Mexican Archaeology

Thirteen years ago, my father and I went to Mexico in search of two relatives whom I'd never met and who had long been buried: my grandparents. My grandmother died in the 1930s—when my dad was just a boy—and nobody knew where her grave was. Lucano, my grandfather, died in the 1980s and, for some unknown or long-forgotten reason, shared an unmarked tomb with my dad's first wife. To fix these mistakes, my father and I rented a car in Guadalajara and drove to Teocuitatlán, the lawless little town where he was born, to find my grandmother, unearth Lucano's grave, and give them both proper headstones.

At the cemetery, Lucano was an easy find. My dad had pictures of the funeral and spotted the gravesite quickly. While two hired men dug up my grandpa, my father and I spoke with the graveyard man. He told us burial records had long ago been burned so he couldn't tell us where to find my grandmother.

"Burned?" I blurted out. "Who burned the records?"

The graveyard man ignored my question, then said that there were shattered tombstones all over the place and we were welcome to scour the burial grounds. He walked away with his hands in his pocket, whistling. My dad pointed to the far edge of the cemetery, indicating that's where we should start to look for his mom.

"Did he really say burned? Why would anyone burn burial records?" I asked my dad as we stepped over the dead.

"That's just how they did things," my father said. "Someone steals your pig, or land, or woman, you kill him. You don't want someone found, burn the record."

________

I'd learned when I was a kid that it was no use trying to get my dad to engage in too much conversation. He never chatted on the phone. He didn't have any friends. He didn't hang out in bars or on the front porch like some other dads did. And if we went to a gathering or party, he'd mostly sit alone or with my mom, or he'd walk around slowly, with his hands held together behind his back, looking down at the ground or up to the sky. Most of my why? questions resulted in a quiet shrug or an "I don't know, mija." And if he did answer, the few sentences that came out of his mouth were all he'd say about it. Follow-up questions were never entertained.

As a child, I remember him always being angry. And when the steel mills closed down and we had to go on welfare, he was really angry. He would hit us for the smallest things, like spilling a glass of milk. I hated him then. I thought he didn't like me, or my mom, or my siblings. Now, I just think he was frustrated because we were so poor.

That's just how they did things. We walked in silence as I tried to put it together, put him together. Someone steals your pig, you kill him. You don't want someone found, you burn the records. You're a dad to three kids, you provide for them. You just do the things you're supposed to do. Every problem has an obvious solution. And if you can't fix the problem, what else is there to do but be angry. As a girl born in 1980s Chicago, I find it hard to understand the black-and-white upbringing of a 1920s Mexican village kid, even if he was my father.

________

I tripped over a rotting tombstone.

"Careful," my dad said.

We reached the edge of the cemetery. We started at one corner and worked our way along the crumbling rock wall, picking up dusty slabs and bits of stone for some sign that maybe my grandmother was beneath our feet. My dad, in his seventies at the time, grunted as he bent over and lifted stone after stone, pebble after pebble, hoping for the gem that would resurrect his mom. We...