Nanahuatizin and the Fifth Sun

And my real inspiration.

For me it started a long time ago with the realization that I realization that I don’t fit into a neat little box.

I am not a real Mexican because I don’t speak spanish.

I am not a real chicano because I dress or speak a certain kind of way.

I will never be American enough because I have this beautiful brown skin and look the way that I do.

It began to scream at me when I took a DNA test and learned that the overwhelming part of me is indigenous and part of an erased part of mezoamerican past.

But it wasn’t until I sat with my amazing niece waiting for my wife and her daddy to get off a ride at Disneyland Paris that something clicked. I was having this amazing conversation with this little girl who had this perfect oval face of an Aztec Mexica Princess. As I listened to her talk to me about her life, her little world and where she fit into it I caught myself wanting to scream you have the spirit of warriors in you!

But I realized she would think her tio was crazy because, well, the sc…