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jhamellblen · 1 year ago

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The Culture of Mexico

Mexican culture is a reflection of indigenous and Spanish customs. These customs and religions are practiced all across the United States of America. Mexican culture includes clothing, traditions, and cuisine.

When it comes to Mexican Americans or people in general there are a lot of assumptions that are made about you. Before you even talk or express yourself. Some assumptions towards Mexican people would be that they only speak Spanish well but not english. Or that they only work manual labor jobs. As humans our first instinct is to create these assumptions about a person, but how can we change the narrative? That should be the next step into the right direction. Is eliminating all the bad connotations towards people.

The people of Mexico are very close and celebrate many traditions. To name a few, There are Piñatas, Dia de los Muertos, and Quinceañeras. Piñatas are commonly used during birthday parties to celebrate that person’s birthday. Piñatas are made of paper mâché and are filled with different candies of choice. There is a line to hit the Piñatas where everyone takes a turn to hit the Piñatas with a stick. The Piñatas is hit until all the candy has fallen or until the Piñatas can no Longer to be hit. Another Tradition would be Día de los Muertos. Día de los Muertos is where families remember their loved ones. This celebration is from October 31- November 2, the families can rejoin with their loved one’s spirits. Those who participate often create ofrendas which are alters with pictures of loved ones who passed, activities they enjoyed, and foods that they liked. The last Mexican Tradition I would be talking about is Quinceañeras. Quinceañeras is a celebration of a girl who is turning 15, as she is entering adulthood. Quinceañeras can differ from families, but the most common aspect is the formal dress that the Quinceañera wears. Other aspects within a Quinceañera are the father-daughter dance, changing of the shoes (a girl’s first pair of heels), and the cutting of the cake.

My Favorite part of the Mexican Culture is the cuisine. I love Mexican food. There are many types of foods that are Mexican based. Today I am only going to be talking about three. The first one is Tamales. Tamales are made from masa, dough made from corn. The fillings differ but the most common fillings are chicken and pork. When assembled with massa and the filling they are then steamed in a corn husk. It is very traditional to make tamales during Christmas time. Another common dish in Mexican households is Menudo. Menudo is a Mexican soup that contains meat from the stomach of a cow. The broth of the menudo also contains hominy. Hominy is corn, but not straight off the cob. Hominy is whole kernels of dried field corn that have been nixtamalized, a process that cooks have been doing since ancient times, starting with those living in what we now call Mesoamerica. (Castle May 26, 2023) Menudo is often consumed after a night of celebration. Lastly, Arroz con leche is rice and milk mixed with cinnamon. It is believed that this dessert came from the Muslim world then it was.

When it comes to family Mexican people are really traditional with the dad at the nucleus of the family. Mexican dads were in charge of making family choices, and neither the mother nor the kids frequently questioned them. The conduct relating to conventional views of males as being powerful and strong is known as machismo. Although this belief continues to impede Mexico's progress toward gender equality, it is less pervasive than it once was as a result of that success. I feel like Mexican people stick really strong to their traditions and never really break them. Me as a black man does not really have much tradition compared to Mexican people, Asian people, Indian people, etc. I think that tradition brings families closer. Family is the most significant social institution for Mexicans. They live in multigenerational households with huge, close-knit families. The Mexican people firmly believe that strength lies in unity. They support one another through tough times and are always there for one another. Mexicans take great pride in their traditions and rituals. The family's elders make every effort to preserve them and pass them on to the following generations. Every member of the immediate family and even the extended family is respected and loved. Married couples leave their homes to start their own families in other locations, although they do look after their elderly parents.The importance of religion in bringing the entire family together cannot be overstated. 90% of Mexicans identify as Roman Catholics, hence the church plays a significant role. Numerous rites, such as weddings, burials, and christenings, foster strong family ties and encourage extended family time. (historyplex.com, Unknown)

Mexican People didn't always have freedom, In 1810, the official emergence of the yearning for freedom from Spanish authority. The "El Grito de Dolores" incident, which took place on September 16, 1810, is noteworthy for the call for revolution that a priest by the name of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla made. His call lit a spark that would lead to the independence movement in Mexico. Despite the fact that he was put to death by the Spanish in 1811, the revolution's spirit lived on in the hearts of many Mexicans, including new leaders like José Maria Morelos and Agustn de Iturbide who finally won Mexico's independence in 1821 (csun.edu, Sept. 2015)

Mexican education is not the best but has been improving. The history of education in Mexico has been rocky, from conflicts with the Catholic Church to the influence of socialism, things haven't always gone smoothly. Fortunately, the educational system has become more stable and high-quality recently, with a positive outlook for the future. Public schools are now overseen by the Secretariat of Public Education, or SEP. They are fully secular, well-funded in metropolitan areas, and required until the age of 18. (Wise, 2017) Mexico continues to operate a free, publicly supported education system, like the majority of other countries. The history of the country's educational system is extensive and illustrious. The Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico was the first university to be established in Mexico, and it was established in 1551 by a royal decree. In comparison, Harvard University, the oldest university in the country, wasn't established until 1636, over a century later. (Friedman, 2019)

From the vibrant colors of traditional clothing to the delicious flavors of Mexican cuisine, there is so much to explore and appreciate. Mexican families demonstrate a well-connected social and emotional structure. They were historically rather patriarchal, but with the help of contemporary forces, things appear to be improving. The most significant lesson we can take from a Mexican family is the value of harmony. So let's examine the makeup of a Mexican family, including the roles played by family members and their philosophies. Thank you for reading!

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i-love-you-all · 3 years ago

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Reyna for the ask meme, pretty please?

Ah yes... the other agent that regularly throws my games! :p

Of course tho! :))

Headcanon A: realistic

So stubborn. She knows how she sees the world, and doesn’t even bother to hear other opinions. She may at least listen if she respects the person depending on the subject - after all she’s not going to correct Killjoy if she agrees to help her with tech. But say, if Sage tries to preach a “better path” she’ll walk right out of the room. Sometimes she may listen in for a bit, but that doesn’t mean she’ll change. For example, she may engage Sova in a conversation about mercy vs cruelty and where to draw the line, but she does it just to listen to his point. She has no intention of changing her mind - and she doesn’t much to Sova’s frustration.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Amazing dancer. Solo or duo, she can capture the eyes of everyone on the dance floor. She’s graceful, has long, muscular limbs and beautiful hair, and she has the confidence to enjoy the spotlight. Sometimes, you can find her waltzing by herself, and whenever she goes home for holidays (Día de Muertos) she’ll take part of traditional dances. What this means for other agents is that this is a great tell for when she’s in a good mood. She’s danced with nearly every agent (not Sage, Viper, Killjoy or Omen though and never will). Most of them need to be led but are decent dancers like Astra, Sova, Skye, Jett, and Phoenix. Some can lead her, like Chamber, Breach, or Raze (who Breach learned from lets be honest). And some will step on her toes a little too often but if she’s dancing, she’s also not going to care because her mood is that good. Brimstone, Kay/O, Cypher, and Yoru fall into the last category.

If that’s not hilarious enough, you can also have:

Sometimes she’ll glare at agents she’s otherwise neutral or on bad terms with with just to see them squirm. Some are funnier to watch than others. For example, Yoru very clearly feels uncomfortable and has even disappeared into rifts before to escape her. Phoenix is also fun to watch because he’ll accidentally light things on fire or turn into a radiator getting everyone else in the room pissed at him. Some agents like Raze might just outright ask her though, so she needs to pick her targets well. Killjoy is the main target. Though Reyna has a reason to get angry at Killjoy, she’ll do it even if she has no real anger behind it.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

To piggy back off the dancing hc, on specific days in the year, perhaps in her room or back home, she’ll dance by herself in the shadows on purpose. She doesn’t want to be seen, and she doesn’t want to be interrupted. She’ll hold her hand out a little lower than she would when dancing with an adult, and smile down at where her sister should be - by her side. She’ll teach her all the steps, how to turn and spin, and she won’t think about how empty the space is in front of her. She saves her a dance every birthday, every Christmas, every New Year. When Reyna gets to the day where her sister would’ve celebrated her quinceañera, she dresses up no matter where she is, and dances in her room. An homage to the memories she’ll never get to make.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Stole this hc from @ninadrawsstuff (sorry for the @ but I loved the Breach & Reyna art)

Loves to watch lucha libre (Mexican wrestling if I got it right?). Sometimes other agents will catch her in front of a screen, invested in a fight with snacks and drinks readily available. Breach and Raze love to join in as well from time to time, not really knowing the rules, but loving the action. To a few agents’ frustration, the three get quite loud, and make quite a mess that is always left for someone else to clean up.

Hope you liked it :))

#I still can't decide if i believe it's her sister or her who's holding viper's hand #the evidence points to a sister #but #maybe she's just crazing and referring to her younger self as a separate person?#valorant #valorant headcanons #valorant reyna #reyna #ask meme #answered asks

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morethanonepage · 5 years ago

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i’m angery

i know i’m mostly a star wars killjoy on tumblr dot com lately but allow me to SCREAM about my latest nemesis, a book called “American Dirt”:

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.

Even though she knows they’ll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy―two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia―trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

Written by one Jeanine Cummins, who has Puerto Rican ancestry but grew up in the MD suburbs (as I did, tbf) and in 2015 considered herself white (”I am white...in every practical way, my family is mostly white.” [cw for sexual assault and murder at the link]), everything I read about this book has begun to drive me to madness.

Recommended by the Mary Sue book club (the source of the above summary), it has since been retracted bc a) its sucks and b) THEY DIDN’T READ IT BEFORE PUTTING IT ON THE BOOK CLUB LIST (”I try to read most, if not all, of the books I recommend for the Book Club because I truly do love reading, and I want to make sure that if I suggest someone grab something, it’s something I can say I liked. When I was looking up two books to fill out the list, one of them was American Dirt. I saw that it had received a lot of positive press from Stephen King, Rumaan Alam, Don Winslow, Sandra Cisneros, and other literary news outlets including Oprah’s Book Club. It seemed like the type of literary fiction that’s always good for a book club read. I was mistaken.“)

Myriam Gurba, at Tropics of Meta, describes being asked to review it for a feminist magazine, and then being told her review was too negative to publish. It included gems such as:

Cummins bombards with clichés from the get-go. Chapter One starts with assassins opening fire on a quinceañera, a fifteenth birthday party, a scene one can easily imagine President Donald Trump breathlessly conjuring at a Midwestern rally, and while Cummins’ executioners are certainly animated, their humanity remains shallow. By categorizing these characters as “the modern bogeymen of urban Mexico,” she flattens them. By invoking monsters with English names and European lineages, Cummins reveals the color of her intended audience: white. Mexicans don’t fear the bogeyman. We fear his very distant cousin, el cucuy.

[...]

With their family annihilated by narcotraffickers, mother and son embark on a refugees’ journey. They head north, or, as Cummins’ often writes, to “el norte,” and italicized Spanish words like carajo, mijo, and amigo litter the prose, yielding the same effect as store-bought taco seasoning.

[...] Lydia’s husband, a journalist, describes her as one of the “smartest” women he’s ever known. Nonetheless, she behaves in gallingly naïve and stupid ways. Despite being an intellectually engaged woman, and the wife of a reporter whose beat is narcotrafficking, Lydia experiences shock after shock when confronted with the realities of México, realities that would not shock a Mexican.

It shocks Lydia to learn that the mysterious and wealthy patron who frequents her bookstore flanked by “[thuggish]” bodyguards is the capo of the local drug cartel! It shocks Lydia to learn that some central Americans migrate to the United States by foot! It shocks Lydia to learn that men rape female migrants en route to the United States! It shocks Lydia to learn that Mexico City has an ice-skating rink! (This “surprise” gave me a good chuckle: I learned to ice skate in México.) That Lydia is so shocked by her own country’s day-to-day realities, realities that I’m intimate with as a Chicana living en el norte, gives the impression that Lydia might not be…a credible Mexican. In fact, she perceives her own country through the eyes of a pearl-clutching American tourist.

Parul Sehgal, at the NYT, digs into the fact that while the motives of this book may be unimpeachable (tho: are they??), the writing itself is...perhaps less so:

I found myself flinching as I read, not from the perils the characters face, but from the mauling the English language receives. Lydia’s expression “is one Luca has never seen before, and he fears it might be permanent. It’s as if seven fishermen have cast their hooks into her from different directions and they’re all pulling at once. One from the eyebrow, one from the lip, another at the nose, one from the cheek.” Yes, of course. That expression.

Sehgal also highlights my favorite line I’ve heard about in this book: “when Lydia finds she is unable to pray, ‘she believes it’s a divine kindness. Like a government furlough, God has deferred her nonessential agencies.’” The Raised in the DMV Suburbs just JUMPED OUT, didn’t it, Jeanine? But like legit, why on earth would a Mexican bookstore lady’s frame of reference ever be A GOVERNMENT FURLOUGH and NONESSENTIAL AGENCIES. followers, i just about died.

David J. Schmidt, at The Blue Nib, calls out other inaccuracies and stereotypes:

It is worth dwelling on the character of Javier for a moment. A “drinking game” could be created based on all the Latin American stereotypes he personifies. Javier is dapper, yet dangerous. He is charming, yet mysterious. He wears a white guayabera, a shirt the author describes as “more suitable for Sunday Mass than a regular workday.” (Untrue—this is a casual garment, more suitable for a love affair in a Fabio-bedecked romance novel.)

This quintessential “Latin lover” shows up at Lydia’s bookstore and speaks to her in a tone significantly different from the other characters of American Dirt. I must emphasise, Javier’s dialogue does not reflect the normal speech patterns of Mexico, but perfectly reflects U.S. stereotypes. The only way to properly read Javier’s lines is through the most gross of caricatures.

One should imagine the husky voice of Antonio Banderas, speaking at his most sensual and Spanishy. Any character he has played in English will do, although it is clear that Javier was ideally written for the voice of Puss in Boots. When Lydia asks if Javier reads English, the dapper narco responds:

“I try, yes […] My English isn’t fluent, but it’s close. And this story is so delicate.”

[...]

The cultural inaccuracies of American Dirt run deep, right down to the language. Throughout her book, Cummins shows confusion regarding the grammatical genders in Spanish. Most notably, she baptises the drug kingpin Javier with the nickname La Lechuza. It is difficult to imagine a macho, womanizing capo using a feminine-gendered noun as his moniker. Would a hardened mafia boss call himself “The Princess of Compton” or “The Belle of Belfast”?

Cummins got a seven figure advance for this. A SEVEN FIGURE ADVANCE. She “wished someone slightly browner than me would write it,” but she did it, and her team is throwing around the fact that her husband’s previously undocumented status as some sort of justification without mentioning that he’s white & Irish.

Also, there’s this news:

Imperative Entertainment, the production banner behind the Clint Eastwood hit The Mule, has acquired the rights to American Dirt, the Mexican migrant drama novel by Jeanine Cummins.

Charles Leavitt, the scribe who penned the Leonardo DiCaprio drama Blood Diamond, has been tapped to write the adaptation, which will be produced by Imperative’s Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas.

Charles Leavitt is a white guy who, most recently, wrote the Warcraft movie. So, that’s going to end well.

I’ll leave you with this other gem from Gurba (from her essay about it, “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck “):

Susan Sontag wrote that “[a] sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about” and with this challenge in mind, I assert that American Dirt fails to convey any Mexican sensibility. It aspires to be Día de los Muertos but it, instead, embodies Halloween. The proof rests in the novel’s painful humorlessness. Mexicans have over a hundred nicknames for death, most of them are playful because death is our favorite playmate, and Octavio Paz explained our unique relationship with la muerte when he wrote, “The Mexican…is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.” Cummins’ failure to approach death with appropriate curiosity, and humility, is what makes American Dirt a perfect read for your local self-righteous gringa book club.

so idk, The Mary Sue, maybe it should stay on your Book Club list after all. (Oh wait: as of this writing, it still is.)

#american dirt #sorry for the long post but as i said #i'm angery #long post #(also TBF: i think Schmidt dings the book for having a character named luca)#(my cousin named her son that)#(and it's not like mexicans can NEVER have foreign names [i mean -- SCHMIDT -- etc]#but it's a thing that maybe requires some explanation even if it is 'well she liked the italian version better'#(oh also you can be white and latinx)#(i think more accurately jeanine is white passing but)#(that's her deal to id with)#anyway this will be made into a movie staring whatshername from Knives Out and MAYBE diego luna as the dead hubby #but realistically oscar isaac bc they love killing him off

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