Mexican Masks

Recently right after having conducted let’s say a questionnaire to find out who is closer and more warm Mexican or American families, I confirmed many things that I’d experienced coming from a Mexican family. One of the many reasons why foreigners love Mexico is because of the warmth of Mexican people; they are very close knit but sometimes so much closeness can be suffocating. In the U.S. people are colder, more distant, more plain and independent, they have more freedom, and they are more expressive, they aren’t afraid to show their real feelings. On the other hand, Mexicans don’t’ say a whole lot with words, they project feelings with actions, they always come through for each other in times of need although this may not always be the case because they are afraid to show their true emotions, they feel that their “weak side” is going to show the idiot inside them and someone may take advantage of them. For Mexican women everything else comes before her, her parents, her job, her husband and children when she gets married. For a Mexican macho it is detrimental to be sensitive because he’s afraid that people will be able to see right through him and a moment of weakness is not acceptable in this macho ruled society. I’ve always gotten this tingling sensation with the idea of them wearing a mask hiding their real selves behind it and this poem by Charles C. Finn Really hit home when I read it. I could see right through many Mexicans for we are a cage of our own making.



Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
Masks that I’m afraid to take off,
And none of them is me.
Pretending is an art that’s the second nature with me,
But don’t be fooled.
For God’s sake don’t be fooled.
I give you the impression that I’m secure,
That is all sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water’s calm and I’m in command,
and that I need no one.
But don’t believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
Ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies confusion and fear and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it.

I panic and at the thought of my weakness and fear
Being exposed
That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
A nonchalant sophisticated facade,
To help me pretend,
To shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation.
My only hope and I know it.
That is if it’s followed by acceptance,
it is followed by love.
It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
From my own self-built prison walls,
From the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t
Assure myself,
That I am really worth something.

But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare. I’m afraid to.
I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
Will not be followed by love.
I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh,
And your laugh would kill me.
I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing, that I’m jst
No good,
And that you will see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
With a facade of assurance without
And a trembling child within.
So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,
And my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that’s really nothing,
And nothing of what’s everything,
Of what’s crying within me.
So when I’m going through my routine,
Do not be fooled by what I’m saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying,
What I’d like to be able to say,
But what I can’t say.

I don’t like to hide.
I don’t like to play superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want o be genuine and spontaneous and me,
But you’ve got to help me.
You’ve got to hold out your hand
Even when that’s the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the
Breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you’re kind and gentle and encouraging,
Each time you try to understand because you really care,
My heart begins to grow wings,
Very small wings,
Very feeble wins,
But wings!
With your power to touch me into feeling
You can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.

I want you to know how important you are to me,
How you can be a creator – a honest-to-God creator –
Of the person that is me
If you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
You alone can remove my mask,
You alone can release me from y shadow-world
of panic and uncertainty, from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to. Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.

A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach me
The blinder I may strike back.
It’s irrational, but despite what the books say about man,
Often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing that I can cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls,
And in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
With firm hands
For a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder?
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every Mexican you meet
And I am every human being in the world
who escapes from his own reality.