Ofrenda Magazine Issue 05: Memoria by Ofrenda Magazine

L ATI NX SPI RIT UAL IT Y • A N C E STR A L C O N N ECT I O N • E A R T H + JUST I C E • H E A LI NG A R T S

ofrenda M A G A Z I N E

ISSUE 05: MEMORIA Art Feature: Momma’s Dreaming Tamara Torres

Spirit Loss in America Xochi Quetzalli

This Kin, Not of Blood but of Time Aaron A. Abeyta

FROM THE EDITOR

Celebrating the ones who live on within us.

HAT IS THE wisdom of the autumn? What lessons does the season of el otoño offer? As several of the contributors to this issue remind us, fall is a transitional season—a time of shifting the balance from longer days to longer nights. Fall presents a time to slow down, look inward, and remember. As we observe lessons from nature, we remember that life is both fleeting and giving. We remember that leaves turn, that fruit ripens and falls, that plants begin to offer themselves back to the earth so that they may be recycled into new soil—soil that, in turn, nurtures and integrates itself into new forms of life. The cycles of nature remind us that the past and present are interconnected: that past life sustains current life and that current life will, someday, sustain future life. In our attention to cycles and transitions, we also take time to remember those who live on within us. In this issue, you’ll find memories of loved ones who have made the journey, descriptions of Día de los Muertos traditions and celebrations, and instructions for ways to connect to ancestral roots. May you find inspiration in the contributors’ teachings and testimonios. I’m sure you have varying views about ancestors, dear readers: some of you may know ancestral spirits and past lives quite literally, while others may think of these

energies more metaphorically. Either way, I encourage you to also take a moment to remember who lives on within you. In my case, I remember my grandmother and her ancestral line every time I look down at my own hands. Her hard-working hands are there in mine: the knuckles, the veins, the olive skin, the long fingers that whipped yarn around with a crochet hook, that measured out just the right amount of flour by touch, that rolled out balls of tortilla dough and flipped them on the comal. They are creative hands. And they remind me to create, to make, and to honor the artistic gifts that live on through me. So I encourage you to take a moment to acknowledge yourself. Look, perhaps, at your own eyes in the mirror. Who still lives on in those eyes—in the color, the shape? Whose beauty lives on in your nose, your cheeks, your feet? Whose voice carries on in the way you laugh, sing, or teach? Whose talents live on through you? What urgencies do you feel? Even if you didn’t know the individuals who bestowed them, what positive legacies do you carry? May you remember and celebrate these gifts. And on el Día de los Muertos, when you commune with your ancestors and leave them gifts, may you also remember that you are your ancestors’ gift back to you. Marcy Carbajal, Editor in Chief

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Contents

ISSUE 05: MEMORIA | OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2021

FEATURES BOOK EXCERPT

This Kin, Not of Blood but of Time, From the Kinship Book Series (Vol. 2) | 12 WORDS BY AARON A. ABEYTA TESTIMONIO

A Día de los Muertos Perspective: My Path with Mictecacihuatl, “Lady of the Dead” | 20 WORDS BY CUAUHTLI CIHUATL TESTIMONIO

Ofrendas for Grandpa | 26 WORDS BY RUTH NAKAMURA ART FEATURE

Momma’s Dreaming | 30 WORDS AND ART BY TAMARA TORRES

PRACTICES / CURANDERISMO

Spirit Loss in America | 36 WORDS BY XOCHI QUETZALLI

Ancestor Velación for el Día de los Muertos | 41 WORDS BY XOCHI QUETZALLI

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PRACTICES / CURANDERISMO (Cont.)

Building the Vibrational Layers of an Ofrenda | 44 WORDS BY BRI MARTINEZ

TESTIMONIOS

My Father’s Ghost | 48 WORDS BY SARAH MONROY SOLIS Originally Published in Issue 01: Intention

Ijkwania Ejekat (Moving Wind) | 54 WORDS BY YOSHABEL SHAY

...if it all means nothing. | 58 WORDS BY CAMERON NAVARRO

BOOKS + AUTHORS

Q&A on Brujas and Brujería | 62 AN INTERVIEW WITH LORRAINE MONTEAGUT, AUTHOR OF BRUJAS: THE MAGIC AND POWER OF WITCHES OF COLOR

The New Brujas, From Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color | 65 WORDS BY LORRAINE MONTEAGUT

MEDITATIONS / VERSE

Prayer | 76 WORDS BY RUTH NAKAMURA

Find links to online content and shops where you see the link icon.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Aaron A. Abeyta

Bri Martinez

Cameron Navarro

AARON A. ABEYTA (Chicano)

BRI MARTINEZ (Hispanic) is

CAMERON NAVARRO is a

is a Colorado native, poet,

a certified Holistic Health

white Xicanx social worker

professor, and mayor of

Practitioner from New Mexico.

working to create purposeful,

his hometown, Antonito.

One of her primary modalities

sustainable, healing-centered

He can be found online at

is vibrational medicine, and

(trauma-informed) change in

aaronabeytapoet.com.

she loves sharing her passion

our community by challenging

for healing with all who are

and dismantling systems

PHOTO CREDIT: LATINO

interested. As a New Mexico

of oppression. He is the co-

COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF

native, she considers herself

founder of Pa’lante Consulting,

COLORADO

blessed to be able to study the

LLC and the co-host of Life

art of curanderismo. Find her

is Work podcast, available on

at www.mannerholistico.com

all platforms. Find him on IG

and @manner_holistico.

at @palanteconsults and @ lifeisworkpod.

PHOTO CREDIT: ASHLYN DEYAPP PHOTO CREDIT: CAMERON NAVARRO

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Cuauhtli Cihuatl

Lorraine Monteagut

Ruth Nakamura

CUAUHTLI CIHUATL

LORRAINE MONTEAGUT, Ph.D.,

RUTH NAKAMURA (Humana/

(Indigenous), who is also

was born in Miami to Cuban

Chicana/French/Portuguese/

known as Maestra CC, is an

and Colombian immigrants.

Chichimec/Tano/Coyota) is an

elder and the founder of

Inspired to the spiritual life by

Indie poet from Albuquerque,

Kalpulli Teocalli Ollin in New

her great-grandmother, who

New Mexico. She co-authored

Mexico. She is a Mexhika

was an espiritista in Cuba,

her first book of poems, Crow

Huesteca, Raramuri, and

her research centers on brujx

Moon, with her good friend

Lipan Apache ceremonialist.

feminism and the reclamation

Anna Griego. You can find her

She holds a J.D., a Ph.D. in

of ancestral healing traditions.

on Instagram at @veranotaos

public health and community

She holds workshops on moon

or @blackberrybramblebooks.

education, and a master’s

journaling, astrology and tarot,

degree in social work. Now

plant magick, and more in her

retired, she spends her

local communities around

energy on her Jardin Patzin.

Tampa Bay, Florida.

PHOTO CREDIT: SUMMER SCHILDT

Her mission is to share her Abuelita’s traditions, for “la

PHOTO CREDIT:

medicina es para todos.”

CRISTINA ISABEL RIVERA

PHOTO CREDIT: D’SANTI NAVA

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CONTRIBUTORS

Sarah Monroy Solis

Tamara Torres

Xochi Quetzalli

SARAH MONROY SOLIS

TAMARA TORRES is an Afro-

XOCHI QUETZALLI practices

(Chicana/x Indígena) is a

Latina Latinx feminist artist;

Curanderismo at her centro de

writer and immigration

her art is an outlet opening

sanción as an Aj’Qij, Maestra,

attorney in Northern

a world of self-exploration

artist, and healer in Eureka,

California. She can be found

and healing. Much of her

California. Her passion is to

reviewing books or talking

work is autobiographical,

empower womxn by guiding

about writing, plants, and

revealing themes of childhood

them to heal their birth stories

reconnecting on Instagram:

homelessness, racism, sexual

and sustos through rebirthing

@sarisolis.

abuse, motherhood, women's

themselves to their cosmic

rights, and courage.

identities. One of her special offerings is a 9 Moons Cosmic

PHOTO CREDIT: SARAH MONROY SOLIS

PHOTO CREDIT: TAMARA TORRES

Rebirthing Series, which is a trauma-healing journey with soul retrieval. She also offers traditional limpias, Mayan fire ceremonies, and much more at www.xochiketzalli.com. PHOTO CREDIT: DUSTIN ROBERTO

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ON THE COVER

Yoshabel Shay

YOSHABEL SHAY (Indigenous)

La Feminista

was born and raised in

by Tamara Torres

Las Vegas. She earned her bachelor's degree in fine arts

4" x 6" photograph and paper

with a minor in art history.

collage on birch wood.

Her parents migrated from

Image © Tamara Torres.

El Salvador in the 1980s and are descendants of

La Feminista grasps the rise of

the Maya-Nahuatl people.

feminisim amid rapidly shifting

Though history has been

expectations for women.

lost, Yoshabel's passion is to

Torres states: “Each symbol in

redefine what it means to be

the collage depicts a part of my

Maya-Nahuatl and share her

mother’s spirit.”

knowledge with her 18-monthold son. She is a wife to a Diné

Read Torres’s testimonio and

photographer and has a silly

tribute to her mother, “Momma’s

little dog called Milo.

Dreaming” (p. 30).

PHOTO CREDIT: TROY SHAY

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This Kin, Not of Blood but of Time Writer and poet Aaron Abeyta contemplates ancestral guidance and protection in this excerpt from the Kinship book series. WORDS BY AARON A. ABEYTA

None of us remember a time before her. She had with her three spirits we could not see or feel or imagine; they were with her, the shaman said, to protect her. “Shall I send them away?” “Only if they are ready.” “They are. Finally.”

AM WRITING in front of the church— parked here in the first rays of morning sun—that, many years ago, my abuelita and I would attend, every day for morning mass. Most days we would make the short pilgrimage, five blocks on foot, where I would sit by her side, impatient, lost in

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the Spanish voices, their whispered and fervent cadence like a trance, a portal to some communion that neither of us could see but understood nonetheless. Her home on the edge of town bordered an irrigation ditch I would play in as a boy; it flowed east, out of Antonito, toward the distant Sangre

de Cristo range, toward the farms of barley, alfalfa, and potatoes. Spring and summer were times of joy; autumn a respite from the endless chinook winds of spring and the incessant mosquitoes of summer. Winters are always difficult. Days like today, mid-January, made our walk more difficult. The morning sun would do little to warm our bodies as we made our daily journey to receive the body and the blood, to commune with our ancestors, those silent and those heard in the prayers we recited from memory—custom and a grace we sometimes mistake for survival. That is why I am writing, for the ancestors, the kin who carry us, lead us, follow us, linger just beyond the visible so that someday they may guide us to the home we hold in our hearts but have not visited for some time. The tecatos are walking by. It is cold out, eight below zero as the sun barely creeps over the Sangre de Cristo. They are moving quickly, not from the cold but for their morning fix at the drug house on Eleventh Street. Two days prior there was a blizzard, winds at sixty miles an hour, and the snow blew horizontal to the Earth. Twin calves were born in the bosque. Such a birth is rare. Both of the newborns perished in the blizzard.

na of my vehicle outside the church where years ago my abuelita would pray, perhaps to the same ancestors who now watch over me and my family. Here, I am with my family, their spirit; their eternal parts make their way toward me in a procession of voices, and together we write this, me their conduit of past struggles and occasional triumphs. The road in front of the church leads to the drug house on Eleventh, where every morning—in the thinnest slivers of dawn and the most impenetrable of cold—the emaciated tecatos make their way for their morning fix. Later, the day will warm to twenty-three degrees and the sunlight on snow will shimmer. The sunken eyes of the hopeless will make their way back toward their own homes; theirs is a darkness and desolation deeper than abandoned wells. Their despair is not a different loss than the others on display here in my hometown, pieces of all of us sold in desperation and necessity. I sometimes pray that one day we will all not be left landless, without possessions, on foot.

This, too, is why I am writing.

I am called to write about kin. I cannot help but think that what I am really being asked to consider is not kin but protectors. Here is another prayer. That my ancient protectors stay with me until it is safe for them to leave, their work done, lessons bestowed upon me and those they follow or guide out of faith, protective love, and eternal hope.

So much is about faith and survival here at eight thousand feet. Last night, it was twenty below. I don’t wish to oversimplify things. For instance, I am not sure I remember how to write anything that is good, but something makes me seek the silence and resola-

Our daughter came to live with us on April 1, 2012, readopted from her previous home, a chamber of literal hunger, abuse, and pain. We knew instantly, the day we first met her, that we would love her forever. We knew, immediately, that she was indomitable. Her

ISSUE 05 | MEMORIA

That is why I am writing, for the ancestors, the kin who carry us, lead us, follow us, linger just beyond the visible so that someday they may guide us to the home we hold in our hearts but have not visited for some time.

body was so tiny; the family that endeavored to break her used food as their tool of choice, the absence of which left her, despite having lived in the United States for over two years, without growing an inch or gaining a pound, all while the others in the family thrived, ate well. For some reason they tried to break her, first her will and then her body. She was so diminutive, five years old yet uncowered. None of us remembers a time before her. She, the tiny child, with a presence that fills rooms, sent to us para sanar corazones heridos, sent to erase time—the faint and fading markers of sadness etched into our memory—the time before you, dear child of ancient and potent medicine who was sent to heal us. Her protectors followed her to Antonito. They crossed oceans with her. They lived beside her, guided her, there in that house that looked east from a high hill, overlooking Denver and Golden to the east. Perhaps it was the hands of her ancient kin, their voices guiding her—telling her where to hoard the crust of bread, where to hide dog food and crackers to eat later when the hunger was beyond what many can or will ever imagine. There were three of them, spirit protectors, that must have told her when no one was looking so she could steal bits of food from the plates of her so-called family. This, then, is kin. Kin, not of blood necessarily but of time, of longing, of human necessity—and these, all of them, these spirits, are your family, the word upon the soul’s ear that is made kin. These addicts moving north on River Street, toward Eleventh, where are their kin? Have

they stopped arriving? Protecting? What losses, forces of assimilation, ache, keep them at bay? Why do some kin haunt and others heal? These are the questions. Why I write. My daughter’s kin were sent to her some six hundred centuries before. I believe this. My wife’s family has received their DNA results via email, a world map of arrows, centuries at a time of lingering, settling, of blossoming maternal and paternal lines and then migrations set in motion by marriages, famine, war, human longing. The email results from the National Geographic ancestry kit state: “The origin of our species lies in Africa: It’s where humans first evolved, and where our species has spent the majority of its time on Earth. We have since migrated to every corner of the globe, a journey that is written in our DNA.” The results indicate that my wife’s ancient ancestors “started to leave the Ethiopian Rift Valley of Africa between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago.” There, they begin their millennia-long pilgrimage to Antonito, some 8,500 miles distant. Our daughter, born in Mekele; adopted out of Addis Ababa; relocated to her hunger and neglect in Golden, Colorado; now, finally sitting across from us in a living room in Antonito, sits in silence as we laugh and joke about my wife’s love of gymnastics, suddenly illuminated by the results of the report, which claim that she and her family are 19 percent Romanian. We turn to Rut, our daughter, she of the elegant features, of the jawline of unconquered ancestors, of eyes more ancient than all other human existence, and we ask what she thinks of the fact

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that some sixty thousand years ago Michele’s family came out of Ethiopia. “Did they know me?” We all laugh, except her. Now, as I ponder this question of hers, I know it must have been so much more than childish naïveté. This, then, is kin. Not of blood but of ancient and connected time. The shaman asks Michele if she knows of the three spirits that accompany Rut. To protect her, we are told. To see if, finally, someone can be trusted to love her and look after her. “Shall I send them away?” “Only if they are ready.” “They are. Finally.” I would like to think of myself as a person of faith, not just religious faith but learned and handed-down faith, the antidote to anguish. I know our ancestors do not give up on us. They do not leave us because of human choices. They once were human, frail as reeds, broken as a winter dawn, where even the sun cannot bring forth the warmth of its own promise. Sometimes our kin are taken from us. Stolen. First, by whatever force or forces bring ache and loneliness into the world—colonialism, loss of language, betrayal, assimilation, and poverty that is the direct descendant of the aforementioned. The ancestors do not leave us. They survive. They survive on the smallest morsels, the crumbs left scattered on the table, the spiritual food overlooked

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by failure, doubt, and the already broken. The broken do not wish us harm. They seek in their own despair and longing, not out of malice or cowardice, to bring others with them, a seemingly final and desperate attempt to capture their own redemption, a chance at feeling less than alone. Somehow, despite all our failings, our ancestors survive, lingering in the deep and almost-forgotten parts of our being. They subsist on whatever bits of our true human selves remain. They wait, patient as spring beneath frozen earth. They await our call, to be summoned to our aid, their portal to Earth, born, ultimately, of hope. They wish us well, to cast away misery. They arrive unseen, again and again, to help us overcome whatever longing that has gathered them to us. This, then, is faith. Not of blood but of kindness, of error remedied, of path restored, of loss redeemed. My daughter asks, at five years old, if some six hundred centuries prior, this family, her new family, knew her. This time we do not laugh. We linger on what we know to be profound. The addicts are moving south now, their blood no longer craving, their brains spinning in a false and temporary joy. The sun has warmed the day to thirteen degrees. There is no wind. There is no blizzard. Everything born today, both rare and ordinary, should survive. The snow glimmers in the sunlight. The thin edges of ice at the roadside are beginning to melt. The day shimmers bright, cold, diamondlike. I squint against the glare. I imagine that in the brilliant light, where my eyes cannot

penetrate, that the ancestors, the kin of the tecatos, linger near. Following. Protecting. Their ancient form rendered nearly invisible but made evident, always, by a longing or a hunger only they can apprehend or alleviate. This, then, is kin. Waiting at the edges of our lives, feeding us, patient, protecting us from peril. Perhaps we cannot yet name them; they remain constant sentinels. They wait so that, finally, they may be sent away.

Aaron A. Abeyta, "This Kin, Not of Blood but of Time," in Volume 2: Place, of the book series Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations, edited by Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and John Hausdoerffer (Center for Humans and Nature, 2021). Printed with permission of the publisher, the Center for Humans and Nature. Order your copy of Kinship in Ofrenda’s Bookshop: bookshop.org/shop/ofrendamagazine

ISSUE 05 | MEMORIA

Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations Series edited by

Gavin Van Horn

AUTHOR OF WAY OF COYOTE: SHARED JOURNEYS IN THE URBAN WILD

Robin Wall Kimmerer BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

John Hausdoerffer

CO-EDITOR OF WHAT KIND OF ANCESTOR DO YOU WANT TO BE?

ORDER NOW THROUGH OFRENDA'S BOOKSHOP! (Click anywhere on this ad.) PUBLISHED BY THE CENTER FOR HUMANS AND NATURE

www.humansandnature.org

Cuauhtli Cihuatl as La Llorona. Photo by Joe Caldereon Photography, 2016. Image courtesy of the author.

A DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS PERSPECTIVE:

My Path with

Mictecacihuatl,

“Lady of the Dead” Cuauhtli Cihuatl weaves together reflections on her lifelong relationship with death, the Mexhika tradition of el Día de los Muertos, and her current bout with cancer. WORDS BY

Cuauhtli Cihuatl

EATH HAS BEEN my companion longer than I have known life itself. She has been part of my path since I was in my biological mother’s womb. My abuelita Casi used to say, “tienes el don de la medicina porque La Muerte te cuida” (you have the gift of medicine because the Lady of the Dead is watching over you). I grew up honoring and respecting La Muerte. She was never someone I feared but someone I saw

as an energy that is part of life and part of me. It was instilled in me, as the saying goes, that we [Mexhikas] “were immortal and Death was just another new way of life.” Growing up between two borders, two cultures, two languages, two spiritual paths, and all that makes up my own being within the ometeotl pantheism system gave me a full-spectrum view of La Vida y La Muerte.

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While some may think of death as a fearful or morbid subject, it doesn’t have to be. In the Mexhika tradition, the transition of a loved one and el Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) are sacred times of reverence: we focus on celebrating and honoring the lives of the deceased rather than fearing evil or malevolent spirits. El Día de los Muertos, which takes place from October 31 through November 2, is a Mexhika, Mexican, Mexican American, and Latin American celebration of deceased ancestors that has a 3,000-year history. Before colonization, rituals celebrating the deceased were practiced from the start of the ninth month of the Aztec solar calendar (August 1) until harvest time. The timing now coincides with Halloween and the Roman Catholic celebrations of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day—a calendrical change made by the colonizing Spaniards. This sacred celebration has evolved (and nowadays, it has even become trendy), but its roots are deep within our ancestral bloodlines. Desde chiquita (since I was a little one), La Muerte has been teaching me lessons on how to live and fully embrace all the beauty of life on this earthly path. My first memory is riding in the back seat of a car by the window, looking at the night sky, and feeling the cool air on my face. I suddenly felt a caress on my cheek, cold and boney, and within an instant, the car door swung open. My hands grabbed the door handle, and I used it to balance myself before my biomom grabbed my dress and pulled me back onto the backseat. I felt La Muerte’s hand in mine and her breath next to my ear. I wasn’t afraid. I felt comforted. Doña Emma,

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the bruja of the block we lived on, gave me a limpia (energetic cleansing). I could feel her magic bringing my soul back from susto even though I felt no fear. My way of being was later transformed by the deaths of three loved ones: my abuelita Casi, my first love (who is the father of my oldest son), and my adopted dad. The common variable among them was their unconditional love for me. They saw me. They heard me. They supported me. They nurtured me. They made me laugh. All three gave me pure authentic joy for life and the gift to embrace love deeply. The lessons I learned through their deaths were not easy. Each passing was traumatic to me, and I spiraled. I wasn’t a good mother, wife, or even human for many years after they transitioned. My healing came from connecting to Mictecacihuatl and her gentleness (yes, her gentleness) in knowing that my loved ones were in another realm. Each year, when the veil opens for el Día de los Muertos, I am able to be with them. La Muerte gifts me the opportunity to sit with my loved ones, my ancestors, and receive the messages from beyond. To remember the times of being together, to honor their role in my life, and to respect all their wisdom.

VER THE PAST six months, once again, I have felt the Lady of the Dead close by, and even closer than usual. I feel her dress brushing me as I walk by my altar. I feel her breath in my ear at night. I feel her fingers on my hair caressing it. I hear her footsteps. I lie awake waiting for her message, for her wisdom, for her guidance. There are nights she is so close

“I grew up honoring and respecting La Muerte. She was never someone I feared but someone I saw as an energy that is part of life and part of me.”

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“There is a feeling about Mictecacihuatl—a comfort, a knowing, a sensation of being. I acknowledge that she is part of my life.”

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that I yell in my dreams, and my honey has to gently wake me up. Still, I have no fear, just a knowing. This is my third bout with cancer. I believe it is my last. My cancer has no cure. I am being monitored by a wonderful oncology team, on palliative care and experimental medications to extend my life expectancy, and doing all my medicinas tradicionales de Madre Tierra. As I feel my body deteriorating, my heart is expanding with love, my spirit is flying with alegría, and my mind is at peace. Yes, the physical body is tired. BUT there is much life yet to live, and I have plans to live every minute as fully and as powerfully as I can. Como La Frida, even if I am being carried on a bed, I will go to Oaxaca for Día de los Muertos in 2022 and walk El Camino in 2023. I will sit by the beach, and Madre Mar will cleanse me. I will sit in a temazcal, and Abuelo Fuego will hold me. I will sit under the old elm tree and Ehecatl will soothe me. I will dance under Grandmother Moon in the rain and giggle while jumping in puddles. I will enjoy every second I see my grandchildren and hear them say, “I love you Ama.” I will listen to every note my honey plays, for his music is healing to my soul. I will sit in my wooden rocking chair under the portal on my sacred land and breathe. I will teach until my last breath, for La Medicina es para todos (Medicine is for everyone). This year, I will set mi altar con mucho amor y respeto, honoring my deceased loved ones. I will arrange it in a pyramid shape of three to four levels; I will cover the layers in different papel picado, paper banners representing the Aztecs’ ritual flags that symbolized the freedom that death gives. On the first level,

there will be photos of the deceased. On the second level, I will place their favorite food along with pan de muerto y mole, candles, and my popoxcomitl (smudging vase) with the copal burning. There will be cempoalxochitl (marigold) flowers on the ground as a path for them to find their way home. I hope my grandchildren will continue this celebration so they do not forget me, for I am their real life “Coco.” There is a feeling about Mictecacihuatl—a comfort, a knowing, a sensation of being. I acknowledge that she is part of my life. Creator is the ultimate timekeeper for our earth time, and La Muerte is the holder of our soul’s time in the next realm. Y que asi sea; and so it is. A’ho Ometeotl! As Victor Landa has famously said: “In our tradition, people die three deaths. The first death is when our bodies cease to function; when our hearts no longer beat of their own accord, when our gaze no longer has depth or weight, when the space we occupy slowly loses its meaning. “The second death comes when the body is lowered into the ground, returned to mother earth, out of sight. “The third death, the most definitive death, is when there is no one left alive to remember us.”* *Victor Landa, quoted in Judy King, “Los Dias de Los Muertos.” Mexconnect.com. https:// www.mexconnect.com/articles/1427-los-dias-de-los-muertos-the-days-of-the-dead/

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Ofrendas for Grandpa Poet Ruth Nakamura recalls memories of New Mexico and artfully describes her ofrenda to her grandfather. WORDS BY RUTH NAKAMURA

HE PICTURE IS black and white. Its plain black frame encloses the sixties, and the setting is the dust of New Mexico, in the juniper winds of spring, the sneezing breezes of their pollen-scattering rituals. In the juniper hills of El Rito, up north, in its cottonwood-studded valleys and red earth, John Martinez, my grandpa, stands in front of the old adobe home, with its wooden door frames and blackened windows, its cracks like spider legs creeping up the sides. The car is barely in the picture, a

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curve of metal, a smooth light color, like the enlarged shell of a Jordan almond. He stands in front of it, with a jacket heavy enough for a northern spring. A fedora is perched on his head, of some sun-bleached color, and his long eyes, staring into the lens, squint against the sun, his brows pushed together. He is not smiling, and he is not unhappy. He lets the photographer, my dad, in his late twenties, take his photo; he lets himself be captured so that he can hang on my wall, decades later, in honor of a man I knew for

Photo of John Martinez, courtesy of the author.

the first four years of my life, and clearly remember.

lawn chairs, under the crabapple tree or the willow or the sun.

“Grandpa!” I shouted when he came to visit, rushing to hug him.

In the picture, he is in his early sixties, but his skin is smooth with the exceptions of deep furrows on his brow, around his eyes, and around his mouth. His complexion is clear, brown, healthy for a lifetime smoker; in the picture, you cannot see that it has an unhealthy pallor, a yellow tinge, the cancer of cigarettes staining his skin the way smoke stains windows, the way the smell clings to

Once, he presented me with a bouquet of handmade flowers, twisted green plastic coated hangers for the stems, pastel-colored Styrofoam egg cups he’d carved into tulips with many petals. We sat in the backyard with my little Grandma on plastic lounging

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the shadows and valleys of his clothes. I can imagine, from this picture, from the fact of his daily pack of smokes, that the smoke crept everywhere in his life, floating tendrils from deep in his lungs, curling from his lips; creeping, it built up a residue over his mirrors, over the glass encasing the photos of his wife and only son, over the leaves of the lone cottonwood with its arms aching from cradling their little house, trying to sweep the air clean of the smoke’s debris. I do not remember a funeral, a wake, or what weight a four-year old can give to death. When I build ofrendas for you, Grandpa, I place your picture just so. I include your

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favorite poems and passages from stories and books, gathered like wildflowers, stapled together with pictures my kids will draw to illustrate it, because you never knew much of either me or them, except what you can see from where you are, some good place, I am sure. Is the only thing he knows about me, in that place, a memory of a little girl, a mestiza, a coyote, with light skin and eyes that are both green and brown, and a long banner of hair curling to the waist, dark, red-lit with backyard sun, running over the mowed grass in his son’s South Valley home to meet him, her spindly arms open wide, shouting “Grandpa, Grandpa!” with delight? This would be

alright, too, this picture of innocence, of heart’s delight, this little girl I’ve grown so far from. My ofrenda for Grandpa John includes a number of toxin-absorbing houseplants, to balance the cigarette smoke, bowls cradling beans and chiles of all types, with tortillas like stacks of warm pillows; it would include branches of cottonwood with healthy green leaves, and the flora and fauna of his home, its red tailed hawks, its ring-necked pheasants, its birdsong, its lizard hide, its pale mountain dandelions with their yellow points of light, its smoky, rosy chunks of quartz, and flakes of mica like sheets of lightning. I would pour for him a jug of El

Rito tributary water, cooling the dusty parch of his journey. At his feet, I would place his favorite sunset, braid it with the memory of his favorite dawn, include soft threads of rain, and the constellations he looked to the most, creating a rug for him to sit on, a place to visit with me for a while. My ofrenda brings him home, for a brief while, so we can sit and talk of all that has passed, and he can share the wisdom of the long dead.

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La Feminista, 4" x 6" photograph and paper collage on birch wood, © Tamara Torres. La Feminista grasps the rise of feminisim amid rapidly shifting expectations for women. Torres states: “Each symbol in the collage depicts a part of my mother’s spirit.”

Momma’s Dreaming Artist Tamara Torres crafts a stunning vignette in both words and images, honoring a sweet memory of her momma. WORDS AND ART BY

Tamara Torres

WATCHED YOU with curiosity. The air was filled with a scent of lavender and Downy. The windows were open, the summer breeze pushed your unspoiled white curtains, the room was bright, the plants were pleased, photographs filled the bedroom with memories. The noise from the streets came in and out like waves of disruptions. You hummed a melody that was strange to me. Your fingers gripped the iron, and steam floated up your lovely, glistening face. You wrinkled your nose and giggled a bit, stroking the pants on the ironing board gently like you would rub my back when I was afraid. With every stroke, you hummed the melody that was strange to me. You captured my gaze, smiled, and said, “Momma’s dreaming.”

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Momma’s Dreaming, 9" x 12" photograph. © Tamara Torres.

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Spirit Loss in America Xochi Quetzalli, maestra and practitioner of curanderismo, offers a reflection on cultural susto and a velación ritual to prepare for el Día de los Muertos. WORDS BY

Xochi Quetzalli

ODAY IN THE USA, we are living in a country of different ethnicities, culturas, tongues, and religions—a confluence with its own evolutionary path. Ancestral identities have faded by both choice and force, and assimilation into the dominant colonial culture has triggered a new tendency in thinking: detachment and individualism. In America, many of us tend only to look ahead, with complete disregard of whom we step on while racing forward. Only now, it seems, are people beginning to step back, seeing the effects of the climate

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crisis and corporate capitalism, and questioning this stampede towards the future. While living among a diversity of people brings so many positive influences, our detachment from our roots and our constant rush forward have sickened us. We are living today in a country full of inhabitants who have experienced susto: our spirits, nuestras almas, are lost amidst generations of cultural uprootedness. Lost identities, lost cultures, forgotten memories of who we once were.

“It is time to call your spirit back home. So, say your name aloud. Call your spirit back so that it may reanimate your body, mind, and heart.”

In curanderismo, susto refers to a “shock” or “scare” that causes the loss of one’s soul. It is most often triggered by a shocking or traumatic event, and when someone is suffering from susto, they, in clinical terms, might be experiencing depression, PTSD, physical sickness, or any other low-energy conditions. Today, in Los Estados Unidos, we are going through a pandemic of mass cultural susto. It is a soul loss of the deepest kind: a loss of tonalli caused by the loss of rootedness—by traumas, the pressure to conform, and the disconnection from our raíces. In curanderismo, there are three levels of existence—physical, emotional/mental, and spiritual. Each person, too, has three souls. One of these, tonalli, lives in the heart and mind; it animates our forward motion, the path we choose to walk in life. When susto occurs, your tonalli spirit leaves, and your alma perdida (lost soul) must then find its way back home. Because of oppressive assimilation over generations, there are adults of all ages who are all still searching for their lost souls. Many are questioning: who was I before they put up these walls? Their souls, wandering around like shadows, are lost fragments of self. They are hiding in forgotten childhood homes, at invisible crossroads, or deep within the locked parts of the mind. These lost pieces of soul have forgotten who they once were. Sometimes, the lost pieces have wandered so far away from their people that death results. For soul loss causes low energies and ailments, such

as fatigue, thirst, depression, or insomnia. It is a loss of life force and the will to keep living, for the tonalli spirit has wandered away. Without memories of where you come from, you may have no understanding of how to move forward. Our spirit essence is that which gives us our breath to live; it inspires the desire to flower, to sing—in xochitl, in cuicatl—and to make beauty all around, yet we cannot move forward if we ignore our traumas that abound. It is time to recopar nuestras almas (recover our souls), retrieve ourselves from the depths of our minds, and truly begin the journey of looking inside. We must become warriors and face our worst enemies ahead. Yet, as true warriors, we do not go into battle to inflict violence on others; instead, we meet our reflections in the original mirror (which is the moon) and face our own enemies (which are our traumas). The battle is to heal ourselves and make ourselves whole again. We womxn, men, all genders alike, are like Coyolxauhqui,* broken and dismembered— but we are slowly putting ourselves back together again. And remembering why we are here. It is time to call your spirit back home. So, say your name aloud. Call your spirit back so that it may reanimate your body, mind, and heart. Go ahead and say your birth name or nickname aloud with strength, courage, and force. It is time to journey within our lost memories, to find the lost pieces of our souls, and to rebirth ourselves into a new

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people who will interrupt and turn the dire course of history. We have officially entered the time of the sixth sun, so this is the time to make way for the turning of cycles and the shift ahead. It is time to pick ourselves up and return to our raíces, whatever roots are calling you home.

Four-Directions Prayer It is time to turn to the east, Tlahuiztlampa, place of Quetzalcoatl, and offer copalli and the touch of the huehuetl (drum). Here, ask for intelligence and the capacity to speak with wisdom, watching your words carefully. Go ahead, turn to the left, face the west, Cihuatlampa, where Xipe Totec lies, and add more copal to your burner while lightly beating the drum some more. Here, we may find the capacity to change, to forgive ourselves, and to improve. Move then to the north, Mictlampa, where Tezcatlipoca reigns, and offer your copal smoke on the breath of the wind with drumbeat in rhythm. Here, look towards your ancestors, those who have crossed over to the longer life and Great Mystery.

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Finally, we move to the south, Huitztlampa, place of the deity Huitzilopochtli, and offer copalli and drum. Petition for your willpower to strengthen, for the capacity to use free will when you choose, for the ability to persevere, and to always be curious, like the child within. Salute the four directions, with medicinas in hand, and know that your ancestors are here to guide your spirit back home. See your feet rooting into the earth, Tonantzin Tlalli, and remember your raza may be mixed, but you are connecting to what calls you inside. Give thanks for your ancestors’ presence, for the healing work that you will do ahead; give thanks for your familia, and the long life that you have lived. To all my relations, Ometeotl. Xochi Quetzalli

*Coyolxauhqui is the Mexica warrior goddess (or archetypal energy) represented in the moon.

Ancestor Velación for el Día de los Muertos A VELACIÓN RITUAL BY

Xochi Quetzalli

O YOU FEEL like you have experienced susto (soul loss) and that pieces of your spirit have strayed away because of disconnection from your ancestral culture? Well, it is time to call those pieces of your spirit back home. Join me and millions alike, as we honor our ancestors during this season of offering flowers, during this time when the fruit falls—known as Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos (November 1–2). Building relationships with your ancestors can help you recover from susto, reconnecting to the deepest parts of yourself. Your ancestors can guide you to find those lost pieces of your spirit and reintegrate them for your strength and healing.

Ancestor Velación Ritual To prepare for this sacred day and season, let’s do some ground work to prepare and connect with our ancestors first. This simple velación (vigil candle ritual) can be done as often as you’d like. It helps you establish a connection to one deceased ancestor and then continue to strengthen your relationship with them. Materials needed: • Several thin, fast burning candles (any color) • 1 photo or representation of a deceased ancestor • 1 frame • Smudging medicine (ethically sourced copal resin, leaf of sage, small branch of cedar, palo santo, etc.)

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Choosing an ancestor to work with and preparing your space

In choosing the ancestor you want to work with, it is important to begin with just one (unless you already have a well-established connection to your ancestors). You might ask: How do I choose that one ancestor? Well, have you had any dreams about one particular ancestor? When you sit with photo albums, is there one ancestor whose story you particularly remember or enjoy? Who do you connect with when you sit in silence, between the waking and dreaming state? Let your intuition guide your choice. Choose a photo of your ancestor to use in your velación. If you do not have one or cannot obtain one, then a beloved item that was once theirs will do.

Beginning your velación

Go ahead and begin your velación by lighting the candle. The candle represents the fire and is a portal to welcome in our ancestors. It attracts them into your home. Next, light your smudging medicine. You can use a smudging medicine that is common to your ancestor’s place of birth—or you can simply use what you have on hand. (Use just a leaf if you are using white sage or cedar, for bundles often burn too much, too fast.) These sweet aromas entice our ancestors to join us in the physical realm, call their spirits, and feed our senses.

What if you are adopted and have no direct lines to blood family? This displacement is great, yet know you are not alone. Working with the ancestors does not mean they have to be blood related; in fact, you do not need to have met the person you choose as your ancestor. Those who feel displaced often choose to work with a deity, ascended master, angel, saint, or holy person instead, and this is perfectly fine. Use an image or drawing of them in place of the photograph. Next, honor your ancestor by placing their photo or image in a frame. (You can make the frame if you wish.) Next to the frame, place your fast burning candle. Use a candle holder, or more simply, melt some of the wax in a small ceramic dish and stick the candle into the wax. Use a few drops of wax and a steady hand, and do not wiggle the candle around once you set it firmly in place.

After you have an aroma filling the air, begin to pray. Yet what if you feel like you do not know how to pray? Well, begin with a four-direction prayer, like the one in the article, or with any poetic words to call the spirits to come. Be direct and clear, stating the name of the person you’re talking to, stating your name, and simply sharing that you are hoping to establish a relationship with them. What is important is communication and your continued development of this relationship. The more you speak aloud to them, the more natural your words become, the more they turn into a prayer, poetry, and song that entices the spirits into your home. If you do this velación often these coming weeks and months, you may feel ready, then, to create your own ancestor altar for the Day of the Dead. Remember, the ancestors are always guiding you.

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Building the

Vibrational Layers Ofrenda of an

Holistic health practitioner Bri Martinez suggests ways to enhance the energy of your altar as you connect with your ancestors around the time of el Día de los Muertos. WORDS BY BRI MARTINEZ

ITH THE ARRIVAL of autumn—el otoño—it’s common for many of us to experience a bit of tristeza (sadness). The temperature dips, nature turns inward, and we, too, may feel a sense of loss as we witness the trees surrendering to the cold and letting go of their leaves. But let us remember that the trees do not let go of their leaves without first giving the earth a beautiful display of color. This powerful symbol from nature reminds us that el otoño is the most energetically powerful time of the year: a time of transformation, letting go, and taking the time to journey within. Journeying within can be the most beneficial of practices; we often find that the answers we seek are already within us. And we can use this energetically powerful time of year to call upon our ancestors to help us journey within and retrieve what we are seeking.

Ancestors, Altars, and Vibrational Energy Connecting to our ancestors is an essential part of our personal evolution and can help us understand the “whys” of our lives. Our ancestors can be the flames that ignite our spiritual abilities. Creating an altar, especially around the time of el Día de los Muertos, is a special way to honor our ancestors and deepen our connection to them. It provides them a specific place to gather when they pay us a visit—or, from a different perspective, a place for us to visit with them. As a holistic health practitioner who studies within the curanderismo tradition, I rely

heavily on vibrational medicine to deepen my practices. Around the time of el Día de los Muertos, I work on adding high vibrational layers to my altar to help me connect to my ancestors—and you can do the same. Altars are expressions of personal creativity, and there is no right or wrong way to design one. A truly beautiful altar is one that holds meaning for you. And while your altar should stay unique to you and your intentions, I offer a list of elements* you can add to your altar to raise the vibrational energy on and around it. As you may know, there is energy in everything. (*Please ensure that any plants or minerals you use are ethically and responsibly sourced.) 1. Intention

The number one ingredient to include in the creation of any altar is intention. I stress this as the first step because your intention is most important, regardless of your offerings. Keep your ancestors in mind throughout the process of creating your altar. Use this time to be reminded of your love for and admiration of them, and think of any good memories you may have of them. For example, I share a bond and relationship with my late great-grandmother and keep her in my heart and mind while I craft my altar. Her spirit is one of the biggest inspirations in my practice, and I connect with her energy regularly. I believe that everyone is capable of initiating these strong relationships with their late relatives by keeping their memories alive.

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2. Herb Bundles

it to amplify intentions and aid you in traveling spiritually to your ancestors. In fact, this is an amazing ally for those who are familiar with spiritual travel— that is, traveling with your heart and mind to the sacred place of your choice. When connecting with your ancestors, your spiritual travel might involve remembering a special memory that you have with them or imagining them doing what they loved.

Traditional wisdom says that smoke from herbal bundles is effective in alerting the spirits with whom you aim to open the lines of communication, should they allow you. To raise the vibration and enhance your connection with your ancestors, you can burn the following herb bundles on the altar you’ve created. (Again, ensure that you source any herbs ethically and responsibly.) •

Cedar. To welcome your ancestors, consider burning a cedar bundle. Unlike sage, which will clear energy, cedar is both protective and strengthening. It will fortify the space rather than swipe the room clear.

3. Crystals and Minerals

You can also use crystals and minerals on your altar, since energy emits from these natural specimens from the earth. When trying to decide which crystals to use on your altar, you can first consider the crystals that formed in the same global region where your ancestors lived. You can also consider minerals that symbolize connection and transformation. Here are a few that I frequently recommend. •

•

Artemisa / Planta Viajero. To connect with your ancestors, you can also try burning artemisa (mugwort). Artemisa is what I like to call the Planta Viajero (Traveler’s Plant) because you can use

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Fluorite. Central Mexico is

well known for producing some of the most beautiful fluorite, which ranges in color from clear, to light green, to dark purple. Fluorite clears negative energy. It aligns with the throat chakra (thus facilitating communication) and aids in spiritual balance. During ancestral connection, it is of utmost importance to be direct and speak your truth. This truthfulness often leads to a flow of emotion, which fluorite can support and help balance.

•

Petrified wood.

When using crystals from the specific region your ancestors were from is not an option, you can add petrified wood, symbolizing your family tree. Altars are all about representation and expression. Petrified wood on the altar adds both an element of nature and an additional layer of energy. Petrified wood is also known to be the stone of spiritual transformation. What better time to incorporate it than in el otoño, the season of transformation? When adding petrified wood to the altar, you are representing years of transformation through your ancestral lineage, and you will experience a strong sense of grounding and security. •

holding that stone while praying at your altar or during your meditations and intention setting. 4. Fresh Flowers

One more element and energy layer that I feel every altar needs is fresh flowers. Using the favorite flower of a specific ancestor is always a good place to start. But when you're feeling unsure of what to choose, you can use a traditional orange or yellow marigold, also called flor de muerto (flower of the dead). It’s said that these fragrant flowers lead our ancestors in with just the smell!

Clear quartz or selenite.

If petrified wood is not easily accessible, you can use clear quartz or selenite to add another layer of vibrational energy to your altar. Strictly dedicate that specific piece of stone to be used for connecting to your ancestors. Dedicating the crystal to ancestral work will cement the bond between you, the stone, and its job of facilitating energy between you and your ancestors. This will allow you to leave the stone on your altar as a permanent fixture without having to recalibrate it with intentions as often as you would if you were using it for multiple jobs. I recommend

Creating an altar does not have to be too complicated. In fact, it can be as simple or as elaborate as you would like it to be. As I mentioned above, your intention is most important, and being conscious of the different vibrational layers that you can add will make all the difference. Creating an ofrenda with strong intentions and love is one of the best ways to channel the transformational energy of el otoño. Think of the hidden beauty in the rainbow-colored leaves surrendering to the cold and falling to the earth. What can you let go of to make room for new? What intentions do you keep while creating the ofrenda this year?

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My Father’s Ghost A touching essay by writer Sarah Monroy Solis on the healing journey of discovering and remembering ancestral languages. WORDS BY

Sarah Monroy Solis

T TOOK ME a long time to admit that my father’s ghost haunts me—even longer to figure out that his spirit was leading me toward reclaiming my identity. He first appeared to me in a dream after his funeral. I was in my first year of college, sleeping in after another all-nighter. The dormitory was quiet, the other students eating breakfast in the cafeteria. Suddenly, the dorm room’s plaster walls faded, and I was standing on the porch of my childhood home. I could smell the pollen from the mulberry trees and felt a hummingbird buzz

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over me. It was morning, and my father measured a two by four on his workbench. He is probably mending a part of the house, I thought. (He had built it from the ground up.) The sunrise filtered over the trees, its shadow tracing the blue line he was drawing on the wood. He finished his lines and rubbed the back of his hand on his forehead, an old habit. His hair was black like it was before chemotherapy and before he died. “I’m lucid dreaming,” I said to myself. The shock made me still. I waited for him to look up at me.

When he finally did, he smiled. “Utz awach,” he said. Hello. I was about to respond when his shape faded. The house disappeared. I was alone in a dorm room again. This dream marked one of the first moments I asked myself what I understood about heritage languages. I asked my Spanish professor in college to identify some of the words my father had spoken when I was a child. I had already taken all the courses available to me

in Spanish language and literature and was now studying Portuguese. I felt I was missing something if I did not have all my father’s words. At first, my professor looked puzzled by my question until another student who had Guatemalan parentage overheard us and came over. “I know other words, too.” We both wanted answers. Our professor looked sadly at us. She did not know anything about our words, but she

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Left: Photo of the author's parents on their wedding day. Right: Photo of the author as a toddler, holding onto a camera tripod. Courtesy of the author.

guessed they were an Indigenous dialect. She suggested we ask our parents. I didn't bring up the fact I had no one left to ask. I left the question alone for a long time, avoiding it because it was like picking at a fresh wound. But the question came up again when I embarked on the long process of scanning all of our family’s childhood pictures. I had not realized the mountains of photo albums from the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties that my family had amassed. I think, altogether, the tower could have crushed the small scanner. If only, I thought, there had been digital cameras sooner. I began to embrace the process, enjoying memories I had forgotten in the pictures. I admired my father’s photography skills. As a child, I took for granted that he had worked as a photographer and had an eye for

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composition. My sisters and mother’s photos in seventies garb reminded me of the film Saturday Night Fever. Then I found a carefully composed headshot of my sister wearing a Mayan textile top and head covering. There was a photo of me as a toddler gripping my first tripod and wearing my first Mayan huipil. If I had been younger, I would have still assumed all Guatemalan citizens wore these. I found a photo of my father’s mother. It was ghostly gray, but she was also wearing the same textiles. The pieces of my identity did not come together, even after this. I had put these questions to sleep for years, again, after asking my mother. She was not from Guatemala. She was from Veracruz, Mexico, the site that saw the arrival of Cortez. Everyone in that region had to adapt to survive. She suggested my father had left his language behind because he could not

use it here. But I could see that even she had led a life of resistance where she could. She had learned enough English to pass the citizenship test, and then she spent the rest of her life speaking only in Spanish. It was our responsibility to adapt to her, not hers to assimilate. When I interpreted for her in public, I began to feel shame. I had absorbed the self-hate taught at school and accepted that we must shed a part of ourselves to assimilate. But the adult in me sees how deeply the resistance to this assimilation still burned within the languages my family kept. I continue to share phrases with my mother that my father used: “Quieres un kappe?” Do you want a coffee? The words hold more than just Mayan and Spanish; they contain the memory of my ancestors.

ECOVERING A LANGUAGE is an emotional journey. Yet there have been amusing and empowering moments. I still recall the first FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request I submitted to ask for my father’s immigration file—it was the back and forth with the Department of Homeland Security that I had grown used to as an immigration attorney. I submitted the documentation I needed to prove that I was my father's daughter and asked for “everything.”

I had absorbed the self-hate taught at school and accepted that we must shed a part of ourselves to assimilate. But the adult in me sees how deeply the resistance to this assimilation still burned within the languages my family kept.

The first reply was terse: “We cannot give you everything. Please be more specific.” I responded curtly: “I am specific. See reattached document.” They replied again. We went back and forth until frustration gave way to my replying, “I think you forget I’m an attorney. I

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know what you can give me. These are my father’s documents.”

Like the world I step into when I lucid dream, there is a world we step into when we speak and learn our Indigenous languages. Entire cosmologies come into view.

They sent me a template letter back with a disc. In it were hundreds of pages, a few redacted lightly. From this, I began to draw out pieces of my father’s journey, his parents’ names. I then found his original Guatemalan birth certificate. I found out where he was born, my great grandparents’ names, and even the finca (plantation) where they were born. I also began to research Guatemalan Indigenous languages and how Indigenous languages were discouraged through a complex history of Ladinization. Indigenous languages were discouraged across the continent, and I saw a new piece of that. That fact sat painfully within me. I was a child of the nineties. I remembered Proposition 187 in California, English-only movements in Arizona, and California Governor Pete Wilson. I grew up on the border, where assimilating into the “melting pot” is what determines how easily you can move, with immigration officers always present. My parents frequently took our family across the border to visit friends. They were terrific visits to the ejidos, the unincorporated, rural enclaves outside the central city of Mexicali. However, coming back was an ordeal. No matter how late into the night we arrived at the checkpoint, I needed to sit up, recite my name, date of birth, and city of birth. I remember the flashlight in my face, and the many times my parents were sent to secondary inspection because of their heavy accents. In our words, I realized, we can usually find our truths.

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N THE PAST year, I’ve had time to reflect on the truths, the cultural roots, hidden in my parents’ lives: how my mother used plants or the words in my father’s songs. There are truths in their words, words that don’t exist in Spanish dictionaries. Last fall, in my first semester of Huastecan Nahuatl, I began to understand the language was not cognate with Spanish or English. It was not parallel. There are entire world views in the words—there is no him or her, for example, and no gendered nouns. Another example of a world within a word is cempoalxóchitl, the name for marigold, which holds ancient ties to sacred holidays, deities, and medicine. Like the world I step into when I lucid dream, there is a world we step into when we speak and learn our Indigenous languages. Entire cosmologies come into view. But the dream does not get fuzzier as you awaken. Just the opposite. You are turning the knob on a telescope, and your perception of yourself, your parents, and their communities comes into focus. My Nahuatl teacher, Cuitlahuac Martinez (founder of Speak Nahuatl), once asked, “How deep is your love for yourself and your community?” There are many threads of meaning for me in that question. I became an immigration attorney because I wanted to help my community. But is it good enough for me to work within an immigration system built upon white supremacy? Should I not envision a different future where my role doesn’t have to exist as it does?

Our languages, holidays, medicine, and customs have survived for generations. When I started this reconnection journey, I began to see our peoples’ relationships differently. I saw the deep connection to the land and realized I have just as much a duty to care for this continent as they do. I recognized that by reconnecting to my Indigeneity, I could better support my community and acknowledge my interculturality. I also learned to be more aware of the culture of individualism I grew up in, so I could begin to take part in a more significant collective consciousness. As I study today, my father’s Mayan words continue to appear like small stepping stones of knowledge. The Nahuatl terms, which I share with my mother on the phone, jog her memory sometimes and lead to stories about her grandparents. Reconnecting is a lifelong process. For my part, I have felt more whole since I realized I could continue building a connection to my ancestors through language. With the same intention and love, the substance out of which my father made our family home, my son and I can continue building on his legacy. This piece was originally published in Ofrenda Magazine, Issue 01: Intention, January 2021.

My ancestors were resilient people, and it is a testament to them that we are still here.

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Ijkwania Ejekat (Moving Wind)

Sharing her own traditions for Día de los Difuntos, counselor and healer Yoshabel Shay reminds us to be like ijkwania ejekat, the moving wind, as we celebrate with our ancestors’ spirits and prepare ourselves for personal transformation each fall.

WORDS BY YOSHABEL SHAY

HE SUN BEGINS to travel to the underworld a little earlier each day as the summer season comes to an end. Metztli, the moon, glitters with golden sparkles as she dances with the vientos de otoño (autumn winds). The vibrant summer colors start to soften into a warm, cozy, palette. Leaves mature and leave their story behind as they prepare to wither away. Green. Spots of brown. Gold. Fall. During the time of autumn, some plants’ cycles end, while others begin: a death to prepare for a rebirth in the spring. Reflecting on this cycle as a metaphor, I think of autumn as a time to let go of what no longer serves me. I allow myself to grieve about this change. I allow myself to both experience the loss and appreciate what will come—two steps that are crucial during this time. During this season, the ancestors become more active, as well, to assist this transition. As we enter into the night a bit earlier each day, the spiritual veil becomes thinner,

creating space and time to look inward and be grateful for the work we have been doing through the year. My favorite autumn celebration is that of Día de los Muertos—or as it’s known in my ancestral country of El Salvador, el Día de los Difuntos (day of the deceased). These are magical, celebratory days, and through our celebrations, we can experience the timeless realm of spirit while remaining in a physical vessel; we become like ijkwania ejekat (moving wind) amongst the living and the deceased. My personal practice on Día de los Difuntos is to reconnect with my late grandfathers and others who have passed before me. For the past few years, my family has kept a tradition of enjoying a large meal featuring each deceased family member’s favorite dish. They may not all match in flavor, but we enjoy an eclectic array: hot dogs, mojarra frita, ribs, french fries. And we can’t forget Don Beto’s ice cream—pistachio ice cream to be exact.

Spirit reminds us that time is a construct, and slowing down to connect with the divine spirit requires patience. These celebrations and traditions create space for just that...

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We set up five extra plates for our spirits at the table and eat as a family. We play music and tell stories. At times, I can feel my ancestors’ spirits, excited to be celebrated and remembered—and also loving us and preparing us for change. Sometimes, I receive messages from them to share with my family. During our family’s second annual Día de los Difuntos meal, for example, my husband’s father sent me a message stating that he would be returning to the physical realm soon. I mentioned this to my husband, and unbeknownst to us at the time, in December of that same year I would become pregnant with my son, whom we named after my husband’s father.

and give yourself permission to release. Trust in the winds of Quetzalcoatl that these changes are for growth. Listen to Tlaloc’s songs as the rain drops with rhythm. Each drop is blessing you for your new beginning. Listen to and respect the words of the ancestors as we transition into the underworld earlier in the day. Take the time to watch the leaves change color. Green. Spotted brown. Gold. Fall.

HEN WE PAUSE and experience the veil between the spiritual and physical realm, time becomes irrelevant. Spirit reminds us that time is a construct, and slowing down to connect with the divine spirit requires patience. These celebrations and traditions create space for just that: slowing down and releasing the summer’s heat. Harvesting the change that will come from letting go for the new season. Pausing and collecting our thoughts and strength for the winter. Autumn is a time to quiet down the mind and return home. Home may be a physical place or spiritual place. Whatever it may be, let yourself breathe quietly and mindfully. Allow yourself to reconnect with self and family. Whether with your blood family, a spirit family, or a chosen family, enjoy autumn as a time to come together and watch the sun slumber a little longer. Slow down

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... if it all means nothing. Writer and consultant Cameron Navarro encourages us to pause, grieve, and treasure each moment.

WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY

CAMERON NAVARRO

RECENTLY HAD one of those feels-likereal-life dreams where, while chatting with a friend, I abruptly declared, “I’m so lonely and so sad,” and then burst into sobs. It was a heaving sob that woke me up. Later in the day, when I was feeling a bit down, I recalled the dream and thought: if you can dream it, you can achieve it! I promise the entirety of this essay won’t be too maudlin. Grief has been a common theme of the past eighteen-ish months—not only from our global issues but also from multiple losses of friends and family in my case. While I’m still processing and experiencing these losses, I’ve noticed a theme in my grief: it shows up in wildly different ways at any moment. Like a shifting tide. When I learned my friend took her life after living with schizophrenia for years, I ran my tear ducts dry. Bawled while doing the dishes, while in the bathroom, while watching Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Luckily, I was still in quarantine, because grief doesn’t read the room. About a year later, when my cousin died in a tragic car accident, I stood in the middle of the Utah desert, staring out into the seemingly endless expanse of sand and rock, just standing and staring. The world felt so big and so small, all at the same time. Time made even less sense, and in some ways, I don’t think I have left that spot in the Devil’s Garden. In the past few days, I’ve teared up at commercials, TV shows, my dog sleeping, some jangly folk songs, a group of ducks, a gentle breeze, and on and on. All of these bring up the big questions: What does it all mean? What if it means nothing?

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There have been many experiences of loss, kindness, and joy before, between, and since these events. And there will continue to be, because life continues to cycle in each moment and will continue to do so until its end. And in some ways, that is enough of an answer to those questions of meaning. The seasons are one of many tangible reminders of these cycles. I think that’s why I resonate with the fall season. I believe fall is our Mother Earth showing us that processing loss is essential to all processes; by acknowledging and respecting the end of things as winter approaches, we can be prepared for the new growths of our spring seasons. I also really enjoy pumpkin soup and a good cardigan. While I didn’t enjoy Halloween much growing up—I do not enjoy being scared, but that’s a story for another time—the season has grown on me in the past decade as I learn more about my family history, Día de los Muertos, and the cycles of plant life and harvest. For those unfamiliar, Día de los Muertos is not “Mexican Halloween,” and I only connect them here because my experience with their themes is connected in my life. As someone who has felt comfortable thinking about life, death, beliefs, and the like since I was a kid, seeing the world publicly acknowledge and even celebrate death is comforting. I feel more connected with others, with the Earth, with the universe. And also, did I mention the pumpkin and sweaters?

UT IT TURNS out most people don’t enjoy ruminating on death after November 2 or so. We rush right along to the next winter holiday, event, or obligation. This is not a judgement by any means—I love the general cheer and kindness that seems to accompany the last few months of each year. The many different traditions and celebrations are full of joy and community, essential parts of our humanity. However, I’ve started to wonder if this deluge of celebrations might be a coping mechanism, heavily supported by capitalism. Don’t wanna think about death for too long? Don’t worry, you can buy everything you need to have a perfect Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s! Don’t wait, because stuff will distract make you happy now! While cheeky, I don’t intend for my words to be cynical, because coping mechanisms are normal human responses to keep us safe. As we navigate so many personal, local, and global hardships, coping mechanisms are essential to continue moving forward. But this is where I start to wonder: What if our coping mechanisms are no longer serving us? What if distractions and preoccupations have served their purpose, and now it is time for us to start to sit with our grief? To speak aloud that we are lonely and sad. To sob. To stand and stare in the desert. To get swallowed up in our favorite sweater. To eat plenty of candy. And to wonder what it all means, even if it all means nothing. I’m better at wondering than I am at providing any reasonable answers, but I do want to encourage you to pause, however that looks to your life. If nothing else, Earth wants

I believe fall is our Mother Earth showing us that processing loss is essential to all processes; by acknowledging and respecting the end of things as winter approaches, we can be prepared for the new growths of our spring seasons.

you to pause to enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, to feel the breeze, to listen to the crunch of leaves, and to remember all the past year has brought. And the years before that. To think of the joy that our loved ones have brought us. To consider how the tender, fleeting nature of this life is what makes it all that much more brilliant. And to enjoy your versions of soup and candy and sweaters. May you, your loved ones, and your ancestors be safe, be well, and live with ease.

Author’s note: The title of this essay is taken from the song “What Do It Mean” by Lord Huron. I recommend listening to the song, reading the lyrics, and enjoying the entire album as a good companion for this season.

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Q&A on Brujas and Brujería A conversation with Lorraine Monteagut, Ph.D., on brujería, spiritual activism, and her forthcoming book, Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color. WORDS BY LORRAINE MONTEAGUT

Ofrenda Magazine (OM): Lorraine! Thank you so much for sharing an excerpt of your new book, Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color, and congratulations on its upcoming release. (Readers: You can pre-order your copy now from Chicago Review Press.) You’re both an independent scholar and a practitioner of brujería, qualifications that give you fascinating and valuable lenses through which to explore this topic in a book. What should readers expect to find in Brujas? Lorraine Monteagut (LM): Thank you so much!

Now that I’ve had a little distance from the writing, I’ve been looking at Brujas as a sort of pandemic yearbook of witches of color and brujx who are not only reclaiming their ancestral traditions, but creating new ways to engage in ritual and connection. It’s the kind of book that

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you can flip through or dive into, depending on what you’re looking for. Each chapter profiles a practitioner that I’ve interviewed or whose workshop I’ve attended, and I also include my own stories—some are really fresh journal entries that reflect my reaching for magic while processing loss and grief over the last couple years. I wanted to show how messy and ongoing the process of both healing and writing is. You can start even if you don’t have the answers to everything. You can keep going even if you don’t know where you’re going yet. That’s why I also include resources at the end of each chapter to prompt your own ritual practice, and above all, I hope readers will use the book as a reference to find other books and practitioners, to go deeper into any of the topics I skim. OM: In your excerpt, you suggest that brujería is misunderstood. When you describe brujería, what’s your basic definition for those who have never heard the word before? And how do you reframe brujería for those who have pre-formulated conceptions of what it might be? LM: Bruja (“witch”) and brujería (“witchcraft”) are loaded terms, and they’ve historically been used in derogatory ways, usually by mainstream religions to demonize indigenous ways of knowing. I use the term to describe what organically developed throughout the indigenous Americas and particularly along the African diaspora to keep practices safe from forces of colonization. These were usually decentralized healing practices that supported community and evolved as cultures mixed. They were

often syncretized with mainstream religion to stay hidden in plain sight. This occulting, or secrecy, is probably why brujería has been associated with evil in the past (and still today, tbh). OM: Many of our readers are familiar with curanderismo. How is brujería— specifically in the way that you explore it in your book—similar to or different from curanderismo? LM: There are books that go into the specif-

ics of a local brujería practice, like J. Allen Cross’s new book on Mexican folk magic, American Brujeria, which is a little different than a book on, say, Puerto Rican magic would be, since the practices are highly local. My book takes a more general look at brujería, which encompasses stories and rituals from many different spiritual technologies and regions, including curanderismo. In chapter 3, I present curanderismo under the umbrella of brujería and challenge the way some of us have been conditioned to think that one is “white magic” and the other “black magic.” Curanderismo focuses on healing through traditional plant medicine, which I see as one part of the patchwork that is brujería. Ultimately, they’re all rituals that enact the myths of making home in a strange world. The new bruja/brujx is one who sees these patterns in all our ways of magic and brings what was once secret out into the open, and in the process creates a new ritual artform. OM: One of the elements I love about the chapter that you shared with us is that you sprinkle in elements of your

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own learning journey of practicing brujería “responsibly.” For example, you hint that, as a teen, you weren’t aware of the importance of sourcing crystals ethically. Can you elaborate on this idea—the relationships between brujería and care for the earth and/or social justice? Would you say that earth care is an inherent part of brujería? LM Yes, yes, yes. Part two of the book cen-

ters on spiritual activism, because I think spirit and politics are inherently linked. This doesn’t mean you have to go out and protest. Taking care of yourself and exploring the rituals that make you feel grounded and connected are just as important as raising money for a cause. One thing we can all do is make sure that our routines and the things we buy don’t cause more harm. Crystals and sage have become so popular, and they are

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often unethically harvested at the expense of Indigenous communities that were until very recently persecuted for their rituals. To reclaim a phrase from the right, “Do your own research.” But really. It takes a bit more work to find ethical products and practitioners, but your practice will be more powerful for it. OM: What do you hope readers will learn from your book—whether about brujería directly, or about themselves? LM: I hope the book provides a broad structure for you to start where you are, whether you’re a baby witch looking to create your first ritual, or an experienced practitioner hoping to expand your network or engage in activism. I hope everyone will carve more time and space for their craft. Your art and magic are important.

The New Brujas The opening chapter of Lorraine Monteagut's forthcoming book, Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color, available from Chicago Review Press on October 5. WORDS BY

Lorraine Monteagut

Y THE TIME Sabel Santa arrived in Carolina, Puerto Rico, a municipality east of San Juan, she was mute. She was two years old. Her family was perplexed because she had just begun to speak her first full sentences of English in the United States, where she was born. They tried coaxing her into talking again, to no avail. Sabel would not speak. It was 1987, the same year King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain visited Puerto Rico to plan the commemorative event for the five hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of America. Just before their public appearance, five bombs went off on different areas of the island. One of the bombs caused property damage to the Bank of Boston, a couple miles from Sabel’s grandmother’s house in Villa Carolina. Sabel’s mother had left her father behind at the military base where he was stationed. Her grandmother took Sabel and her mother in, and they were once again an unbroken matriarchy. Sabel had the brown skin of her mother’s line, her inheritance from the West Africans who were brought forcefully to the island in the 1500s. Her grandmother was an eccentric woman. She didn’t go to church like the other ladies in the barrio. She sensed when people were on their way over. She talked to plants. The objects in her kitchen were all enchanted to her, and she put her nurturing energy into everything she cooked, which would sustain the bodies of her descendants. For a while, she was Sabel’s best friend. With her grandmother, she didn’t need to speak. They communicated without words. Her grandmother

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would fix her eyes on Sabel, and Sabel understood and would nod or shake her head. Sabel intently observed the world around her, new to her but old to her family. The buildings with their flat roofs and wroughtiron geometric patterns. The patron saint festivals for San Fernando, yet another Spanish king. Her neighbors, shouting and dancing and fighting and loving. A thrumming of magic barely perceptible, whispering. Months went by, and Sabel began to speak again. In Spanish. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, there were isolated bombings on the island and on the mainland to protest Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth under the United States. Most resulted in no injuries or casualties, but they were a constant reminder of the people’s unrest in a land that had been colonized by Spanish powers since the late fifteenth century, before the United States invaded during the Spanish-American War in the late 1800s. There were other forms of resistance. Brujería was first documented on the island in the 1500s, as a response to the colonizers’ religion and as a method of keeping Indigenous and African traditions alive. Providing private modes of healing and dissent, brujas and brujos stepped in to help the people when governments and mainstream medicine fell short. These were not always peaceful practices. They were responses to violence and oppression and

“There were other forms of resistance. Brujería was first documented on the island in the 1500s, as a response to the colonizers’ religion and as a method of keeping Indigenous and African traditions alive. Providing private modes of healing and dissent, brujas and brujos stepped in to help the people when governments and mainstream medicine fell short.”

“The way of the bruja was a current that flowed under everything on the island, beneath the Spanish names and customs— something far older, full of mystery, misunderstood.”

often required sacrifices, so they were easily denounced by the Catholic Church and the government as devil worship. Many descendants of these traditions were successfully converted to Christianity and condemned their own ancestry, and the stigma lives on today. But since brujería wasn’t a religion with established institutions or hierarchy, its grassroots rituals were difficult to identify and stamp out. Brujería survived in the shadows. Next door to Sabel’s grandmother lived a so-called bruja, and though Sabel’s grandmother was clearly an intuitive herself, she forbade Sabel from visiting. But Sabel couldn’t help herself from getting close. She was fascinated by the decapitated birds hanging outside her neighbor’s door. What could they be for? What else was inside?

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Somehow she knew that there was more to the “witch” than her grandmother said, that these people who lived just apart from the rest of them and made strange sacrifices were not necessarily evil. The way of the bruja was a current that flowed under everything on the island, beneath the Spanish names and customs—something far older, full of mystery, misunderstood. Sabel began collecting occult objects of her own, crystals and spell books and tarot cards, and she created her own rituals. When she was thirteen, Hurricane Georges hit Puerto Rico, and Sabel energetically absorbed the force of the wind and the rain, believing it to be her magical initiation. At the same time, one thousand miles away in Florida, another thirteen-year-old was getting ready for the same storm. I pushed

my furniture to the middle of my room and tucked my prized possessions into the closet that held all of my secrets. I remembered Hurricane Andrew and how I’d been too little to save my things when parts of the roof flew off and the windows all broke and the carpets flooded. I should’ve been scared. I’d never admit it, because I knew what a hurricane could do—how it could take your home or your loved ones in a blink—but the truth was, I was always excited when a storm was on its way. Each storm feels like an inheritance. Before a storm hits, the barometric pressure plummets, and the air feels both full and empty. The skies become an otherworldly green grey, and the wind assumes a harsh whisper. Then comes a trance of water and wind, hands of gods mixing everything together, strengthening the undercurrents. The past emerges to the present, and they become one, and you can remember things long forgotten, things maybe you’d never been taught but somehow you carry, like how to keep possessions light and when to run or when to hunker down. Like how to rebuild after the storm, that emissary of nostalgia carrying the tears and sweat of our ancestors hundreds of miles to rain down on us. Brujas hold this reverence for hurricanes. Maybe it’s because they follow the trajectory of a great ancestral migration, originating from the coast of Africa, running through the Caribbean, some dying down, some gaining strength, before settling in the United States. Hurricanes are a reminder to keep moving, to find higher ground, to survive.

Sabel’s story hums between binaries: Black and White. Spanish and English. The occult and Catholicism. Colonized and colonizer. Her in-betweenness is her special mark. The bruja contains all these identities, allowing Sabel a fluid movement between them. •••

HEN WE MOVED to our new home in the suburbs of West Kendall, Florida, I started to have the alligator dreams. In the dreams I am dressed in white, walking barefoot across a vast swamp. I’m trying to make it to a shoreline a few feet out of reach, but it keeps moving of its own volition. Along the way, I step on the heads and bodies of stonelike gators. The water is opaque milk, and there is a penetrating fog. If I’m slow and intentional with my steps, the gators remain stone. If I hesitate in fear, they start to move and snap at me. In some dreams, panic takes over, and I freeze on one of the gator heads, eternally encircled by the reptilian force of the swamp. In others, I slip and fall into the water, and I’m torn limb from limb. I still have the dreams, though I haven’t lived in West Kendall in nearly twenty years. It is the closest thing I have to a homeland, this unincorporated part of Miami-Dade County. Abutting the eastern border of the Everglades, West Kendall is named for the European merchant who bought it in the late 1800s. Ours was the first house in our development, Sunny View Homes, the helm of the area’s suburban boom in the 1990s. I was nine when we moved there. I was a tomboy, with knobby knees and a nose like

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a bird’s beak. The grown-ups, mostly South and Central American and Caribbean immigrants like us, stood on the foundations of homes that would bear the broad strokes of the Spanish Colonial style, what they’d collectively decided was the mark of progress. They reviewed their cookie-cutter plans, pointing here and there. I perched on the roof and followed the sun as it set on the interminable marsh, clouds towering milky pink and yellow on the horizon. All around were U-pick strawberry fields, rows and rows stretching west to the swamplands. I ignorantly thought the Everglades a wilderness. I didn’t know it had long been home to nomadic migrant workers and Miccosukee. Then more neighbors came, and mazes of stucco houses all the same, and the strawberries were paved over. Our suburb became indistinguishable from all the others. It was sunny, but in a bad way. Without the swamp to absorb the light, the roof view turned to a blinding whiteness, the beam of an alien ship keeping everything in suspension. Barred from nature, I craved relics of the old Florida of my imagination. I was so close to it, to Big Cypress and the ancient alligators and the collective memory of the Seminoles who knew every mangrove, every dome. I might as well have been a world away. There were two Floridas, one humming, trapped under the weight of the other. Years went by, and I could feel the hormones making space inside of me—for what, I didn’t know. I pressed my face to the heat of the pavement to listen for the old

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magic beyond the burning of my ear. Nature became synonymous with the past. I didn’t want to grow up and forget the swamp. If I could somehow channel it, I might spare myself an adolescence of suburban mundanity. When I smelled a storm coming, I sat ready on the roof, my arms to the sky, half pretending I controlled the thunder, half hoping lightning would strike me and I’d get powers. My little brothers shared a room where they created an insular world, so I explored on my own. My closet was your ordinary preteen confessional, the walls covered in posters my mom wouldn’t like out in the open. Alien-like as he was, with breasts and a bony bump where genitals would be, Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animals album cover was particularly offensive to conservative sensibilities. Nothing was a solid line—not gender, not species, not genre. I excused the violence he portrayed as “artistic,” unaware of the real abuse he inflicted. He made me feel like I could be anything, love anyone. Behind the posters were the names of crushes and symbols I’d made up as placeholders for words I didn’t yet have. I could only write them in total confinement, doors fully shut. Though they pressed me to the wall, I was safe in my altar of clothes and cracked light, away from the overexposed photograph that was my waking life. Darkness called in a richness of forms I wished I could unsee. One scared me to the core: a shadow that materialized into a witch in the corner of my room, all static and dark matted hair like the girl from The Ring. If I let my guard down, she would

“I held on to the word bruja because it was more right than the witch I associated with paganism, but I didn’t identify with it openly because my practice wasn’t the brujería that seemed to equally scare and attract my family.”

advance. Once, she got all the way to my chest and clawed to get in, and I felt myself coming untethered from my body. Panic became a familiar visitor. Over time, I learned how to keep the shadow in her corner with my willpower. When she appeared, I had the weird feeling that I’d asked for this, like it was a wild offshoot of my imagination that had grown a will of its own. My terror pushed away any wish of magic, and when the sun rose, I was happy to look out my window onto the boring street with the boring little houses all the same. But then the fear would wear off, and I’d start experimenting again, chanting made up words into the air, inviting spirits to speak with me. I didn’t yet know that this mundane existence my family had created was the product of careful decisions to separate us from the

worlds of chaos from which we’d come. I didn’t know that I was opening a door my ancestors had intentionally closed, that the strange shadow in my corner would continue to grow in strength. My parents were born in Colombia and Cuba, which didn’t set me apart from the other kids at school, who were mostly children of immigrants themselves. But I had a sense that there were secrets my family wouldn’t tell me, and for some reason, I was afraid to ask. Besides some old photos, they brought no heirlooms that I could use to access family memory. To them, progress was a constant newness, the cold and hard aesthetic of Miami in the early 1990s: glass walls, marble floors, granite countertops. Even our decorations were marble, like the little eggs my parents placed on pedestals around the house. We weren’t allowed to play with

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them, but sometimes I would sneak them into my palm, feeling their weight as I warmed them, imagining I might one day hatch a baby alligator made of alabaster. We’d routinely throw out perfectly good stuff to make room for new stuff. I think of all those shards of recyclable material in the landfill. Maybe now, decades later, they’re finally escaping their temporary prison and returning to the earth. What if the shadow I see is energy, old memory, trapped like the tons of our things that can’t decompose, contained as they are in all that plastic? Can I undo whatever curse is holding it in place and set it free? As a teen I swung on an accelerating pendulum of fear and ennui. That’s when I decided I would absorb the shadow and become a witch myself—one sweaty morning, paralyzed in my bed, overwhelmed by my changing body. Being a witch was the solution to all my problems. I’d once and for all refuse the sterile life around me, the endless big-box consumerism and the nine-to-fives. I’d learn the skills I needed to face the shadows, like Sailor Moon and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I escaped my awkward reality through the fantasies of pop “occulture.” To my excitement, the witch had arisen as an icon of goth and grunge subcultures in the late ’90s. Suddenly, being a witch was just the right degree of taboo for a rebellious teen. The witch was the only aesthetic that fit my in-betweenness, and like a whole subset of girls of my generation, I dressed like the witches from shows like Charmed and mov-

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ies like The Craft. Dog collars and baby tees. Flowy skirts with combat boots. I wanted to get deeper than superficial experimentation, but I wasn’t sure where to turn for spiritual guidance. I wrangled my few friends into a coven. (It really takes off if you mimic a fictional one and each choose a character.) We sat in circles and chanted our poems as spells. We concocted smelly potions that we sprayed onto the lockers of the girls we didn’t like. We hexed the exes who broke our hearts and reserved the nicer-smelling potions for love spells. And we had crystals, of course. Each kind of crystal imbued us with different powers, we said. We didn’t care to find out if this gorgeous pyrite that increases intelligence might have come from a mine letting loose millions of gallons of acid into drinking water. We were just girls. We were the children of immigrants. I was the whitest of them all, which I got from the relentless Spanish genes on my father’s Cuban side. I was called gringa and mona. My Colombian cousins on my mother’s side were darker and gorgeous, with deep, dark eyes and thick hair. My skin felt so thin in comparison to theirs, which never burned. Two of their mothers, my favorite aunts, were inseparable, and I thought them Amazonian goddesses. For a time, they shared a master bedroom from which they reigned the house like a pair of queens. I could live in the curve of their hips, the forest of their hair. They told me I was beautiful for my light skin and green eyes and that

these things would take me far. That’s what I had to do, they said—get ahead for the family. But I felt small and exposed next to them, like a snail without its shell. Looking White did help me assimilate to American life faster than my cousins. White was new, a passport. Over time, Spanglish was the most I could muster of my mother tongue.

word bruja because it was more right than the witch I associated with paganism, but I didn’t identify with it openly because my practice wasn’t the brujería that seemed to equally scare and attract my family.

Now, I see Spanglish as a spellwork of sorts, a rejection of two colonizer languages in favor of something in between, something my own.

I didn’t know it, but I was one of thousands of dormant little witches all over the country, and years later, we would start to show ourselves.

One night, my mother and aunts took me to Catholic mass where people dropped to the floor with the Holy Spirit. After, at a house nearby, they made me stay outside as they consulted someone dressed all in white. They appeared with something wrapped in burlap (and covered in blood?) and they told me not to tell anyone where we’d been. In my family, brujas were associated with dark magic and openly shunned, so they were sought in secret.

As an initiation of sorts, I carved the word into my closet of secrets: B R U J A.

From the forthcoming book Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color © 2022 by Lorraine Monteagut, Ph.D. Printed with permission from the publisher, Chicago Review Press. You can purchase a copy from Ofrenda’s Bookshop: bookshop.org/shop/ofrendamagazine.

Years later, I drove around town in search of brujas myself, but nobody had “witch” just written on their doors, so I had to be satisfied with the esoteric book shops run by older White ladies whose histories and homelands were so different from mine. They wore loose, flowing clothes and kept cabinets of herbs I’d never heard of and displayed books and books about Wicca. I built my magic on my own. I read all the books I could find, science and new age ones alike. Learning about the force of an alligator’s bite felt the same as learning about the planets of astrology. I held on to the

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Visit Our Bookshop Support Ofrenda’s work and mission whenever you buy books! AUTHORS FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE OF OFRENDA

LORRAINE MONTEAGUE, Ph.D. Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color Lorraine Monteague, Ph.D.

RUTH NAKAMURA Crow Moon Ruth Nakamura and Anna Griego

bookshop.org/shop/ofrendamagazine

AARON A. ABEYTA Kinship Series (vol 2.) Edited by Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and John Hausdoerffer

Rise, Do Not Be Afraid Aaron A. Abeyta

Letters from the Headwaters Aaron A. Abeyta

Colcha Aaron A. Abeyta

Prayer Asking Mother Earth for forgiveness, poet Ruth Nakamura laments the harm humans have caused the planet. WORDS BY

Ruth Nakamura

Mother, with your rebozo of cloud wrapped around your shoulders in tatters, hear me, my candles are lit. In all the windows of my house a flame burns, blue tealights invite you to settle here awhile. Tierra sagrada, your last children are almost ghosts, bone, spirits like skeins loosening, the hold of their footprints on the land evaporates in the sun. Javan rhinoceros, vaquita, mountain gorilla, snow leopard, in each country the list is shameful, in each oyamel there are fewer tiger-flamed butterflies

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yet if we listen we can hear them fling their songs through the remaining trees, around the hollows of your body, its mountain roots, gemmed, its dry riverbeds, its ocean cradles, though this vast, intricate cathedral has been lit with heat, fire opal. Mother, I am sorry we are a people that haunts you, phantom parasites, our fingers caress metals, plastics, papers, we sting with pesticides, our bodies are graffiti in an acid rain war zone, we have forgotten your languages, the tie between us, we have entered the concrete halls of the dead, our hearts mummified, dried up things, atomic shadows. Mother, show us, open us, let us remember our Eden-flower minds. When the geese fly overhead, their call a spool of crimson from the first dawn, may something long forgotten stir within us, become the thin unbroken trail we follow back to you.

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