For Black Women Staying… Also, Going.

I came to Mexico in the mid- 1980s led by characters in a dream I had some years before  in Brooklyn, New York. Though I return to the US every spring to plant my garden in Northern California, I have been here every year since. During most of those years I could afford to be at my Mexico home only for  a week or ten days.  Local friends teased that my visits were so fast they gave them whiplash. Over the decades, I have been able to stay longer, to eat mangoes from a tree I planted when my grandson was born; to grow collards and okra and zinnias.  Here I feel surrounded by people of mixed ancestry similar to my own -African, Cherokee, Scotch-Irish- though no one seems to think much about it. The Indigenous vibe is strong, even if there are Mexicans who insist their ancestry is purely “Spanish.” Like, from Spain.

Interestingly, when I visited Spain many years ago, I liked the Spanish people my partner and I encountered, and bought a handmade guitar from the gifted man who made it. This man might have been considered “white” in the USA, but it was clear his consciousness was not infected with the disease of racial  superiority.  

Are there places on this earth where black women can live freely? Where our children can feel safe? Where our men can relax?  If there are, it is perhaps time we found them. Which is what our younger sister is advising us to do.  With her beautiful hair, skin, eyes, smile, joyfulness. Of all people on the planet I believe Africa’s children deserve happiness. Unencumbered movement, idle time to sit and dream.  It’s been a long 500 (maybe 800) years. ~aw