[three of three] Posadas

I think about Emiliana’s grandmother and aunts, and one of her aunt’s sons.  Her grandmother is a monolingual Nahuatl speaker who understands Spanish.  The family asked her to join them in Cuernavaca, but she doesn’t want to leave.  The aunts speak Nahuatl and Spanish, but sticks almost entirely to her mother tongue.  I imagine that they will stay as long as the grandmother will.  Her son is just learning to speak.  He is at the beginning of it all. 

Emiliana’s second cousin will probably grow up like a lot of the Oapaneco boys that I know—bilingual, but with a preference for Nahautl.  I wonder what will happen when he is older and his grandmother perhaps isn’t around.  Will he join Hugo and the rest of his family in Cuernavaca or Oapanecos in other parts?  Will his mother and his aunt come with him?  Will he make the trip up north? 

I just don’t know.

I have so much respect for people in Oapan—how generous they are, how hard they work, and the extent to which they center their lives on food and family.  Xmotlali, they say when you enter a home.  Xmotlali.  Sit, eat, get fat.  I remember the Sunday morning after I first arrived in Oapan, years ago.  I woke up to firecrackers and roosters.  When the first went off, I almost shit my pants.  I thought that someone was firing a gun at the house.  Now, in some ways, Oapan is a paradise for me. 

There are people on the periphery of Oapanecos’ lives who would rather wash them away from the face of the earth—from the land that they work and the river in which they fish.  The Mexican government’s position has been that they would be good laborers in other areas of Mexico—a little post-colonial “fuck you” to one of the relatively few indigenous communities that remained after the arrival of the Spanish.  Even in their own community, there are people who steal from them, with no right or recourse. 

Perhaps this is convoluted, but I see Oapanecos as real people with real fights and real issues.  Many are just trying to get by.  I have respect for them, I identify with them, and almost involuntarily, I tell people that Oapan is where I am from. 

Oapan is home.