Never Been

by Danielle Salas-Casillas (United States of America)

Making a local connection Mexico

I can't say I've ever been to Africa, although I do have ancestry from Cameroon and Senegal--countries whose exports once included human beings, stolen and sold by Spain via Mexico, the Caribbean, and most of what is known as "Latin" America, though originally all indigenous land. This mix of this theft of both indigenous land and cultures and African people, and also cultures, is the epigensis of my bloodline. In short, I can say with confidence despite my "immigrant" background via my grandparents my ancestry has been on this continent for at least 20,000 years, making me connected to every part of this land and its people. Though never to Africa I can say I've been to México, however. While my grandparents hailed from Durango I've never been past the border towns of Ciudad Juaréz or Nogales. In fact, I grew up less than 1 hour and 30 minutes from Juaréz in a tiny town called "Chaparral," in New Mexico, about 40 minutes west of the Mescalero Apache reservation. This isn't a campy tourist story about me "discovering" myself in a 3rd world country. Its about: connections. About loss. Truth, and everything endemic about being part of two worlds. Juaréz is the town the world once dubbed "the murder capital of the world." This was when calls for justice for Murdered, Missing Indigenous Women went ignored. A city you could once access by crossing a bridge. It wasnt, at least in the 90's, very different from parts of southern El Paso: hot, dusty, colorful buildings dilapidated with lead-paint peeling, and shops with handwritten signs in Spanish sold baked goods or fabric with indigenous and even African prints in neon greens and blues. My mother went every so often to collect this material for various outfits sewed with her push pedal sewing machine. Making my clothes, she made it look like art. It was easy to get lost in the hustle of these border towns, large crowds busting in the streets, haggling prices over a number of street wares: jewelry, clothing, really anything you could want. We also ordered the barbacoa tacos from one street vendor--meat was juicy, aromatic and soft in the fresh warm corn tortillas topped with fresh cilantro. I looked forward to these trips; from our rural enclave where our commuter town consisted of a milled-out hole converted dump for larger neighboring towns, one gas station and grocery store, and no hospitals or high schools, nearest one was more than 40 minutes away, both high school and hospital. Being in Juaréz I imagined the world beyond my empty home of bangers, dealers, addicts, drop outs, future teenage moms, Mexican immigrants, natives, and 3 black kids. El Paso was more diverse but I never fit in with the army brats in my church. Here I knew my mom's parents met, went out together, married, and promised each other better for their kids and grandkids--more than coal mines, being the hired help, working fields, or selling apples out of a cart--things they did just to make it less than 300 miles to the "Promised Land." It was among the colorful crowd, full of barbacoa tacos, walking the land of my ancestors, where my grandfather met my grandmother, fell in love, married--is that I saw her. A woman, indigenous by her clothes, deep brown skin, matted black hair, wrapped in rags too thick for the heat--a burgundy shawl and dress--huddled over what looked like a bundle of cloth, then a small head of black hair, a little brown face. I saw nothing but stillness, her whispering into the cloth. She must have felt me staring, she looked up, met my astonished gaze, at 9 I felt like what I imagined Eve felt in the garden after her first bite: loss of innocence, yet powerful in knowledge, yet so much pain in confusion. My heart ached. I never felt so accused. Accused for not having known this world. Foreign, yet my own. This place was the beginning of me. Yet I had never know the feeling of fear of wearing my own skin in public because of how much I'd lost, at least not until years later. That's, another story for later.