Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Rigoberto recounts his childhood. He begins by describing his parents’ courtship. Before he was born, his father was a boxer, but he wasn’t very good, “according to [Rigoberto’s] mother’s sisters” (43). As a result of this failing and his drinking, Rigoberto’s mother’s family didn’t approve of the relationship, so his parents elope to Mexicali. His father worked in the Imperial Valley in California so that he could earn enough for Rigoberto’s mother to cross over to the United States. Rigoberto’s mother got pregnant, and in 1970 she and Rigoberto’s father drove to the United States, ending up in Bakersfield, California, where Rigoberto and his brother, Alexandro, were born. In 1972, they moved back to Zacapu, México, for a variety of reasons: the “César Chávez-inspired strike-and-boycott furor” (45), the Vietnam draft, problems with work permits, and to have family support with the children. Rigoberto notes, “My mother said that all of those reasons were true, but that there were a few more. And that eventually I’d be old enough to know and understand them” (46).

In Zacapu, the family moved into a half-finished home owned by the extended family in Colonia Miguel Hidalgo, a neighborhood. Rigoberto describes how the second story of the home was incomplete and the family made do with the first-story rooms.