“I Am A Chameleon With Different Shades Of Brown”
Posted by CAD2012
Sage, Cedar and Copal burn on a daily basis to cleanse our spirits and minds on this journey across Northern America and these two months have felt like nine long months. Our bodies are accustomed to walking long hours as we sit restlessly in Salt Lake City waiting for the next road that will lead us to the upcoming town on our way to Denver, Co. The road has been rocky but with this great team we continue looking forward to walking over the Rockies and those long flat roads with cornfields that people tell us we are going to dread. The temperatures are running high in this altitude and I know it when my cheeks and nose turn red instead of dark brown as it usually does in the hot and humid, Chicago summers. High altitudes in Lake Tahoe Ca. gave us the chills as we walked through the National Forest up to where the snow met the peaks and our skin met the cold weather. The road led us to a Valley where we met the most amazing mujeres that organize in their communities all over the state of Nevada, from the Universities to the churches.
There is melancholy in the air after getting a call from my older sister telling me my grandmother had just passed away. She was a wise mujer born in 1925 and wife to a Brazero who left her children behind in the 60′s in order to provide them with their basic needs. She was strong and confident. She was my family, a family that I had to leave behind when we came to this country. Now I only remember the stories my mother used to tell me about her childhood and the family I haven’t seen for more than 20 years. People whom I know I love even though they are thousands of miles away and yet I’m so close. I sit here praying with the staff and the smoke of Cedar to call for my ancestors and guide me with love and patience because this journey is going to be long.
Itza told me a story about her grandmother the night before she came out of the shadows here in Salt Lake City, a story about how she would take every leaf from the Cilantro stem before chopping it. Now she gets tears in her eyes not because she is chopping onions but because she is chopping Cilantro remembering her with its fragrance. The days of living in the shadows is over and her dedication to freeing our people is right around the corner.
Let’s remind ourselves of our history and where we come from:
“You tell me to go back to my land and yet you forget that in my indigenous blood, and this dark brown skin I am so proud of there is a warrior who migrates in this occupied land, checking people’s privilege and those who forgot history. The real history that is, not the one of the Anglos but the one of our Ancestors!”
As we begin our Journey out of The Great Salt Lake I will take with me all the stories I have hear and the stories of US, the oppressed. We had our last dinner last night at Barbara’s house, who along with her two sisters are looking at the ticking clock because they are all set to be deported on the 15th of June. I see her eyes and I see a worried mother who does not know what is going to happen with her life. The anxiety is consuming her all the time. We talk over tostadas de tinga and a can of Coke. She is one of the millions that we do this walk for because I will do whatever it takes to make sure her kids live each day with her.
Good Bye Salt Lake City!