EP 158 | Marcela Aviles Davidson

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

CloudCast and NSPN take you to a place where no podcast has gone before, the center.

Ruben Navarrette (0:07)

Well, welcome back to Ruben In The Center, where we avoid the extremes in favor of nuance, honesty and common sense. I'm Ruben Navarrette, your host. I'm a writer, author, syndicated columnist recovering radio talk show host and TV commentator. I'm also the CEO and founder of the Navarrette the Sonic Podcast Network. I live here, right here in the middle of the road, where my goal isn't to make you angry, only to make you think, but I warn you from experience, having to think just might make you angry.

Well, we have always so many interesting guests and some great conversations here on Ruben In The Center. I'm very proud to have a circle of friends and acquaintances I have. And, you know, it's always great just to take a moment and get them to reflect on their own personal story and what they have learned over time and what they can share with the rest of us. And my friend today and my guest today is no exception to that. Her name is Marcella Davison Avilés. She is a longtime friend who has a great interesting story that took her to Harvard as an undergrad, Stanford Law School, a career in corporate law.

She'll tell you the story and also a major departure into a very happy place where she's done some very interesting impactful work. And every time I talk to her, she's always sort of lit up about her work and what she does and she'll get into that. And she'll also talk a little bit about a major change recently where she moved out of California where she lived so long to Wisconsin. And some of the interesting changes there. Marcela, welcome to Ruben In The Center.

Marcela Davison Avilés (1:35)

Ruben, it's terrific to be here and thank you for the invitation.

Ruben Navarrette (1:38)

You bet. So this is a storyteller podcast. I want to start by getting your story. And you can start me anywhere you like. It can be at the beginning, at childhood, adolescence, in college or Harvard or beyond that.

Tell me the Marcela story.

Marcela Davison Avilés (1:53)

Well, I don't know that it's very interesting or enlightening, but I appreciate the invitation.

I guess my story starts where I was born, which is on the border. And I think that really informs a lot of what I'm doing now as a storyteller in different genres.

So I was born in Nogales, Arizona.

My family is from Sonora, Nogales, if folks are familiar with that part of the border, is right in the middle between Sonora, Mexico and Pima County, Arizona. And my family actually has a history with that part of the Sonoran region going way back. My great-great-grandfather and his brothers immigrated to America from Santander, Spain back in the late 1800s. They went through Texas and arrived in Nogales around 1880 They opened up a mercantile, which is still there, or family members still operate a mercantile that my grandfather helped to found and worked in. And my grandmother was born there. My mother, she ended up heading south with my grandfather, Jesus Aviles. And it's so interesting what occupied people back in the day. So he was with Wells Fargo de México, but he wasn't a banker. He was an accountant for Wells Fargo when they were a shipper.

And my grandmother was from the Mexican side of Nogales. And my father also has an interesting story. His folks, again, were from the Sonoran region. But Davison is in my name because my grandfather, Robert Bady Davison, I would say he was the person in the family who had a lot of wanderlust. He ended up leaving New Jersey, ended up in Chile. He was a mining mechanic for the railroad, of course. And just wherever the railroad was, that's where he worked. He ends up in Sonora, where he settles down. And of course, I don't know any Mexican or Mexican American family that doesn't have some sort of Pancho Villa story. Pancho Villa did go to my family. We have one too. 100%. Yeah. So my granddad was tall. He was very fair. He had blue eyes. And so the family story goes, he was very noticeable in the little railroad town where he was working. And it was about the time of the revolution. So they had to hide out because they want little Pancho to find him. And he ends up taking the family to, of course, Nogales, where my dad grew up. So we, you know, I have had this, I don't know, romance with the border, which is kind of in the bloodlines. You know, I remember the border that was, and I lament that it no longer exists. And, you know, I have a lot of relatives who were artists and storytellers. And I think the, my mother in particular, loved to tell stories about growing up in Nogales and going to high school in Nogales and getting caught by her father across the line, being in a cantina where she shouldn't have been. And, and so I think that that was perhaps subconsciously one of the reasons why I got out of practicing law, because, you know, fast forward to going to high school in Tucson, ending up in Cambridge, you know, being very shocked that it snowed in May, and I had to put put away my Mexican embroidered peasant blouse because I was freezing in on the campus. And, you know, the, I don't know how you feel Ruben, but I think you can't survive in a place like that as an undergrad, not being from that environment without having a way to reconnect with your identity as a sort of a pathway to your own resilience. And, you know, my family just was very, I would say, instrumental, especially my mother in not only, you know, encouraging me hanging there, don't leave. But, you know, I could always go home.