Definitions, differences and inequalities in times of COVID-19: indigenous peoples in Mexico.

Abstract

© 2020 European Association of Social Anthropologists. My grandfather is a farmer from the south. In the afternoons, he sits down to contemplate the sky, to analyse it. He likes hot days in the morning and rainy at night, because that way corn grows stronger, he explains, while we all complain about the vaporous May weather. Artemio is indecipherable because he speaks in metaphors that I cannot understand. It’s always right having a lemon tree, says my grandfather. It’s good. The lemon heals. And he knows it because his family survived eating lemons on the river bank, day after day, when they fled from cholera, carrying the Virgin of Candelaria with them. My father, who is a biologist, tried to explain that perhaps they survived because they did not drink the contaminated water. Maybe, pues, says my grandfather. He is not interested in scientific explanations. He only has faith in the lemon tree that grows towards light and life. My grandparents think the world differently from me; for them, life is uncertain. They do not know the certainty in which I have grown, the illusion of progress and stability. They always walk between life and death without anguish. I think now, of my grandparents, of their ancient knowledge, how they tried to protect us from certainty. And now I hear them, I finally understand them, I decipher them. How did we become so confident of life? What can we learn from the oral histories of past epidemics? What were they telling us that we did not listen to? Planting a lemon tree is essential, I think. Lemon trees grow tall and slim. Before bearing fruit, a small, white, citrus flower blooms.