Mapping Migraciones: Querétaro to Fresno

por Ruby J. Rodríguez

Guadalupe Pérez González, my maternal great-great-grandmother, was born in Querétaro, Mexico. Orphaned at a young age by the loss of her parents during the Mexican Revolution, she endured many hardships in life. 

Guadalupe Pérez González in Fresno, California

Sometime around 1930, Guadalupe and her two children (Phillip and Mary) journeyed north to a border town called Mexicali, where they would remain for about twenty years. She labored hard over a stone stove top to produce tamales for sale and eventually purchased a humble home for herself and children. 

Grandma Eleanor and siblings during a rest stop while travelling for work.

Mary married Leon Torres Ruiz, and gave birth to my grandma Eleanor in 1940. About 10 years later, my great-grandpa Leon moved the entire family to El Centro, California. They became migrant workers and labored at farms across California’s San Joaquin Valley, eventually making Fresno their permanent home. 

My family came to the US in pursuit of a better life. From their journey, I have learned that the meaning of “a better life” is often incomplete unless it includes the process of (un)learning, healing, and growing.

Ruby prepares a meal with her Latino Outdoors team

So much of my cultural heritage was lost to assimilation. While this disconnection is a painful experience for me, nature supports me with feeling connected to myself, my history, and everything around me. Being involved with Latino Outdoors (LO) helps me reconnect to my culture and embrace my experience as a third-generation Mexican American. Through LO, I am learning about the many facets and richness of the Latinx identity.

Ruby with her three children in Humboldt County

I was twenty-seven years old when I left Fresno and made my own journey nearly five hundred miles north to Humboldt County. For six years, my three children and I lived there while I finished my undergraduate studies and tapped into the woman and mother that I wanted to be. Close to the end of my time in Humboldt, I shared with my grandma my experience of living away from home in the most beautiful landscape I’d ever seen. On that day, I learned that I was living her dream. 

Ruby with her grandma Eleanor, mom, and daughters in Downtown Fresno

While in Humboldt, I slowly connected with barn swallows, Canadian geese, and snowy egrets as I observed them from my apartment window. Returning to Fresno was an adjustment; however, I do see snowy egrets passing over my home. They serve as a reminder that nature knows no bounds. 


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