Reconnecting with my Mexican culture through my plant ancestors from Veracruz
First Exposures 2022 Summer Photography Residency
Using online scientific archival photographs of native flora and collaging them to envelop me is my form of a long-distance hug to the beautiful homeland of my mom. The place my mind jumps to when I think of Mexico– Veracruz.
I wish I could visit my family in Mexico.
I wish I could experience its culture, wonderful sights and delicious food in person,
that my dad often tells me about.
I wish I could see my grandmother again.
I want to know where I come from.
My memories of Mexico feel so distant.
Like a lifetime ago.
Like I can’t be sure they really happened.
I don’t have the full picture.
I don’t know if I’m fabricating an imaginary place I came from.
I can’t come close to imagining what Mexico is really like.
I want to reconnect with my roots.
But all I know of my ancestry is from the stories my parents have shared.
That and DNA ancestry tests. It feels so phony though.
Like fake. And makes me think of blood quantum stuff.
I feel like any attempts to connect with my Indigenous roots are through a heavy filter.
I’m trying to reach over from another country.
Talking with my parents, they’ve said they don’t feel connected with their Indigenous half.
Racism towards Indigenous people in Mexico is prevalent and subjugating.
My family doesn’t know or claim being part of an Indigenous group.
Being Indigenous is associated with being lower class.
My parents never claimed Indigeneity.
Because it would lower their social perception? I don’t know.
I can feel colonialism’s ripples in this lack of knowledge of hundreds of years of culture.
Knowing where my family comes from is really important to me.
I don’t know where to start.
My grandma would be the best way, I think.
I should talk to her more. She’s starting to forget things.
I wish I could talk to her in person.
The phone always distorts our voices so much that we can’t understand each other sometimes.
The phone always distorts our voices so much that we can’t understand each other sometimes.
“Tell me about your childhood. Where do we come from?”
Even these questions my mom hasn’t asked her.
“I didn’t think to ask about those things,” mom says.
“I am Mexican. I was born in Mexico City. I grew up in Mexico until I was nine.”
I always say these lines. But what does it mean to be Mexican?
I always say these lines. But what does it mean to be Mexican?
The Mexico I remember is so far away and fading.
But isn’t ancestry something that sticks with you no matter what?
I feel like most of what I have learned about Mexican culture was once I was not there anymore.
I’ve lived in San Francisco for 11 years now. Officially more time than in Mexico.
Am I more American than Mexican?
Would I be considered gringa in Mexico?
Do people even see me as Mexican in the US?
Would I be considered gringa in Mexico?
Do people even see me as Mexican in the US?
Does it matter what others think of me? Maybe not.
What I think of myself is the only thing that matters.
I don’t want to melt completely in the American pot.
My parents lost connection to our Indigenous ancestry long before we came here.
Because of the lasting social, economic – everything – impacts of colonization.
I want to reclaim what was lost. But how?
Opening history books feels so impersonal.
But I don’t know anyone alive I could talk to, that isn’t my family, to help me reconnect.
Connecting through food and plants are the closest thing I can think of.
Flora and fauna are living and non-judgemental beings.
I know my ancestors had deep knowledge of their medicinal, spiritual and nutritious uses.
Maybe if I learn more about the plants and animals they used, I’ll feel more connected.
It certainly wouldn’t hurt.
I would be reclaiming knowledge that got lost somewhere in the lineage.
My mom is forgetting what plants and animals lived around her family home.
“I’ll know them when I see them. It’s just been years since I’ve been back there.”
She told me of the abundance of fruit trees surrounding the family home.
Where she could reach up and pick an avocado or peach the size of her hand.
Of the frogs that would jump and dance in the puddles after a rainpour.
“It would rain all the time. Veracruz is very wet.”
Of how she’d peek into the water potholes on the dirt road –
Of how she’d peek into the water potholes on the dirt road –
“There were no paved roads back then. My shoes would get caked with mud.”
– and watch the little tadpoles grow to lively jumpy frogs.
I love her smile and laughter that fills her voice when she recounts childhood stories.
"El árbol daba muchos aguacates, ¡pero muchos! Tantos que ni siquiera había que recogerlos de las ramas. Caían al suelo y los enterrábamos en los grandes sacos de harina de mi padre -que en paz descanse- y maduraban rápidamente. Los comíamos con bolillo, en tortas de aguacate".
(Translation: "The tree gave a lot of avocados, but a lot! So many that you didn't even have to pick them from the branches. They would fall to the ground and we would bury them in my dad's big flour sacks - may he rest in peace - and they would ripen quickly. We ate them with bolillo, in avocado tortas.")
I don’t remember a lot of my mom’s homeland without the help of photographs or retellings of our family vacations there. My mom shows me pictures from the massive family Whatsapp groupchat sometimes. After looking at the subject – a family gathering or construction on a building – my eyes are drawn to the background. To the soft gray clouds caressing the tops of the tall lucious trees. The low hanging clouds give the image a hazy dreamlike feel. Making it more nostalgic. Makes me yearn more to be there. To experience whatever is now left of my mother’s childhood memories. To smell and feel the fertile land that nourishes the fruit trees.
“You can drop a half-eaten guayaba on the ground, kick dirt over it, barely covering it, and in less than you know it, roots will have spread and the stem will be springing towards the sky.”
“You should look it up online: ‘what flora grows in Veracruz?’
You’ll find out more than I can tell you.”
It was a little difficult to find a database of endemic plants inhabiting my mom’s home state. Thankfully I came across a website by the University of Veracruz that documented and uploaded a picture list of their native plant species. Looking through their photo archives made me feel nostalgic, but happy that from so far away, I could learn and see the life that sprouts there. It saddened me to learn that a majority of the plant species are endangered and in risk of extinction. For some species, the uploaded pictures are of the only known bunches left alive. A sense of urgency got planted and began to grow in my heart. Habitat loss due to expansion of construction is the main reason for their endangerment. I’m afraid that by the time I’m able to return, they’ll be extinct.
Using online scientific archival photographs of native flora and collaging them to envelop me is my form of a long-distance hug to the beautiful homeland of my mom. The place my mind jumps to when I think of Mexico– Veracruz.
