Luis Gutiérres introduces both of his selves to us

national hispanic newsBy Mariana Correa, Hispanic Link News Service

  “The greatest good for the greatest number,” Congressman Luis Gutiérrez sums it up to reporters jogging alongside him after his press conference in the Rayburn House Office Building. He is running late to a Congressional Hispanic Caucus meeting.

While maneuvering around video cameras, smart phones and recording devices, he stabs at explaining the political philosophy he expounds on in his memoir Still Dreaming: My Journey from the Barrio to Capitol Hill, published Oct. 19. It’s that philosophy which guides his career, he says.

At the news conference, 59-year-old Gutiérrez stands tall at five-foot-six as the legislative force and face on immigration policy in the House of Representatives.

His hands cross alternately over his chest as he ponders each reporter’s question. When he speaks, he bangs the wooden podium to punctuate each point. Wielding his Chicago in-your-face oratory style, he has become the advocate in two languages for the community people, too often defenseless recipients of questionable public policy. When Gutiérrez delivers a statement in English, it’s expected that a Spanish-language broadcast journalist or two will fire back, “¡En español!”

He shifts gears smoothly. The impact is greater en español. A vein on his forehead swells, in part maybe exposing his frustration for running late.

I was disappointed that he no longer sports the “Zapata mustache he refers to in the book while describing his young adulthood. Gone also is the short-cropped curly hair.

I also wonder how he feels now about his Spanish. As he writes in his memoir about growing up in Chicago and his family’s abrupt migration to Puerto Rico, he makes a point about strengthening it. In Chicago he was a Puerto Rican stopped arbitrarily by the police.  “I was a short, brown-skinned kid with curly hair who couldn’t have passed for white if someone offered me a costume and a makeup kit to pull it off,” he writes.

In San Sebastián, Puerto Rico, he was the gringo kid who couldn’t quite speak Spanish. How can you be the same person from two places?  He declares, “I want to fight for immigrants because I’ve been an immigrant in my own land. Twice.”

You can see the boy forming values that serve him as a politician. He contextualizes the Puerto Rican diaspora caused by public policy from a personal perspective. The back-and-forth is often left out in the real experiences people have, as if migration is only mainland-bound, not a two-way path.

Gutiérrez also explains the role in shaping our times in a way that other accounts have left out. Since it is a political odyssey, the book is mercifully non-cliché.

Specifically, he depicts the confrontation people face when going back and forth, a looking glass of his own experiences, seeing themselves as perpetual outsiders and insiders, strangers and natives confronting issues about acceptance and adaptation.

Gutiérrez’s stories and vignettes travel a main current, enlightening the reader about the fight for comprehensive immigration reform. It is a study of the true essence of politics. “You never know which knock on your door might change your life.”

For many, he might represent an immigration agent. Or as a citizen, it could be “a couple of guys from the Water Department who want you to support the White Republican guy for mayor.”

That is how his political career began.

This article was originally published in Hispanic Link News Service.

Mariana Correa is a reporter with Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, D.C. Reach her at mc1368a@student.american.edu. Gutiérrez memoir is published by W.W. Norton and Company, $27.95, 432 pages, hardcover.

[Photo courtesy of National Hispanic News]

Subscribe today!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Must Read