Episode 62: David Dorado Romo, Ph.D.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: And so, to say no young people are not capable of, these are not appropriate stories for young people. It's a way of, it's counterproductive. I think young people have to know these stories, but not only the stories of of trauma, I think the stories of change.
Jessica Fowler: Welcome back to what your therapist is reading. I'm your host, Jessica Fowler. Today we are speaking with David Dorado Romo, who is an author, historian, and musician with a PhD in Borderland History. We are speaking with him about his book Borderlands and the Mexican American story, which was recently placed on the list of best books of 2024 by Kikus Review in the School Library Journal. His historical essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Texas Monthly, and others. Borderlands and the Mexican American Story is his first nonfiction book aimed at middle and high school students. I hope you enjoyed this episode and learn a lot because I know I did. And if you are enjoying these episodes, please leave us a five star review and make sure you follow us on social media @therapybookspodcast. And as always, the information shared on this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. And before we start, I just wanna give a trigger warning due to some of the content that is discussed on today's episode.
Welcome David.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
Jessica Fowler: Thank you so much for being on today. And as our listeners know, I like to jump right into my favorite question, which is can you share a memory of how reading has impacted you?
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Well, one of the first memories that I have of a book that really, really impacted me, it's a little, I don't know it, it was an encyclopedia series that they sold at Safeway, a grocery, uh, convenience store right next to, to where I lived in El Paso, Texas. And I remember as a kid, I must have been like in third grade, I would wait. For every, because they would sell it to you every week. They'd sell the A's and B's the first week, and then the C's and D's and, and I would just read it, cover to cover. And I love that book. I mean, it got me hooked because it, it gave me a sense that like I, now I know everything there is to know about the A's and B's and then everything there is all the way up to, you know, the XYZs. And I remember that, that. That just captured my imagination to, to try to just encompass all the world's knowledge. And then later of course, I graduated to the, to World Book Encyclopedia, and that's what I learned. Everything like, including I was raised an only kid. I didn't, I was kind of a, a nerdy kid. I would read too much. So all my information about sex was just looking up the World Book encyclopedia. So, encyclopedias had a big meaning for me when I was growing up.
Jessica Fowler: I hear a lot of stories. This is one that I have not heard before about reading the encyclopedia.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: They were really cool. They were, they, they weren't too thick, maybe each one, I remember they were yellow and they had great illustrations and I think that captured my imagination and I just got hooked into reading for the rest of my life. Thanks for the Safeway encyclopedia.
Jessica Fowler: I did not know Safeway did that. My aunt and uncle, I remember my cousins had a set of encyclopedias that we would go through. I, I remember them, I remember them all together. Um, very distinctly image. It's so funny, every time I ask this question that if somebody says something that I will have these images that come up that I relate to. And so these encyclopedias is one that comes up that I remember seeing. Mm-hmm. But it's interesting because you now write about, history and things that we're in encyclopedias.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Um mm-hmm.
Jessica Fowler: So we're gonna talk about Borderlands and the Mexican American Story, and I thought maybe we could just talk a little bit about the book and why you wrote the book. Um, and I'll tell you. Mm-hmm. We were talking earlier about how much I enjoyed learning about this, but if you maybe wanna start with that.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Why I wrote the book. Well, I think I wrote the book for my, my. my former self, I mean, even as early, maybe not as early as third grade, but definitely in middle school. Um, in high school I hardly, there was very little about the, the Mexican American community. It was just like this big black hole. If you wanted to learn about growing up non-white, it was usually about, you know, African Americans or, and even that was very difficult to find. So, I think there was this absence of, of storytelling, it's almost like it was somebody had deliberately zapped our memories as a collective people. Um, this idea that Mexican Americans are these in-between people, they don't really fit into an category 'cause they're, historically, they're classified as white, but they're really not white, 'cause they went through the same kind of discrimination and, and all kinds of, of, um, intergenerational trauma that, uh, say African Americans or Native Americans went through. So, I wanted, that attempt to recover these stories that were never told about us to be an act of healing. So I think I, I wrote the book to heal us as a community and also to, to try to figure out where the stories that the dominant society has told about us have been very harmful to us, very psychologically harmful to us. So, I, I do think healing is probably my primary primary motive for, for reading, for, uh, writing this story especially aiming it at, at a young audience. I would say the audience is like 13 and above, but so many adults have told me something similar in terms of they wish they had had this book.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: When they were growing up. 'cause they didn't know these stories either.
Jessica Fowler: I did not know these stories. I would say I'm somebody who really likes history. I think if I wasn't a therapist, I'd probably be a history teacher. I really like history, I like to read about history. Historical fiction is my favorite. Probably gonna ask you for a recommendation related to that. Related to this.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Yeah.
Jessica Fowler: Um, and I, I was telling you, so I ended up reading some of it and then listening to the book, and I listened to it with my son who's 14 and it just left me with this. I can't believe I didn't know this and I wanna know more, and this is so important. Like why? Why do I not know all of this? Like I know other things.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Yeah. You know, one of the first stories that I heard from, she was basically my grandmother, even though she was my grandmother's sister. She, she lived with us when we were growing, when I was growing up in in El Paso, and she told me this story of when she was a young woman having to go through, um, these very humiliating baths, um, at the crossing between El Paso, Juarez, people that crossed from Mexico to United States, and we're talking about 1920, around that period. And she would tell me these, these very strong, I mean, I, I would get these strong images in my mind of them having to go and being, um, asked to, to take off their clothing. And they were fumigated. And, and, and she told me this story about how she would have to put all her clothing in a big dryer. And, and when they gave it back to her, her shoes had been melted. And I remember just thinking this, I was probably a, a, a senior in high school, like, why had nobody told me this, that. The treatment of, of people from my own family that had to go through this very humiliating process. And I remember that that was probably the original story, the, the original, let's say wound that opened up in me that. Turned me into a historian. Really, it was her stories, her and not all her stories were, were about trauma. A lot of them were, I mean, she was one of the, the happiest persons I've ever met, the most joyful person yet. Her stories about the Mexican revolution, she was abducted as a 12-year-old. I mean, they were, they were the stuff of, of film, right? But nobody had ever taught me these stories in, in high school. So I think. Yeah, it, it, it was trauma that first, made me look deeper into things and find that a lot of times these connections were not just personal. It wasn't just my aunt or my family going through them. It was a much bigger story. So, yeah. I had the same questions that you had reading the book as, as a kid, right, in high school.
Jessica Fowler: And so that's an example of one, right? That you had heard these stories growing up and then you. I read about these, these are the bath riots that you're, that you ended up learning about, correct?
Dr. David Dorado Romo: That's right. The bath riots. And, and that's, I first wrote about this in, in, in, uh, it was my first book. It was for adults not geared towards young people. Um, and that. The details that came out on it really got a, a big, uh, reception. I mean, there's a, there's a Vox video that has a, I don't know, more than 3 million, views where I talk about it. The whole thing is looking into the connection between those path riots and those fumigations and how they ended up. Um, influencing what was going on later in Nazi Germany, specifically the use of cyclone B as one of the pesticides. So that's an example of how one little micro story or a family story ended up having these, these major repercussions around the world. And so, while I'm digging up stories, I'm, I'm seeing that the stories that America, especially white America, has told about itself has ended up influencing other people in other parts of the world. The treatment of brown people in this country that, that is usually not talked about in the history books, ended up influencing a lot of the, uh, German eugenics, for instance, in the 1930s, later in the 1940s. And to, to me, it's important for young people to realize that what these stories are that are being told about them. How to counteract them by, by connecting them, by understanding them in a bigger context.
Jessica Fowler: And how do you think that that relates to mental health as therapists?
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Mm-hmm. Ah, that's a great question. I think at its worst, white therapy and white psychotherapy has been a way of whitewashing people of color, whether, I don't know, African American, Mexican American, native Americans. It's a way of, of saying. You'll be okay if you adapt to our therapeutic therapeutic values. Right. Uh, kinda adapt and, and become part of the norm at its worst. I'm not saying that all, um, therapy has done that, and I think at, at its best it tries to understand you not only as, as an individual, but part of a collective.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: So the stories that I tell in my book. Are, are trying to explain to young people and, and everyone really the effects of two colonizations, I call it the double colonization that happened to the Mexican American community first by the, the Spanish colonization and then by the Anglo-American colonization. And so even though it seems that that happened a long time ago, it left not only the transgenerational traumas, but it left certain legacies. Certain narratives, certain stories out there that continue to be repeated. So, these stories don't go away. So I, I talk about how there were already ideas of like the, the great replacement theory a hundred years ago, right? With some of these early eugenics, like, uh, who had a a degree from Harvard and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. And he was talking about why you need to, to repress the numbers of everybody that's not eugenically, uh, that doesn't fit the model of kind of the superior human being, right? The Nordic human being. And, and you have to do that because otherwise, uh, white people around the world are gonna be replaced. Well, that's an old theory that you're hearing about today, right? So, this isn't dead history. This is either repetitive history or perhaps history that never really fundamentally changed, not mm-hmm. Not underneath the surface. Right. So, um, so I think by ignoring our collective experiences, the, the worst kind of therapy in a, in a sense just perpetuates it, right? It, it's also a form of colonization. I don't know if you agree or disagree with me on that.
Jessica Fowler: No, I can, I can see that I was just here thinking that one of the things that, when I think about like what's happening today in our world, in our country, that the people that I like to read the most are the ones who take the history and talk about how we got where we are today. And when I was reading this, I was seeing all of these things that either I didn't know. And how they've impacted us or the things that were happening back then that are still happening today and that history of what brought us where we are today. And I just thought it was so important to know that, like as a therapist for the people that I work with, but also when we think about intergenerational trauma. As a country.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Mm-hmm.
Jessica Fowler: As a population and how important that is to have that understanding. Like, I think it's important to understand where we came from as a country and
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Absolutely.
Jessica Fowler: I think that this just brought to light to me, like, oh, here's this whole area that I knew some about. It's not that I didn't know some things, but more that I, it made me feel like, oh, I should really know more than I know.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: I'm, I'm, I'm very happy that it has that kind of effect, and thank you for sharing that. 'cause, uh, when you write a book, you never know exactly how it's gonna be received. If people, I mean, I, I, uh, will get either defensive or if they, it's not important whether they agree or disagree with you, but how they take it and how they make it theirs. So going back to this question of how the history affects intergenerational trauma. Maybe I can share a few examples in my own story. I, I told you the story about my great, my, my grandmother. So, when I was born in a time period in California, in the United States when doctors would, um, or, or I was born in the county hospital in, uh, San Jose, California. And at that time there was a whole movement to give, uh, subsidies to county hospitals or funding, extra funding who, sterilized often without the consent of women who were not seen as genetically fit. So usually in California, between, I think it was between 1907 and 1979, 20,000 women were, um, forcibly sterilized, or sterilized without their consent.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Doctors were trying to quell the numbers of people who were seen as genetically unfit. So, if you were Mexican, if you were Native American, African American, a poor white woman that supposedly didn't score high enough in the IQ test, there was a good chance that in a county hospital. You may be sterilized without your knowledge or consent. So when I was born and, um, my mother afterwards, she couldn't have any babies. And so I, that's why I'm an only child, and she said that the doctor told her that there was some kind of complication and she had to have her tubes tied. And it was not until much later that I realized that this was happening. I thought it was just a complication. You know, I thought it was just, uh, the misfortune. And my mother always blamed my father because he was an immigrant. But he worked at the, he worked at, he worked at Stanford University. Picking up the garbage of the professors there. Right. And then later I went to Stanford. So, there was this whole complete circle, right? I, my undergraduate was there. And so that just gives you an indication of how these generational, generational traumas some happened to us. And it isn't until many, many years later. I was already an historian when I found out about that. Right. So that's just one example of this kind of systemic, institutional racism, white supremacy, eugenics, movement, all these kind of things that affect our personal stories without us knowing them. So that, that might be an extreme example, but we live in that kind of water. When I, when I, um, when I was going to elementary, I remember every morning it depended on what side the wind would blow and what kind of stench I would, I, I would smell because on one side we had a refinery, and so the wind blow to the west, I would smell the, the refinery smoke. And on the other side we had a sewage treatment, so it literally smelled like crap. And much later I realized what environmental injustice was. Environmental racism. It has to do with all these complicated factors of, of zoning, why it's only in the brown or or black neighborhoods that you can have switch treatment and, uh, and refineries, but not in the, in the white, uh, areas. Right? So that's a form of institutionalized racism. So ,these are two examples of how. Nobody is being racist against you. Nobody's using the N word or calling you a, you know, a wetback or anything like that, but it's just in the air, literally in the air around you. And it can have an impact on you from, from the, the first day of your life throughout, and you're not always conscious of it. So, my book tries to make those connections. I, at one point, I, I explained what environmental racism is. I explained what, um, racial capitalism is, and it was great 'cause my editor would say, oh, if you're gonna use those kind of words, you, you've gotta start from the beginning. Like even tell us what the heck is capitalism? Much more what is racial capitalism, right? It's a kind of a more complex, uh, theoretical, uh, analysis of capitalism, right?
Jessica Fowler: Yeah, I noticed that in there, that you had put that in there, but you made the connections, right? Like going back far, far in history to how we are where we are today. And even though that this, I said this earlier, that this book is technically for youth, I think as an adult it's a great starting point to learn about this. I think it's written in a way that's very easy to understand and it's like it left me like, okay, I need to learn more about this. It has some pictures in it, which is great, but what I liked about it too is that you highlighted all of these young people and their stories, and I think, I don't know if that was because it's for younger readers or not, but I really enjoyed learning about the people that you identified. That's who I was like Googling out. Was there a book on.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Yeah, and that's something I hadn't read before in a Mexican American history book. I don't know of any other books that as a whole, because there, there are other books that will focus on, on, on biographies of people and then they look at their youth of course. But what I was trying to do is look at the people that are usually left out of the story. They're not seen as the protagonist. So, I'll, I'll, I uncovered some wonderful stuff. Like one of them was something that happened in my own hometown at at Bowie High School, and it was this, it was one of the, perhaps the first walkout Mexican American walk school walkout or in the history of the United States, it happens in 1937, and it was kind of a strange thing to protest. A whole bunch of students got up and walked out of the school carrying a loaf of bread in one hand and a bottle of milk in the other, and they went up to the local newspaper with signs without saying anything. They weren't shouting, and all they said is, we're not hungry. I said, wow. It's a very kinda strange protest. I mean, what the heck? Why are you going to the newspaper saying we're not hungry? Wow. The newspapers well in, in a well-intentioned way had tried to raise money. This was in the midst of the depression for high school students, and there was an Anglo teacher that went to the newspaper and said, look, the, these Mexican American high school students, they're fainting in the cafeteria. Even the, um, even the football players are weak from hunger. Let's, let's do a, like a food raising deal where, where the, especially the Anglo population can give some money for these hungry students. And, and these Mexican American students were, were, they felt like their dignity had been offended. And so they went up there and they demanded an apology both from the teacher and, and from the newspaper. And the teacher said, no, I'm not gonna apologize. And, and the newspaper didn't apologize. We're trying to help you. Mm-hmm. And so, the students said, oh, when you try to help us this way in such a public way, you humiliate us. And so, when we go and we play against the Anglo High School, they, they start laughing at us and they call us muertos de hambre people are starving to death. Right. And, and this, and, and that's an insult to us. And not only that. The same teacher that is trying to help us. She talks in a negative way about our parents. She says that they're backward, that our food is bad, and, and these same teachers punish us for speaking Spanish in school. And so I realized that when young people protest things, they don't, they don't protest environmental injustice in an abstract way. So, what's going on in 1937? I'm talking about something that's not taught in, in, in most American history books for, uh, for youth, and that's the, the so-called Mexican repatriation. Some scholars estimate about 2 million people, both Mexican and Mexican Americans were just shipped and deported. So, 60% of them were young people that were born in the United States, and that's something that's probably gonna happen today if Trump carries out his threat to, to deport 10 million people. It won't only be 10 million people. It, it might end up being a. 10 million people who aren't here, uh, don't have the, the documents to be here, but there's be probably an equal number, if not greater, of young people who were born in the United States were also gonna be deported. So, contemporary legal scholars have said that was a form of ethnic cleansing. It fits the, the, the legal definition of ethnic cleansing. 'cause you're kicking out people 'cause they're not seen as real Americans, whether they're born in the United States or not. So, the question is, yeah, why are these students protesting something that's relatively trivial, right? An article. Why don't they protest ethnic cleansing at a grand scale, 2 million people? Well, I think the answer is you're living it at ground zero. That's what gets you.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Right? What gets you is that article. There was another great example of that in my book of a, a cheerleaders revolt. There was cheerleaders that that said, hey, it's not fair. We're the majority Mexican Americans of the majority in this high school. Why is it that out of before? Uh, cheerleader squad. Only one of them can be brown. Why do the other three have to be whites? Why can't we have two and two? And so, the principal said no. The parents said no. The superintendent said, no, you can only have one brown cheerleader. And it became a huge revolt. And it, and it was one of the most successful revolts. It, it, it overturned not only the school board, but even the mayor of Crystal City, Texas ended up being brown because of this little. Insignificant strike about cheerleaders, right? So, by including young people, I think I'm trying to, not including them, but really putting them in the prominent place in the book and that they're the, the, the protagonist of many of these episodes that I write about. I think I'm trying to find those little details, that are often the spark to social change. That affect young people in a way that, that maybe the big details, they're just too abstract, but it's the little details that spark a movement. Right. And maybe those, those little details are, are the essence of trauma. Like my great aunt's shoes, right? That her shoes are returned, they were brand new and they were melted. And that's what really got her, that's what really made her feel bad. It wasn't so much, you know, the medicalization of the border and how public health is, is being used to, um, um, racialize people or in the case of the students, it's how white benevolence is being weaponized because what happens is that if somebody stamps your passport, that your children got some form of aid. In the 1930s, you can't, if you leave and go back to Mexico, you can't cross back because you're seen as a burden.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Right. So there's all kinds of connections here that I'm trying to make in the book, maybe in a subtle way. I mean, it's impossible to make them all.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Right. I think once you read the stories, I hope that the reader will start connecting them.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm. Like I said, I think that's what you did. It was these stories that just got me thinking and wanting more that you shared and you had, I forget where in the book you had it, and I forget exactly how you said it, but the idea of young people and including them, 'cause so much of what is happening is impacting them more than maybe us adults. Like to realize, I forget exactly how you said it. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Yeah. Uh, I, I think that young people are often at the forefront of, of the impact of history. I mean, see what's going on in Gaza today that it's, it's the young that are bearing the brunt of the bombs, but in reality, it's often been that way.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: That, like for instance, in, in this case, of the deportations, the majority of the people that were deported were young people. And they had at no fault of their own 'cause they were born in this country, they didn't violate any kind of, of, uh, immigration laws. And so, to say no young people are not capable of, these are not appropriate stories for young people, is a way of, it's counterproductive. I think young people have to know these stories, but not only the stories of, of trauma. I think the stories have changed, the, the stories that they are the protagonist. So my book actually starts off with these footsteps that, uh, that archeologists recently dated to 22,000 years ago, and there's about a thousand footsteps, about a hundred miles from, from the US Mexico border in White Sands, New Mexico. And the large majority of them were made by children. Not by adults. Why? Because children, they like to jump around and skip and do all, you know, jump up and down and make, leave their markings on the sound, on the sand. They had so much energy back then, just like today. So, to me, that's super metaphorical that young people leave their mark and then the sand covers them. The wind. Over them and it, it takes 22,000 years to rediscover them. Right? So, to me that's just metaphorical of, of the role, the energy that youth have had throughout history. And they're usually, their stories are not put at the forefront as, as the main protagonist of history. It's usually adults that, that end up doing all the change, right?
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: So that was my way of, of acknowledging that protagonist.
Jessica Fowler: Would you say there's an age for this book? Like who, what age should be reading this book?
Dr. David Dorado Romo: It's hard for me. I have, um, I have sat down with classes that, that read my book of high school students. I haven't sat down with any, uh, middle school students yet. So high school students for sure.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Um, have, have responded to it. There, there's a section. The same high school that had that, that strike in, in 1937. Later they took the, uh, the border patrol to court because of racial profiling and the high school students that, that I've talked to, that that story specifically has a great impact on them. Um, I think 13 and above. Even though, to tell you the truth, so like high school students or middle school students, they usually don't get on Amazon or, or Good Reads and will write their comments. It's usually adults, right, especially educators. And often they make the same statements as you. It's like, man, I thought I knew a lot about history. I'm, I'm an educator myself. I teach in California, and I didn't know the majority of these. Of these episodes that, that my book talks about. So definitely, I mean, all ages, uh, have, have responded very well that I know of. I just, I just don't hear, I don't read their comments on online, but I know that when I sit down with them, definitely high school students react very well to it.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah, I, I told you I listened to it with my 14-year-old and he, like, we had a lot of great conversations in the car while we listened to this book, paused it, talked about it, and we go back and listen to it and so he's 14.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Wow. Gimme an example of a conversation that you had.
Jessica Fowler: So. I was wondering what he knew, 'cause I was trying to figure out what I already knew or what I learned in school. And so one was just talking about that he had learned about the second underground railroad in school and so what he had. Yep. And so we just talked about that when he learned that. So that was, I think he said seventh grade, and I was trying to remember, 'cause I was a seventh grader too, and seeing what he has been learning about if he learned it yet. And so just kind of talking about that and just really a conversation about how horrific a lot of the things had happened and what it was like to hear that this was something that had happened and we didn't know a lot about.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Mm-hmm. Why do you think these stories are not out there?
Jessica Fowler: Well, I think you talked about this in the book, this idea of silencing, right? If we don't talk about it, if we, you know, just look forward, right? I think we have that message now. Just look forward. Just look forward. If we talk about it, you know, then we can't move on. I mean, I think there's lots of different reasons. Try to make it sound better than what it really was.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Hmm.
Jessica Fowelr: I don't know. What do you think?
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Definitely that the fact that, that the story has always been told from east to West. Part of the reason that you, you don't hear stories that are, that are from along the south, north axis.. So, even when you think of this as a nation of immigrants, you think of Ellis Island because that's a one way immigration. You cross an ocean and then you join the melting pot, a pot, and, and, and you leave everything behind and immerse yourself into this new definition of what it means to be. A white American, really. Whereas there, I talk about it in my book, even before the landing of Plymouth Rock, the European colonization already started at El Paso. That was the crossing, and that was 22 years, 20 years before people at Plymouth Rock landed, 400 Europeans across the river at El Paso. But the difference of that is that that had been going on for thousands of years and it had been going on back and forth. And so, like for instance, in my case, my, my father came here, uh, without papers. So does that make, and I was born in the United States. Does that make me a first generation American second-generation immigrant? But my grandmother, had also lived in El Paso, then she went back to Mexico. So, there's that back and forth. Mm-hmm. So, does that make me a second generation American or a third generation immigrant? But then later when I really started looking into my genealogy, I found out that I had a great grandfather, uh, who came to El Paso, crossed the river in search of, and, and had, uh, like an, like a ranch in 1647. And then his family went back to Mexico. They didn't stay here. Right? So, you see the back and forth 1647. So, does that make me a 10th generation immigrant? And then later I kind of hit a dead end and then I was able to trace my Macheka ancestors, Aztecs, right? They didn't call themselves Aztecs. The recent people call them Aztec is because they live in Aztlan. Aztlan is what is now the southwest, it's the American Southwest. So. in, in Arizona, New Mexico, parts of El Paso, they left behind their, their languages, the Uto-Aztecan language. So, the Hopi, the Comanches, the Shoshone Ute, they speak the same language of the so-called Aztecs. So, darn it, does that make me a 30th generation immigrant? Right? So, you see what I mean?
Jessica Fowler: Yeah.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: This back and forth. So that totally complicates the story of. We're a nation of immigrants because yeah, I'm a second-generation immigrant, but I'm also a 40th immigration native.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: That went back and forth. Right. Because that's part of our, uh, what indigenous people do they like in Apache, if you ask somebody, where are you from You're asking them, where do you walk around, 'cause they're, nomadic movement is part of who they're and their identity. Right. So, so that's a whole. Much more complicated way of understanding. We are a nation of immigrants. So, the Hispanic and native ancestors of Mexican Americans were here way before the border crossed us.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Right? Because the border used to be up there like close to Missouri. That's why the first people that invaded, um. El Paso, El Paso, when it was called El Paso North, they were from Missouri, those soldiers, and what was one of the first things that they did? They went to the mission repositories, the church, and they burned a lot of the, uh, land deeds. They deliberately erase the history and that way it's, it's harder to prove the presence of, of Mexicans and native people north of the river, and it's easier to take away their lands. So, this erasure is deliberate. So, when, going back to the question of therapy, if somebody like deliberately zaps your memory, I mean, that's kind of a, that's a form of abuse, right? I mean, everybody understands it. When, when, um, when natives are taken from, from their, their home villages to American boarding schools, you can see how that's cultural genocide.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: It was a form of abuse and that's part of the intergenerational trauma. But Mexican Americans also experienced that. But we don't have that image that, that our culture and our nativeness was stripped from us deliberately. And I explained in the book how it was done, even in the classification systems and the census records, what have you, right? That only saw black and white as the only race and, and when there was discrimination against Mexican Americans, it was based on the fact that we weren't completely fluent in English, and that was the reason that brown kids were discriminated in California schools, for instance, it was based on language or disfluency. So, it's so much more complicated. This story. The erasure goes so deep that sometimes we don't even know that it's been erased.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm. I know those were some of the things that you just brought up that I would talk about where we were, my son and I were talking about like, you know, burning of the deeds. Um, I think there was in there about you couldn't be on a jury, write your own jury if you couldn't speak English. Um. All of those things that you just said and thinking like, I did not know these things and how horrible these things are that, that happened and so when you asked me that question like, why is, you know, why is it, why do we not learn about about it? I mean, that's part of the answer right there, right? It just got rid of the records, got rid of the way things, you know were.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Yeah. And then today, the justification in Texas for not teaching. These kinds of histories is because it, it will make specific, some students uncomfortable.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: That you don't want to create discomfort. It's, it's almost like a trigger warning. And so instead of giving you a trigger warning, we're not gonna like teach this at all, 'cause it'll be traumatic to, I guess, predominantly white students. Right. And I'm thinking, ah, sometimes in order to heal you have to experience the memory of the trauma. To me, that's not a justification, that's more of a pretext.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: For the silencing, because I think, um, we have to have these honest conversations. They're, they're part of everything, part of these stories. I, I remember growing up, I was really ashamed of my parents when I would go to these Cub Scout meetings as a fourth grader because they couldn't speak English, and the other Mexican American students that had lived longer in the United States, their parents could speak much better English than mine, my parents. And I just remember feeling like this idea of the fact that they weren't fluent in, in English, made me feel ashamed of them and made me feel like I had to compensate, maybe overcompensate. So, I started learning a whole bunch of languages. Right. I, I took, I started with French in high school, and then I started, uh, learning other languages to the point that I, it became almost obsessive, right? I, I studied something like 20 languages.
Jessica Fowler: Oh, wow.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: So. But it, it, it wasn't, it was this idea of, oh, so you're saying that, that you're gonna be able to discriminate me because I, I, I can't speak as well, if you will, I'm gonna show you this kind of thing, right? This, this overcompensation. So sometimes out of bad stories, you, you get good results because even today, like I'm teaching myself Navajo and, and Apache, you know, and, and, uh, now what? And I'm almost thankful that I had that tr traumatic response to it, right? Some good things come out of, of stories that other people tell you and you tell yourself, but why did it have to be that way? Why?
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Why couldn't I have just learned those languages? Because it was a fun thing to do or a good thing to do? Why? Yeah. Why did it have to be that I have to kind of defend myself? A kinda psychological defense mechanism, right? So yes. Good things come out of bad situations. Like the, the story of my father when he crossed, he crossed into the United States without papers at the age of 14. And, uh, when the Border Patrol guy saw it, he started running and he, and when the border Patrol finally caught my father a 14-year-old, uh, he was so pissed off that he threw his, uh, lunch sack at him. My father was carrying a, a sack with a sandwich and a, and a Coke bottle, and threw it at his head and, and it gashed his forehead. Later my father told me this story and my father, you know, was, he was tough as, ah, it wasn't a big deal. It was just a minor gash, but to me that was symbolic of a gash that hearing that story, it probably hurt me more than it hurt him. So later when he ended up working as a farm worker and then later at the Palo Alto Sanitation Department, uh, and, and collecting garbage for the Stanford professors, I felt that I had to go full circle. That's why I got accepted to both Harvard and Stanford. And I said, I have to go to Stanford because that's where my father went before me, right? So there's these, these traumas that you turn into something good.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: And if it stops there, it almost seems like, oh, an immigrant who made it good, right? It's the American success story. Thanks. Thanks to the fact that America allowed him to come here and gave him a job and what have you. Look now his son is at Stanford, right? It's more complex than that, 'cause remember, my mother suffered through the eugenics movement. Right? So, the American success story of the immigrant making it good is part of a bigger trauma.
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: And that trauma borders are enforced as I write about in my book, by violence and by injustice and also by stories. You gotta tell stories of the people on the other side of the barbed wire fence. The barbed wire fence itself is, is a, is an act of propaganda. It's like, you're not gonna move here or else we're gonna inflict pain. The barbed wires are supposed to inflict pain in cattle and in human beings, right? So, this, this space is full of stories. Even. Even these micro details, like a barbed wire fence will tell you very painful stories, right?
Jessica Fowler: Mm-hmm.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Excuse the pun, but that's exactly what they are, right? So what I'm trying to do in my book is, is unpack all those layers, unpack the stories behind the stories. Well, and you do that, um, I think, anyway, so I feel like I could listen to your stories and talk to you all day. Um, but I wanna say thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate this book. I'll say it again. It left me wanting to learn more. I think it's a very important read. That's my, you know, recommendation? I don't know. I mean, you said 14 above. I think it's important for people to pick it up, maybe even not this book, but to do a deeper dive into this history. That would be my challenge for my listeners to learn a little bit more about this.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the invitation for your feedback.
Jessica Fowler: Where's the best place for our listeners to connect with you?
Dr. David Dorado Romo: My Instagram is at David.d,Romo. Uh, Facebook,you can also connect with me. It's David Romo. That, that, that one's a little harder to, uh, you'll, uh, you'll see a very co there's a lot of David Romos, but you'll see a, uh, uh, you'll see a, on the cover, the cover of my book Boarderland and the Mexican American story. So, I think those are the two best ways to connect with me.
Jessica Fowler: Well, wonderful. Well, thank you so much.
Dr. David Dorado Romo: Thank you.
Jessica Fowler: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of what your therapist is reading. Make sure you head on over to the website or social media to find out about the latest giveaway. The information provided in this program is for educational and informational purposes only, and although I'm a social worker licensed in the state of New York, this program is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a patient therapist relationship.
About the author:
David Dorado Romo, is an author, historian and musician with a Ph.D. in Borderlands History. He is the author of the award-winning Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juárez, 1893-1923 (Cinco Puntos Press, 2005) and Borderlands and the Mexican American Story (Penguin Random House, 2024), which was recently placed on the list of Best Books of 2024 by Kirkus Review and the School Library Journal. His historical essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, and Mexico’s City’s Nexus. Borderlands and the Mexican American Story is his first non-fiction book aimed at middle and high school students. David is a curator and co-director of the Museo Urbano, a public history project based in El Paso that exhibited “Uncaged Art,” a 2018 exhibit the featured the artwork of migrant children interned at a detention center in Tornillo, Texas.