Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir

Pedro and his brothers are aghast when they realize that the only tape they have left is the recording of The Music Man that includes the song “Shipoopi.” They feel cut off from American culture on their trip. When they stop to talk to the older children, Pedro’s older brothers tease him that there are plenty of dolls in Mexico that can replace his Green Arrow toy. He angrily tells them that action figures and dolls are not the same thing. Apá tells Pedro that after lunch they will go to a mercado (store) in Tijuana and replace his things. Pedro wants to stay mad at Mexico for what happened at the border, but he gets distracted by new treats like pineapple ice cream. Thinking it will deter thieves, Apá parks far away from the mercado and Sal wedges the truck up against the motorhome.

When Apá hears the mariachi music coming from the mercado, he makes a sound “that Mexicans call ‘el grito,’ the yell. […] [A] cry and a laugh all at the same time” (85). It is a sound that Pedro himself does not know how to make: “All I could do was the American version,” he says, “The Fonzie Ayyyy!” (85). Apá says that he will call them with his distinctive whistle when it is time to go. Pedro is thrilled to see that the store is filled with action figures of Mexican wrestlers painted to look like American superheroes, and he picks out several. All the children stock up on toys they have never seen in the United States. Pedro quips that the unregulated environment of Mexico leads to a lot of fun—and dangerous—toys. Pedro buys himself a delicious-looking licuado, but his older sister takes it from him, explaining that the younger siblings don’t have the gut bacteria needed to digest the raw milk it contains since they were born in the US. She’s not fast enough to stop Adam, however, and they have to rush him back to the motorhome when he gets terrible diarrhea.

The family drives through mountainous terrain on a curvy, narrow road, which makes Adam, who is still feeling very sick, miserable. Then, because Hugo was playing with the dashboard during a rest stop, the motorhome’s engine gets clogged and the motorhome stalls on a precarious curve. Apá calls the older children on the CB, and they walk back to the motorhome to see how they can help. When the younger children want to throw rocks over the cliff at the crashed cars below, one of the older sisters explains that this will anger the ghosts of the people who died there. She tells them that, in their house in Mexico, there is a ghost who hid treasure and that she gets closer to finding it each time they visit. Sal and Apá finally get the motorhome running again. Apá stops at a small town to have a mechanic look at the engine. The family goes to a restaurant for dinner. Lila lectures her siblings about the Spanish and French appropriation of Indigenous foods. When the waiter appears, Apá points out a cockroach on his menu and jokingly asks what the cockroach costs, since it is moving from price to price as it navigates around the menu. Pedro appreciates his father’s sense of humor and that he treats the incident like a joke instead of getting indignant and entitled. After tipping the waiter extravagantly, Apá tells him the story of Hugo’s accidental damage to the motorhome. The waiter says that the mechanic is his cousin and he will make sure the repairs are done well. Later, Apá tells the children that it is important to be kind to everyone and that a good reputation is worth more than money. When they pick the motorhome up, the mechanic gives them a list of his cousins along their route in case they need more help.

Lila rides in the motorhome that evening. When Pedro is disappointed to realize that his new comic books are in Spanish, Lila tells him that his Spanish will get better while they are in Mexico. She also says that he will learn more about Mexican history. Pedro shows her a comic book he is writing about the Mexican Revolution. She is impressed at how hard he has worked on the drawings, but she critiques the historical inaccuracies. She starts to lecture him about the social and economic inequalities that led to the revolution, but he tells her this is boring and that he wants to learn about more exciting parts of history.

Many hundreds of miles later, the family arrives in the village of Pegueros, Amá and Apá’s hometown, where they once ran a hotel, restaurant, and ice cream shop out of their home, which they now rent out while they are away. The children jump out of the motorhome to greet Simón, the cheerful and polite cousin who always welcomes them first when they arrive. Pedro notices how helpful and gracious all his Mexican cousins are. Ruth tells him that nearly everyone in town is related and that, if he ever needs help, his Mexican cousins will be there for him. When they go inside the house, Amá feels distressed at how dirty the renters have left it, and she directs a cleaning effort. Pedro is surprised when his older brother points out a trough in the floor that they used to use for cleaning pigs; Pedro cannot imagine pigs being brought through the house in this way. Amá wants the children to have showers, but there is no water in the holding tank, so Apá sends them out with buckets to fetch water to refill the tank. Pedro is irritated that his younger brother, whom he believes his mother favors because he is the baby of the family, gets to have the first bath.

The next day, Simón convinces the brothers to go get haircuts so that they look presentable when they see their grandfather. Don Felipe, who knows their father, has cut their family’s hair for many years. He says how much everyone in town will miss Abuelito. Don Felipe shows Pedro the many pictures on the wall of Mexican actor and ranchera music superstar Vicente Fernández. Pedro thinks he is the Mexican equivalent of Fonzie from Happy Days and agrees to have his hair cut like Fernández. Don Felipe tells Pedro that, because of Abuelito’s military hairstyle, he was nearly hanged during the Cristeros Rebellion following the Mexican Revolution. Abuelito suffered a head injury while he was running his mule train between towns. Some Catholic rebels saw him and mistook him for a wounded government soldier. Abuelito prayed to God for strength and nearly fought the men off, but they had vaqueros (cowboys) lasso him. Just as they were about to hang him, they saw his rosary and let him go because they realized he was a Catholic, like them. As Don Felipe tells the story, he uses Abuelito’s name—Don Alejandro. This is the first time Alex has heard his grandfather’s first name. Seeing the terrible haircut Don Felipe has given Pedro, the other boys duck out of the barber shop. When the boys get home, Amá is dismayed and does what she can to fix Pedro’s hair.

The next day, the family goes out to Abuelito’s land. He is much bigger than Pedro remembers, and Pedro wonders if he will grow up to be as big as his grandfather. When Pedro realizes that Abuelito does not remember all their names, he decides that this trip is his opportunity to impress his grandfather. Apá tells the boys to take over the work that Abuelito was doing while he and Abuelito have a talk. The boys struggle to lift bales of hay out of a truck and marvel that their aged grandfather was doing this work by himself. When Abuelito comes back to continue working, he tells them a story about encountering two road bandits when he was younger. When they first confronted him, he tried pretending that he knew one of their cousins. Pedro recognizes this as the “Mexican Jedi Mind Trick” he has seen his father use. The trick didn’t work, and so Abuelito grabbed a piece of cane from his saddle bags and used it as a cudgel to defend himself. The men managed to knock him down and started to get away with his mule, but Abuelito used a slingshot to break a bag of flour the mule was carrying and spook the mule into running away. Surrounded by airborne flour, the disoriented bandits ran off and Abuelito whistled for his mule and rode to safety. When Pedro hears Abuelito demonstrate the whistle, he suddenly realizes that this “mule whistle” is the same whistle Apá uses to call him and his siblings, and he feels both amused and insulted. Excited by the story, the boys begin mock fighting the bales of hay. Abuelito gives them the disappointed look Lila is known for, and Pedro thinks that the look is like another family “Jedi” power.