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JUAN DELGADO

Milpa translates to “maize field” in Nahuatl, an indigenous language. The word denotes a field where native people of the central and southern Americas practice crop rotation, growing corn, beans, and squash. Milpa can also be a cycle for cultivating and for leaving a field unsown or unplowed in order to restore its fertility. As a kid, I recall the word being used for a piece of land that was worked in the outer borders of a jungle. I imagined it was a plot that no one person owned but was used communally for a period of time. I was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, and I recall that a relative who was a farmer also used the plural, milpas, for corn fields. I saw how a family’s labor connected them to others, and now I see how a small cultivated plot can interconnect with other communities and the society at large. In that spirit, I hope that my communal space or milpa at the Garcia Center for the Arts ( http://www.sbvca.org/garcia-center/) will become a place where we practice the importance of respecting each other and celebrate our reliance on each other as artists while we labor for common causes. In this recent election, we have been reminded that some institutions are more fragile than others. We are, thus, reminded that we must stand up and walk shoulder to shoulder with institutions as if they are adopted family members needing our help. They are one of the best aspects of our past, and we should ensure that they remain for future generations. I have come to respect committed individuals and groups and see particular elementary school libraries, certain university classrooms, and unique centers of learning as the main strands of institutions that consistently need our backing and support, especially for those sites that support uplifting change and progress, even though they might be struggling to find a place or milpa among indifferent, harsh, and hostile forces, a kind of wilderness where there is a lack of nurtured civility. Dreamers come to mind and the institutions that support them as needing voices to contribute on their behalf. For them and others, we can, together. Through our arts and practices, we can express ourselves in thoughtful, respectful, and ethical ways, recalling that our adopted families are beside us, they are our lifelong models of excellence in this democracy we are making our own.