Family: Blog #5

With the expanded definition we use in class to define family--as in, a non-Eurocentric kinship, community elders, caretakers, chosen family, deeply-connected support structures that are not nuclear-- I was able to delve deeper into J. Michael Martinez's "Heredities (1) Etymology."

The position of the speaker is of an adult looking back through two frames of memory--his own childlike memory and that of his grandmother's memory. 

First, to acquaint myself with the terms used in the poem. I already know of the significance of curanderas, but I had to look up the word "santito." The most common definition, out of a few slang terms, was that it relates to statuettes of San La Muerte: 

Image source

From the article "¿Quien es San La Muerte?":

A San La Muerte se lo invoca igual que a otro santo. Según cuentan los fieles, se recurre a él para interceder ante Dios en medio de la adversidad para que les brinde la gracia que necesita en ese momento. La diferencia es que a San La Muerte se le puede pedir que realice algún daño.

San La Muerte is invoked just like another saint. According to the faithful, he is called upon to intercede before God in the midst of adversity to give them the grace he needs at that moment. The difference is that San La Muerte can be asked to do some damage. 

This figure isn't necessarily recognized by the Catholic church, and the numbers of Mexican and U.S. latinx people devoted to this practice of ritual have grown (source). 

I think that all of this locational background knowledge of santitos and curanderas are important in understanding the speaker's context, and that of his grandmother's context. They both represent life and death forces and a cultural relationship with the sacred. With these forces, we see a rejection of the western notions of health and caretaking. Home and well-being are rooted in Mexican cultural practices outside the medical establishment. We can see these moments as the "etymology" or the origin of the speaker's current mindset, and also the etymology of his mother's name: "'That is why the name of your mother is Maria, because she is a prayer, a song of praise to the Holy Mother.'"

Birth, family, are rooted in voice and the throat. The grandmother's throat, a sort of family tree with "fleshy apples," is both the site of curse and dream-scape. The mother figure is birthed through the throat, an initiation the speaker (the poet) takes up in retrospectively looking at his family. I think, in this recognition of the past and of family myth-making, the speaker is able to take part in decolonizing his past. He is able to articulate a more holistic and whole trajectory of his life, the diaspora of his family, and the collective identity formed within this ancestral bond.