that they are emminently important human beings, worthy of the love, respect and veneration they receive from their grandchildren. The fierce pride instilled in their children is indicative of their whole approach to life. "You can be white and have money and not own your soul," one grandfather says. Their poverty is immaterial. If their children can be proud, that's all that matters.

A DIFFERENT INDIVIDUAL narrates each chapter of the book. The tales are simple, childlike, and vivid, both imagistic and imaginative--bridging the gap between two languages.

The other day I thought I was going to say goodbye to this world. I was hanging up some clothes to dry...I had dropped a few clothespins, and was picking them up, when suddenly I could not catch my breath, and a sharp pain seized me over my chest. I tried hard to stand up, but I couldn't. I sat on the ground and waited. It was strong, the pain; and there was no one to tell about it. I felt as though someone had lassoed me and was pulling the rope tighter and tighter. Well, here you are, an old cow, being taken in by the good Lord; that is what I thought.

Coles wisely refrains from editorializing or interpreting; his introductory comments at the beginning and end of each chapter serve only to coordinate and unify the work. By stepping aside he allows the speakers to exert their full power.

The coalescence of the modern and the archaic in the lives of these people is at once startling and refreshing. The Church is the tallest building in town; God exerts his influence even in the architecture. Calendars with the Pope's picture hold sacred positions next to the children's photos on top of the television. Sewing machines work manually, though electricity is available. Instant coffee sits on top of a wood-burning stove. Battered wooden rockers sway next to plastic kitchen chairs. Telephone wires stretch above glassless windows. Near the electricity meter the old fashioned stove-pipe vent perches like a top hat.

As one aged Chicano says, necessity can teach more than a year at a university--The "Old Ones" give us insight into our lives, as well as their own. A great sense of joy pervades this book. Even though there are two languages here, there is only one soul. The old clap for the young, and the young clap back.