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Tag: #LatinxHeritageMonth

Connecting the Generations

por Marilyn López

I often think about my family trips to Guanajuato, Mexico. Growing up, my parents, younger brother, and I would make the 16-hour drive from Houston every summer to spend time with my paternal grandparents, aunt, and uncle.

We traversed las sierras de Tamaulipas into the low mountain ranges of San Luis Potosi until finally reaching the distinct clay brick and concrete houses del Cerro Gordo, Guanajuato.

This is where I learned to play in the dirt, developed a taste for nopales, and realized that different types of maíz existed (or as the saying goes, “sin maíz, no hay país”). My fondest memories include going grocery shopping with our colorful bolsas de mercado and stopping by la paletería y nevería afterward for a quick indulgence. Back en el rancho, I would help my tía y abuelita wash clothes outside by hand using la tabla, and then hang them up to dry. We would tend to the chickens, horses, and goats with the utmost love and care. Food never went to waste, and water was used wisely. I became aware of the human-nature relationship and our profound responsibility to preserving our environment.

These early childhood experiences in connection with physical and human geography, which were critical to my understanding of the self and the world around me, are only but recuerdos now. It has been 20 years since I last visited my second home. I’m now left to figure out: how do I build a connection for my 3-year-old daughter to the outdoors y con sus raíces mexicanas, when we live more than 2,500 miles away from family and nuestra Madre Patria?

“This is where I learned to play in the dirt, developed a taste for nopales, and realized that different types of maíz existed”

Marilyn López

As a second-generation Tejana through my mother, but first-generation Mexican American through my father, my Chicana identity was formed by way of having what Gloria Anzaldúa calls a “forked tongue” (the ability to speak Spanish and English), through the practice of cultural Catholicism, being raised in a predominantly Latino community, Tejano home cooking, and Mexican images and symbols plastered throughout our home. Thus my identity and resilience were so exquisitely preserved I never had a reason to question it, but for my daughter, who was born and is being raised in the Pacific Northwest, how do I build that same foundation? Because to me culture and nature are intertwined.

Our family’s journey in reconnecting with the outdoors and bridging that cultural and spiritual gap began by first recognizing that Latinxs remain significantly underrepresented in outdoor participation and the environmental movement’s leadership. Not to mention a report published by the Center for American Progress states that “people of color, families with children, and low-income communities are most likely to be deprived of the benefits that nature provides” (July 2020). With this in mind, my husband and I sought out local Seattle organizations and public events focused on connecting Latinx youth and their families to engaging and meaningful experiences in nature. The only ones we found intent on creating access and opportunity to these particular spaces were Latino Outdoors and Washington Trails Association (in partnership with LO).

“Our family’s journey in reconnecting with the outdoors and bridging that cultural and spiritual gap began by first recognizing that Latinxs remain significantly underrepresented in outdoor participation and the environmental movement’s leadership”.

Marilyn López

As a result of Washington’s COVID-19 social distancing measures, we’ve ventured outside more than usual. From bicycle rides in North Bend to camping in Olympia to trail hikes in Anacortes, my husband and I have been intentional about providing our daughter with rich opportunities to explore the outdoors. Children are already natural explorers, so our goal is to integrate nature and outdoor play into our daily lives. Since playgrounds have been temporarily closed, we started going on bicycle rides around our neighborhood in the evenings and going on family-friendly trail hikes on weekends. I started running regularly, and now my daughter enjoys running alongside me too.


Back in May, the Hispanic Access Foundation (HAF) released its 2nd Annual Congressional Toolkit and policy recommendations, where it noted that “recent polls have shown that Latinos care deeply about the environment, a sentiment that is rooted in a culture and history of taking care of the land for future generations.” As reflected in my own experiences, environmental stewardship and conservation are ingrained en nuestra cultura. For now, I want my daughter to grab puños de tierra, breathe in the reassuring smell of fresh pine, and engage in curious play, but ultimately, I hope to raise my daughter to be an environmental justice chingona who will embrace her abuelita knowledge and view the disruption of settler colonialism as a moral obligation.

Lifelong Love of the Outdoors

por Andrea Enger

I am so proud of my Chilean heritage! It is so intertwined with my love for the outdoors, too!

I grew up getting lost in the wilderness of my native country, Chile. Every year until I was in my teens, we spent three months at my family’s country house, nestled between the forest and the beach. We explored the many trails, encountered wildlife (like mountain lions!), and farmed/harvested the land. It instilled in me early on how it is so important to take care of our planet so we can continue to enjoy its gifts

From Chile I moved to Seattle, Washington, when I was 20, and fell in love with a completely different landscape and climate: lush, green mossy hikes, misty mountains, and picture-perfect fields of wildflowers. Then I visited Colorado, where I now live, and was awestruck by the majestic peaks, the red rocks, and the big, blue skies. I love hiking in the backcountry where you don’t see another soul for days. It feels like the world is completely yours — the still, mirrored lakes, the fragrant pine trees, the bright, shining stars…

“I am also dedicated to helping our earth not only survive, but flourish”.

I have traveled all over Chile and backpacked in more than 20 countries across North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel as much as I have. I realize that so often, appreciation of the outdoors is only possible with some level of privilege, and it’s so important to continue working to make it more accessible to all.


I am also dedicated to helping our earth not only survive, but flourish. I recently became a certified Leave No Trace Aware Photographer and I practice and promote these principles at every one of my sessions. I donate a portion of my profits to the Leave No Trace Center, the National Park Foundation, and Water for People. Our world is such a beautiful place and I want to do everything in my power to keep it that way.

Andrea is a Chilean-born, Colorado-based photographer who specializes in elopements and micro weddings. She is an inclusive photographer who celebrates diversity, believes love is love, and thinks that adventure brings everything to life.

Inheriting a Tradition: Embracing My Dad’s Love of the Outdoors

por Brian Gabriel Canever

I was 7 years old the first time I watched my dad clean a catfish. We were in the kitchen of the old ranch house in the Pocono Mountains where we’d go every summer to escape the city. He cut off its head. Even separated from its body, the fish’s lips smacked together like it was still breathing. I was terrified. And strangely fascinated. The same feeling I had had a few years earlier at my grandparent’s house on the dirt road side of Capitan Bermudez in Argentina, where my grandfather slaughtered a chicken and let it run headless through the yard.

For men like them, when it came to blood and guts, there was never any blushing or hesitation. As for me, I could not have turned out more different.

In the 1980s, my parents immigrated to Bayonne, New Jersey, a densely packed city a few miles and the New York Bay away from Manhattan. My brother, Victor, and I were city dwellers, inheriting my urbanite mother’s traits. She grew up a dozen miles away from my dad in Rosario, Argentina’s second largest city. She wasn’t present on the visit when my grandfather cut off the chicken’s head—she is terrified of livestock. My father, on the other hand, he could be left in the woods beside a river with a knife, a lighter, and a sack of red wine, and hours later you would find him dining on freshly caught Rainbow trout. “Want a piece? It’s good,” he’d likely say.

In my head live these snapshots of my dad’s efforts to ingrain a love of the outdoors in Victor and me. He took us to fish piers in Central Jersey and on the beaches of Staten Island for snapper bluefish, porgy, fluke, and striped bass. He brought us hunting with his Portuguese friends in the woods of eastern Pennsylvania and West Jersey, teaching us to handle a shotgun with care as we sought out pheasant, rabbit, and dove. After we passed our hunter education courses, he bought a simple clay thrower from Walmart so we could practice shooting. That was usually out at the ranch house, where, in the same weekend, he’d drive us to a nearby stocked trout pond, The Fishing Hole it was called, and pay for us to hook into a few fish we’d bring to cook later on the grill and eat.

It took some years for us to catch the outdoor bug I always saw as so inseparable from my dad’s identity.

“In my head live these snapshots of my dad’s efforts to ingrain a love of the outdoors in Victor and me”.

As kids, if Victor and I weren’t outdoors with my dad we were likely helping him on plumbing jobs, running copper, replacing water heaters, and installing baseboard heating everywhere from musty basements to million-dollar houses in the suburbs—when he got a call for a job, no matter what or where, he rarely turned it down. Like many immigrants (and blue-collar Americans), the outdoor hobbies he lived for were paid for with long, hard hours that stretched far beyond the comfortable 40 I’m now privileged to spend behind a desk at my white-collar job—thanks to his sacrifices.

Nearly two years ago, I decided I was going to reconnect with the outdoors. Yes, I had spent some weekends in college camping in the woods with friends. After freshman year, three of us explored Scotland over the course of three weeks. We slept in a tent in the backyards of kind strangers and even once in a valley on the beautiful Isle of Skye. After moving to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2011, I explored the Great Smoky Mountains. My brother and I took trips to the Rockies in Colorado and camped in the Grand Tetons.

Still, the outdoors hadn’t become a staple of life, yet. It took the guidance of a close friend to reawaken the spirit my dad hoped for years to instill in me. In the last two years I’ve picked up recreational shooting, bass fishing, and fly fishing in the trout-rich waters of East Tennessee. I am never more at peace than while on a small stream in the Smokies watching a dry fly float toward a rising brook trout.

No one could’ve predicted this. When I first left New Jersey after college, I rarely spoke with my dad over the phone. It wasn’t like it is for us younger generations. Old immigrants are hard; they must be that way to make it in a foreign land, not just for themselves but for the families they’re providing for. But, in the past two years, I’ve found myself calling my dad regularly for advice about the best hooks to use and shell sizes for target shooting. He doesn’t know how to use a computer, so all of his wisdom is inherited, learned on the water, in the woods, or through other outdoorsmen he meets. He isn’t shy. It’s incredible to picture the library collections stored in his head, while I spend hours on YouTube and Google searching “how to tie the best fishing knot.”

One day soon I hope my dad will join me here in Knoxville. I meet friends who are curious about a northerner and a Latino who knows something about what it’s like to hunt on opening day or descale a fish. A lot of my Latino brethren here are from rural parts of Central America. They settle in the most urban parts of Knoxville. I am not sure how many have regular access to the outdoors. I imagine their dads, like mine, spend hours hard at work, rompiendose el lomo (“breaking their backs”), to put food on the table. If providence grants it, I hope I play a part in passing on this tradition I’ve inherited from my dad to not only my children but to the many children who don’t have the same opportunities I had thanks to him.

This past August, my wife and I joined my parents and brother for a family vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My dad was excited to take Victor and me out fishing to the spots he’s learned over the last decade. On the first full day, we drove over to this jetty separating the sound from the ocean. Right where the rocks ended, he cut up fresh mullet and tied pieces to big circle hooks he had us cast far out into the surf. The wind whipped at our faces and dragged the lines into the seaweed. Then, we saw the first rod bend. It looked like the bend on a branch carrying the weight of a hanging child before snapping at the base. My dad never reels in fish when we’re around. He still passes the glory of the catch to his greenhorn sons. On the other end, a more-than-two-foot long redfish. It was one of four we’d catch together that morning—the first time my dad had ever caught redfish. It was a special moment. And it was only possible because of him and this tradition he’s worked hard for us to inherit.

Brian Gabriel is a writer based in Knoxville, Tennessee. He has written about American cage fighters, immigrant soccer players, community educators, front-line health care workers, and hundreds of local, national, and international nonprofit and higher education leaders. Brian learned to fish from his father, an Argentinian immigrant raised on the Paraná River, and spends his free time roaming the Smoky Mountains for wild and native trout.