“Dios Aprieta pero no ahorca”- Mexican Proverb

Literal translation: “God squeezes, but he doesn’t suffocate”

Context: The informant, VA, is a first generation student at USC. She has one sibling and her family is from Puebla, Mexico. She hears this proverb whenever her family has financial problems or health problems. In the past year, both her mother and father have had serious health issues. Her father suffers from heart disease and was operated on. The year before that, her mother had a stroke. She states that she is not religious but her parents are. Her father believes in God a lot and they are Catholic. They believe in saints including Saint Judas and La Virgen de Guadalupe (The Virgin Mary). Both of her parents say they learned the proverb from their parents because their families are very religious, except for her. Finally, she explains how hearing this proverb from someone that’s close to her gives her relief and helps her believe that her situation will become better. 

Description (From Transcript): 

“So what this proverb I always heard was “Dios aprieta, pero no ahorca”. The translation is “God squeezes but he doesn’t suffocate”. But it literally means, (it’s more on the religious side), but it means that God is testing you, but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna let you suffer. He’s not gonna let you die. And we used to say that when we were having financial problems: paying the rent or trying to pay hospital bills. Or finding ways to have hope that my dad was going to get out of that surgery well, or have hope that my mom was gonna get well out of the hospital for a week. He [my dad] was like “Dios aprieta, pero no ahorca. she’s gonna be fine”, and that kind of gave me a little hope. It’s a way of coping and having hope and making the best out of the situation.  We were like “everything happens for a reason”. It puts you at a state of rest, a little bit, because you have so much to worry about but everything is going to be okay

My interpretation: If God only squeezes someone’s neck or body, they might be uncomfortable and in pain, (a metaphor for being tested), however he won’t actually suffocate them because his tests only go so far. To me, this means that a person must have faith in God’s mercy or trust the plan he has for them. The informant’s parents told her this, revealing how faith is present as a form of intergenerational comfort. It also reveals how faith is often used as a final mode of hope when a situation (such as poor health or financial instability) is out of a person’s control. 

The Cleansing of the egg- Religious/ Spiritual ritual

Description (From Transcript): “Okay so for this one it’s the curing of the egg! I don’t know how the other person you got it from told you this, but my mom, she gets an egg, and she rubs it with either alcohol or agua bendita (holy water). We get our agua bendita from church, or sometimes in a tiny bottle. We have like a little bottle here at home, and what she does is she puts agua bendita or alcohol, or both sometimes, and she does a cross on our body. But that cross is a small cross on our forehead, which is 1, 2, 3, 4, (*does a cross motion*) and then a small cross on our heart, in the small crossing our legs and then a cross behind our head. She rubs that egg all around our body,  starting with the back of our head, which is the most important part. My mom says that’s the most important part because that’s where it’s in the middle. Medically, if you hit your head right there, you’re probably going to die. That’s the most important part that you have to protect, and that’s where she rubs us and especially when I had problems with stress, she does this to me, and as well. She does it through the head, first in the back of the head and then on top of the head, and then she moves towards the shoulders and hands, the front of the heart, and then she moves to the back, and then at the end towards the bottom, and then she brings all that energy into the top, and she rubs the head again. Then she goes to the restroom. She opens the egg, and she throws it in the toilet, not in the back. I know a lot of people throw it in the backyard or they throw it in the trash.But she does it in the toilet. She’s like “don’t come with me because you’re going to get that bad energy, and I have to do it by myself”. 

She goes to the toilet, she closes the door, and she flushed it. Then, she throws the shell in the trash can outside. 

Context: The informant, VA, is a first generation student at USC. She has one sibling and her family is from Puebla, Mexico. She got this tradition from her mother, who learned it from her own mother. As for how to do it, her mother saw it on an online video on facebook. However, she first learned of it from her mother. The informant explained that this practice shows how, even if you don’t believe in it, seeing how much her parents care for her, or the extent to which they care that they would do it, makes her feel important. She emphasized how seeing her mom do this small ritual for her when she feels bad or because of schoolwork, she feels a lot better. 

My interpretation: Unlike the other informant who explained this ritual, VA utilizes many religious aspects, including holy water and the crosses made on her body. To me, this reveals how the act is not only a demonstration of religion, but also a way for her to connect to her family and her culture. Additionally, her explanation of the head being the most important body part demonstrates how physical well being and spiritual well being are directly connected, and more specifically, how negative energies can be physically removed from a person’s body even if they are not visible or tangible. Flushing the bad energy down the toilet demonstrates how it’s seen as a particularly putrid agent that must be disposed of the way waste or toxic chemicals might be disposed of. I found it interesting how her mother relearned the ritual through social media videos. 

First Rain – A College Tradition

Background information/context of performance: DC is a 21-year-old student at University of Southern California, Santa Cruz. She grew up in Los Angeles and Alameda, CA, but is currently living in an apartment in Santa Cruz. Now that we’re back on campus, DC has been able to engage much more with UCSC culture and traditions.

DC: First Rain is another tradition that Santa Cruz has, but I think it’s the same for a lot of colleges. It still hasn’t happened this year though (laughs). Because it hasn’t even rained. It’s pretty sad, um, but I guess we still have a few weeks for it to happen.

Me: If there had been a first rain at UCSC this year, what would the tradition look like?

DC: It rains a lot in Santa Cruz usually. But a lot of students like to exercise by walking and running around campus, so maybe this came from that? I don’t know. But basically, like, whenever it rains on campus for the first time during the school year, everyone will run through campus naked. I think everyone runs from somewhere to Porter College, and the run ends there.

Me: Do you know anyone who has been able to participate in First Rain? Is that how you now about it?

DC: Yeah, I think I know a couple underclassmen friends who have? I’m not really sure. I think people mostly just know about it because it’s a big Santa Cruz thing. It just fits with the whole, like, hippie kinda reputation the college has. I remember Kayla is the one who told me about it in high school, when I decided to go here. Maybe they knew from their friends who went there in past years too.

Me: It might be too late for a First Rain this year, but would you do it next year?

DC: (laughs) Um…maybe! If my friends did it with me then I feel like it would be funny. And I’ll be a senior so I may as well since it’s my last chance. But I’m not, like, in a rush to do it. I think it’s funny though, I would definitely wanna see one before I graduate.

I have heard of this tradition occurring at multiple universities, but UCSC definitely has a culture that I feel like aligns with it tradition the most. The college is known to have a very free-spirited and artsy student body, so learning about their First Rain tradition was a fun way to see how that reputation is kept up. I also think it was very interesting to learn that First Rain has become less accessible due to the lack of rain in California, despite the fact that it was established when it rained very often during the Fall and Winter months in Santa Cruz. Hearing about this made me think about the relationship between climate change and longstanding folklore and traditions – if something like UCSC’s First Rain can no longer occur annually because the environment is much dryer than it used to be, I can only imagine how other cultural practices and traditions throughout the world have changed/become obsolete as a result of climate change as well.

4/20 Celebrations at UCSC

Background information/context of performance: DC is a 21-year-old student at University of California, Santa Cruz. She grew up in Los Angeles and Alameda, CA, but is currently living in an apartment in Santa Cruz. Now that she’s back on campus, DC has been able to engage with UCSC culture much more often, which includes a large amount of “stoner” culture that is specific to Northern California. Since this is very well-known about UCSC culture and its student body, I asked DC about any 4/20 traditions she has learned about as a student.

DC: We go to Porter Meadow which is on-campus where one of the colleges is and smoke every year on 4/20. It’s a thing for all the students, um, because it used to be a tradition for everyone every year. This was the first year everyone got to do it in a couple years because of remote school.

Me: Did you know about this tradition before you decided to go to UC Santa Cruz?

DC: Yeah, since, like, a lot of kids we know from high school go to UCSC, I feel like it’s kind of just a known tradition now. Plus I had older brothers who knew a lot of people who go there. I also had, um, some upperclassmen friends who go to UCSC now too. And 4/20 in itself is just well known in Northern California. I feel like as you grow up here you just learn these things.

Me: So is this how you spent your 4/20 this year?

DC: I went to Porter Meadow with my boyfriend and my friends and just kinda like stood outside in the grass with everyone and smoked. We brought picnic blankets and some food and it was pretty warm that day, so it was honestly really nice to see everyone hanging out outside together again…it felt like I was getting a very college experience (laughs).

Me: How was it for your first Porter Meadow experience?

DC: (laughs) It was fun! It’s so specific to my school, so it was cool to finally experience it.

DC and I have been friends since high school, but now that we’re at different universities I obviously am not able to see her or talk to her as often as I would like. I enjoyed being able to talk about this when I saw her during our Fall break. It was interesting to realize that hearing about the folklore that my friends are exposed to in their new environments was a great way to get to know what their daily lives are like now. In that way, I think that folklore and traditions not only creates a feeling of membership and belonging in a group, but also allows for connection through storytelling. Because we both grew up in the Bay Area, I do think that 4/20 traditions and celebrations are well-circulated among teenagers and adults, but DC was able to actually experience a piece of folklore that had only been something we had heard of through word of mouth for years as high schoolers. This emphasizes the idea that folklore and tradition are able to persevere for such long periods of time, despite something as life-changing as the Covid-19 pandemic. DC was still able to feel as though she is part of a specific group or culture at UCSC, despite missing over a year of in-person school.






Hot and Cold Foods In Persian Culture

Background

Informant is a friend of mine from high school. She is a current student at UCLA and former student at The Madeira School (the high school we both attended). She is a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Iran. She does not have any specific religious affiliations. I chose to interview several people from my high school to compare their versions of our school stories. She is referred to as “SF”.

Context

I asked the informant about any homeopathic medicines or remedies she has learned from her family/culture. She provided multiple examples – this example is of the concept of hot and cold foods.

Content

In Persian culture, there’s this really interesting concept. It’s foods that are used that is like kind of used for specific, like, things that you’re feeling. So basically the words are like there’s two different categories, like a food can be either “garm” or “sard” and garm and sard mean hot and cold. So like certain foods like fit into those categories and based on like this thing that you like, like if you have a headache or whatever, like either someone will tell you, oh, you have to eat foods that are in the hot category or like you have to eat foods that are in the cold category. And like, I don’t necessarily know, like what goes in each category cause there’s no, there’s kind of like an intuitive like thinking that you think so like ginger is like a hot food or whatever because like, you know, kind of warms you up. But like, there are certain ones that you can’t, I can’t really like distinguish. Like you have to know. Like, I feel like elders, like just know what are like hot and cold foods. And so like that’s a pretty interesting concept that I feel is very specific to like Persian culture is like if you say, Oh, I like feeling ill or whatever, it’s like this certain way, that way I tell you to eat also gets either like hot or cold.

Analysis

While my informant believed the concept of hot and cold foods to be specific to Persian culture, the concept is actually prevalent in a lot of cultures, especially those native to East Asia. In Korea and China, the concept of hot and cold foods is especially prevalent in postpartum care. The correlation of hot and cold is not necessarily the specific temperature of the food, but the effect the food has on the body – if it is warming or cooling. I especially appreciated SF’s comment “I feel like elders, like just know what are hot and cold foods.” It’s a perfect summarization of the mechanisms of folklore: that it is knowledge passed down through generations, so currently, the elder generations have the knowledge, and will pass it along to their descendants.

Translation: Garm and sard are Farsi words. Garm = hot, and sard = cold.

Annotation

For additional versions of hot and cold foods, see: Song, Yuanqing. “坐月子：Postpartum Confinement”. May 20, 2019. USC Folklore Archive. http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/%E5%9D%90%E6%9C%88%E5%AD%90%EF%BC%9Apostpartum-confinement/