I found this clipping in one of my grandmother’s photobooks. It’s about my great aunt Anita and her son Richard, my mother’s cousin.
Plaza Baratillo, Guanajuato, GTO
The place of chard tamales and vegan gorditas. Where the fountain is protected from splashing children by an iron gate. Cold in the shadows but bright in the sun.
Los callejones are filled with secrets.
It wasn’t difficult to find this house in Guadalajara, the former home of my great-grandmother Sara Ybarra Ramos. She never knew I existed and I knew nothing of her until my father shared some family letters with me earlier this year. But now, I have this connection to her – we have both traversed the same pavement, 70 years separate our footsteps.
(Light posting due to a long needed vacation in Mexico)
November 9, 2009
You might’ve noticed the picture now is of a different house. I went back to the house to find more information and to ask around if anyone had information on my family and realized I had the wrong house. It was on the same street and the correct number but the street name had changed. Luckily, the correct house was only blocks away and interestingly, near the city courthouse.
My great-grandmother’s old house is now rented by a friendly social justice lawyer who recently took over the space and plans to rehabilitate the building as it is in extreme disrepair. Neither he nor the abarrotes across the street knew of any Ybarra families in the area. The lawyer did mention something about chocolate…
Front hallway of the building
(please click to enlarge)
It’s rare to have photographs of people at work, that’s why I was quite excited when I came upon this photograph of my Grandfather Atanasio in work mode at Hobbs Battery Company. He is the first worker on the left. I don’t know too much about his work at the battery shop. I know he also worked at a company called Smallcomb Electric.
What I love about this photograph is it seems to have captured the various personalities of these men, they look to be so different from each other. It’s almost as if the photo was staged. Who is the mysterious Zoot Suiter in the hat? Most striking to me is the fellow with the upturned collar. He looks to be a heartbreaker or the workplace snake. There is the double-headed ghost man and the White guy stuck in the shop full of Mexicans, perhaps he was the boss? The curly-headed worker filling the batteries with toxic goo looks to be the clown, the payaso quick with the jokes and biting comments. My grandfather is so fresh faced here, slightly dazed as if he slept in a little too much. He was probably the one who’d tsk Mexican style while waving his hand away in a sharp motion and saying “Ay, estas chingaderas!” But in the next minute would crack a smile and think about the beer he’d be having at quitting time.
My uncle has been cleaning out the last of my grandmother’s things and recently handed me a big Danish cookie tin containing forty years worth accumulation of my grandmother’s junk drawer. In the jumble of rusted paper clips, plastic stirrers and other flotsam was this badge from the Hobbs Battery Company. What a find! I pleaded with my family to never throw any of my grandmother’s things until I have gone through them for this very reason. I imagine this badge was long forgotten.
My grandmother, Jessie Tellez Garcia
I wonder if we dream of the same things?
Photo taken in the Lincoln Heights Industrial District
For a brief moment the warehouse doors opened… and behold, an unexpected sight!
A photo of my great-grandmother Matilde taken somewhere in Los Angeles, perhaps Echo Park. Her heavy coat suggests the photo was taken in the winter.
Although, she died long before I was born, something about her smile seems familiar and knowing. It’s as if I can tell exactly what kind of person she was through this photo: spunky, warm, mischievous, responsible and independent.
She died in her 50s and quite tragically of a heart attack. It was told to me that this heart attack came after she received a error ridden phone bill of an extremely high amount. Her second husband was never told of the phone bill because the family believed if he knew this was the cause of her death, he would have gone to the phone company and killed someone!
I was told they were very in love with each other.
Barcelona, 2001.
Just moments before this photo was taken, my friend and I remarked that there was so much graffiti on the walls of Barcelona that we might even spot a Chaka tag. Coincidently, a few blocks later and causing a great deal of astonishment, such a tag appeared.
“Coincidence on the other hand, is total freedom, our natural destiny. Coincidence obeys no laws and if it does we don’t know what they are. Coincidence, if you permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures. In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion. The communion of coincidence and effect and the communion of effect with us.”
-2666 by Roberto Bolaño
As mentioned in a previous post, a few weeks ago someone asked me if I was Native American and I answered as I often do, most people of Mexican heritage have some indigenous heritage. I think they meant Indian from north of the US border but like lots of indigenous folks, I don’t recognize these borders when it comes to culture. I was told my maternal great-grandmother was Yaqui Indian and my mother says she remembers hearing Yaqui words as a child. So in honor of my indigenous heritage, I present this video.
Yaqui Deer Dancer Yes, that is a deer head on his.
The clip is of an important ritual tradition called the Deer Dance. The festival where this dance took place was intended to bring Yaqui tribes from both sides of the borders together to celebrate their culture. There is some debate as to whether it was appropriate to film the ceremony and post the clip on Youtube. As the dance was a demonstration and not a ceremony, it seems approriate as a method to educate others in Yaqui culture.
Yaqui: Danza del Venado en Sonora, Mexico
Yaqui prefer to call themselves “Yoeme” and their homeland is “Hiakim.” It is their homeland name that most likely gave rise to the term Yaqui.
My great-grandmother in the red cape. Boyle Heights, 1975
Of all my family photos, this is definitely one of my favorites. It is of my great-grandmother Guadalupe Martinez (originally from Pastor Ortiz, Michoacan) at a presentation in her honor. She won out over the other women (presumably, her court) to be crowned “Grandmother of the Year.” According to family stories, the other ladies weren’t too happy about losing. It’s kinda apparent, no?
The dance took place at the CSO Center on Brooklyn Ave (Cesar Chavez) across the street from San Antonio de Padua church. I imagine my great-grandmother’s revered role as the founder of the Guadalupana’s club at the church and provider of the feria tamales and bunuelos contributed to her anointment. Strangely, her involvement with this church would benefit me even after her death and in the most unlikely of ways.
I love the band. You can just make out their name, The Fairlang, artfully done in the infamous Mexican Blackletter.
