Santana Nescafé Immigrant Odyssey
You know, it’s not too crazy to say that it’s possible every Latinx household in the United States probably has a jar of Nescafé Instant Coffee in their kitchen cupboard.
Whether it’s for your morning cup of joe before heading off to work, as a midday snack before lunch, a cool down right after an epic holiday dinner, or just finding whatever reason to drink a cup of coffee – mostly to talk to someone or kill hunger before the next meal – Nescafé Instant Coffee is a way of life.
I’m serious. There isn’t a morning that my mother and father don’t have a cup of Nescafé to start their day.
Every day, the first words my father utters to me after “Buenos dias,” is “La agua esta caliente.”
Time to make coffee. Or now that I’m older, and I want to pretend I’m more sophisticated, more refined, I make Earl Grey Tea.
But way before that it was Nescafé. Cups and cups and cups of Nescafé.
The Best Coffee in Existence
I was around 19 when I picked up the habit too – I guess that was me reconciling the fact that I had to grow up. In my mind, Nescafé was the best coffee because it was the only coffee I knew.
That is until I discovered there was better coffee out there.
Now, that’s not to say Nescafé is bad. But it’s “good” in the sense because you don’t know any better, so your “good” is the “best” by default.
If anything Nescafé is a metaphor for my upbringing. Because I didn’t know any better, I assumed that what I had was the best.
I assumed that having two immigrant parents from El Salvador who worked their assess off night and day to put a roof over my head and put food on the table, with minimal interaction with me Monday-Friday, was the “best.”
I thought going to a working class immigrant ghetto Catholic School with declining enrollment year after year, with like 80% of the families getting financial aid from the Bishop and Orange County Diocese, was the best education around.
I just assumed Tijuana had the best medicine in the world because that’s where everyone – and not just my family and network of cousins, but I’m talking my friends, their families, and their networks of cousins – went to the doctor.
I assumed that HBO was the best premium channel because it had every movie ever. Okay, that one was true. HBO was pretty bomb back then as it is now, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t know as much pop culture as I do today had it not been for HBO. (Thanks for the subscription, Dad!).
I just didn’t know any better. What was presented to me in my everyday, Santana, working class immigrant, wanna-be-hood life seemed like the best.
I had books? They presented to me alternatives for what I knew – you mean I could be a scientist who brings dinosaurs back to life? That’s awesome!
But I couldn’t make the intellectual leap that what I saw in movies and TV was available to me – I saw it, but I knew it wasn’t for me? I saw Saved By The Bell, but I knew I couldn’t be Saved By The Bell – know what I mean?
This Is All I Know
There’s this old, now obscure, but-fresh-to me-in-96′, SNL sketch called “Wong & Owens: Ex-Pornstars,” starring Jim Bruer and Tracy Morgan as washed up, 70’s pornstars who try to adjust to life post-porn by working mundane day jobs.
They did like two of them. And the first one finds them working at a KFC. And it’s ridiculous. They show up in perms and afros, thick mustaches, open silk shirts, gold chains, and bell bottoms.
There’s one joke in the sketch. They hit it over and over. Someone tries to teach them how to do a task – like pull Fried Chicken out of a fryer – and they interpret it as a come on, they go into pornmode, person freaks out, Wong and Owens realize they fucked up, they apologize profusely, and in their shame, they declare, “This is all I know.”
And damn, if that line didn’t resonate then, it resonates now.
I don’t want to go digging up ancient, childhood memories of me being hammered down for being poor and and unaware…
But there’s so many moments of me being ignorant of the world outside of my little, Santana, working class immigrant bubble.
I would say something stupid, didn’t know how to behave in a certain social situation, or just felt like an alien with no frame of reference for how to move forward in a brand new environment.
I became aware of how much I did not know.
I learned to be silent to not risk being made fun of for not knowing some random world fact it had just been revealed to me was important to know.
When this happened, all I wanted to do was to look at the person in the eye and say, “This is all I know.”
New Ways to Drink Coffee
My Nescafé worldview – once I realized there were other ways of life out there – made me feel like an undereducated, gullible, naive and ignorant non-cultured idiot from the sticks, which I was – I just didn’t want to be aware of it. But damn, aware of it I was, and always will be.
I eventually discovered other ways to drink coffee:
1). First in smoothie form at Starbucks (Caramel Frappuccino),
2). Then black coffee over ice (Community College Cafeteria),
3). Then Starbucks again with Grande in a Venti Coffee;
4). A friend took me to Lee’s Sandwiches and revealed to me Vietnamese Coffee, probably the best way to drink coffee in the whole world – I’ve written many poems about it.
5). I discovered French Press Coffee in Berkeley because of my friend Paquita, and I’ve had one ever since.
6). Hell, I went to Brazil, the land of coffee, where I went nuts drinking home-made Brazilian coffee: put coffee grounds and water in a pot, put on a stove, bring to a roiling boil, and then pour hot coffee into a thermos through a filtered sleeve. Add cream and sugar, eat with a piece of French Bread – delicious.
I would drink that entire Thermos too by the way.
I loved it so much that I was able to persuade my Brazilian host grandmother to make me a fresh pot every day early in the morning – right after she told me that I could drink instant coffee every morning before going to school.
7). Duncan Donuts Coffee – simple, unpretentious, working class, delicious.
Every time I discovered a new way to drink coffee, my worldview expanded. I didn’t feel so much like a simple country bumpkin from the ghetto.
That’s obviously an insecurity I’m going to wrestle with my whole life. And I’m just going to have to do my best to deal with it.
Coming Full Circle: Nescafé Is Still Good
Now that I’ve seen the world and experienced other ways to drink coffee, I can say that there are many ways to live.
Here’s the thing: no one knows any better when growing up; you think your way of living is the only way, and because that’s all you know, it’s possible that you’ll conclude that’s the best way.
And then you’ll be exposed to something new, something you couldn’t prepare for – a new school with kids of all races, a new friend from a different economic background, a new enemy who you secretly want their life – and you’ll be like, “Maybe this isn’t the best way to live?”
Or you might double down, and be like, “Fuck it. This is the right way to live,” and just get even more working class, immigrant, and ghetto.
Or Hell, you might say, “I’m going to get away from that, and do everything in my power to be the exact opposite,” and you become self-hating, self-loathing.
Or maybe, you just embrace the journey, and forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know in the past. You keep an open mind and try to learn as much as you possibly can, doing your best to not pass judgement.
You try to become free and you accept that everyday is a challenge to earn your humanity, earn an identity that transcends your ethnic, class, language, and geographic identities.
You start drinking Nescafé Instant Coffee again, and you accept that this is one part of yourself, one part of many, and that the whole is always greater than the sum.
Now, everytime you drink Nescafé, your embracing a part of yourself that you will have forever, but it’s not the only part of you, and that’s awesome.
I’m going to go have a cup of Nescafé now.
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