Garza first became interested in genealogy when he and his father were migrant workers in Texas, listening to his father’s family stories during long hours picking carrots. “I’m not going to say I’m embarrassed or going to apologize for what they did, because I have ancestors on both sides,” Garza said. Courtesy Teresa Vega“Enslavement [and] genocide were designed to cut the ties that bind,” said Teresa Vega, an African American and Puerto Rican genealogist and public educator based in New York. “I had been to Puerto Rico before, but I reconnected with my Taíno and Afro Indigenous side,” Vega said. At that time she was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to own a store selling candles,’” Garcia said.

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