“It’s better out here because they use cane sugar.” A sentence I heard a few times over the course of the week I spent in Mexico with my girlfriend’s family. They were talking about Coca Cola and how Mexico is known to use cane sugar in place of high fructose syrup like the U.S. As a black man originally from Texas with way below conversational level Spanish skills, I hung on to any moment and story I could that connected our worlds.

It was a unique time to be out visiting Mexico. June 2025- and back home the troops were being deployed into our neighborhoods and communities across the city of Los Angeles. The ice raids were running rampant, families were being torn apart and a moment of respite felt uncertain as ever. After a hot day out touring the city of Durango, learning the history, trying the foods, and meeting the people, we’d gather around the living room and watch the news — and the news was LA.

It was pretty surreal seeing a Mexican broadcast on an issue that was broadly built around the bigotry and disdain of their own lineage of people. To witness it all as a guest — in their home, their city, their country — and see how they processed this systematic chaos wasn’t lost on me. I couldn’t help but imagine a reality where the modern technology of telecommunication reached the shores of coastal Africa as slave ships took to the sea, and the scenes of families being slain and torn apart forever played in perpetuity across the diaspora. But in this fog of trauma, I sensed a lighter room. Not a non empathetic room, but a room that doesn’t carry the baggage of the American experience so readily. It was peripheral. I sensed a people who didn’t need to wear their pride as their war paint. Their language as a means of solace. There was no high fructose syrup in the coke. It was cane sugar.

words by brice blanco

photos by jazmine jaquez