Latinx Heritage Month and the Search for Belonging
I am writing from a cis-gendered non-Black Latina from Mexican descent lens. When I use “we” or “our”--I am speaking to other non-Black people from Mexican descent, although I also believe there are truths shared that apply beyond those constraints. I am aware of and embrace that there are many groups of races, peoples, and heritage that are made invisible by each other and the same constructs of white supremacy that I will be speaking toward. I’m starting the conversation with those that share aspects of my lived experience as a non-Black Mexican person.
In a series of unexpected events, I ended up in Madrid in the last days of a month where we celebrate the contributions of Latinx people in the United States. While being here, I learned that the National Day of Spain was at first created because of what was formerly known as Christopher Columbus Day (now Indigenous People’s Day, which we also just celebrated). I walked by a Spanish government office and in front of it hung several flags from Latin American countries with the Spanish flag in the middle as the largest and most prominent. As I watched the flag fly and people standing below it, waving their own Spanish flags, my stomach flipped.
I wasn’t sure why I was angry. Something felt like betrayal. I searched for the Mexican flag as if hoping it wasn’t there, but I knew it would be. When I found it, I felt a sadness–one that I can’t forget because it came with a knowing that all that I have ever known about my roots are inextricably intertwined with that of the oppressor. More so, that I come from both the oppressor and the oppressed, colonizer and colonized, what and who is upheld and demeaned, who is loved and who is hated. You see, my ancestry (thank you, 23andMe?) is about 50% from indigenous peoples in what is now known as Jalisco, Mexico, and about 45% from peoples in Spain, with a trickle of other peoples in Africa. This is true for many people (not all) that identify as Latinx, Latina/o, Hispanic, etc.--we are often confused about who we are or where we come from because we can only identify with a location rather than a race. There is no box for us to check off that feels accurate enough. The more that I dive into my identity and sense of belonging, I realize the fact that we don’t have a box is entirely on purpose.
Latinidad, much like race in general, is a social construct and a way to give people a proximity to whiteness, and a tool to further extrapolate the power of white supremacy. A quick Google search will tell you that Latinidad is “a Spanish-language term that refers to the various attributes shared by Latin American people and their descendants without reducing those similarities to any single essential trait.” At first, it feels like–yeah! That makes sense. It speaks to a truth we all share–a love of belonging, feeling seen for aspects of our culture that feel othered in countries like the United States. When you are stomped on or demeaned for things like accents, physical features, skin color, names, and the long list of stereotypes, we cling for dear life to things that make us feel like we belong to something, that something being Latinidad. And so we sit in Latinidad and pull on that rope hoping for it to be tied to a lifesaving float and our access to safety–social, financial, and psychological. Let’s stick with this metaphor of the rope, the float, and trying to survive in the ocean.
The rope is Latinidad–we hold on to it, we pull on it, we thank the sun, moon, and stars for it, because it makes us feel hope for survival. It’s the pride we feel when we fly our countries’ flags, the music that moves our hips in ways that we know others cannot, the food that satisfy every taste bud and every sensory receptor in our noses, the bright colors, the embroidered blouses, the sound of heels hitting wooden floors when they dance folklorico with colorful waves of a skirt flowing in perfect harmony. We feel delighted, we feel together, we feel pride, we feel love. For those of us born and/or raised in the United States, we feel a deeper sense of pride in aspects of ourselves we’ve been conditioned to hate, so we cling to its belonging. As if Mexico is the long lost mother that hugs us in a warm embrace after years of living with the cold and hateful white American stepmother that rejects us. And so, we grip the rope harder, even though we know it’s chafing our hands, burning them, and we realize too late that we’ve been bleeding. Although it hurts, it seems better than letting it go.
The chafing, the burning, the bleeding comes from the intertwined elements in the rope of Latinidad–as if it has barbed wire, metals, and coarse threads interwoven to make it stronger for its survival as a rope and for the people it saves. That barbed wire is white supremacy, the metals are patriarchy and machismo, the coarse threads are elements like anti-Blackness, anti-indigeneity, misogyny, and the severing of our minds, bodies, and souls.
When the conquistadores arrived in the lands they called the New World, they understood that in order to conquer the land, they needed to conquer the people–over and over again. Total domination over generations of people requires both physical and psychological warfare. How do you dominate people’s minds? How do you control them? How do you have them be in service of you and your people? First, you give them something to fear–guns, torture, rape, and a total dehumanization of their being. Second, you teach them where they belong on the hierarchy you are creating by developing defining differences like the color of your skin, physical features, language, mannerisms, etc. When the inevitable mating between the white Spanish men and indigenous women happens (we all know it was rape, at least at first), then what do you do with the “mixed” people if they have a claim to whiteness but are not “pure” white? You give them a name that allows them to be different from the indigenous peoples but not have complete access–in comes “mestizo.” You also use mestizos or mestizaje has a tool for white supremacy, just like mulattos and anti-Blackness—they can be allowed into the house, maybe attend some parties, access to some money, all so they feel a part of you but not too much–you can’t have them feeling like they belong like a full white person, right? So, mestizos feel the power of their proximity to whiteness and the hatred of the indigeneity that feels like it holds them back, makes them susceptible to pain, and opens them to hatred both of themselves and of others that remind them of their indigeneity. They grow up, staring at themselves in a mirror, often hating or being disgusted at the features they believe make them ugly–the width of their nose, the skin that won’t brighten, the eyes that are too big and too dark, the lips that are too full. Then, as the oppressor and colonizer, you have created a group of people that manage and control the rest “below,” perpetuate what you taught them, protect the hierarchy that keeps you at the top, and you even save energy while they make you more powerful, rich, and protected.
And so, the rope burns us, hurts us, makes us bleed. The metals in that rope we know as machismo and patriarchy are what make our men weaker–they are detached from their emotions to survive and they fall victim to themselves. They hurt their loved ones, become enslaved in the fight to gain financial wealth only to grow old and understand it brought them little happiness, and realize too late that their pursuit of power in wealth puts them further in the cage of white supremacy, trying to be more like the white hetero men in power, and learning to fear the emotions that would set them free.
On the other side of the same coin, toxic marianismo conditions our women to be subservient for the sake of others. We learn to idolize sacrifice as honorable, silence as beauty, and humility as access. If we’re quiet enough, serving enough, not showing our emotions, and allow anyone access to power over us, then we are virtuous like the Virgin Mary–another tool of control and dehumanization. To be seen and not heard, objectified and forced to cast down our eyes in shame of our bodies, talked and walked over–all make us admirable, while simultaneously destroying us. The rope continues to dig deeper and deeper, with streams of blood that run down our forearms. When we say it hurts, we’re told we’re not bleeding, or that they have all bled before and that soon it turns into scars and you don’t notice the pain anymore. It’s as if the jagged rope is now permanently entrenched in their hands and they’re not sure where one begins and the other one ends.
By severing our minds, bodies, and souls, we become easy to control, profit from, and lucrative tools in keeping power. We exist in a world that doesn’t seem to have a place for us–neither from here, nor from there, endlessly searching for belonging, starving to know we have a place and not out here alone. Coming to the realization that Latinidad comes with a price to pay, one that I’m no longer willing to pay, knowing that a place that I belong to wouldn’t make me pay a price in the first place. You see, this rope is attached to a boat, but white supremacy doesn’t intend on actually allowing you to get on the boat. The lighter you are, the closer you are to the part of the rope attached to the boat, but if the waters get too tumultuous, they’re cutting off the rope, and you along with it.
Coming to Spain has made me feel more removed from belonging than I have ever felt before. I’m surrounded by white faces with blond hair and blue eyes yet feel eerily familiar in the music and the language spoken. Being here and feeling so different, I realized that that in feeling othered, I held onto things that give me proximity to whiteness and therefore power–my financial stability, the way I speak American English, the passport that I hold–it’s like I felt the beast of proximity to white supremacy roaring its ugly head when I felt powerlessness. The things that the white colonizer fetishized about indigenous women are what make me beautiful here–my long, flowing brown hair, my almond-shaped eyes and long eyelashes, and my accentuated curves. In a way, I wielded those things, too, for security, safety, and another source of power.
It all made me think–will we ever be able to really let go of this rope that hurts us? Is that possible in a world where everyone sacrifices their entire selves, mind-body-soul, to hold onto the rope, to white supremacy, to survival? Telling people that the rope is making others hurt, making them hurt, or that it was socially constructed therefore insignificant in the pursuit of happiness and life, it only makes them hold onto it harder. Believing it’s not real makes their pain and sacrifice arbitrary–then what does their life mean, what are they worth, what will they need to learn to gain power again? No, that sacrifice and psychological shattering of the world as they understand it is too much to bear for most.
So, I sit here, in this little coffee shop in Spain, looking at white faces that look back at me with curiosity, as if I’m a novelty like the hot chocolate they drink. Hot chocolate, like me, that is only here because of colonization. I sit and wonder about the ancestors that come from Spain and how angry they must’ve felt about my existence at some point in my heritage–a byproduct of mating between a white son and an indigenous woman, a dilution of their purity. Children whom they didn’t want to claim as their own unless it benefited them.
I close my eyes and I can see my indigenous ancestors, looking at me with pain and love. That kind of look when your eyes are welling with tears, but you see the echoes of a smile. A pride and joy, but a loneliness that comes from being forgotten and abandoned. They’ve been waiting for me to see them. They tell me how they’ve been there this whole time, in the passion I hold for justice, in the reminders to connect with nature, in the way my soul ignites when I’m told to be silent. They’ve been here all along rowing alongside me in the ocean, while I turned my back to them in order to hold onto the rope–a rope that wasn’t attached to anything, just a mere illusion so that I would bleed out and drown. They whisper to me to let go of the rope, it’s time to be free.
