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I’ve lived in Sweden for well over 27 years now and my colleagues, right around these xmas seasons, still ask me how’s it like in México. Which I really don’t mind at all. I usually answer to the best of my abilities to which I, much to my chagrin, fail miserably at describing what it is like in México during the xmas season. I often find myself at a loss because the Scandinavian, ordinary one, lacks a sociological imagination. The worst part of said imagination are the borders they paint in their heads. Much like European-Americans who think Europe is a country, they think of México as a single entity. I’ve never succeeded in transmitting this piece of cultural knowledge in a succinct nutshell. México is such a nice package to carry around and fits in neatly in the brain, you don’t have to carry in 31 states or 62 other languages, dances galore of different ethnicities that make up a country like my México. Sometimes it scares we will fracture, I mean Yucatán is a pretty darn close case but otherwise, México is a concept or an image in the European imagination of a sombrero and tequila. Our differences are based on cardinal points, there is the South and there is the North. How can I explain how through cuisine México relates to one another, that we invade the paladar and conquer the heart and the stomach with flavors that take over our whole sense of identity. One more failure there. Nor can the ordinary Scandinavian imagination imagine a person with duality such as mine. I, like many like me, have identified for years as bi-cultural and bilingual. I grew up 2 things. It used to bother me that many people did not see the anglosaxonized aspect of my ens. I’ve reconciled myself to it. I guess given up would sum it up better and yet no either.

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