Carlos Alberto Sánchez writes:

I recently spent an evening trying to convince my father not to go back to Michoacán. I told him it wasn’t a good time. He reminded me that he’s been a naturalised US citizen since the George H W Bush administration. I reported what I’ve seen on the news: people with decades of US residency, with Green Cards and outstanding civic engagement, are being deported, and the rationale seems to have something to do with previous acts of criminality, like shoplifting or parking tickets. I reminded him that, back in the 1990s, he was arrested and charged with assault for an incident at work. ‘I’m afraid,’ I said, that ‘that’s enough to detain you, strip you of your citizenship, and deport you!’ He shrugged. ‘Worse things have happened. Besides, I’m 74 years old. I may die on the way. Nada es seguro.’ Nothing is certain.

I let it be. My sister called me in a panic: ‘Tell him not to go!’

‘It’s no use,’ I said. ‘He’s going. We’ll find out his fate when he tries to come back sometime next year.’ And the waiting game began.

My father’s dismissive attitude used to confuse me. Growing up, I thought he was overly sentimental and melancholic. I was sure that there was something wrong with him. I thought that, maybe, he was depressed. He lived each day like a man who had been betrayed one too many times and was now resigned to a disappointing life.

Now I see how wrong I was. I see now that he was merely reflecting the trials and tribulations of circumstance, that he was a product of a history that had mercilessly exposed him to the truth that a ‘worse thing’ can always happen and that, really and truly, nothing is certain. Now I see that what I thought was dismissiveness was awareness and acceptance of a fundamental fragility and accidentality.

I came to see my father with even more clarity after reading what Mexican philosophers had to say about accidentality and fragility. Mexican philosophers, especially those of the existentialist tradition – what I’ve elsewhere referred to as (M)existentialism – seem to have a person like my father in mind when they talk about what it means to be Mexican. They talk about a type of person who understands or recognises the meaning of the phrase ‘nothing is certain’. This person understands or recognises their nepantla – that they are in between spaces, times, destinations, life and death – and so they recognise their indeterminacy, instability and radical uncertainty, what Mexistentialists call zozobra. In short, they are sure of one thing: that ‘nada es seguro’. That’s my father. [Continue reading…]