Canto CDV: The Incorruptible Baby Guti Photo

Gentle cabrones:

The last thing I have from my Yukon – which was actually my parent’s Yukon, which was really my mami‘s Yukon (Canto CCCLXXXII) – are two third-row folding seats. Never used. I don’t even know how we would’ve used them because it would’ve been a hell of a tight fit in the cab even for Mutt and Jeff.

My parents had the seats in their garage forever and now I’ve had them in my garage forever. I’m not keeping them for memory’s sake – it’s just one of those things that you forget to get rid of even though every time you see it, you think “I need to get rid of it.” Plus, I don’t think I’ve ever put anything on Craigslist in my life — yeah, I’m still very much a Luddite. Is the Penny Saver still around?

I digress.

I need to get rid of those seats soon. My honey has turned our garage into a mini-gym, so I’m trying to think of how to make more space. I tried to unfold the seats, but they wouldn’t budge when I tried no matter which lever I pulled – probably needed some WD-40, which I resolved to do the following day.

Which I’ve promptly forgot.

But soon after I tried and failed, I found something on the garage floor: a tiny photo of me as a baby. Yellowed because my parents took me long, long ago to Sears for a session. Me before my hair grew in, which probably marks me as no older than two. Cute, with a Mickey Mouse in the backdrop while I wear a checkered vest (my mami always dressed her kids well).

It’s a photo I’ve seen my entire life, so I didn’t even question at first how the hell it got into my garage. My mami had a huge one framed, some mid-sized ones, smaller ones that she gave out to people, and then a few the size of a dime that she put in small, faux silver charm frames like the one I found.

Then the following day, I realized the discovery of the photo was basically supernatural. I remember how my mami used to keep it in the Yukon’s middle glove compartment, and sometimes, in a little change container that came with the Yukon. At some point when she cleaned the Yukon, she must’ve put the photo of me in the fold-up seats that were never used and it remained buried in them when she removed them from her garage and I placed them in my garage.

That story makes no sense whatsoever.

There is no reason why my mami would’ve put that small photo that she treasured so much on things she didn’t care for. The only other logical explanation is that she gave me the small photo and I left it on the seats, which is even less likely because I have all my childhood mementos either in my archives or somewhere in the Cosmo Cavern and put them there immediately lest they get lost.

Or did God transport the photo from Yawheh-knows-where and put it on the floor to teach me a lesson? Most likely scenario of them all — and trust me, God likes to mess with me as if I’m some Job with glasses.

First time reading this newsletter? Subscribe here for more merriment! Feedback, thoughts, commentary, rants? Send them to [email protected]

My sisters and brother like to post photos of us as kids in our group text thread. So does my cousin Plas on our Mexiclan thread (Canto CCXI, kinda).

I don’t.

I care more about photos for their historical value than the memories behind them. I always say that if you need a picture to remind you of something, then that memory must’ve not meant that much to you.

But I’ve always liked that photo I found on our garage floor. My eyes are wide and looking off to the side, no doubt curious about whoever was trying to get my attention. My cheeks are cherubic, just like all of us Arellano kids because my mom‘s trick to keep us chubby and healthy was feeding us bottles of oatmeal. Never cared for the Raggedy Andy next to Mickey, but I did like the teddy bear sewn onto my vest.

I would be cute one more year, then my looks went downhill from there.

Now in my older years, I can read the photo in new, more poignant ways. My mami long had us sit for photo sessions. She wanted documentation of her babies, to show off then to friends and to give her solace of how sweet we were when we were grown up and bratty and indifferent when we shouldn’t have been.

The Baby Guti session was the first, with her firstborn. If the sister that follows me was around back then, she would’ve been an infant. We lived in a old granny flat next to an alley in Anacrime at the time (Canto XXX). My mami wasn’t making much money when this session happened and my dad was wasting his salary on gambling and booze – it’s not a critique or bitter memories but just facts.

But damnit if my mami wasn’t going to make her happy memories, and for years to come.

Decades later, my sisters arranged to have a nice photo session with us now-adult siblings and give them to my mami for her birthday. If you see them, I’m not smiling at all. I was annoyed — again, my weird philosophy about photographs. But my mami was so happy with the result that she hung them at our house — sons and daughters separate, then together — along with other photos of us through the years.

They’re still there.

The dime-sized photo of Baby Guti is in immaculate condition. Incorruptible, even. There are no scratches on the photo or its holder. Just the yellowing chronic to all Sears portraits from the 1970s and 1980s.

I know the big, framed copy of it is in my parent’s house, along with the others of my siblings. But this small one I’m gonna carry with me in the slip that carries my L.A. Times reporter’s badge, where I keep medals of various saints. Before I go on assignment, I always look at them and pray for my safety and for success. Now, I’ll be able to see Baby Guti and be thankful that my mom‘s prayers for her children to be safe and successful, even at moments where nothing was certain, came true.

Thank you, Mami.

Gracias, diosito en el cielo. Now, stop messing with me already!

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Two weeks of my honey! This time, in front of her recently refurbished kitchen for her restaurant, Alta Baja Market. She was closed for two weeks, so swing by and get the store back in the groove of things — I’ll be there manning the counter tomorrow for Pozole Sunday, which happens the last Sunday of every month!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.” — Herman Melville

LISTENING: “Eight Days a Week,” Procol Harum. The prog-rock band is a bit much — I can only hear “A Whiter Shade of Pale” for so long before mumbling YA GÜEY. And I’m very particular about my Beatles covers, let alone one of my favorite tracks from my favorite Beatles album. Yet two wrongs make a hell of a delightful right here. Procol Harum amps up the happy in one of the Fab Four’s happiest songs yet never overdoes it even though it’s, you know, Procol Harum. Never heard this song until this year, and I’m sure glad I did. Hence included in Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly Radiola of Randomness YouTube songlist, where I’ve included every song I’ve ever featured in a canto — give it a spin!

READING: “I’ve Visited Guantánamo 28 Times as a Reporter. It Still Defies Belief”: Leave it to Canadians to publish something about the banality of evil that’s better than what Americans can.

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo in the News

“The Fight for Mexican Los Angeles”: I get quoted at the very end of this great New Yorker piece about L.A.’s hot deportation summer.

“For some, Latinos will never be truly American”: A Los Angeles Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

“Immigration Reform News July 24, 2025”: Legendary whistleblower Zachary Ellison mentions me in a story of his.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“Santa Ana’s streetcar project plagued with lawsuits, delays, protests”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary talks about SanTana’s trolley to nowhere.

“Chris Newman is at the center of the immigration fight — again”: My latest L.A. Times columna talks about the legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. KEY QUOTE: “His full head of hair, round-framed glasses and freshly sprouted mustache gives the Chicagoland native the look of a Depression-era do-gooder.”

“With Manifest Destiny art, DHS goes hard on ‘white makes right’”: My latest L.A. Times columna talks about the Department of Homeland Security using one of the most notorious paintings in American history to brag about “our” “heritage.” KEY QUOTE: “Administration officials act shocked and offended when critics accuse them of racism, but the Trump base knows exactly what’s going on.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!