Alex Espinoza: A Return to Michoacán
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 02.26.07 | 8:46 AM ET
The youngest of 11 children, Alex Espinoza never felt the same connection as the rest of his brothers and sisters to his family’s native Mexico. They mostly grew up in a village called El Ojo de Agua in Michoacán; he was raised riding his BMX bike, watching cable TV and collecting “Star Wars” action figures in Los Angeles. “Their connection to Mexico was close, deep and also painful, something I simply could not grasp,” he writes about his family in a terrific Lives essay in the New York Times Magazine. “Growing up, I felt no ties to El Ojo de Agua. I traveled into Mexico with my family as a child a few times, but I felt disconnected and uninterested during those trips—and was always eager to return to my American life.” Recently, however, he returned to El Ojo de Agua with his mother to see if he could connect with a place that, over the years, had become “mythic” in his mind.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
