10 - Diaspora

Something I referenced in an earlier episode is that my family stayed in the same communities in Mexico for over 300 years. They were there for so long, with roots so deep, that very distant family members, several degrees removed, people with the same last names—Federico, Chavez, Morales, Ramos—they still live there. The name of the neighborhood might have changed, the city adopted and discarded several names, and even the very streets they lived on went through several evolutions before finally settling down. History unfolded and they remained. I’ve never met them and they have no idea who I am or that I exist…but we share a common history, much more than a name. When I was putting together the collection of short stories, the word I kept returning to was diaspora. Since leaving their communities in 1885—Hacienda Ledesma in Jalisco, Hidalgo del Parral in Chihuahua—a question I kept asking was: is it fair to say that my family is a small component of a broader Latino diaspora? #BridgeBetweenPodcast