Gleaning Stories, Gleaning Change

Christina Jogoleff & Mauricio Macias (Part 2)

Listen

[Once the audio is playing, click and drag across the volume bars to change volume. Initial volume set to 80%.]

Families

Rusten asked about how farflung their extended families are.

Christina talked about her mother and father's sides of the family. Both live in southern California. Her mother identifies with her Irish roots. Her father has mixed Mexican and Russian heritage. There was tension between the two families, she says, because her mother's side of the family disapproved of Christina's father. And there was a certain tension within her father between the Russian capitalist and the Mexican sides of his background.

Mauricio's mother and father came from farming families in central Mexico. The main crop was corn on his mother's side and guavas on his father's. Together, his parents immigrated illegally to California. Of the 7 children in the family, only Mauricio and one older brother were born in this country. His father was politically active, fighting for water rights for their community when a US oil company sought to move into the region, threatening both land and water. Though his father died when Mauricio was 8, he passed on his political passion to Mauricio.

Ties to the Land and Farming and Politics

Rusten asked Christina and Mauricio to use the outlines they'd given of their family histories to describe their own ties to fields, farming, and farm work that might resonate with their own gleaning.

Mauricio pointed first to his parent's families working family farms, doing everything from preparing and planting to the harvest and the market. The cruelties of agribusiness impacted both families and led to his parents leaving Mexico. Mauricio remembers the cornfields and storms from early in his childhood, when his family returned to visit their families in Mexico. And he remembers the collective process of scraping the kernels from the dried ears of colorful corn. His family moved from Long Beach to the Central Valley just before his father died of cancer. In Exeter, they had enough land extensive gardens, and his mother got the kids out before school to help dig and plant and harvest. Eventually they got chickens and goats (and even a calf once) that the kids helped care for until Mauricio's mother had to return to Mexico to take care of her parents.

Christina talked about the complex heritage of her mother's Michigan farm roots, her urban San Diego childhood, and her father's early history of work as a saboteur and spy for the UFW during the farm worker strikes. She traces some of her interest in growing food to her mother and her mother's mother. But when she thinks of fields and field work, she thinks of the injustices her father told her about, not about the Michigan corn fields on her mother's side of the family. Her father's two heroes, he told her, were Cesar Chavez and Jesus Christ. The lessons he passed on to Christina from Chavez were peace (including peaceful resistance), tolerance (accepting difference), and giving back to your community. Her aunt and uncle started the Cesar Chavez Service Clubs which have spread from San Diego throughout southern California.

Pepenar and Rebuscar

Rusten asked if Christina and Mauricio knew the literal meaning of "pepenar," the verb Mauricio used for gleaning. Mauricio remembered who told him about "pepenar" and how they'd used it, and Christina remembered the verb "rebuscar" as writer Cherrie Moraga used it to mean something similar.

Go back to Part 1 of this conversation.