Mexico lost to England 3-2 in the World Cup Sunday night, yet thousands of Mexican Americans across Southern California took to the streets as if their team had won.
El Tri was eliminated from the tournament in another heartbreaker, but fans set off fireworks, joyously rocked cars and were tossed in the air from Orange County to the Inland Empire to Ventura County and all points in between, just as if we had won the damn thing.
It was yet another early exit for a team that has never made it to the World Cup semifinals — but no wanted to dwell on defeat, because no one felt defeated.
“We didn’t lose,” 29-year-old Kevin Cuevas said through watery eyes. We were at Chapter One: The Modern Local in downtown Santa Ana, minutes after the final whistle. “We have the best culture, the best men, the best women, the best work ethic, the best team — you name it, we have.”
I reminded the Corona resident of the final score.
“Yes, but we’re moving up,” Cuevas replied, clutching a Mexican flag emblazoned with St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes. “We’re always moving up, never down. There’s no other way to live.”
It’s one of the great clichés of Mexican culture — how our parties always end in tears and worse.
“There is nothing so joyous as a Mexican fiesta, but there is also nothing so sorrowful,” Nobel laureate Octavio Paz infamously wrote in “The Labyrinth of Solitude,” his 1950 treatise on the Mexican condition. “Fiesta night is also a night of mourning.”
Paz was criticizing Mexicans for not knowing how to properly process pain and pretending all is well even when it’s not — especially when it’s not. But as I left Chapter One to check out the desmadre outside and scrolled through social media, I felt a vibe I had never sensed among Mexican Americans.
We’ve long been told by American society to be ashamed of who we are, yet I felt no shame. A people forever accustomed to defeat wasn’t going to think like that anymore. Our leaders and elders have long urged us to practice resilience and think of mañana. Thanks to this thrilling, ultimately futile World Cup, we can and will push for more, and settle no more.
“We did what we could, and we gave it our absolute all,” said Zeus Palacios, a 27-year-old immigrant from the Mexican state of Hidalgo. We were at Fourth and Bush streets, where people waved Mexican flags on top of traffic lights, danced in a conga line and launched fireworks into the air for hours after the soccer match, as police looked on. “You have to! Seguimos, seguimos.”
Mexicans keep on keeping on.
Even though World Cup watch parties have sprung up across Southern California, I’ve spent the tournament in downtown Santa Ana because it’s it different here. No other city has dozens of restaurants and bars in such proximity, run by and catering to young Latinos. Or stands proudly athwart a county that has long demonized it as too dirty, too crime-ridden — in other words, too Latino. Or saw the National Guard put up an armed roadblock in the middle of a shopping district last year during federal immigration raids, just blocks from my wife’s market and deli.
Bigger and bigger crowds flocked down here as Mexico tore through the Cup before its face-off against England, with many coming from outside Santa Ana.
“It would mean the world” if Mexico won, 32-year-old Reek Fernandez told me at Chapter One before kickoff.
“The way politics is going right now, the Hispanic community needs this,” added fellow Orange resident Jonny Munguia, 30.
“I hate soccer three years out of four, but not that fourth year,” said 22-year-old Jesse Magaña of Riverside. “Because then you’re rooting for [your] blood, not a random team.”
I joined them and hundreds of others crammed into Chapter One to try and collectively will El Tri to victory.
We stood up to warble Mexico’s national anthem and continued to cheer, even as Mexico went down 2-0. When Julián Quiñones scored near the end of the first half, the Chapter One crowd erupted in the loudest noise I’ve ever heard from humans — and I used to cover metal and punk shows.
We kept the faith even as we saw the obvious: Mexico wasn’t going to pull it off. England’s players were taller, faster and more experienced. Mexico couldn’t convert near-misses. It was a story we Mexicans know too well — we’re talented, just not yet at the level of the elites of the world. But we always put our hearts into it and never back down. And at the end, another loss.
My friends started to scream the names of Mexican greats — singers Jenni Rivera and Juan Gabriel, Emiliano Zapata, the last Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc — hoping to spark a divine intervention, but it wasn’t to be. The Chapter One crowd went quiet when the final whistle blew. Then the house DJ blasted two melancholy mariachi classics that had become the unofficial theme songs of Mexico’s World Cup run: “Cielito Lindo” and “El Rey.”
The former urges us to “sing and don’t cry.” The latter is as defiant as Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” a torch song that boasts, “It’s not about being first/but knowing how to get there.” As I walked through downtown, I marveled at how the overwhelmingly Gen Z throngs expressed their mexicanidad.
There were green soccer jerseys, sure, but men wore colorful Oaxacan shirts, ponchos and gigantic sombreros. Women had flowers in their hair a la Frida Kahlo, donned cowboy hats or did their hair in braids with ribbons and lace, which became a symbol of resistance against the ICE raids among young Latinas last summer.
What I saw definitely would not have happened last year — or ever before. Mexican Americans have long risen up to defend ourselves and defy our haters, but there’s usually an underlying strain of bitterness and anger that kneecaps us at the worst possible moments. Strains of that pathology emerged across the Southland at other celebrations Sunday night.
Four people were shot in East Los Angeles. A fan was stabbed in Lynwood. An unlawful assembly was declared in Pacoima. Why, a young lady even vomited in the patio of my wife’s business because she couldn’t handle her BuzzBallz.
Those were random pendejos. Last night, Mexican Americans said no más to our pained past. It’s as if we synthesized the unofficial slogan from this World Cup (¿Y si sí? — what if we do win?) with the one from 2018 (“Imaginemos cosas chingonas” — let’s imagine great things) to challenge ourselves to think of a better tomorrow and live a better today.
And it all came because of a soccer squad, proving anew how sports can effect positive change like few other things.
“Win or lose, we’re so proud of the team and ourselves,” said 53-year-old Norma Medellín (“no connection to narcos”) of Fountain Valley. She and some younger relatives, all decked out in different styles of Mexico soccer jerseys, had just finished line dancing outside a beauty salon that had set up an impromptu sound system. “It’s unfortunate things didn’t go our way, but there’s always 2030.”
Medellín excused herself and headed across the street — there was more fiesta to enjoy.
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