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Below: My father's family home, where he lived for a majority of his childhood
My father was born in 1975, just outside of Mexico City, where he lived for the first ten years of his life. He lived in the family home, where he was surrounded by relatives from all over the city. Sunday dinners signaled the arrival of dozens of family members, during which they spent time together around the house’s large round table. He recounted how the adults would talk late into the night, food flowing freely with cigarette smoke hanging over the table. When describing the importance of family in Mexico, he stated that: “In Mexico, it’s very common for the systems to not work. Your water might stop flowing, your electricity might go out. That’s when you really need family to support you and help you out.”
When he was nine years old, my father’s family left the Mexico City area and moved to the northern region of Mexico, living in a small town only an hour from the American border. In Sonora, my father remembers how close the United States felt despite the cultural differences. While there, his mother hired an English tutor to ensure that he and his siblings could communicate whenever they went to the United States. While he did not know it then, this would come to be critical to determining the path his life took.
Left: The drive from Cananea, where my father lived, to Douglas, Arizona, where his family visited
Above: Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, and Michael Irvin, the three players credited with the 90s football success that led to Cowboys games being broadcast in Mexico
Sports played an important role in my father’s life. He remembers how “we [he and his family] would watch American football and baseball on the tv.” From a young age, my father and uncle also played baseball, following in my grandfather’s footsteps. This enabled both he and my uncle to travel around the country and occasionally the world. With this, my father grew up with a cultural connection to the United States; he became both a Cowboys and a Yankees fan.
Right: My uncle and my father in their Baseball uniforms
Above: The main building for El Tecnológico de Monterrey, the university my father attended
My father attended the university where his older brother studied after graduating from high school. Thanks to his playing baseball, he secured a school-backed loan which enabled him to finance his education. He remarked that it was “a really important part of [his] life.” While there, he studied Mechanical Engineering, again following in the footsteps of his father and brother. After graduating, he worked in a glass factory for some time, before being hired by an American company based in Boston. This was, in his words, a “major turning point” in his life.
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