The Bridge Between: Recent Episodes
Francisco Ramos
A weekly exploration into how a family history project transformed into a search for understanding, truth, and the points of connection between people.
Please don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review The Bridge Between on Apple Podcast and Stitcher. #BridgeBetweenPodcast
Email: thebridgebtwn@gmail.com
Twitter: @thebridgebtwn
Instagram: iamciscoramos
Please don’t forget to rate, subscribe, and review on Apple Podcast and Stitcher. #BridgeBetweenPodcast
Email: thebridgebtwn@gmail.com
Twitter: @thebridgebtwn
Instagram: iamciscoramos
I have a very special announcement.
In light of COVID-19, I am starting a new project called Story Time with Cisco. The idea is simple. Every weekday evening, from 9:00 pm – 10:00 pm EST, I will read from a book I've been wanting to read and just haven't had time for. Think of it as a bedtime story for adults. When I was a kid, bedtime stories were a way for me to slow down, take a deep breath, and relax. And with a lot going on right now in the world, it's my hope that we can practice social distancing, without losing social connection, by sharing a story.
The first book that I am going to read from is called All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015.
Story Time with Cisco will premiere on IG Live @iamciscoramos on Friday, March 20 at 09:00 pm EST. I hope to see you there.
Please don’t forget to rate, subscribe, and review on Apple Podcast and Stitcher. Please reach out because I’d love to hear how the stories I’m sharing relate to your experiences and identities. #BridgeBetweenPodcast
Please don’t forget to rate, subscribe, and review on Apple Podcast and Stitcher. Please reach out because I’d love to hear how the stories I’m sharing relate to your experiences and identities. #BridgeBetweenPodcast
Email: thebridgebtwn@gmail.com
Twitter: @thebridgebtwn
Instagram: iamciscoramos
Please don’t forget to rate, subscribe, and review on Apple Podcast and Stitcher. Please reach out because I’d love to hear how the stories I’m sharing relate to your experiences and identities. #BridgeBetweenPodcast
Email: thebridgebtwn@gmail.com
Twitter: @thebridgebtwn
Instagram: iamciscoramos
This week’s episode is about the US-Mexico borderlands and learning more about being an American while living abroad than living in America.
Please don’t forget to rate, subscribe, and review on Apple Podcast and Stitcher. Please reach out because I’d love to hear how the stories I’m sharing relate to your experiences and identities. #BridgeBetweenPodcast
Email: thebridgebtwn@gmail.com Twitter: @thebridgebtwn Instagram: iamciscoramos
You can find me on email (thebridgebtwn@gmail.com), Twitter (@thebridgebtwn), and Instagram (iamciscoramos).
Heros are often thought of as brave individuals who go out into the world and achieve something that is remarkable and memorable. I never liked how heros are traditionally illustrated. I always thought of heros as the everyday people who wake up, look at their difficult circumstances, and continue to walk forward. It’s the kind of work that’s done quietly, in the mundaness of daily life, as if belief and faith in something better are the only means through which action is possible. To put one foot in front of the other when everything surrounding you is telling you that betterment is not possible.
For this episode, the historical figure that I focused on is my great grandfather, Abelino Federico.
When I sat down to write this episode, I kept thinking about how high-ranking Mexica officials were told about the arrival of Hernán Cortés to the Yucatan peninsula in 1519. I did not want to write something from the perspective of the Colonizers. We have their accounts and they can be easily accessed. Instead, I wanted to take the perspective of the person who, for the first time, had no choice but to tell Moctezuma II about a previously unknown presence that just arrived along the shoreline. How does this person describe armor, horses, or the foreignness of their language? What words do you use? Did their voice hesitate? Did they stutter?
I am also taking this perspective because so much of our collective understanding of indigenous populations is incorrect. What has been presented to us is largely a fabrication—a presentation of a monolith population, somehow idyllic, unchanging, primitive, without culture. That understanding is wrong. This is an attempt, a modest attempt, to help de-center those narratives.
This story is called Invisible Pueblos.
When I was putting together the collection of short stories, the word I kept returning to was diaspora. Since leaving their communities in 1885—Hacienda Ledesma in Jalisco, Hidalgo del Parral in Chihuahua—a question I kept asking was: is it fair to say that my family is a small component of broader Latino diaspora?
I wrote a letter to a family member who died in 1951. When I was doing research for this project, I was haunted by the stories I was told about this person, how he was described, his attitude, his actions, his beliefs. I wrote a letter because I couldn’t think of another way to talk, to release the tension I felt, the knot in my stomach, to understand, to forgive, to let go. This is a letter I wrote. It’s called the 1951 letter.
Home is about people. Home is made through language, shared over a meal, and forged through relationships. People are my home.
It is easy to say that Mexico is complex, beautiful, endlessly cariñoso and, sometimes, brutal and unforgiving. Mexico is more than that. Mexico is an idea, rooted in a story so rich and a culture so profound that it defies words. Mexico is an idea, an emotional idea.
This week's episode explores how stories are passed down between parents and children. I share my experiences of learning and sharing stories on long car rides in West Texas.
When doing archival research, I kept asking: why do we give paper so much power? I believe the genesis of an answer begins with something very simple: because it is something tangible that’s been left behind, something we can touch and hold, as if we can confirm a moment or a memory with a physical object, an artifact. This piece of paper survived, others didn’t. I’m not saying that’s a good start. I’m saying that there must be a balance in the dialogue…that complicated intersection between the visible and intangible, between what is written and culture, belief, imagination, photos, stories, experience, and tradition. It’s hard but forgetting is too high of a price to pay.
This week I am sharing the story that started it all. Learning My Place in This World began as a submission to a writing competition at New Philosopher magazine. Eventually, the story was published in 2017 at Teachers College Record, a peer review journal at Columbia University. This story was hard for me to write because it wove the personal with the political, juxtaposed what the research said with how my life unfolded. Without further ado…this is Learning My Place in This World.