Alfonso in Umami, a widower and an anthropologist who studies the concept of Umami. He defines it as “one of the five basic flavors our taste buds can identify. The other, the ones we all know, are sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Then there’s umami, more or less new to us in the West. We’re talking a century or so. It’s a Japanese word. It means delicious.” (152) Him describing what umami is, tends to be a point of conversation he repeatedly has with  many important people in life such as Linda and his dead wife Noelia. Umami touches those around him, asking them to think more about their own individual food ways. Alfonso lives in a house called Umami. He also expresses how umami is the reason why he married his wife as it was a concept that intrigued her and begun their future relationship. Umami has contributed to so many aspects of his life, but when his wife dies, it’s almost as if one of his five flavors die, his umami dies. After the death of his wife, he drowns in grief and looses parts of himself such as his devotion to amaranth, he takes a sabbatical and spends his days drinking and uninspired.

While reading Testimonio, I was very moved by how tight knit Menchú’s family and community was. That being said, the way in which the progression of events was written made them even more heartbreaking. Menchú’s community moved as a unit and everyone took care of one another. Keeping that background story and information in mind when reading the second half of this story really brought emphasis on what desperation can force a person to do. We see pure desperation when Menchú’s brother is sold out for 15 quetzales, by a member of a community that he once supported and in turn they supported him. We see how these brutal treatments and torture physically effect communities, but also how they can try to turn them against one another. Moments like this in history are so brutal and key to the destruction of families, cultures and communities. These events not only pain a moment in history but can transcend generations. This reading was so difficult for me personally, as I distanced myself from the reading, to make me feel like this moment in time happened further from the present than it really did. I believe it is always important to keep in mind how close these times are to people and how they still impact our living relatives to this day, or even ourselves. They are not events of the past, they are events that have occurred in the life of those still living. It was hard reading all the way through to the end, to see how they organize and are resilient was moving, while I also kept in my mind how my family chose a different route to a similar situation. To flee and forget. There is a lot of pain fighting the urge to forget these history’s, but what this reading has brought to light for me, was the importance of telling the story, not forgetting history, and not becoming dull to the pain. While writing this, I cry for my family, for those who had to bear witness to such tragedies, and those who fell victim to these brutalities.