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"The Barbosa Express" by Ed Vega is a short story from the collection Mendoza's Dreams. Vega, a contemporary Nuyorican writer, gives us a comic portrayal of the day to day life of Puerto Ricans living in the United States. The demonstration of teamwork's power and an importance of unity are very significant in this story.
The main character of the story is Barbosa, a motorman with the New York City Transit Authority for seventeen years. He's quite active in his community and well acclimatized into American life. He feels that he's "inside the veins of the city" and subway travel is "a metaphor of the lifeblood of the city". Barbosa wears a uniform which is symbolic for blending in.
Barbosa expects his long-term commitment to this country to be recognized. However, when he is not considered for a new train when they are being given to many other motorists, he gets angry. He claims that the injustice is caused by discrimination, and he's just a "Jeronimo Anonimo," nobody worth any attention.
Barbosa creates a plan to manifest his presence in the society and express the power of a single working middle class man. He has put together a 4th of July party to celebrate Nuyoricans' independence, and involves numerous members of his family to demonstrate the power of the "underground". In a comic way, by remodeling ten cars of a subway train, Barbosa, together with the upper class members of his family, from university Ph.D. graduates, through doctors and executives, to the Pentagon worker, makes a ridicule of bureaucratic systems that oppress and mistreat immigrants. He admits: "I feel like blowing up the whole system".
Barbosa also feels that the closeness of all Puerto Ricans makes them one family, and no matter how high they climb up society's ladder, they ought to help each other.
"The Barbosa Express," in its unique, grotesque way, shows how important one person's existence in our society is, regardless of the immigration roots. A single being makes a contribution to the formation of our country.
"Sometimes, If You Listen Closely, You can Hear Crying in the Zoo" is another short story by Ed Vega from his collection Mendoza's Dreams. The story is a satire on a rational, institutional life vs. human nature.
The main character of the story, Gregory Sandoval, lives the perfect, stable life, "hardly ever given to emotional outbursts". The irony is that Gregory races to perfection, to become someone else, any one but a Puerto Rican. His mother even compared his looks to an Italian's, meaning that being born to another nationality was better than being Puerto Rican, and he "had nothing to fear as long as he remained quiet". All his life he reaches to become independent, to have a better job and a better life than other Puerto Ricans, to cast off his backgrounds.
Gregory, at last, lives in a "perfect" house and has a respectful job. He is married to a white, "All-American" woman, and has two very sophisticated children.
This married man in his forties and a father to teenage kids discovers that he has lost sight of his goals. Gregory realizes that his life path is really a big mistake: "it was my greed, my need to possess America, to make her mine and now that I have her, I don't want her and I'm lost".
Eventually tired of his 'make pretend' life, Gregory identifies himself with a gorilla. In his understanding, the animal possesses more feelings than his immediate family or for that matter, any human being. He finally realizes that racing to become stereotyped American isn't worth rejecting his origin. He realizes that his wife is afraid of him and his "unexpressed animal Latin instincts". She almost agrees to stay with him as long as he behaves in a civilized manner and stays within "normal", "American like" boundaries of behavior.
His rebellious daughter calls him by his name and claims that "the parent-child relationship is on the way to becoming obsolete" and that allowances are "sick dependency" and a "symbiotic attachment" that exists in the family.
Gregory realized that he didn't want to blend with the others; he wanted to live "out of the mold" American, and mark his difference and his uniqueness.
In the context of the story is a message to all immigrants that criticizes the often chosen way of trying to live someone else's lives. Sometimes people strip themselves of their individuality and their real, one of a kind nature; they reject or try to forget their roots.
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