I remember as a little girl, I would see these photographs on my great grandmother’s bureau; of people whose faces were so rigid I felt I understood why my great-grandmother could be so cruel. The photograph was centered around a man who sat comfortably, albeit rigidly, in a chair. Off to the side stood a woman. I always wondered if she had ever been happy, o si se lo tragaba todo, para que no se la tragara a ella. Had it been her choice to stand?
Much later, when I had finally learned enough English to be able to make sense of sounds that always seemed to crash into one another when spoken, I remember seeing the same type of photographs in the history books while in school. The expressions as severe as the ones I knew were sitting on my great-grandmother’s bureau. We learned of the time periods in which these women, sobrevivían y peleaban por el derecho a existir. It wasn’t until 1974, 49 years ago, that a woman could have her very own bank account, with no marriage price tag; in the United States of America. (Rose, 2023) By this time, my grandmother had already had children alone in her bedroom, and had had to bury others. Pero esos tiempos eran diferentes, cuando el robar mujeres era romántico.
European-American women were fighting for their right to have a bank account without having to be married, and my grandmother was having to survive her second colonization. Mis abuelos had grand-parents que nacieron Yaqui, nacieron españoles, and some fought alongside Pancho Villa. Our first colonization estaba aún muy presente, even if it had begun centuries prior. Mexico won their independence from Spain in 1821, only 45 years after the US had won theirs; it had been a 1st generation Mexican born que empezó la conspiración que lo llevó a cabo. (Garcés et al.) No sooner had Mexico been born when the fight against the second colonization had begun. Ya que el USA, y Francia ya estaban cruzando fronteras para hacer lo que hace un cuerno de chivo in a mass shooting which continues to take place in good old ‘Murica to this very day.
Aún más luego me tocó tener fotos a mi, y fue mi turno en tener que navegar el fluyo de la vida. Ella fluye, all around you, sepas tu o no, como no ahogarte. Healthy community is our fertilizer, but you need to know when people are not your community, and are better off alone. Life will lazily carry you on your back, as the sun whispers soft kisses along your skin. It will drown you under a 100-foot-tall wave, smashing into your body at 500 mph, as the heavens unleash screams that shatter the world into a trillion pieces. Así fue como al vivir, mi mente, mi alma, mi cuerpo se empezó a curtir.
I have understood that one day, I too will be just a photograph either displayed, guardada, or forgotten and lost to time. But when I look around us, the dread in the pit of my stomach whispers insistently that tomorrow it will be my photo that is circulated on social media, or the news. Another face and name added to the long list of casualties del sueño americano. O aún peor, ¿será la foto de alguien al cual yo ame? Just another body masticado por el sistema that created and runs the United States. Just ask Elsa Mendoza Marquez, Vanessa Guillen, Kendrick Castillo, y Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez.
Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez
Ana con 8 años, ya soñabas con ser doctora, y tus padres soñaban con darles a ti y a tus hermanos una mejor vida. (Montoya-Galvez, 2023) They believed in the propaganda that the US sells to the world about the American dream. Pero para pedir asylum, you have to be physically present in the United States and not be a U.S. citizen. (2023 USCIS) Cuando llegaron, Custom Border Patrol (CBP) ya estaban ahí listos para agarrarlos. They made her parents and siblings watch her die right in front of them. No amount of begging for help, or begging for medical attention, made a single CBP agent lift a finger to get her medical care. (Montoya-Galvez, 2023) Fue ese día que tus padres pagaron la primera factura del sueño americano. Democrats charged the same payment from Ana and her family, that the Republicans charged the father of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal in 2019. Nuestra hermosa Jakelin, una niña Q’eqchi’, who was forcibly taken from her father and died alone while they just watched. (Brigida, 2020)
Pero no se preocupen, la muerte de Ana ya está siendo investigada. I imagine they will investigate it as deeply as they did when ICE detained immigrant women and sterilized them. (Manian, 2023) I mean, Mahendra Amin, “the uterus collector,” who carried these “alleged” sterilizations (Vásquez, 2021) was identified in 2020. But, as of July 2023, is still walking free, practicing as a doctor in Douglas, Georgia. The man isn’t even certified with the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. (Whistle-Blower, 2023) We have also not forgotten that some of our children, which were taken under the republican presidency, are still missing. In fact, we now have to add 85,000 more children missing to that list, all “lost” under the democratic presidency. (Martínez & Grisales, 2023) Como que son tocayos no, la bola de ellos? Where are our children? Regresen a nuestros niños.
Kendrick Castillo
Kendrick was the same age as my little brother. Como todo un Coloradean eras amante of hunting, fishing, the outdoors, four-wheeling and cars. Eras bien canica mi chavo, you attended a STEM school and were well on your way to be a mechanical, or electrical engineer since you loved science and robotics. (Tabachnik, 2019) I still remember all the times that I had been in school, and we had gone into lockdown, or done shooting drills. To this day, I still look for all the exits and possible hiding places of every single room I enter. But I at least made it out of high school, Kendrick died con solo 3 días para graduarse. Kendrick died at the age of 18 because he tackled the school shooter so he couldn’t hurt any of his classmates. Ese día nos enseñaste tu corazón Kendrick, y es solo por eso que fuiste el único en morir. Lograste proteger a todos. (Tabachnik, 2019)
He had more backbone than the Uvalde Police Department. They couldn’t even be bothered to save children, but they sure arrested and pepper sprayed the parents that tried to do what any parent would do if their kid was being shot at; which was to try to save their child. (Kingsley, 2022) I wonder what would have happened if we had taken more serious action after Columbine. After all, Kendrick died 20 years after Columbine took place; less than 20 miles away from Columbine. Since Columbine, there have been 118 “active shooter incidents,” at schools(K-12) across the country. (Vigderman, 2023) But thank you so much Polis, for tweeting that Kendrick Castillo Day was May 15, 2019.
Vanessa Guillen
Vanessa, you were a 1st generation who wore her cadenita like many of us do every single day. (Diaz et al., 2020) Fuiste de corazón tan fuerte y noble, that you joined the military to serve and to protect. At 20 years of age, you were stolen from us, not by war, but by the same people you worked with. It took a protest, organized by her family, for anyone to seriously start looking for her after she had already been reported missing. (Staff, 2023) No solo eso, pero todavía tuvieron el descaro de decirle a su familia que ella estaba AWOL. (Oxner, 2021) They had the audacity to tell her mom and her sister that this intelligent, responsible, courageous young lady was not really missing, and had just decided to leave. Not to mention, being AWOL carries monetary and confinement consequences along with possibly being discharged dishonorably from the military. (The Military Justice Center, 2022)
Pero hasta con su muerte, Vanessa and her family helped another family find closure. In searching for Vanessa, they found the skeletal remains of another soldier who had been missing for almost a year, Gregory Morales. (Staff, 2023) Just like Vanessa, he had been considered AWOL, but unlike Vanessa, he had been finally tachado simply as a deserter. (Hamilton, 2020) Que fácil no, just designate someone a deserter, or that they are AWOL, and you elude having to be accountable for their disappearance. I am so sorry they didn’t believe you when you tried to tell them what he had done to you. I am even more sorry for what they did to you because you spoke up. Had they done the right thing, Ana Basaldua Ruiz would not have been sexually harassed just like you, and she might still be alive today. (Lenthang, 2023)
Elsa Mendoza Marquez
Elsa, mi amada Elsa, I still feel as if there is not enough oxygen to fill my lungs after your death. You dedicated your life to education, you vehemently believed in our children and our future. You lived and survived in a city which is considered to be one of the most dangerous cities to live in, Juarez. (Uribe, 2019) You survived and beat breast cancer (Uribe, 2019), and when you were taken from us, like the others mentioned above, you left a gaping hole in the lives of those who loved you. You were only quickly running into Wal-Mart, you weren’t going to take that long. Tu esposo y tu hijo estaban afuera esperando, ya que tenías que tomar un vuelo hacia Colorado, because your daughter had just graduated university. (Uribe, 2019)
A woman who lived in and survived for years in a city deemed to be a hugely dangerous place, beat breast cancer; could not survive racism in the United States. On August 3, 2019, Elsa stepped into Wal-Mart and died for the simple fact that she was Hispanic/Latina. Patrick Wood Crusuis killed 23 people that day. He killed them because he wanted to. He killed them because he wanted to do his part in cleansing the United States from Hispanics. (2023 DOJ) He held so much hate in his heart that he posted a manifesto before driving to kill as many Hispanics as he could. Crusuis exposed a truth that all of us have known, we are being hunted.
To my No Sabo hermanes, in case one day it shall be me.
El beso de mi madre fue la primera huella en mi alma. Me acobijo en la dulzura de su amor and in there was born my first privilege. I grew up con telenovelas, banda, corridos, cumbias, Juan Gabriel, Roció Dúrcal, Selena, tortillas hechas a mano, piñatas, quinceañeras y que no falte la salsita. I was sheltered under the labor that was extracted from my father, a man who taught me what it means to work before the sun has shown its face until mucho después de que el sol haya caído. Mis padres taught me como echar vergazos; porque si tu no le chingas a la vida, la vida te chinga a ti. I grew up going to catechism y echándole ganas al inglés, because who else was going to translate doctor 's visits, or entrarle cuando los gringos se trataban de aprovechar.
Your status, or that of your parents was a secret que te tragabas y por ningún motivo did you ever whisper it to a single soul. You knew that if you let this secret escape, it could mean that the people you loved would disappear. Back then there was no ICE, pero si la migra, and sometimes they would spring traps when everyone was going to work. They would block entrance and exit of a town/area/farm and grab everyone, they were called redadas. There was no internet or cell phones, so you had to wait until the end of the day to see if your parents would come home. Before there was social media and cameras at the ready, they had the audacity to deny they ever did this.
I felt lost in a society where I was told over and over in different ways that I did not belong. I was a wetback, a frijolera, but not an American. My English was never good enough, my Mexican accent always seemed to kiss every single word that I spoke. I didn’t know the twinkle-twinkle little star song, and didn’t understand what the pledge of allegiance was. Pero cuando iba a México, I was a gringa. I was stripped of my Mexican roots for being born on the other side of the frontera. The ridicule of speaking my Spanglish withered the fluidity of my mother tongue.
I had thought that if I could just strip my accent from my English and got better at it, I could prove that I was good enough to be American. I thought that if I went to university, it would be easier to blend in. I thought that if I white-washed all the parts of myself that were Mexican, I could be one of them. I still remember the first time I stumbled on the word Chicana. A whole new world of possibility opened in front of my very own eyes. It was the first time I saw myself reflected in American society. Like me, they occupied the in between. Too Mexican to be American, and too American to be Mexican. I thought I found a space that I could be just me. I didn’t realize the world of identity politics that I had entered, or that years later we would still be having to defend the terms with which we identified.
Slowly I gained my footing in this society, and I learned to camouflage. Like a toddler learning to take its first steps, I somehow made my way through university. Back then, they sold us the dream that if you went to college, you would be able to have a good job. With a good job you would be able to have a stable life, and you would finally be able to do more than just survive. Pero como saben, university has a price. Many of us went off to college, debt up to our eyeballs, while not understanding what the consequences would be. Many of us are still paying school loans for degrees we couldn't even finish. Many of us have paid our debt already, but because of interest, still owe the same amount that we borrowed. Many of us are paying for degrees that have nothing to do with what we actually do for work. I watched my dad have 2-3 jobs, and now am having to do it as well.
Trabajamos como burros y hacemos que la economía corra (Cool, 2023), and in so giving up our minds, our bodies, and our time to capitalism. Yet, we still can’t even buy a small house in the town we grew up in, and dreamed of being able to leave behind. We are chained to jobs that only make the rich richer, whose only concern if we died would be, who would cover our shift. They criminalize our status para esclavizarnos. In the 13th amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (Congress.gov) While in prison they make us work for free, or if we are lucky, get paid maximum $2.00/hour. (Kent State University, 2021)
They get away with this because we have forgotten who we are, and where we come from. One of our ancestors, the Aztecs, had running water at a time Europe still had not discovered indoor plumbing. They kept a clean sustainable city where hygiene was imperative as well as sanitation. They understood the importance of recycling, and even had water drainage systems. (Becerril & Jiménez, 2007) They had floating farms where they cultivated the food that they ate. They were called Chinampa. They were so efficient that, with how badly we have exploited the earth, we are turning back to it in order to save modern agriculture. (Gayatri, 2022) Venimos de toda una civilización.
They told us that we deserved to be conquered because we came from savages that fell against the might of Hernan Cortez. They told us we deserved it because we were stupid enough to trade our gold for mirrors and baubles brought by the españoles. But they don’t tell you that with the españoles came disease and plague, such that had never touched our lands. We can only estimate, because so much knowledge has been lost, waiting to be rediscovered by us, their children, but millions of us died due to this plague. It would not be an exaggerated figure to say that 80% of our population died because of it. (500 years later, scientists discover what probably killed the Aztecs 2018) Yet they still fought, to the very end. (Beck, 2021) We were here long before the United States of America, y todavía nos dicen go back to your country.
You and I both belong here. Aún estamos en las tierras en las cuales nuestros ancestros caminaron, mucho antes de que fuera Estados Unidos.
I want to believe and dream like Ana. I want to be brave and have courage like Kendrick and Vanessa. I want to live a life that pays tribute to Elsa. When I must, I will survive. When I can, I will heal myself and all the generational trauma that I carry with me. But through it all, I will dream, for the reality of today was born from someone else’s dream. I will not go quietly into the night, I will go bailando, cantando y gozando at the top of my lungs.
References
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