The Bridge Between

Heros are often thought of as brave individuals who go out into the world and achieve something that is remarkable and memorable. I never liked how heros are traditionally illustrated. I always thought of heros as the everyday people who wake up, look at their difficult circumstances, and continue to walk forward. It’s the kind of work that’s done quietly, in the mundaness of daily life, as if belief and faith in something better are the only means through which action is possible. To put one foot in front of the other when everything surrounding you is telling you that betterment is not possible.

For this episode, the historical figure that I focused on is my great grandfather, Abelino Federico.

When I sat down to write this episode, I kept thinking about how high-ranking Mexica officials were told about the arrival of Hernán Cortés to the Yucatan peninsula in 1519. I did not want to write something from the perspective of the Colonizers. We have their accounts and they can be easily accessed. Instead, I wanted to take the perspective of the person who, for the first time, had no choice but to tell Moctezuma II about a previously unknown presence that just arrived along the shoreline. How does this person describe armor, horses, or the foreignness of their language? What words do you use? Did their voice hesitate? Did they stutter?

I am also taking this perspective because so much of our collective understanding of indigenous populations is incorrect. What has been presented to us is largely a fabrication—a presentation of a monolith population, somehow idyllic, unchanging, primitive, without culture. That understanding is wrong. This is an attempt, a modest attempt, to help de-center those narratives.

This story is called Invisible Pueblos.

When I was putting together the collection of short stories, the word I kept returning to was diaspora. Since leaving their communities in 1885—Hacienda Ledesma in Jalisco, Hidalgo del Parral in Chihuahua—a question I kept asking was: is it fair to say that my family is a small component of broader Latino diaspora?

I wrote a letter to a family member who died in 1951. When I was doing research for this project, I was haunted by the stories I was told about this person, how he was described, his attitude, his actions, his beliefs. I wrote a letter because I couldn’t think of another way to talk, to release the tension I felt, the knot in my stomach, to understand, to forgive, to let go. This is a letter I wrote. It’s called the 1951 letter.

Home is about people. Home is made through language, shared over a meal, and forged through relationships. People are my home.

It is easy to say that Mexico is complex, beautiful, endlessly cariñoso and, sometimes, brutal and unforgiving. Mexico is more than that. Mexico is an idea, rooted in a story so rich and a culture so profound that it defies words. Mexico is an idea, an emotional idea.