Other days, I was immersed in the city’s often-overlooked history. At the Oregon Historical Society, I learned about the nearly 15,000 Mexican men who came to Oregon during World War II through the Bracero Program, helping sustain the state’s farming and timber industries while U.S. men were deployed, and often experiencing wage theft, dangerous conditions, and segregation in return. At the Portland Museum of Art, I marveled at abstract works by Afro-Puerto Rican artist Iván Carmona Rosario that took inspiration from the mountains of a Caribbean land we both call home. And at Hopscotch, an immersive art experience, I wept in the Secret Garden, a room by artists Paloma Cortez and Pamela Rachel, where participants safely and anonymously share their deepest secrets, trusting strangers to listen and hold them beneath the shelter of artistic tree and bush forms. Finally, I ended the night, and my trip, at Palomar, a tropical, dimly-lit Cuban restaurant-bar, savoring a deeply satisfying jackfruit ropa vieja tostada.