There’s this story my dad loves to tell any chance he gets about a vacation trip my parents and I took a few years ago.
We were in Oaxaca, and I had taken them to a fancy restaurant that would have been prohibitively expensive in the United States but was affordable to us because of the favorable exchange rate.
“Es un lugar de cachet,” my old man tells his listeners, his shorthand way of explaining how out of place he felt.
Here he was, this working-class Mexican man, sitting in an establishment that made him feel like a foreigner in his country of origin. It didn’t help that we were surrounded by the type of Americans who love to brag about how much they love mezcal after spending any amount of time in Oaxaca. (If this feels like a knock, know that I’m putting myself down, too, because this is exactly who I’ve become. Tepextates or bust!)
I could sense his and my mom’s…
