“We Were Always Here: A Mexican American’s Odyssey,” by Ricardo Chavira: A Review and Interview with the Author
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On a six-week boyhood trip deep into Mexico, Ricardo Chavira was at first hesitant. He was unaware of Mexico, of the weight of that heritage on his shoulders or of the roots his family planted in the Southwest U.S. dating back to the 1870s. The experience marked the beginning of his personal odyssey to, as he describes it, “rescue” his heritage.
“I’m 100% Mexican,” Ricardo says in an interview with Hola Cultura. “But culturally, I’m American.”
That family trip would awaken a curiosity for the world — a factor he considers important for a good journalist.
His curiosity would grow in his college years. A school essay about the Mexican Revolution led him to consider becoming a historian, but a professor suggested giving journalism a try. Documenting modern history is how he came to refer to the job he would hold for decades in this highly competitive and challenging profession. He would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s top honor, despite becoming a journalist against the odds.
In his new memoir, “We Were Always Here,” Chavira chronicles his life, from rejecting the predisposed path of gang violence and car theft to graduating college and becoming the California collegiate journalist of the year. Chavira continued his career at publications such as Time magazine and the Dallas Morning News, covering global politics and natural disasters.
Chavira writes about his struggles as a minority in college, since he had to deal with racist professors who clearly treated him differently from white students and told him he couldn’t write. Later, after making it to a top-ranked news outlet, he describes feeling like the “token minority” since he was surrounded by white Ivy League graduates, but how it was easier for him to make connections to get a better story because of his past life experiences.
By the time he arrived at Time magazine, he recounted having more experience than the many reporters and editors he worked with. Chavira noted that their professional connections helped them enter the field with little resistance — an observation he is not the first to make. Countless stories have documented how most major news organizations hire interns from a small pool of highly selective schools, which ultimately limits the professional development opportunities of those who can’t get into or afford those elite colleges.
According to a report from the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA,) 65% of summer interns from publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and the Los Angeles Times came from some of the most selective universities in the country. Chavira mentioned how even with a bachelors and master’s degree, two merit scholarships and an award for being the California collegiate journalist of the year, he couldn’t get an internship —let alone an interview —with his hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times.
“I don’t know why they’re called the liberal media, because internally they’re as conservative and ‘good ol’ boy’ network as ever,” Chavira says.
But he persevered. His first break was at a local weekly newspaper where he reported on Latino communities that were “still off the radar” at that time. To his surprise, he encountered backlash. He recalls how critics circulated a petition saying he “was writing about Mexicans and stirring up trouble.” Unfortunately, he reflects today that little has changed.
“We’re still off the [mainstream media’s] radar,” he says.
“In my heart I identified with the poor people because those are my people,” Chavira says, which prompts a question about whether those same life experiences made it difficult to remain impartial in his reporting. He admits “it’s hard to achieve complete objectivity because you pick and choose what facts to include, but I would read the story and say, ‘Is this a story that comes close to impartiality?’”
Hola Cultura’s Storytelling Program for Experiential Learning (S.P.E.L.) interviewed Chavira during one of our weekly Zoom meetings last month. S.P.E.L. members and Chavira had a wide-ranging discussion about the book and his past both as a journalist and as a person striving to achieve his professional aspirations. Our reviewers found they could relate to Chavira’s experience.
“It reinforced the thought of how important it is to be proud and keep learning about our identity,” writes Noemi Vega. She adds that she finds it interesting to hear about how he is sometimes identified as Latino and sometimes as American “and how both have advantages and disadvantages.”
Marco Gutiérrez finds it uplifting to hear the success story of someone from a similar background to his own.
“Growing up in a Mexican household, the talk of ‘following your passion’ was rarely brought up,” Gutiérrez writes. “It was more a talk of ‘what can you do’ than ‘what do you want to do.’ Ricardo Chavira lays testimony to what I’ve feared in the past about institutional racism … but his testimony is uplifting — proof that despite the obstacles, it is still possible” to achieve your aspirations.
Lizzett Garcia, meanwhile, says Chavira’s accounts of his experiences with the police and incidents he witnessed as a reporter made her reflect on last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
“This just makes me think of how little racism and police brutality has changed—and how much not staying quiet has increased,” she says.
“The most important thing I learned in the interview with Ricardo was that being successful isn’t just about thinking about it. He stated, ‘You have to really want to be a success’ in order to be successful,” adds Garcia, who will be a freshman at Trinity College in the fall and says she finds motivation in Chavira’s words. Like him, Garcia says she didn’t think she was “college material” until after watching her parents’ worry over lost income during the COVID-19 pandemic. Until then she writes: “My grades in high school were always average and I knew I could do better but did not have the motivation.”
“This experience made me realize that I needed to take advantage of my education to secure my future,” she says. “I can truly say I became much more organized and pushed myself to get out of my comfort zone. I began to believe in myself more and left fear of failure aside. I am proud to say I graduated with high honor rolls and received many awards.”
Chavira’s is a story of perseverance against major odds that are still present for Latinx journalists in the newsroom today. It is both personal and universal in its experience.
“We Were Always Here: A Mexican American’s Odyssey,” published by Arte Público Press, 2021
You can find Ricardo Chavira’s book here.
—Review by Melissa Perez-Carrillo, Marco Gutiérrez, Noemi Vega, and Lizzett Garcia with editing by Madison E. Goldberg
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