My family is Mexican. My grandparents came from Mexico. I grew up eating the food, speaking the language, being surrounded by the culture. I thought I understood it.
I didn’t. Not really. Not until I actually lived there.
There’s a difference between inheriting a culture and living inside it. Between growing up around Mexican food in California and eating actual Mexican food in Mexico. Between speaking Spanish with your family at home and navigating daily life in a country where it’s the only language and your California accent makes people smile.
Mexico handed me a mirror. What I saw in it surprised me.
The California Version
Growing up in California with Mexican heritage is a specific thing. You are Mexican and you are American and sometimes those two things fit together perfectly and sometimes they pull in opposite directions and you learn to live in the middle of that tension without always being able to explain it.
The food at home was [ADD YOUR DETAILS: what your family cooked — specific dishes, your mom or grandma’s cooking]. The Spanish was [ADD YOUR DETAILS: how you grew up with the language — was it spoken at home? A mix? Did you speak it fluently or just enough?]. The culture was present but filtered through a California lens.
California Mexican food, I now know, is its own thing. A delicious, valid, distinct thing — but its own thing. The burritos, the style of cooking, the particular combinations that feel completely normal to anyone from SoCal — these are California inventions built on a Mexican foundation.
I did not fully understand this until I tried to order a burrito in Mexico City.
[ADD YOUR DETAILS: What happened when you looked for California-style Mexican food in Mexico?]
What Surprised Me About Mexico
[ADD YOUR DETAILS: Where specifically did you live or spend extended time in Mexico? Which city/region?]
The first thing that hit me was the pace. California moves fast — there’s always somewhere to be, something to optimize, some version of yourself to be performing. Mexico, or at least the parts I was in, moved differently. Meals were longer. Conversations were longer. Nobody was in a hurry to finish and get somewhere else.
I fought that at first. Then I stopped fighting it. Then I didn’t want to leave it.
[ADD YOUR DETAILS: A specific moment or experience where you noticed the pace difference — a meal, a conversation, a Sunday afternoon, something specific]
The Food Reality Check
Here’s what Mexican food actually is, or at least what I experienced:
[ADD YOUR DETAILS: Dishes you discovered or experienced differently in Mexico — regional specialties, things that blew your mind, things that were completely different from what you grew up with]
My grandmother made [ADD YOUR DETAILS: something specific she made]. In Mexico I had [ADD YOUR DETAILS: how a similar dish tasted/was prepared differently]. They are both Mexican food. They are not the same dish. Both are correct.
That realization — that “Mexican food” is not one thing, that it’s a continent of regional cooking that California has interpreted and adapted — changed how I eat everywhere. I’m more curious now. Less certain that I know what a cuisine is before I’ve actually been inside it.
The Language
My Spanish is [ADD YOUR DETAILS: how you’d describe your Spanish — fluent? Conversational? Strong enough? Do you speak with an accent?].
In Mexico it was both an asset and a source of constant gentle humor. People could tell where I was from. Not from my face — plenty of people in Mexico look like me — but from how I talked. Certain words. Certain phrases. The California accent underneath the Spanish.
[ADD YOUR DETAILS: A specific interaction or moment around language — something funny, something meaningful, something that connected you to someone]
What It Meant for My Sense of Identity
Here’s the thing about being Mexican-American and then going to Mexico: you realize that you are your own specific thing. You are not fully one or the other. You are the thing that happened when those two worlds mixed, and that thing is real and valid and distinctly yours.
[ADD YOUR DETAILS: How did being in Mexico affect how you think about your own identity? Did it feel like coming home? Like being a visitor? Both?]
California made me. Mexico is in my blood. Living there let me hold both of those things at the same time, clearly, without having to pick one.
That’s worth more than I expected when I booked the ticket.
— Baldo
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