“This passionate dedication to collect the artists’ stories and try to preserve their works is a love mission for me.” — Armando Vazquez
As a child growing up dirt poor in Mexico I was raised by mostly women, my mother, my two beloved curandera abuelitas; Madre Elvira and Chavelita, along with four overly protective older sisters. Even as a kid I was amazed by the level of cooperation, love and support that they gave to one another each and every day. The matriarchs of the family knew if they were to survive, while their husbands, sons and other male relatives where toiling in the fields of El Norte, they had to work and live their lives in harmony and communion with one another, to fend off the ever present and real possibility of starvation and disease, along with all the horrors that poor, illiterate india “viudas” faced every day in our small village of Ahualulco. And so, they did, I was surrounded by love and affection my entire childhood. These Mexican women, the women of my family, were the original giants in life. These guerilleras in large part molded the man I am today. Mi madre sagrada and my godly abuelitas are now dead, but they are always in my thoughts and my prayers. God, I miss them.
I have written extensively about my family, both women and men, it is my way of keeping their lives, their history, and contribution to our family alive. It is my way of honoring their memory and keeping it fresh in my mind and heart. In writing about my family, I began to also think about other men and women that have come into my life and whose lives, struggles, and accomplishment have had a tremendous influence on my life.
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