The story begins between the years of 1980 and 1981 with a picture of my mother. My father and my mother’s uncle Sope had worked together for the same trash company. Sope had a picture of my mom and my dad said he would give him five dollars for it but Sope responded with “No, cómo crees.” The conversation about the picture ended there and one day during their lunch Sope goes up to my dad and says “I’ll sell you the picture” I should mention Sope loved to smoke but he did not have a single dollar that day and needed his cigarettes, and so my father said “Okay” and he finally got his picture. About a year or two later after selling the picture Sope was to get married and wanted my mother to come out in it, my grandfather agreed, however, she could not come out with the boyfriend that she was dating at the time. Sope said not to worry that he knew of someone that could come out in it. Three days before the wedding the wedding party met and rehearsed for the big day and my mother walked in and saw my father and thought “Him! I’m going to marry him” that following night my mother met with her boyfriend and told him that she was breaking up with him because the guy that she was coming out with in the wedding is extremely good looking and nice and she wants to see if anything can happen between them. And the rest after that night turns into spending thirty-five years together. In my collage there is a recent picture of my parents in Mexico where every summer and any vacation time is spent.

A year after they were married their first born comes along, a boy Rafael Jr. or Ralph as we like to call him. Three years after their first born comes their second child, a girl Paola or Polly as we like to call her and then nine years after being told they could no longer have children here I come as their third child with no nickname just Mayra. About a year after I was born, a dog named Lady comes along and grows with us for the next eighteen years. Within the collage I have placed a picture of Lady whom I grew up with and was definitely part of the family as she got disciplined, loved, and joked with just as much as my siblings and I did. Next to the picture of Lady and I is a picture of our puppy now her name is Peaches. My sister and I see Peaches more as for the next generation; meaning my nephews and niece may possibly create similar responsibilities and memories as we did with Lady.

When I think back to my childhood, various memories begin to float around beginning with the different family vacations, like the picture of my parents mentioned above, at Disneyland, going to the snow, to weeks on the beach or pool and more. I also think of Saturday mornings when my mom would be baking, my dad showing my brother how to cut the yard with Lady running around, my sister cleaning the bathroom and me floating around to help whoever needed me at the moment. My two nephews, Julian and Oliver are also show in the picture both resembling what my each person in this family has taught them to be themselves, have fun and to love. Recently, my brother and their mother separated and although it has been difficult on my brother it has been extremely difficult on my nephews with the change and having to understand that mommy and daddy don’t love each other anymore. This picture of them means a lot because when it was taken it was during the first family trip without her and not once did they show sadness of the situation but had fun and enjoyed the trip. My niece, Elia, is also in the collage with her parents my sister and her husband on her first birthday this past June and this day was a celebration for us all because she was premature baby who stayed in the NICU for three days and had the possibility of being born a stillborn.

At a glance within the family many could possibly say there had been gender roles in our family and as I got older I started to believe it too. In our childhood my sister and I were taught to clean the house, learn to cook, iron, and basically how to care of the household and then I had noticed my brother was always taught the hands on stuff for outside like: the yard work, anything that had to do with machinery, how to build and to provide. But, then in one of the many arguments that had occurred I mentioned this to my mom and she responded with they did not have us in gender roles because they taught all of us the same things. My brother was taught how to cook, how to clean and iron just before I had been big enough to really understand. When my sister would get bored she was outside learning to cut the yard and doing different building activities with my dad. As for me I would just watch certain things that I wasn’t interested in or I had already known how to do, I just never paid attention because I was too busy complaining that the other sibling did not have to do it. She said what they taught us wasn’t the exact same way as to how they taught the other but the lesson sure was taught because “they are not going to be eternal and we have to know how to take care of ourselves” (Rosa Murillo, every time we ask her to do it).

Within the readings that we have done from the semester I strongly believe that El Plan de Aztlán relates to my family because throughout the ups and downs that have occurred in the many accidents that could have killed my father, the arguments between siblings, with parents or significant other, or separations, financial reasons, etc. we have stayed as one family that sticks up for the other. Within El Plan there are written organization roles which most would been seen within my family, for example, unity, education, cultural and self -defense. My parents and especially my siblings have always told me to stick up for myself to never let anyone walk over me and whether I’m in the right or wrong they have defended me many times when someone would try to verbally attack me. We don’t leave anybody behind and El Plan is a written bondage for the Chicano people and I believe that my family has an unwritten bondage that not many families are lucky to have. I also believe the poems by Marcela Christine Lucero-Trujillo can relate to my family because she speaks on machismo in the first poem and in the second she speaks on assimilation and what Chicanos are told and the total opposite that happens. These poems relate to what my parents raised us on and has become even a bigger topic discussed as we get older to always love ourselves, be ourselves, never try change anyone, to accept and never forget our culture and how beautiful it is. Accepting ourselves ties into the podcast of “Mala Mala: More than a Trans’ Fairytale” because as hard as something “nontraditional” can be for my family they accept and encourage who we are because trying to be someone else can sometimes lead to harm because of how uncomfortable it is. In the podcast they talk about being you and that nobody else’s opinion about you matters.

The one person I have yet to mention that is in my collage is my brother in law, Chuy, his family are our neighbors in Mexico and because I have an uncle who lives by himself Chuy’s family helps look after him. Chuy has been part of my family longer than I have but it was not until three years ago that it was official and when he was able to come over to the U.S. He’s helped mold what our family is today as he shares his family values and keeps us connected with our culture when he tells us stories. The Murillo bunch is far from perfect and is constantly overcoming different obstacles but we also experience wonderful blessings. To think it all began with a picture, which is in the middle of the collage, it’s pretty crazy but if you ask my dad where that five dollar picture is he’d say it’s in his wallet right on top of the many pictures of his grandchildren and children.

Aside from my education, my family is the most important aspect of my life. My family is everything to me and my life has always been family-oriented. While I grew up, my family would eat together, go to the movies together, and would squeeze on the couch to watch television together. However, unfortunately, when I turned fourteen years old, my family suffered a few setbacks which has changed our family dynamic drastically. My family consists of my mom, step-dad, sister, and brother. Both my parents (including my biological father) are from Guatemala. While my mom has been fortunate to have had the opportunity have had papers, my step-dad did not. Although marriage could have changed this dilemma, my step-dad and mom did not get married until after my step-dad got deported. His deportation caused a strain in my family, and things have not been the same since.

After my step-dad’s deportation, my family endured a lot of hardships. During this time, my mom had to take over my step-dad’s position of the head of the household. As my step-dad was in Guatemala figuring out ways to come back to the United States, my family transitioned from a heteropatriarchy to a “woman family,” similar to what Lorna Dee Cervantes refers to in her poem, “Beneath the Shadow of the Freeway,” even though my brother has been a part of the family. My mom became what the women in Cervantes’s poem ended up becoming within the Chicano, or Latino, family. My mom had no choice but to take on the traditional male role in the traditional Latino family. By taking over my step-dad’s duties, my mother was able to eliminate the machismo embedded in “la familia,” while my step-dad was away, and my family was no longer a heteropatriarchy.

Since my family spent twelve years without my step-dad in the picture, he literally has not been in in the picture, or pictures. The pictures I specifically chose to include in my collage do not have any trace of my step-dad. However, I do not know whether I did this subconsciously or not; yet, I actually do not have many photos of my complete family. I believe that I probably did this as a way to demonstrate how comfortable I have become with having my mom be the head of the household in my family. In fact, the only males seen in the photos that make up my collage are my brother and grandfather. Consequently, these males do not exert the kind of machismo that Richard Rodriguez asserts in his text, Next of Kin, which conditions men as dominant and women as submissive. In other words, my family ends up contradiction Rodriguez’s description of the traditional and appropriate family structure. Thus, my family could be seen as being “anti-familia” since my mom is able to have a voice of her own in my family without a man undervaluing her.

Although my family is not traditional, based on the criteria that the nuclear Chicano family exemplifies, my family is traditional in terms of our Guatemalan culture. Expressing and discussing my cultural roots is extremely important to me because, unfortunately, my skin color does not emphasize my true ethnicity. As my photos demonstrate, I have a light complexion, and even though not all Latinos are dark, I still feel ashamed that my outer appearance does not show my Latina roots. For this reason, a photo of Antigua Guatemala (shown on the lower left-hand corner) is included in my collage. I decided to not include a picture of the Guatemalan flag because Guatemala is more than its flag. Guatemala is such a beautiful country, and so, I wanted to display its beauty by adding a photo of one of its well-known features.

Compared to the Mexican culture, the Guatemalan culture does not have too many traditions. Nevertheless, my family still embraces the culture. In fact, my mom has always made Guatemalan dishes and we have always celebrated the holidays in the Guatemalan fashion. This includes having traditional Guatemalan tamales on Christmas Eve. This tradition is what I look forward to all year long, which is why I added a meme photo (shown on the upper right-hand corner) joking about eating too many tamales. Consequently, I realized after posting my collage that this very picture expresses one of the many stereotypes against Latinos regarding eating a lot of tamales. Not only does the picture pokes fun, but it does it in an offensive way by having a Caucasian girl demonstrating this joke/stereotype visually. Although this meme is not the kind of stereotype Rodriguez’s discusses in his text, it still fulfills the Latino stereotype due to it being offensive in light of it being simply a joke. Regardless, my intention was to demonstrate my humor, which I share along with my family.

Overall, I appreciate my family, and I embrace my culture and my familial traditions. Even though my family would not fit the “la familia” mold, it is still an example of a Latino family, only a modern one. I am glad I was able to grow up in a family where a woman is the superior one as opposed to a man because, now, I have better expectations of the kind of family I wish to have in the future.

In the book, “Next of Kin”, by Richard Rodrigues, he talks about the Chicano/a family and also the structure of the family within a household. In his book Rodrigues analyzes kinship, and the family by explaining the structure between heteronormative and patriarchal discourses. In my collage, posted on the blog, I posted pictures of my family and I, because these pictures connected to the family structure discussed in Rodrigues book. My family is a traditional Mexican Family. My father came from a town called Tepatitlan in the state of Jalisco in Mexico. My father, Alfonso D. Herrera, was the fourth child out of twelve, from his siblings. My father was very attached to his mother, which is my grandmother due to my grandfather not always being there due to his infidelity. My grandfather was the worse father to my dad. My grandfather would tell my father that he was no good and a “nobody” so my dad wanted to prove his dad wrong, and at the age of 17 my father migrated to the United States of America to have a better life. Through the hardships with my dad’s father, my father said he learned how to become a better father than his father was to him and his siblings. In his family, they had a patriarchal structure and my grandmother was the one who was maintaining the house and taking care of the kids.

My grandfather had that “machismo” in him and he thought he was superior then my grandmother. He would beat my grandmother and still expect her to have the food ready when he got home. My father’s family was very poor, and the money my grandfather had he gave away to strangers, knowing that his own family was in need and was very bad economically. Unfortunately, my father did grow up with “Machismo” within his family structure and my sisters and I now have to live in a patriarchal system due to the family values implemented to him with his own family.

My mom, Silvia Cano (Herrera), came from Mexico as well but from a different state than my father. My mother was from Jacona, Michoacán. Jacona is a very small city in the state of Michoacán, but it was in the city so my mom was a city girl. My mom grew up without a father, due to my grandfather coming to America and finding another lady and had kids with her. My grandfather abandoned his wife and his six kids. My mother was the second oldest which made her drop out of school in the 3^rd grade, because she needed to help my grandmother care for her siblings and help her do chores around the house. My mother was basically a mother to my aunt and uncles. My mother played a major role in their family, and was the head of the household since my grandfather abandoned them. My grandmother talks about him being a drunk and also wanting to picks fights with her and basically abusing her and forcing her to have sex. This also connects to my father’s story and to the readings we have been doing in the course. In his book, Rodrigues states, “Even if machismo and dominant patterns of masculinity are not one and the same thing, both ultimately affect members of the Chicano family” (Rodrigues, Pg.53). I can agree with his statement because machismo has played a big part in both of my parents families, and to this day I do see that Machismo and patriarchal structure in our family.

My parents married in 1981. My parents had four children together, which were Adriana, Alejandra, Aide, and Amy, which are all in my photo collage. Their children being all girls. My parents were very strict with all of us and made us understand that our gender did matter. To this day, gender roles do apply to our family and I do see patriarchy there. I say patriarchy because if I was a male my father would let me do many things that he does not let me do because I am a woman. An example would be staying out too late with my boyfriend. To this day, my father gets upset if I stay out longer than 12AM because he says I am a girl and girls should not do that because that is not lady like and others might view me as a “slut” or a “whore” and might take advantage of me. I take that very offensively because I do not understand why it would be okay to do that if I were a male instead of a female. This brings me to my dad being very macho and very in tune with his male dominance and having that “machismo” still in him. In his book, Rodrigues illustrates, “…given the fact that dominant masculinities have typically managed the way the family is constituted and enacted, if women and queers are to retain la familia and other kinship-based bonds as useful organizational categories…” (Rodrigues, Pg.14). I can connect to Rodrigues statement because I asked my dad if he would support me if I were ever to come out to him and my family as a “Lesbian” his answer was not what I expected it to be. He answered, “I would not be okay with that. None of my children will ever be gay. I would rather have you be a “whore” than a “Lesbian”. I was star stuck by his answer because I thought he would be supportive as a father and not fall into the regular gender roles society expects it to be. So now I know that being gay/lesbian would not be okay in my family and would not be acceptable. My father believes a man should be with a woman and a woman should be with a man so they can reproduce, which is the norm. This makes me think about gender dynamics and gender roles. It also made me think about how traditional my father is and how that is the way he was brought up to be, being that his father was a head strong male dominant figure in his life. Besides the disagreements I have with my parents, I still love them too death and I do understand where they come from and how they were brought out to be. I understand that the only reason why my dad is the way he is, is because he wants the best for his children and he wants to give them what he did not have.

esmeralda