It’s a Sunny Spicy Love Fest!

Welcome to Sunny Spicy Love Fest! ¡Bienvenidos! I’m Tomás Garza, and I hope you enjoy this celebration of Mexican life and culture!

I created this blog to serve as a forum for all beautiful things Mexican. If you have ever lived or traveled in Mexico you may have some idea what I mean here: stunning landscapes, gorgeous beaches, colorful, intricate art, a robust history, and a vitality and playfulness that many parts of the world would do well to emulate. Mexico is a riot of exuberant music, life, food, and culture, and it deserves celebration.

Much of what we hear about Mexico in the media these days is negative: drug-related killings, corruption scandals, and the like. While the events that make the mainstream media do in fact happen, the media largely ignores Mexico’s beauty, and seems to omit entirely the warmth and generosity of the Mexican people, which has always impressed me. They know what they have their hands on: one of the world’s great cultural jewels.

Working as I do in the travel industry, I visit Mexico frequently, and I have lived and worked in Los Reyes, Michoacán. I have spoken Spanish from a very young age, and of heritage consider myself “GringoMex,” part Mexican and part North American. I was born in Texas and grew up in New Mexico, so you can call me whatever (Gringo, Mexicano, buey, lo que sea…) This is a bilingual celebration, and a bilingual blog.

I am starting this blog as a celebration of a country I have always loved and have always identified with, even though I haven’t lived there my entire life. It’s not important where you were born, after all, if you know your heart belongs somewhere else.

This blog will entail some written and visual displays of Mexican vitality, whether these displays occur in Mexico itself or abroad. A culture this infectious makes its way around the world pretty quickly, and it definitely makes its way around the United States! Stay tuned for posts on Mexican food, drink, travel ideas, travel stories, and celebrations of life, love, and laughter! You’re in for a very fun ride! Subscribe to this blog, follow it on social media, and enjoy!

*language convention disclaimer*- In bilingual and multilingual writing, it is customary to italicize would-be “foreign” languages, to set them off from the language the author is writing in, such as “He said ¡Viva la fiesta! and threw his tequila bottle in the air” or “Ella dijo que no quería ir a la escuela y dijo, ‘Hell with this, Mom, I’m not going!'”

I reject this convention, mostly because neither English nor Spanish is a foreign language to me. Also, I’m too lazy and I don’t feel like it. The feeling of my love for Mexico is unitary, regardless of language, and doesn’t need to be set off by grammatical conventions (sorry, my dear high school English teachers, but it’s true!) Peace.