When I was around 7 to 9 years old, my family started planning a trip back to Mexico. I remember packing dresses and flats and skirts and leggings because my mom said Tacambaro, her hometown in the state of Michoacan, was “tierra caliente," quite literally meaning “hot land," and I would sweat buckets. I recall my mother describing everything to me in detail, and everything was beautiful--otherworldly so.
“The air is so fresh in the countryside," she would say. “When I was a child, I would walk down the streets of Tacambaro and pick fruit from the trees. The mangos were sweet, and the juice would drip down my chin. There are street vendors everywhere; you can buy tacos and chopped fruit for only a few pesos. The church bells ring every day, and the plaza is always busy.”
It sounded like heaven, like a version of home I hadn’t had the pleasure of coming back to.
“The air is so fresh in the countryside," she would say. “When I was a child, I would walk down the streets of Tacambaro and pick fruit from the trees. The mangos were sweet, and the juice would drip down my chin. There are street vendors everywhere; you can buy tacos and chopped fruit for only a few pesos. The church bells ring every day, and the plaza is always busy.”
It sounded like heaven, like a version of home I hadn’t had the pleasure of coming back to.
At 7 or 9, I did not go to Mexico.
Circumstances changed: family issues, violence in Mexico, and deportation in America. Soon, the stories of the heaven my parents left behind turned into nightmares. Michoacan, if you didn’t know, is the biggest avocado exporter, one of my favorite fruits. In fact, every once in a while, a childhood friend of my mother calls her and reminds me: “Mija, don’t worry, I still have your avocados, they’re waiting for you." Of course, that was before a local gang snuck onto her property and burned down a portion of her huerta, threatening to come back and burn the rest if she didn’t pay them to not do so.
Michoacan is also one of the most dangerous Mexican states, run by narco-cartels and gangs; the government does not stand, the guns do.
My mom’s childhood stories of walking to church every morning by herself were replaced with news reports of cartel kidnappings, murders, drug production, poverty, and violence. We all sat there, my mother, father, older brother, and older sister. We sat there and stared at the TV screen in silence.
Finally, my mother spoke: “We can never go back.”
My mom’s childhood stories of walking to church every morning by herself were replaced with news reports of cartel kidnappings, murders, drug production, poverty, and violence. We all sat there, my mother, father, older brother, and older sister. We sat there and stared at the TV screen in silence.
Finally, my mother spoke: “We can never go back.”
On November 1st, 2025, Michoacan's mayor, who was actively and publicly anti-cartel, was shot in the plaza, in front of his people. His funeral procession was televised a few days later, the Catholic mass, and the people carrying his coffin into a cemetery.
My mother sat up straighter and said, “My mom is there."
She reminisced for a few seconds, possibly about my grandmother's voice, cooking, face, and maybe even scent, before her expression was taken over by sadness. You see, my grandmother died when I was only a year and a half, quickly followed by my great-grandmother, whom my mother called “mama” as well. My mother went back to Mexico–for their funerals–when I was only a bit over a year old. In a small prayer book that used to belong to my grandmother, there is a 16-year-old petal from a red rose, faded in the center, almost a yellowish-orange instead of its original red. It’s the only thing my mother could bring back from her mother’s funeral.
By the time my grandmother was sick, my older brother was old enough to formulate and communicate complete thoughts, and my mom was forced to leave them here, in the present, while she boarded a plane back to Mexico, in the past. And every night without fail, as my mother cared for my dying grandmother, my brother called her in tears, begging her to come back to Chicago. “It tore my heart apart”, my mother said, “and I just told him not to worry, that I would come back soon."
My mom stayed in Mexico for close to a month, and when the funeral was over, when the 9-day prayer period was over, she packed her bags, and slipped that petal into her mother’s prayer book, held together by tape and memories of life, to come back to the only future still intact for her, and never look back into the past, for my mother has never gone back to Mexico either.
My mother sat up straighter and said, “My mom is there."
She reminisced for a few seconds, possibly about my grandmother's voice, cooking, face, and maybe even scent, before her expression was taken over by sadness. You see, my grandmother died when I was only a year and a half, quickly followed by my great-grandmother, whom my mother called “mama” as well. My mother went back to Mexico–for their funerals–when I was only a bit over a year old. In a small prayer book that used to belong to my grandmother, there is a 16-year-old petal from a red rose, faded in the center, almost a yellowish-orange instead of its original red. It’s the only thing my mother could bring back from her mother’s funeral.
By the time my grandmother was sick, my older brother was old enough to formulate and communicate complete thoughts, and my mom was forced to leave them here, in the present, while she boarded a plane back to Mexico, in the past. And every night without fail, as my mother cared for my dying grandmother, my brother called her in tears, begging her to come back to Chicago. “It tore my heart apart”, my mother said, “and I just told him not to worry, that I would come back soon."
My mom stayed in Mexico for close to a month, and when the funeral was over, when the 9-day prayer period was over, she packed her bags, and slipped that petal into her mother’s prayer book, held together by tape and memories of life, to come back to the only future still intact for her, and never look back into the past, for my mother has never gone back to Mexico either.
When my mother was eighteen years old, her first cousin asked her if she wanted to come to America. On a whim, my mother agreed. She packed her bags and a lunch. My mom recalls these memories with joy and laughter.
After a few times of telling her story, she reveals, “I didn’t tell my mom I was leaving, I called her from the airport.”
I was shocked. My mother, who would never disobey her own mother, who went to church every Sunday and preached listening to your parents, had left the country, never to return, without telling her mother where she was going.
My mom continued with her story: “I was at the airport and called her, I told her ‘Ma, I’m in America,’ and the only thing she said back was ‘May God bless you.’”
I asked my mother, “Why would you leave without telling Grandma?”
At this moment, my mother's expression changed again. Gone was the laughter about my mom having indeed packed a lunch box with two tortas, fruit, and pan dulce to cross the border, replaced by the reality of why she had to leave.
“Because I couldn’t go back. There is no future in Mexico, there is no growth. I left, for you, one day. I knew I couldn’t raise my children in Mexico."
After a few times of telling her story, she reveals, “I didn’t tell my mom I was leaving, I called her from the airport.”
I was shocked. My mother, who would never disobey her own mother, who went to church every Sunday and preached listening to your parents, had left the country, never to return, without telling her mother where she was going.
My mom continued with her story: “I was at the airport and called her, I told her ‘Ma, I’m in America,’ and the only thing she said back was ‘May God bless you.’”
I asked my mother, “Why would you leave without telling Grandma?”
At this moment, my mother's expression changed again. Gone was the laughter about my mom having indeed packed a lunch box with two tortas, fruit, and pan dulce to cross the border, replaced by the reality of why she had to leave.
“Because I couldn’t go back. There is no future in Mexico, there is no growth. I left, for you, one day. I knew I couldn’t raise my children in Mexico."
My father has his own story. He left even younger, at 15. He had a younger brother and his mother to support financially. So he set off to America, his biological homeland, to chase the American dream he had heard of through whispers on the street. Because that's what America means to all immigrants, a shiny new start.
But the American dream isn’t for them; it's for their children. Neither parent will ever experience the peace and opportunity they were sold, like a cheap vacuum from a dusty catalog. They come over to do exactly what they would have done in Mexico: work from dusk until dawn. But a peso there is only 0.058 dollars here. So they take their chances with the manual labor here to save money they will never spend on themselves, for children who will never personally understand what their parents left, so they can study.
That is the immigrant dream. To watch your children work in an air-conditioned office with their degree hanging on the wall, light years away from the toilets and kitchens Dad constructed for Mom to clean in a stranger’s house. They leave, knowing they can’t go back, knowing they leave behind their mothers, siblings, and grandparents, to risk it all crossing the border for the unborn children they carry within themselves. And they know the dangers; immigrants know they can die along the way, can be found and arrested, or deported. They know once they get to America, they will not meet the idea of America they were promised because their immigrant status will speak to Americans before immigrants can ever open their mouths to say hello and learn of their bravery. They will not get to tell the story of the coyote they hired to cross the border, the family friend’s floor they slept on without blankets, the building they cleaned during the night shift, or the pennies they saved up to buy their first mattress. Some will only see the racism and anti-immigrant lies on the news, never looking up to see that the city they stand in was built by immigrants of all colors and ethnicities.
You learn to keep your head down as a result, to say “no, sir” and “yes ma’am” in a “proper” tone, to drive the speed limit so no cop has a legal right to pull you over, to smile the right way so no one has a reason to cross the street when they see you. You learn very quickly that you must stay behind the curtains, never challenge anyone, and never tell them you’re an immigrant, because the wrong person can hear the wrong thing and tell the wrong people; “you don’t tell people your story, and you study, to make the sacrifice worthwhile, to make Mexico proud,” my mother says.
So that is what I have done, 365 days a year, for as long as I’ve had consciousness, study day and night. But I don’t intend to stay quiet about my story, or the country that brought me forward.
But the American dream isn’t for them; it's for their children. Neither parent will ever experience the peace and opportunity they were sold, like a cheap vacuum from a dusty catalog. They come over to do exactly what they would have done in Mexico: work from dusk until dawn. But a peso there is only 0.058 dollars here. So they take their chances with the manual labor here to save money they will never spend on themselves, for children who will never personally understand what their parents left, so they can study.
That is the immigrant dream. To watch your children work in an air-conditioned office with their degree hanging on the wall, light years away from the toilets and kitchens Dad constructed for Mom to clean in a stranger’s house. They leave, knowing they can’t go back, knowing they leave behind their mothers, siblings, and grandparents, to risk it all crossing the border for the unborn children they carry within themselves. And they know the dangers; immigrants know they can die along the way, can be found and arrested, or deported. They know once they get to America, they will not meet the idea of America they were promised because their immigrant status will speak to Americans before immigrants can ever open their mouths to say hello and learn of their bravery. They will not get to tell the story of the coyote they hired to cross the border, the family friend’s floor they slept on without blankets, the building they cleaned during the night shift, or the pennies they saved up to buy their first mattress. Some will only see the racism and anti-immigrant lies on the news, never looking up to see that the city they stand in was built by immigrants of all colors and ethnicities.
You learn to keep your head down as a result, to say “no, sir” and “yes ma’am” in a “proper” tone, to drive the speed limit so no cop has a legal right to pull you over, to smile the right way so no one has a reason to cross the street when they see you. You learn very quickly that you must stay behind the curtains, never challenge anyone, and never tell them you’re an immigrant, because the wrong person can hear the wrong thing and tell the wrong people; “you don’t tell people your story, and you study, to make the sacrifice worthwhile, to make Mexico proud,” my mother says.
So that is what I have done, 365 days a year, for as long as I’ve had consciousness, study day and night. But I don’t intend to stay quiet about my story, or the country that brought me forward.
I have never gone back to Mexico. I saw my grandmother's grave for the first time on television. I learned about my home through the taste of our food, imagining I was there eating it in person. I learned of my grandmother’s love for me through stories, of how she loved my name, my strong name:
“She said your name was the name of a strong woman, a Calderon woman,” my mother told me once on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. In a time in which I hated and was ashamed of my obviously Mexican name for the simple fact of its exaggeration in length (being two first names, one middle name, and two last names), this meant the world. How could I ever hate my name, the only thing my grandmother knew of me, yet loved me?
“She said your name was the name of a strong woman, a Calderon woman,” my mother told me once on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. In a time in which I hated and was ashamed of my obviously Mexican name for the simple fact of its exaggeration in length (being two first names, one middle name, and two last names), this meant the world. How could I ever hate my name, the only thing my grandmother knew of me, yet loved me?
As a child, I was insecure about my Mexican features, my dark hair, and my equally dark eyes framing a seemingly too light face. I would stand in front of the mirror and think I looked weird. I would stay out of the shade so as not to get darker, for even though a good 80% of Hispanics are brown from head to toe, colorism is still common, and European features, so light as to appear completely white (with the blonde hair and colored eyes), are common both in media and society. In time, I grew accustomed to my features, but never fully liked them, until the day I mindlessly put my hair into a side braid while in conversation with my mother, sister-in-law, and a family friend.
My mother stopped the conversation and looked at me. “You look just like your grandma right now. The same dark hair, thick as a horse's mane, and the same dark eyes."
My mother stopped the conversation and looked at me. “You look just like your grandma right now. The same dark hair, thick as a horse's mane, and the same dark eyes."
To me, Michoacan is the womb from which I was born… of which I crawled out. Michoacan gave me life and lives in me, through the nourishment I ingest, the tongues I speak, the color of my hair and eyes, the pride in my heart for Mexico, a land I have never known but know is home.
So when the life in me is gone, bury me at home. Bury me under my grandmother’s tamarind tree, close enough to hear the church bells. Let the mango juice soil the dirt that embedded itself in my decomposing body, so that when the maggots and worms eat the flesh off my bones, all they’ll taste is Michoacan.
So when the life in me is gone, bury me at home. Bury me under my grandmother’s tamarind tree, close enough to hear the church bells. Let the mango juice soil the dirt that embedded itself in my decomposing body, so that when the maggots and worms eat the flesh off my bones, all they’ll taste is Michoacan.
