A Breakfast for Campeones
“Ya servido!” yells my mother from the kitchen one dewy morning. I groan as I get up from bed and trudge from my bedroom to the kitchen. As I walk down the familiar hallway, I pass pictures of my and my sister’s youth and a few Aztec calendars and sculptures in the living room. I finally enter the kitchen and find a mouth-watering plate full of chilaquiles waiting for me at the table. My mother learned to make chilaquiles, a traditional Mexican dish made with fried tortillas, eggs, and salsa, at a very young age. Since my mother was the first born in the United States out of her twelve siblings, sibling number six to be exact, she was the middle child who got put to work to help her younger brothers and sisters. Once in junior high, it was her duty to help her older sisters cook breakfast on the weekends since it was the only time my grandmother and grandfather had time to themselves after the hectic school and work week. My mother learned our traditional family recipes from my grandmother, who learned from her mother, and so on. Pajarito cinnamon cookies, chilaquiles, enchiladas, mole poblano, and the list goes on to what recipes my mother keeps in her handed down book of Campos secrets. The traditions handed down through the generations of all people has always interested me. Just like my father’s sugar bread and sopita has always kept my stomach nice and full on Friday nights as a treat for completing yet another school week. Which now brings me to talk about school and education, even though I can go on for ages about traditional Mexican food, the tradition of education in my family is quite interesting.
School. When children hear that single syllable word nowadays there are usually either groans of pain or screams of happiness. I happen to be one of the kids who screams of happiness, not literally of course, but my flashing smile tells all. Education has always been an important part of my life because it has always been a very important part of my parent’s lives. You see, my mother was the first in her family to graduate from university with a Bachelor’s degree, and later she went on to be the first to get a Master’s degree. On the other hand, my father was the first of his family to leave Mexico for a better life in the US. My dad took the American dream route in life and ended up going to school as soon as he arrived in California. He ended up graduating from school with a technical degree and most recently he received an Associate of Science degree. He decided to go back to school as a full-time student, along with being a full-time technical instructor at Metro, when I started middle school. Both of my parents have always made it a point to instill the value of a good education in both my sister and me. The reason behind their decision was not only because of the great lengths they both personally climbed to achieve their educational dreams, but also because of their parents. My grandmother on my mom’s side didn’t receive an education past the 3rd grade. It wasn’t because she decided to drop out at such a young age, but rather it was because my abuelita was the oldest girl of all her siblings so she was the one to who got taken out of school to help her mother around the house. The small town of Chavinda, where my maternal side of the family is from, is built on a valley completely surrounded by mountains. There was only one pebble stone road that led down into the valley when my grandmother was young. Traffic in and out of town was limited, and so the town was pretty isolated. Education was not a necessity back in the day, and so when my grandmother was pulled out of classes no one thought anything of it. My grandfather, who lived in the exact same town of Chavinda, was able to attend school all the way through secondary school. On the other side of my family, both of my father’s parents were educated and my paternal grandfather was actually a general doctor in Mexico. My father went to a private Catholic school all throughout his schooling years because it was exactly what his parents went through when they were young. My grandparents grew up in the same city as my father, the state capital of Jalisco, Mexico, which is known as Guadalajara. The difference between my grandparents’ locations in Mexico while growing up in Mexico has a big part in what their education was like. My maternal grandparents grew up in a small, isolated town, while my paternal grandparents grew up in a very well-known and populous city. The education in Mexico is very much religion-oriented, which was something my father was looking to avoid when he came over to the US in the middle of the 90s. Educational opportunity was also very limited in the town of Chavinda, which is what my maternal grandparents didn’t want for their children when they decided to come over to the US in the late 60s. What both my father and maternal grandparents left behind when they came to the US was not only the education system of Mexico, but also their home.
I’m a mixed gal, meaning my roots in Mexico aren’t simply indigenous nor are they just from colonizing Spaniards. I have a mix of both conquistadors and indigenous blood in me, but obviously with my light colored eyes, light skin, and light brown curly hair the conquistador ancestry comes out quite a bit more physically than dark skin, dark hair, and dark hair as seen with indigenous features. Both of my parents have light colored eyes, but my mom has light brown curly hair and light skin like me, while my dad has dark wavy hair and dark skin like my sister. My father grew up in the state of Jalisco, which is a mixed state itself, but is a state where only about 11% of people are fully indigenous, which means most of the population has at least a splash of Spanish blood in their genes. My maternal grandparents grew up in Michoacán, which is a state with about 28% of the population being indigenous. More specifically, the small town of Chavinda was pretty divided in half in terms of the indigenous population versus the mixed-Spanish population. My parents have always told me that I have indigenous blood in me, and it is pretty obvious that Spaniard genes are among my genetic makeup, but I’ve never known what indigenous tribes my ancestors actually come from. The biggest tribe in the region of central Mexico were the Aztecs, but then again Mexico is home to a massive number of indigenous tribes so I could literally have ancestry roots in any of those tribes. This is one oral tradition that has yet to be found out about my dad and mom’s parents’ home.
The aspect of tradition is a big one in my Mexican-American family. We have to keep our traditions alive to feel connected to our family’s country, but we also have the chance to create new ones while we are here in the US. From tradition Mexican dishes, to the importance of education, to the mixed ancestry of my family, it is so interesting to me that the more I learn about my roots, the more I get excited talking about being Mexican. The family tree is still growing and changing every year. It is also growing at an alarming rate since my father has been digging in Mexican records for the last few years and has traced back our history to give me 16 family surnames to brag about. What I know will never change is the pride in my Mexican roots and the tradition of waking up to chilaquiles in those lazy summer mornings thanks to my mama, and her mama, and my grandmother’s mama, and so on. What a true breakfast of champions.
