There are times when the past comes back, even when one is 60
years and nearly 2,000 miles away from it. The sight of the
hate-filled protestors in Murietta, Calif., a town just a few
miles from where I was born and grew up, brought back memories
of the past, and disgust for the present.  Ramona, the little
town where I went to junior high and high school, is about 40
miles from San Diego, where I was born, and 60 miles from
Tijuana. I grew up with many Latino schoolmates. One of my
closest friends was Eleanor Solis. She never encountered any
problems, and neither did the other Latino kids. The boys were
sometimes called "Chicanos," but there were never any fights,
and lots of "inter-ethnic" friendships and dating.  One summer,
my father hired two men he called "wetbacks" to work on our
farm. My sisters and I didn't even know what that term referred
to; in those days no one we knew protested, and we were good
friends with Jose and Eliseo. So I grew up pretty oblivious to
racism. In the 1960s, the civil rights