"Simple" History

Washing the Chicken

"Before you cook the chicken you have to wash it with vinegar and water....wash that spinach again, I don't care if it already says it's triple washed, you never know" my mother always gave me careful instructions in the kitchen. Of course these instructions also served as warnings because she had already observed that I was not going to choose to re-wash a bag of spinach that came in sealed packaging stating "triple-washed" in bold lettering. There was a time when I thought my mother was being overly cautious and that by wasting time in re-washing all of these essential ingredients she was holding up the process of making that delicious arroz con pollo y ensalada that she is famous for. Now I recognize this seemingly simple practice of re-washing as a reflection of my mother's guardedness and rejection of other's guarantees.
The kitchen is the central place where my mother instills her knowledge and life lessons. It was only as a teenager that while sitting in the kitchen I began to ask her questions about her life back in the Dominican Republic. My mom told me stories about unrequited love, teenage thrills and then about war and terror. The more I asked her, the more she began to unearth memories of hiding under the kitchen table as she heard gun shots from the huelgas in the streets. As a young child, my mother often overheard adult conversations of fear that Trujillo had "disappeared" yet another person in the barrio. At first hearing this, I was shocked because although I only lived in the Dominican Republic until I was 6 years old, I always thought of my country as a beautiful place with relative peace and I had never heard of Rafael Trujillo. It was around that time when I began attending a very homogenous university, that felt a strong urge to learn about my own Dominican roots and I decided to dive into my history, one that was never taught in the euro-centric global history classes I was exposed to.
Through my research I found out that Rafael Trujillo was a U.S.-funded dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for over 30 years until 1961. He was said to have had the bloodiest reign in all of the Americas, and was responsible for a heinous massacre of more than 20,000 people of Haitian descent as well as killing or "disappearing" thousands of people with the aid of his secret police force. The era of Trujillo was largely funded by the U.S. government and even after his assassination in 1961, the U.S. led a coup to depose the democratically elected Juan Bosch and hand the election to one of Trujillo's henchmen, Joaquin Balaguer. Soon after this initial research I quickly discovered that the U.S. governments' quest for hegemony often led to oppression of people of color and Latinos. There was the overthrow of Allende in Chile for the ruthless rule of Pinochet, the U.S. funded death squads in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and the training of many Latin American military war criminals from the School of the Americas in the U.S. It was then clear to me that my mother's distrust of food labeling is a small way to combat the historical trauma that she carries with her. This subversive history is as much a part of her as the blood that courses through her veins. It is an experience that has affected her and past generations in a deep way and it now informs her daily practices, the way she sees the world and the choices she makes in her small kitchen.
As a mental health professional working with other Latino families, it is no surprise that my biggest challenge is in getting buy-in from the parents. My work at a high school often puts me in a position where I need to refer teens to mental health supports. Yet many families are cautious to believe that their children are experiencing serious symptoms of depression, anxiety or low self-esteem and that they might benefit from mental health supports outside of the school. At first sight, this can be explained away as a stigma against mental health, yet I can understand that people are not going to be outwardly trustworthy of someone telling them how to heal. In my profession, we often use the word, "resistant" to refer to individuals who do are not open to receiving treatment or to adhering to the professional's suggestions. However, it is upmost important that we recognize that the distrust comes from a place of real trauma and not just stubborn personalities. This intergenerational and historical trauma that we might be carrying might not have yet risen to consciousness but it can inform our view of the world and our ability to trust. I now wash my chicken and re-wash my triple-washed spinach in my own kitchen. The experiences of my mom and those who came before her are also all part of who I am as a Latina living in the U.S. And this means that I too have a healthy level of caution when given a guarantee or a well-known "truth".