My full name, following Mexican usage, is David Eduardo Tavárez Bermúdez. I was born in 1968, and attended mostly public schools in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Both of my parents (upper left, with my in-laws on the left) worked as secundaria (junior high) schoolteachers until their well-deserved retirement a few years ago. My father taught Spanish language and literature; my mother was a chemistry teacher. My only brother, Arturo (lower left), is a chef at a steak house/ranch/movie set location not far from El Paso, Texas. He has two boys, Irving (left) and David (right).
My father comes from a peasant family who had some land and a small dry goods store in Santa María, Chihuahua; my father's father, David Tabares García (upper row center) worked as a bracero for a few years in the 1950's. The last name Tabares (in the original spelling) is a common Portuguese surname; I don't know when my paternal ancestors moved to northern Mexico, but some potential seventeenth-century forebears include the relatives of a Franciscan friar, and a man investigated by the Inquisition for practicing Judaism clandestinely. Both my maternal grandfather Julio and my great-grandfather Julián Bermúdez (upper right; Julián is shown with his mother and sisters in the 1880's) were lawyers and local notables in the city of Durango. Julio's passions included literature, politics, and postcard collecting.
I met my wife Elisabeth (née Weinberg) in college (lower right). After a career in corporate communications, she joined the academic tribe and became the special assistant to Dr. Dennis Murray, president of Marist College. We adopted our dog Shayna in 2007; she holds her own office hours and attends the odd seminar.
