My family was never the most... Traditional. Remember my Dia de los Muertos article? Yeah, the one where I admitted I had to figure out how to celebrate on my own? Well, there ya' go. Sure, we've always made tamales for New Year's and had barbacoa breakfasts on Saturday mornings. I will always remember my grandmother's home awash with color because of all her talavera (don't worry, she's alive!). Tejano music has always filled the living room when its time to clean or bumped out of the car stereo on a road trip. And of course, we can never pass up a good agua fresca from Chicho Boys on a hot summer day.
Even still, despite all of that, a part of me has always been insecure. I never had the guts to try barbacoa or a tamale until just this last year, and I grew up blissfully unaware of the powerhouse that was Selena. I didn't have a quinceañera when I turned quince. Heck, I grew up hearing Spanish, but the only time I actively learned it was in high school. In short, I'm what they call a pocha -- a third- or fourth-generation Mexican-American whose family gradually deviated more and more from their roots. What is this to say? To most Americans, I pass totally and completely for white, even so far as to give false security to a classmate in middle school who felt the need to claim superiority over Mexicans. But as I now attend a predominantly Hispanic university, I have discovered myself assimilating more and more into the loud and proud Latino culture. I feel so good exploring my roots extensively for the first time, to be able to have an enclave to fall into and belong. At least, that's what I thought. For the past couple of years, I've been watching a couple of YouTube channels by the names of Pero Like and Flama. I have found that I do in fact relate to much of what is portrayed in their videos; if not personally, than by stories related to me by my mom or my grandma, not the least of which being -- who is Latino? This is when I discovered how close-minded so many of my brothers and sisters could be. Just because I am fourth-generation Chicana, I am suddenly "not Latina enough". Never mind the fact that my great-grandmother was raised in Mexico for all of her formative years, or that my grandmother has traveled extensively between here and Ocotlán and spoke Spanish as her first language. On that note, who came up with the rule that you can only consider yourself Latino/a if you speak Spanish or were born in a Latin American country? This is exactly the kind of stubbornness that convinced me I wasn't Latina enough for so much of my life. So, to conclude this epic rant, here is my definition of "Latino": if you have Latin blood in your genes, that is the ONLY qualifier! Who gives a rat's cola if you or your parents were born or raised in another country? You didn't have to be immersed in that particular culture from the second you were born. If you want to explore your identity just as I have, then go for it! As for me, I will continue to sip my Abuelita's and eat my conchas in peace, confident in the fact that I am just as Latina as anyone else on this planet, while at the same time embracing the other side of my heritage -- you know, the part that gave me my vampiric complexion and average height. Necesitamos quedarnos en unidad, no en diferencias. Todos nosotros somos Latinos.
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AuthorMy name is Dani Slaughter. I am a university student from San Antonio, musing about what I see and how I see it. Archives
October 2020
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