The Barrio

      The Barrio by Robert Ramirez is an essay about the world that natives create from the Barrio as opposed to the Anglo community. Ramirez depicts the Barrio lifestyle and how it can be very beautiful in tradition but it also comes with a lot of hardships. Ramirez shows how the Barrio lifestyle is a lot more traditional and family based. Family is a very important aspect in the barrio. Ramirez uses a lot of sensory language so the reader gets a vivid picture of how The Barrio is different from the Anglo community. He uses the example of fences to show this difference. In the Anglo community fences are tall and made of wood and you can not see through them; they are built to keep things/people out. In The Barrio the fences are made up of wire or bushes and you can easily see through them without feeling like your invading someones space. Ramirez uses the fences as a metaphor to show how different the two communities think. The Barrio is filled with cantinas and panaderias. Its a place of family and tradition, a worn out neighborhood where running water is a luxury, and culture is something to be proud of. 
      Ramirez  essay was pretty good, I liked how his descriptions gave me a good image of The Barrio looks, what I might see and smell if I was there. There was a line that I especially liked "The old the child, the greater the responsibility to help the head of the household provide for the rest of the family". I felt that I could relate to this line a lot because in my Mexican culture that is definitely true and especially since I am the oldest girl in my family I get the responsibility of taking care of my younger sisters.