Detroit — The bartender at Sidekicks Saloon had to yell her recommendations to me, because the music in the nearly empty bar was too loud. “Evie’s Tamales for tamales, Tacos El Loco for tacos, and La Sierra Bar for trouble.”
She said I would find everything there: drug dealers, bar fights, illegal immigrants.
You can hardly miss La Sierra Bar on Panama Street in Claytown. It’s a commercial building that’s been painted banana yellow and lime green, surrounded by dilapidated homes. The overwhelmingly vibrant paint is the first hint. It’s not an aesthetic common to Detroit. It instead suggests the taste of people near the equator, specifically from the tropics, who draw inspiration from their bounties of tropical fruit and bright feathered birds. The bar is not far from Mexicantown.
Such places raise a provocative question: Do ethnic enclaves, however fun and interesting, ultimately represent a failed vision of the Founding Fathers?
James Madison thought that any immigrant who could not “incorporate himself into our society” should be excluded from entering the nation. Many liberals would even agree with that statement on its own. But in Madison’s time, assimilation was not simply defined as following the law, such as paying taxes and not murdering one’s neighbor. That was a given. Instead, their notion of assimilation was cultural and strongly nativist. Alexander Hamilton, a few years later, wrote that the Republic’s safety depends, eternally, “on a uniformity of principles and habits” and that national pride would “invariably be found to be closely connected to birth, education, and family.”
Outside the Sierra’s entrance was a bouncer. He was black and wearing what seemed like a bulletproof vest. He had a fake police badge hanging on a chain around his neck. He told me to wait at the door, while he rolled a blunt in the passenger seat of his car. He couldn’t complete his task without being interrupted. La Sierra was like a nest for drunk Mexicans, who were coming and going with the inscrutable logic of bees. He was stopping every other person from bringing their beer outside, or sneaking in, or getting into their car when they could hardly walk. At a place like this, few drive home sober.
But the bouncer was not only the gatekeeper; he was also the parking authority. Every time a car parked in what seemed like an open space, the bouncer would shout at the driver in perfect Spanish. He would then translate, since I asked, that part of his job was keeping the neighbors happy.
I asked him how he learned Spanish. He didn’t just speak enough to “get by” on vacation, or claim “Professional Proficiency” on LinkedIn, he spoke well enough to command unruly native speakers. He told me he learned Spanish by living in Detroit. He then patted me down to check for weapons. I asked him how often he has to use those, pointing at his hip where handcuffs dangled.
“All the time,” he said. “Check it.” He then pulled up a picture from this very evening of a man in jeans and a striped polo, face down with his hands fastened behind his back.
The bar was incredible. It wasn’t just Mexican in atmosphere; it was like Tijuana. The men stood with their backs against the wall in baggy jeans and unbuttoned short-sleeve shirts. A few rougher men, with tattoos on their necks and flat caps, were shooting pool. Near the bathrooms, overweight women sat at gambling machines. To get a drink, one did not need to go to the bar. A Latina in a bodysuit, sporting a fanny pack, came to take your order.
La Sierra Bar is a perfect example of parallel worlds. The customers might live in the same city but have little overlap with American society. Their economy (cash) is completely underground. They circumvent bureaucracy and navigate licensing with the help of compatriots. Their mechanic, grocer, and plumber only speak Spanish. Most of these people have not assimilated, often after decades of being here. If you deported one of them to their hometown tomorrow, they would have little cultural evidence of ever having been in America. Nothing of American culture has been internalized. They have resisted progressivism, but they are conservative only because they have conserved their Mexican ways.
No one inside the bar spoke English. After a couple of drinks, which depleted my cash, I presented the bartender with my credit card. She had no idea what I was saying. I had to be relayed to several people, each of whom understood less English than the previous person, until I finally came to the obvious conclusion: cash only.
So I went out back to the patio. An elderly black man was helping himself to a tray of stewed meat and a stack of tortillas that were sitting on a plastic table. They seemed to be free for the taking. The only place to sit was the backseat of a van, which had been ripped out and placed against the outside of the bar. I pulled out a smoke.
As soon as I did, there appeared a very squat Guatemalan man who politely gestured for one. We spoke for however long our cigarettes burned. I asked him how long he’d been in America. He struggled to answer. Eventually, by breaking my English so that he could better comprehend, he understood my question. He flicked open his fingers and thumbs—10—then made bunny ears with one hand—2—and together conveyed that he had been in Detroit for 12 years. He showed me a video of a van being painted; he worked on cars.
I asked him how he liked Detroit. He said, “Detroit feyo,” which I looked up on my phone. The phrase translated into: “Detroit is ugly.” He grimaced and then made the universal sign for money. Detroit was ugly—America was ugly—but he was here for the cash. It was not all that bad, apparently. He smiled and pointed to the bar, “Sierra good!” He concluded our conversation by joining his opinions: “Detroit feyo; Sierra good!”
Sierra, of course, was just a placeholder for Mexico. Hamilton warned, over 225 years ago, that a large number of immigrants would compromise the interest of the U.S., since many foreigners have greater loyalties to other nations. If he could look around America today, what would he think?
As I was leaving the bar, the same elderly black man from the patio, who was now carrying his food in a Styrofoam container, along with two bottles of Smirnoff Ice that he had found, approached me as I unlocked my car. He wanted a ride home. He was frail, very polite, and missing half his teeth. For a moment, I took pity on him. But he was headed in the opposite direction. I apologized and drove away.
A couple blocks away from the bar, a tow truck obstructed my path. I turned around. Through my window, over the sound of the breeze and blasting tunes, I heard a shout: “Now you goin’ the right way.” I pulled over and unlocked the passenger door. The elderly man got in my car and introduced himself as Steven. Everyone knew him around the block. He grew up just down the road.
Steven directed me to his home address, only a few minutes away. He told me he was going home to eat his food and drink his two drinks, before heading back to the bar. There was something touching about his desire to eat at home, in peace, alone, for which he was prepared to limp over two miles. I dropped him off.
He lived in a once-nice home, now in disrepair, in a once-charming neighborhood, now squalid. His neighbors were revving their muscle cars. It was well after midnight. Pit bulls ran across the street, unleashed. People sat and drank on their porches. I could see the steel-green Detroit sign on I-94 from the end of his street. Before he got out of my car, Steven thanked me. He was genuinely grateful.
I had to ask him: “What do you think of Detroit?”
Steven answered without a second thought: “It’s my home.”
Mitch Miller is an adventure writer and conflict journalist. He’s more than happy to join in on any extreme activity, and can be reached at mitchenjoyer@gmail.com. Follow him on X at @funtimemitch.
