Milo Xochitl Hernandez

“My Mom and my Dad are from Oaxaca, Mexico, and they in generations, they know a language that’s like ancient and it’s called Zapoteca—Zapoteco and only like a little bit of people know about it now cause not a lot of like their ancestors teach their kids Zapoteco. And most people in Oaxaca though, know Spanish, but my parents, Spanish isn’t like their first words they talked. And so when we got older and older, like me, I know a little bit but not a lot ’cause my mom hasn’t taught me as a child, but only Spanish and other things and stuff like that.

A month ago, we celebrated San Pedro. It’s a god of I think Oaxaca. I’m not sure but we celebrated and we ate like our cultural foods, we let people dance from our culture and stuff like that. We went to church before all those happened.

Oaxaca, well I’m not sure about the history but I think like only—not a lot of people, like a lot, a lot of people don’t know about it, so only like a little bit of people, a little bit, only a little bit ’cause my other friends don’t know about it. My tias know about it but not my other friends and they told their family and they don’t know about it and some of my friends are like, they ask their parents and their parents know, but they don’t know to speak it, they don’t speak it at all.

It’s a really nice culture, really nice. Their clothing is beautiful, colorful. Their dancing is beautiful as well, it’s all nice and stuff. And uhh..we wear, like, earrings that are like, I think, like colorful feathers, like they look like feathers to me but I’m not sure, and we wear like clothing that has flowers on them and then like um… I’m not sure how to say it but you know when you have leather–no, not leather, it’s like a type of material to use as a skirt, and we have flowers on our heads to dance for our culture.

The funny part was that my cousin from my Dad’s side thought that they were cousins with my mom—from my Mom’s side because we didn’t know. So I’m going to call my other cousin from my mom’s side, her name is Daila or Sophia. So um…Daila and Alexis, the one I talked about, we had fun, we were like a trio, we were like best friends as cousins. And I think it was like a year ago we—well he, Alexis told me about like ‘Did you know that I’m not cousins with Daila?’ And I was surprised. That was the time that I didn’t know they were apart, they were different parts of my family—my parents’ side. And I was like shocked, so we both ran to—upstairs.

Well my house is like, one in the back and one of them is in the front but my front house—I live in the front but the only thing is that the front house stairs to—go down to the back house and so we ran upstairs and went to my mom because she was close and we told her like ‘Hey, is Daila like our cousin?’ And my mom was like ‘Oh! She is your cousin but not Alexis’s cousin.’ And we were like surprised, like a lot. And I kept teasing him about that Daila is my cousin instead of his. I kept doing it since now and he is still mad about it, but I’m lucky! But they’re both my cousins.”