Chapter 8 and the epilogue of “Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream”

Chapter 8 and the epilogue of “Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream” by Sam Quinones were as good if not better then the preceding chapters. On the whole I found this book to be an interesting glimpse on a culture different from my own. This book really helped me to gain greater understanding of the sacrifice and struggle that many immigrants to this country endure.
Chapter 8 is a story about soccer in a small town in Kansas. The primary industry in the town is the meatpacking industry. The people who work in the meatpacking industry are primarily immigrants, mostly from Mexico. While reading Quinones’ description of how the industry came into existence I couldn’t help thinking about “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, but this story isn’t about meatpacking. This is ultimately a story of a town divided.
Garden City, Kansas is like most towns, in the South and Midwest, slaves to high school football. The football team in Garden City had seen success in the past but had recently fallen on troubled times. The soccer team had seen the opposite, starting as a struggling program and by the end of the story winning a regional championship. What is important is the attitude change that the success of the soccer team had on the people in town. The team was comprised of children of immigrants and had never been accepted by the community. Quinones presents us with a situation where self loathing and feelings of inferiority stifled the immigrant community, the success of the soccer team made huge strides to change that.
It is curious that the attitudes of an entire town can change because of a high school sports team. Having grown up around the idolization of high school sports (and being a willing participant) I guess I can understand it. It does make you wonder where our priorities lie. We pay little attention to each other until we can come together in the love of something. I guess that’s something that sports are capable of. I love sports but I can’t help but wonder if there’s another more efficient way.
The epilogue of the story was also good. I personally felt like it detracted a little from the rest of the book, kind of a drug story tacked on for good measure. That being said it was very entertaining. It never would have occurred to me that Mennonites could be drug users much less, drug runners and murderers. The whole story was beyond wild, where Quinones is essentially chased out of Mexico by the Mennonite drug mob.
Back to the dual existence in the soccer story, I have a good example of this occurring in my life. When I was a senior in high school I moved from western Kentucky to west Georgia. On the surface this doesn’t seem like a huge change both towns are in the south, but the truth is they are quite different. Here is my example of this difference. During my second semester at my new high school in Georgia the Prom came along. To my surprise there were two proms, one held in the girl’s gym for African American students and one held off campus in a ballroom for the white students. This still shocks me. I can’t believe that I attended a segregated prom. Granted it wasn’t officially segregated but there was some kind of understanding between the two groups that neither attended the other prom. It really is sad, friends from different races were unable or unwilling to spend one of the “highlights” of high school together. Things like this should not occur. The problem was that administrators could do little about it. The main issue was that the prom on campus was the school prom and the one off campus was a private gathering. Teachers and administrators need to do more to discourage this type of thing. It could be done by simply encouraging a stronger multiracial community within the school, instead of the divisions that still exist. It really does upset me looking back. Ultimately, I guess it is like the Quinones story where the groups stay separate by choice, at least I sincerely hope it is by choice.