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How My Buelita's Songs Helped Me Learn About My Ancestry

Photo credit: Courtesy
Photo credit: Courtesy
Photo credit: AMANDA ALCANTARA / Illustration by Niege Borges
Photo credit: AMANDA ALCANTARA / Illustration by Niege Borges


When I was little, my grandmother used to sing me short, unique nursery rhymes that I never heard anywhere else. While dressing me up she would sing, “Mírala que linda viene, mírala que linda va” (“Look at how pretty she looks arriving, look at how pretty she looks as she goes”). When rocking me to sleep, she would sing, “Duérmete mi catirita, duérmete mi catirita” (“Go to sleep catirita, go to sleep catirita”).

After I turned 3 years old, I was taken to live in the Dominican Republic–far from where my grandmother lived–after the family immigrated to the U.S. exactly 50 years ago this year. Call it reverse migration, or going home, but my mother said she never felt at home in the U.S., so to D.R. we went.

During the summer, we’d come visit my Buelita–her name was Alida Burgos Bautista, but I called her “Buelita.” I lived with my grandparents for an entire year when I was 7 years old–that’s also when I became fluent in English.

She lived in a small, roach-ridden apartment in the town of West New York, NJ, but my grandmother always felt regal to me. The apartment was decorated with a collection of large porcelain vases and wall plates, and a huge mirror right above the plastic-covered couch. A chandelier that adults had to watch out for hung right in the middle of the tiny two-bedroom apartment blocks from Boulevard East, a street known for its magnificent view of New York City.

And while I didn’t live with her for most of the year, today most of my childhood dreams take place in that apartment. Her home was a constant as I moved around when living in D.R. It wasn’t until years after she died that I came to realize her songs were, too.

My grandmother passed away a day after my U.S. college graduation in 2012. Because it was my graduation after having returned to the U.S., my mother who still lived in the Dominican Republic at the time was visiting, and we all went to see her together. Then we went to my graduation, celebrated, and one day later, she passed after having suffered from a stroke a few weeks prior.

It was like she waited for me to have my celebration, and for an opportunity to see all of her kids, before leaving us peacefully in her sleep.

It felt to me like she was the person who loved me the most, unburdened by the task of having to provide for me in our working-class family. Her arms were the first ones where I knew love. And the memories I hold dearest were the songs she would sing to me.

She dusted the house and cooked while singing boleros and classics by salsa singer Celia Cruz. Her big personality shining through when the house would get packed at night time for dinner.

Lullabies have been a tradition in practically all cultures, and yet Buelita’s lullabies felt specific to me. I remember one in particular that went “Mirala que linda viene, mirala que linda va, con su vestidito corto, y la nalguita p’atra’” (“Look at her how pretty she comes in, look at how pretty she goes, with her short dress, and her buttocks dancing back”). There was another one that felt tailored for me because I was nicknamed Matitina in my family. It went “Matitina Matitina, montando bicicleta, dobla la esquina, se le calló la teta” (“Matitina Matitina, riding her bike, turned the corner, and her boob fell off”).

When she passed, I was 21-years-old, impressionable, and focused on my future. I had just graduated as a first-generation student, and at the time I didn’t have many questions about my past, ancestry or where we came from. When my grandmother died, I was numb, unable to process the magnitude of the loss until years later.

Photo credit: Amanda Alcantara
Photo credit: Amanda Alcantara

I knew some things. I knew that my family is Dominican-American and that my grandparents on my mother’s side and all the kids moved to West New York, New Jersey in 1972 after my grandfather made the trek through Puerto Rico and arrived in the area where he had friends. We are diasporic in many ways. First, in our Blackness. The trauma of slavery severed our connection to the African continent. Second, we were members of the Dominican diaspora, having moved to the U.S. in search of economic stability. Questions that should have been as simple as “Who was my grandmother’s grandmother?” had blurry answers. I knew we were from a campo in the outskirts of Santiago called Laguna Prieta. And I knew racially, we had the story of what it means to come from Hispaniola—the first colony in the Americas—in our blood, but only because of the flimsy results of a 23 and Me test.

And that was it.

That was until I found out some answers to my questions in the most important gift she did give me—her love. Her songs were keys to our past. The tradition of singing and song is one powerful way in which the African diaspora has undeniably stayed tied to our roots. The depth of the drums followed us from the home continent of Africa all the way to the Caribbean where rhythms today like salsa and reggaeton, or folkloric music like sarandunga, remain to allow us to celebrate our negritud as resistance to colonialism and white supremacy. Songs my grandmother would sing, Buelita’s lullabies, were no different. When I finally decided to look up her songs, what I found was beautiful.

“Mírala que linda viene” is a Cuban song, something old from Carnival, which was legendarily inherited from ancestral Congolese traditions. Eventually I found out people in Puerto Rico sang it too, as a plena with different variations. Plena is a type of song born out of Puerto Rico which uses instruments like the pandero, guitar, accordion, and the cuatro. They changed the last verse to “Es la revolución boricua que no da ni un paso atrás”— and I laugh at how it arrived in my house, referencing the pretty girl.

“Matitina” is allegedly about a woman named Antonia, nicknamed Titina who shocked all of Havana, Cuba by riding her bike. She was the first woman to do so in public, and this song was actually created to mock her. But Titina rode on, despite the mocking, she rode her bike.

In these songs were remnants of a history and a lineage that feels lost. But like the rhythms that birthed salsa, merengue, tango, reggaeton, and so many others with Black roots, they told a history. Mine was one of el Caribe, not just las Antillas, with specific stories ranging from Puerto Rico and Cuba to the Venezuelan coast too. Places where our ancestors moved, places where migration (both free and as a refugee) exist today too. And when Buelita sang to me, she was doing so to appease me as a baby, like a balm, her own personal salve that she was anointing me with.

I may not have been able to locate the ancestry I was searching for in the form I expected. In a Western world where knowledge is often square, and led by logic, my family might’ve not had a written family tree, yet we did have a sentimental tradition of sorts that opened up an even larger world for me to explore our history of resilience amid the trauma of colonization. Still, Buelita’s songs provided an answer to the question of who I was.

She left in me a sort of message in these songs. And I’m so grateful to her for that. Today, I sing to my niece and nephew too, hoping to continue this tradition. And every Sunday when it’s cleaning time in my house, I blast Celia Cruz and love ballads, letting the spirit of those melodies guide me joyously through the dusting and cleansing of my space, just like Buelita used to.

Photo credit: Hearst Owned
Photo credit: Hearst Owned

This story was created as part of From Our Abuelas in partnership with Lexus. From Our Abuelas is a series running across Hearst Magazines to honor and preserve generations of wisdom within Latinx and Hispanic communities. Go to oprahdaily.com/fromourabuelas for the complete portfolio.

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