Defining Indigenous Research Approaches of Care and Reciprocity

In this piece, I reflect on my approach to research in Indigenous P’urhépecha communities in Michoacán, the influence of my P’urhépecha abuelo (grandfather) Enrique Gómez Montelongo or Papá Quique (how I call him) on my ways to conduct research, and the instrumental role the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas played in my scholarship by funding my investigation and supporting my academic grow during my time as a doctoral student in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Before moving to live permanently in California and when my abuelo would still be alive, he asked me to always serve my people and make connections that would last forever. For him and his ancestors, the memories and relations we build with others in this world would be the only things that would last after we pass and our bodies return to the land and our spirits to the underworld. The state of Michoacán is in West-Central México, and five main Indigenous groups live in the territory: Nahuas, Mazahuas, Otomíes, Pirindas or Matlatzincas, and P’urhépechas. The P’urhépecha pueblo or ireta is the largest Indigenous group in the state, who principally live in the Transversal Volcano System, which crosses the state from east to west. This includes 22 of the 113 municipalities of the state, including Coeneo, Charapan, Cherán, Chilchota, Erongarícuaro, Los Reyes, Nahuatzen, Nuevo Parangaricutiro, Paracho, Pátzcuaro, Periban, Quiroga, Tancítaro, Tangamandapio, Tangancícuaro, Tingambato, Tinguindín, Tocumbo, Tzintzuntzan, Uruapan, Zacapu, and Ziracuaretiro (For more information consult the Atlas de los Pueblos Indígenas de México (P’urhépechas – Etnografía)). The P’urhépecha territory is divided into four regions that respond to cultural traditions, variations of the native language, and geographical characteristics: Sierra or Meseta (Juátarisi), Cañada de los Once Pueblos (Eráxamani), Lago (Japóndarhu), and Ciénega de Zacapu (Tsakápundurhu).

The first seeds of my research project were planted in 2019 after my arrival at UCSC. Through coursework, conversations with my peers, professors, and my abuelo, I realized that histories about queerness and ways to resist heteronormativity were not included in the P’urhépecha histories and local narratives about P’urhépecha cultural practices. Historically, P’urhépechas have practiced specific rituals and customs that follow the agricultural calendar and assign customary responsibilities along a male–female gender binary. Some of these practices developed as part of the precolonial world, and others adapted to the Catholic gender binary that emerged via the Spanish colonization of Michoacán. I analyzed some of these issues in the first version of my research project, which I wrote when I applied for a Tinker Foundation Field Research grant hosted by the Huerta Center (Research Center for the Americas, back in 2020). Because of the COVID pandemic, I had to postpone my first research trip to Michoacán, which I had programmed for the summer of 2020. During that interlude, my abuelo passed due to health conditions that aggravated after acquiring COVID in January of 2021. It was not until September of 2022 that I was able to depart on my first research trip to Michoacán.Despite the physical absence of my abuelo during my eighteen months of research traveling across different P’urhépecha communities in both sites of the border, I always heard and still hear his voice advising me how to move through the old paths he transited in Michoacán. Talking-while-walking, a term I coined based on my experience talking and walking with my abuelo and other elders in the P’urhépecha region in Michoacán (Gómez Zamora 2024), became my way to bring to life the memory of my abuelo and his advice about reciprocity and giving yourself with “your heart” while connecting with people and other living beings. In the fall of 2022, as I moved across different P’urhépecha sites during my first research trip seeking queer histories in P’urhépecha communities in Michoacán and with archivists in the Archivo Histórico Municipal de Morelia (AHMM), I learned about the Maringuías danzantes, who in the contemporary era are often represented by gay and fem P’urhépecha men. The Maringuías traditionally wear the female P’urhépecha dress along with a mask that allows them to cover their identities. Interestingly, at least since the 2020s, some Maringuías started to take off their mask during Catholic and P’urhépecha ceremonies in Michoacán and the United States, where many P’urhépechas migrated at least since the early years of the 20^th century.

In my first research trip, community leaders from the community of Patamban and La Cañada Region asked me to come back to Michoacán in January when the Maringuías tend to perform during Catholic celebrations and carnivals. Because I had almost exhausted my research funds, I wasn’t sure if I could return to my homeland and yet, I made a commitment to my communities to interview Maringuías and enjoy the fiestas with the rest of the locals. As an immigrant in the United States, a part of my heart and feet are always in Michoacán with my hermana and tías. For this reason, traveling back home also implied an opportunity to see my family and check in with aunties, who my abuelo asked me to take care of once he passed, “cuando yo ya no esté mijito, le encargo mucho a sus tías, no me las vaya a dejar solitas, vea por ellas.”

For different P’urhépecha scholars (Lemus Jiménez 2016; Cortés Máximo ed. 2019; Lucas Hernández 2019; Urrieta 2019; Niniz Silva 2019; Gregorio Cipriano 2019; Spears-Rico 2021; Martínez-Rivera 2025; Romero forthcoming), our families and communities are fundamental in our research practices, and very often, they are the ones guiding us through the issues that concern our native communities. Thus, the care of my family is a mission I carry with me with love and respect for the memory of my abuelo and that I bring to my research practices, even though it is not explicit in my research agenda. Due to a travel grant from the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas, I was able to continue this journey and specifically conduct research about Maringuías’ danzantes and gender binary practices during ceremonies in Michoacán between January and February of 2023.

While I conducted this research that brought me so much joy, I was able to stay with my family and support my tías as they took care of my tía Martita, who faced cancer. I remember after one of my long days in the field, I arrived at my tías Martita’s room, and while sitting by the edge of her bed, I told her everything that happened that day. I always felt pretty fem when she let me access her room and let me down on her bed to have chisme (gossip) while she put on her makeup and comb her long black hair. Unlike my parents, my tías always supported my intentions to go to graduate school, meet new people, and explore the world. As a queer kid, my tía’s room was sacred because I was able to dream what I wanted to be away from the hypermasculine spaces that tried to limit my ways of being. Like many other days and despite her medical condition, she was exicted to hear about my day conducting research in the Sierra P’urhépecha. I remember she asked me if I saw a boyfriend she had in one of the communities I visited that day. I joked and told her that I would pass her greetings to him the next time I saw him. This was the last time I saw my tía and heard her loud and contagious laugh. She passed a few months later. While these facts may not seem relevant to my research, they were essential to me to stay grounded and keep alive what my abuelo asked me to do and care for, which was don’t forget my people in Michoacán and take care of my aunties. He also asked me not to forget who I am. For that reason, going back home has been a way to symbolically root myself again in the land that gave me life and where my tías and hermana were (and are) fundamental for the liberation of my queer spirit.

In the following months, I conducted research with P’urhépecha communities who live in diaspora in the United States in the states of Illinois, Oregon, and California, and I interviewed a Maringuía who lives in San Francisco, California. Moreover, I started to write about the violence that queer P’urhépechas have experienced historically in Michoacán and the erasure of queer P’urhépecha histories to perpetuate the gender binary practices and heteronormativity (Gómez Zamora 2024). As I made progress on completing my dissertation, I realized that I needed more data about the contemporary persecution and murder of queer P’urhépechas in Michoacán. Although news in the media and some digital platforms provided me with some of that information, my interlocutors in Michoacán signaled that very often, cases of crimes against the LGBTQ+ community in Michoacan don’t make it into the archival sites and media platforms. This circumstance motivated me to travel back to Michoacán. Additionally, I was excited to see my sister, who was expecting her third baby.

A Research Travel grant I obtained from the Huerta Center was instrumental in my third research trip to Michoacán. On this trip, I was able to acquire legal permits from the AHMM to use some pages of the file I revised in 2022 in a publication (Breaking Queer Silences, Building Queer Archives, and Claiming Queer Indigenous P’urhépecha Methodologies). Moreover, I interviewed Daniel Marin Mercado, an activist for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in Michoacán and a member of Responde Diversidad (a non-profit organization based in Morelia, Michoacán). While drinking tea and sitting outside of a coffee shop on front of the Morelia’s Plaza de Armas, I learned from Daniel the important work they do across the state of Michoacán supporting the LGBTQ+ community in issues related to health, people living with HIV, sexual workers, human rights, violence, and legality. Besides, Daniel informed me about the cases they documented of trans P’urhépechas who transited during their time living in the city of Morelia, but once they returned to their communities of origin, their families didn’t recognize their gender and assigned them to gender roles that are limited to biological categorizations and social constructions of having a vagina or a penis. This was officially the last research trip I embarked on before completing my dissertation and additional writing commitments I had, such as the article about Maringuías and customary practices in Michoacán and California “Those who are like that. Performing Queer Belonging through P’urhépecha Indigenous practices of El Costumbre” forthcoming in Wicazo Sa Review. Since I am always in conversation with P’urhépecha communities in Michoacán and the United States, including participating in ceremonies and celebrations organized by P’urhépechas, my research is continuously ongoing and in movement. As a queer P’urhépecha, I can’t stop thinking about the gender binary practices that sustain the traditions of the P’urhépecha group or all the histories my abuelo passed to me that celebrate heteropatriarchy. I recognize that being able to travel back and forth between Michoacán and California is a luxury I have had as a scholar based in the United States. But it is also a weighty responsibility not only because I am conducting research in my region of origin, but also due to my commitment to care for my family and cultivate the relations I have developed with locals and my interlocutors over ten years of research and teaching in the P’urhépecha region in Michoacán.

My work has also required me to open my heart and develop an intimacy with my research informants, including frequent check-ins about life, updates about my research progress and publications, or about my next trip to Michoacán to see if we can meet and have a coffee or mezcal in the plaza of the pueblo. Furthermore, as a public school teacher who taught and conducted research projects on oral history with middle school students from the pueblo of Patamban between 2014 and 2017, I frequently communicate with my former students and community members from this community via social media platforms. When I am back in Michoacán, I also try to move through the paths and pueblos I transited while growing up in Michoacán and that I visited with my abuelo. This practice lets me bring my abuelo’s voice to life through the fresh air and green color of the Mountains, and it lets me root myself back at home en mi tierra Michoacán. 
This is the path I chose, and through it, I can stay connected with my family and communities across different borders while honoring the traditions of my ancestors through reciprocity and care, as my abuelo taught me. 

This is research for me!