George has been on my mind lately. I can't help but think of him amid today's headlines of hate crimes, threats to revoke birthright citizenship and contentious midterm elections.

I describe George in my book, Homelands, as a white man I met in the fields of California's San Joaquin Valley back when I worked as a young farmworker.

I never knew his full name, nor where he was from, just that he was a Vietnam War veteran, someone who knew the labor contractor, my uncle Jesse. He was bitter about the past and deeply morbid about the future. He changed my perspective on many things through heated conversations that helped shaped the understanding of a Mexican immigrant like me about what it meant to be an American. Participate, he'd say, if you want to belong.

In these polarizing times, the issues we talked about years ago have taken on a new meaning and a renewed sense of urgency.

Back in the 1970s, George helped me load bins on tractors at the edge of a tomato field, as roaring farm machines harvested the red-ripe fruit onto a conveyor belt where mostly Mexican women, standing on a platform over the belt, sorted with nimble fingers. Whenever the machines broke down, and they did with some regularity, I'd listen intently to George, a wiry man with a small paunch and sad eyes. He usually wore an Oakland A's baseball cap and worshipped Neil Diamond.

We'd take our gloves off and sit atop the bins in the sudden stillness. We'd listen to soulful songs like "Sweet Caroline" and "I Am ... I Said," hinting at a hidden pain he wasn't ready to share. Neil Diamond was the closest thing I had heard in English to Mexican crooner José Alfredo Jimenez, so mournful, so melodramatic. I asked George about the war a few times, but he would never open up. These were stories he wouldn't tell a 15-year-old like me for fear that I too would grow bitter, he'd say.

This country needs your optimism, not your bitterness, he stressed.

Don't worry, George, Mexico is home, I explained. That's where I belong.

But you were only a child when you left, he replied, reminding me I was just 6 years old. A romantic fool — foolish, I'd respond. He laughed off my nostalgia with a touch of disdain. Then he'd grow quiet. He didn't like the idea of me feeling like an outsider, sitting on the sidelines.

America is not a grateful nation, he'd tell me. Americans had already killed two Kennedys and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He warned me I would always be a stranger, even as Mexicans kept coming to meet job demand in California and throughout the southwest. Numbers didn't matter. If I, and my family, didn't commit to being American — not just paying taxes or attending school, but becoming U.S. citizens, voting in numbers that turned us into players in the system — we would always be in the fields. The interlopers.

He remained bitter about America's role in Vietnam. He had fought alongside Mexicans and Mexican Americans. They served in the U.S. war and their efforts had been overlooked, he'd say. They were mostly forgotten.

Documented border crossers walk past a group of undocumented migrants waiting to enter the U.S. atop the Paso Del Norte international Bridge between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico on Nov. 1, 2018. Just over 100 migrants were camped out at the bridge waiting to enter the U.S. (Rudy Gutierrez / AP)

Mexicans are a forgiving people, I said, quoting my mother, then a member of the United Farm Workers union led by the iconic leader, Cesar Chavez. My mother and my father are rural people from San Luis del Cordero, Durango, Mexico with third-grade education, and they speak little to no English. All their lives they planned on returning "home" someday, wherever home is.

A proud woman, my mother liked to remind me that history had given us the most practice in forgiving and not judging others. We've been repeatedly humiliated by the United States. At the turn of the century, Mexicans had literally been hunted down by the Texas Rangers, wounds that don't heal overnight. Maybe never.

We lived in a fickle nation. During times of war when America needed workers, they'd open their arms and break into celebration at the mere sight of them, even organizing cookouts. My father, a guest worker known as a bracero, was one of the lucky ones. His boss loved him so much he scored a green card.

Yet, when the first world was done exploiting the third world, Americans would deport millions of Mexicans, including U.S. citizens. A cruel irony.

I told George that my mother emphasized the importance of keeping an open hand, not a grudge, to anyone. As long as we kept our dignity, faith and, in return, they showed a touch of humility, we could be friends.

That's weakness, George admonished me. Americans respect strength, not wishy-washiness. Americans will strive for the next big thing, and they don't look to the past. They conveniently forget their own immigrant history. Americans dream big thoughts for tomorrow. That's where you come in, Alfredo. You're building the country today, but at what cost? So you can keep your humility and dignity intact? In the end you'll be screwed over by Americans unless you become American.

His words have reverberated in my mind for years, but never more than in these dark times, when people who share my color of skin serve as a convenient punching bag for politicians who want to score points by whipping up fear.

Alfredo Corchado and his parents, Herlinda Corchado Jimenez and Juan Pablo Corchado, leave their polling location in El Paso after voting. (Alfredo Corchado)

My mom and father have also become U.S. citizens. Recently, I joined them and my two sisters in casting early ballots in El Paso, ground zero for the Trump administration's campaign against immigrants.

The rhetoric plays out daily here: Tent cities in nearby Tornillo are filled with 1,100 teens from Central America. An 18 to 30-foot-high fence is going up. Fear-mongering over some 3,000 migrants seeking refuge resonates loudly. Customs agents packing high-power weapons stride casually atop international bridges that once served as symbols of friendship. As many as 15,000 troops are headed for the border.

I've never seen my parents so determined to vote as they did recently. We stood in a small line inside a mall. The line slowly grew by the second, as I wondered whether the bears in hibernation — Latino voters — had finally had enough and too were voting, regardless of ideology.

Across the country, Latinos make up 27.3 million eligible voters, according to Pew Research Center, representing 12 percent of all eligible voters. And 4 in 10 Latinos have experienced offensive incidents during the Trump administration because of their background, according to Pew.

Yet voter turnout rate remains dismal.

As for George, I didn't see him again after that summer. He promised to keep in touch but never did. Someone told me he had grown even more angry and likely headed south of the border in search of a new start, away from the bitterness. That sounded like George, despite his advice to me. He'd had a hard go of it in America, and needed a break. I was young and just beginning. I'd joked with him that we would one day meet up in Mexico. He'd try to grin, but he remained serious, imploring me to participate in order to level the playing field. Don't play second fiddle to anyone, Alfredo.

George was right. If we don't care, no one else will. Vote.

Alfredo Corchado is author of "Homelands," and the Mexico border correspondent for The Dallas Morning News.

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