About Rios y Lobos
"In Mexico, where I am from, one's full nombre includes both of your parent's surnames (my full name is Paloma Carolina Medina Hernandez).
However, since I was a young, I felt sad that, because matrilineal surnames are the first to be discarded through marriage, it means I missed out on inheriting my abuelas' maiden names: Rios and Villalobos.
As a child, I fantasized about being Paloma Carolina Rios Villalobos, not just because it sounded super chingon (Rios is "rivers", and Villalobos is "wolf avenue") but also because then my name would tell an accurate story: That it is the matriarchs in my family who I resemble the most, and it is the matriarchs who taught me some of the most lasting life skills I now rely on.
To start with, there's the resemblance: When I look at my hands, I see my abuelas' and mother's hands. Ours are not delicate ladylike hands. They are strong, thick, and built for detailed work. Then there's temperament: I come from a long line of women who found their financial independence through their highly skilled and creative manual labor. They were nobody's employees. They carved their own way to earn their living*. Like them, I have the temperament for entrepreneurship. I'd rather face the risks of self-employment than earn double but have my work controlled by a bureaucratic system.
Lastly, there's the skills: One of my earliest memories is of my abuela teaching me to sew on her 1930s foot-powered machine. Meaning, the machine had no motor, no gadgets, nothing. Just a large treadle foot pedal, a needle, thread - that's it. My other abuela taught me to cook without all the talking: as a kid, I happily sat quietly in the kitchen because she would let me smell, touch, and watch up close to understand the process.
This is to say: in addition to the tactical skills, my abuelas first taught me the self-respect that comes not from the quality of the final product, but by the way you make it. In particular, they modeled and helped me practice a type of quiet and patient observational method of creation.
This patient and quiet observational approach is common in skilled, self-initiated** manual labor: sewing, cutting, molding, baking, carving, sculpting, etc. On the other hand, I have personally observed that quiet patience, and quiet observation, are rare in corporate work, especially in tech and ad agency worlds (likely because false urgency is built into everything). This is so deeply sad, because more and more people find themselves doing corporate work, and thus for the majority of their life hours, they are deeply disconnected from the thing they are so beautifully (across millenia) evolved to do well: skilled, quiet, patient observational physical work. This is likely why we find crafting, drawing, cooking, baking etc so calming and grounding.
Secondly, it's deeply concerning because the reason so many of us find ourselves in corporate worlds is because we don't push back on the rules that say that skilled physical labor and craft work is less valuable than coding skills, making a digital ad, or other digital conceptual work, and thus will pay less.
As an example, I didn't question when my own career drifted farther and farther away from the skilled manual work I learned as a child: it was an unquestioned signal of success when I no longer needed to use my hands to mend my own clothes, to clean my own lentejas, to create my everyday tools and needs with my own hands. In that career world, my corporate work paid exponentially more than when I used to create and sell things with my own hands, precisely because the items I made with my physical skills had utility for everyday people, whereas my conceptual or digital work mostly benefitted CEOs and shareholders.
This is complete bullshit. So I am now reconnecting to these patient, quiet physical skills in whatever ways I can. And as I do so, it feels fitting to call this endeavor Rios y Lobos. As a reminder of my matriarchs, who first taught me the self-respect and community dignity that is possible when we value skilled manual labor, and as a reminder of the biggest matriarch of them all: mother earth."
~ Paloma Medina
* And stubbornly too: Well into her 90s my bisabuela would sneak out to sell her clothing designs in the local market, to the frustration of my worried tias.
** This shouldn't be confused with skilled or otherwise manual labor that is forced on someone via economic, social or other coercions.
