What Mexico Taught Me

Over winter break, my family took a long awaited trip to Mexico. This was the first time our entire family had traveled to Mexico together—before then, I had been the only sibling to travel to the land of our ancestors.

A big factor to our taking the trip was so that my brothers could finally meet our grandfather, Juan Onesimo, but nine days before our departure, he passed away. The timing of my grandfather's death seemed completely unfair. He couldn't hold off his death, just a couple of days? Shortly after his passing, I was sitting on my bed trying to process it all when the thought entered my mind, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" I knew then, that this trip was never really about visiting my grandfather, at least not in Heavenly Father's eyes, this trip was for my living relatives.

I hadn't been back to Mexico in 7 years. But, the timing of this trip couldn't have been more appropriate. I was just about to enter my last semester of law school, and this visit to Mexico lodged a more prominent feeling in my heart of the duty I feel to serve the people of my culture, mi raza. 

On this trip, I saw with greater clarity the role I play in my family—I am a link, a connector between generations past and present. You could say that "I came to myself" (see Luke 15:17). My obsession with family history was only intensified as I searched my grandfather's home for clues into his past, and the family he comes from.

When we left Puebla, Mexico and left my cousin Carlos behind, I listened to Natalia LaFourcade's Mexicana Hermosa and just cried as I looked out the window from my seat on the bus staring at the beautiful Mexican landscape.

My family is divided by a border. Is that not strange? A man made imaginary border can superimpose on my family tree? & it is because of this border, because of the privilege that my U.S. citizenship gives me that I feel compelled to do great things and progress for those that came before me, and my family members fighting against impossible odds.