Who We Are Part 2

I got it from watching my 60-year-old abuelo come home every night chingotiado from picking cilantro till his hands turned green and purple So that his children’s children could go to school in Tejas. It was sitting on the couch with me as we counted monedas for the bus while we only worried about getting an education at Chapman across town, instead, of worrying about quitting elementary school and help work in the fields by age 10 because my father, and his father already made that sacrifice for me. We got it by watching Mami crying “no entiendo lo que dicen!” every time she stepped foot into the racist JCPenny down the street, because that is where Americanos buy their fancy clothes. And it came to us in the form of cheap insults for being more brown than white, which forced our eyes to see things without the rose-colored glasses offered to white people like free samples at a Costco. We got it by watching Trump plaster the TV about us being the problem when nuestra gente have never shot up a school because of mental health issues stemming from white-privledge, because we don’t do those pendejadas, because we were taught to respect everyone or face the chancla to our backside till our nalgas turned bright red from the embarrassment to our people. And now, here I am in my JCPenny jeans and blouse, that was bought with the fear of being white-washed over the blood and sweat de mis padres, proudly holding my College degree en la misma mano that I used to sign my name with when I finally bought a house. Con orgullo, I watch my child give a speech to thousands of people who look to him as a pillar of hope for Latinos about changing the world starting here In California, speaking in my Grandfather’s native tongue, saying, “Si se puede” because he understands the one thing you can’t buy in any store; the one thing that is served in every latino household from dusk till dawn because it feels like a hot bowl of menudo on a rainy day to us. The only thing the first generation made sure to bring with them as they crossed the border in fear. It is the same thing that was given to their children, and their children, and their children and their children… and is now engrained into our very fiber of who we are.