by Debra Diaz
The heavy August air, thick with dust and
smog, hangs like a yellowed tapestry over the low
hills of El Campo Colorado. Family business brings
me to Orange County, and as always I’m drawn to
the camp. Parking my car on Buena Vista, I climb
up to the railroad tracks bordering the barrio. The
wooden camphouses are long-gone, as are El Veracruzano
and the other small camp businesses. All
that remain are the barrio homes, painted different
colors, but still kept immaculately clean and with
the same rose and cactus gardens carefully tended.
Twenty-five years have passed since any family
members have lived here. Dad’s brothers and sisters
have long since left the camp to more promising
neighborhoods. The shifting job market and the notso-
gentle decline of the city and the county, combined
with the American-instilled desire to live apart from
parents, have scattered the children and grandchildren
of the Red Camp I knew.
Walking through the narrow streets, I receive
suspicious sidelong glances. They know I don’t
belong here. Mom and my sisters won’t come to the
camp anymore. They say they don’t know the people
and there are too many foreigners. They’re talking
about the illegals, the immigrants from Central
America and Mexico who have been moving in slowly
throughout the years, drawn by the familiar
atmosphere and the service-job economy of Orange
County. This is now their home.
I ask myself why I keep returning here, to a
place that no longer exists. Maybe it’s some insane
desire to make peace with the past, to make things
right. Or maybe it’s an attempt to confront fears I
ran away from the first time around. Or maybe it’s
just a simple desire to be here again. To smell the
cool, earthy night air, to feel the hurried rush of an
evening freight train or to hear the echo of children
laughing as they play late into the darkening night.
(THE RED CAMP is reprinted with permission from the publisher of The Red Camp by Debra Diaz (University of Houston – Arte Público Press, 1996) to buy a copy of THE RED CAMP, go to their website at http://www.arte.uh.edu/view_book.aspx?isbn=1558851690)