Diandra Marizet Esparza often felt that she existed between two points: Native and settler. But through her connection to the land—and the annual migration of Monarch butterflies from her ancestral country of Mexico—she claimed a new identity and unfurled her identity as an environmentalist. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, she shares her story with Adventure.com.
Orange dust would gently float around my torn jeans and lightly layer my old YMCA tees, as I watched, mesmerized, by people performing on horseback at charreadas, equestrian events. During my childhood, I spent time on ranches where routinely, I’d go each morning, shit shovel in hand, to the horse stalls before school volleyball practice. Years later when I would learn about the aspirational notion of being an environmentalist, it wouldn’t cross my mind that in many ways, I already was one.
Late-night tacos, menudo (traditional Mexican soup) at Buelie’s every Sunday, and begging mama for paletas (ice pops) from the local taqueria where we’d pick up costillas (pork ribs) for the barbeque were enough to paint my childhood with so much joy and odes of ancestral connection to land. I didn’t have words or stories to describe the grounding feeling these moments provided me, so I often discounted them in the face of who I saw marketed as “true environmentalists.” The icons of my youth were the Kratt brothers from Zoboomafoo, the beloved late Crocodile hunter, Steve Irwin, and an honorable mention for Milo Thatch from the lost City of Atlantis.
Like many Mexican-Americans with Indigenous ancestry, I existed between two points of clarity that I had no language for: Native and settler. “And.” My existence like a semicolon in identity form. As the late Tejano singer Selena’s father, the American singer, songwriter, and producer H Abraham Isaac Quintanilla Jr., famously said, “We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time! It’s exhausting!”
Gloria Anzaldúa, American scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural theory, and queer theory, expressed similar sentiments, saying, “Sometimes I feel like one cancels out the other, and we are zero, nothing, no one.” With no full claim to an Indigenous experience and no full claim to an American settler’s experience, I didn’t realize what I did have: A full claim to an emergent cross-border cultural identity that serves as a unique consciousness around loss, responsibility and resistance.
Native “and” settler. I later learned the “and” part was heavily marked by my birthdate. November 8th coincides with the migration of monarch butterflies—an annual phenomenon that knows no borders.
Being that any American identity might as well be a toddler in comparison to most, the forming of this new Mexican-American identity within such a painful duality is currently on the shoulders of Mestizas everywhere (those of mixed Indigenous and Spanish descent).
Imagine the culture you feel connected to being one that started just a few hundred years ago, everything prior having the capacity to ‘other’ you. An identity toddler orphaned from ancestry. My family only has records that go back a handful of generations, matching the sense of ambiguity that underlines the disconnect my people feel from our sense of place on lands our ancestors have stewarded for thousands. And let’s just say getting my 23andMe DNA results—though more evidence than I’d ever had—still wasn’t enough to satisfy the deep connection I longed to see heal my community.
Native “and” settler. I later learned the “and” part was heavily marked by my birthdate. As noted in The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico by Miguel León-Portilla, November 8th is the day Aztec recordings mark the entry of Spaniards into Tenochtitlan. Talk about a subtle reminder. This time also coincides with the migration of monarch butterflies—an annual phenomenon that knows no borders and says a lot about identity being an expression of connection to land and life.
Monarch butterflies come by the millions to parts of Mexico where people harness their presence as a symbolic reminder of lessons surrounding life, death and transformation. In addition to serving as pollinators and markers of healthy ecosystems, some believe them to be spirits of the forest ushering souls after death, or the souls of loved ones coming to visit during Día De Los Muertos.
Although it isn’t often pointed out, what stands out to me most is that the same butterflies that take flight in northern parts of Canada to begin the migration are not the same butterflies that arrive in Mexico. A butterfly’s life is fleeting, so it takes four generations of butterflies to complete this migration each fall. This means that every year, some butterflies are born ni de aqui, ni de allá (neither here nor there), existing in the ‘and’ between two worlds on a purely instinctive journey to help future generations reach something they will have the opportunity to know: Home.
With monarchs being my favorite, many of the environmental symbols I grew up with express the unique and emerging relationship my community has with the Southwest US and the beautiful ways nature has informed the philosophies my ancestors wove into traditional stories.
So as my community continues to define our own unique sense of belonging, when I see monarchs fluttering about I’ll be reminded that I too am fluttering about to shape a journey home for the souls that will come after me.
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Diandra Marizet Esparza, is an environmental writer, poet and speaker whose work recognizes culture as an expression of our relationship to land, and advocates for the accessibility of diverse stories available to rising generations. She is also a co-founder of Intersectional Environmentalist and contributing writer to The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet. She is from Texas and is currently based in Los Angeles, CA.
