A Letter To…
4K Video Installation
4:25
2025
Statement:
In Mexican culture, secrecy and lack of acknowledgement is a virus that runs in many families. Las tías son chismosas y los padres son mentirosos. Lying, keeping secrets, having other families, ignoring gay relatives, denying mental illness, are all common amongst the Mexican population, Mexican-American population, and the generations after immigration. While Mexicans are a matriarchal society, there is also deep rooted toxic masculinity, religious oppression, and societal pressure on the women of our culture to fill a specific role: mother, wife, caregiver. All other elements of her being are removed from thought. This lack of acknowledgement creates trauma that becomes generational. “Well this is just how things are” (es lo que es) becomes the main excuse for continuing toxic behavior and further down the line the reasoning behind the toxicity disappears and all that remains are the broken children bred from hatred, cultural pressure, and secrets.
Puede que mi español no sea bueno y puede que haya nacido en Estados Unidos, pero el trauma en mi sangre es puro Mexicano. (My spanish may not be good and I may be born in the United States, but the trauma in my blood is Mexican.)
Cultural and societal pressure have always been put on me, by my parents, grandparents and siblings. To act, look, and speak (or rather not speak) in a specific way. And since the moment I could talk I’ve rejected everything that everyone in my family has projected onto me. Unfortunately for everyone else that rejection was a sign that I was a raging homosexual with untapped potential. That said, I honestly didn’t see how different I am from my family. Even now I don’t feel different on the inside. But my actions are different, my words are different, my thoughts are different. My existence will be unequivocally different to the lives of my predecessors.
While I love my culture and the people who have come before me, I cannot deny the destructive path that has gotten us all here. I cannot deny the trauma, the conformity, the complacency, the misogyny, the homophobia any longer. Most importantly, I can no longer deny that there is another community that calls to me.
This video triptych represents the amalgamation of me verbalizing my queerness to my male relatives, audio of the letters I wrote to them and the reconciling of my own fears in regard to self acceptance, identity discovery, and the validity of my own queerness beyond cultural standards.
My voice holds more power than I thought. I don’t intend to waste that privilege.
