{"id":18,"date":"2017-08-08T09:48:11","date_gmt":"2017-08-08T09:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/?p=18"},"modified":"2017-08-08T09:48:11","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T09:48:11","slug":"a-mexican-american-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/2017\/08\/08\/a-mexican-american-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mexican-American in Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you\u2019re from the US, why do you speak Spanish so well?\u201d\u00a0 This was a question I faced just about every time I met anyone in Mexico and Nicaragua.\u00a0 Internally, I would think \u201chow could I not?\u201d\u00a0 Not speaking Spanish would mean not knowing three out of my four grandparents who didn\u2019t speak English. \u00a0Speaking the language made me feel connected to them and our roots.<\/p>\n

In the US, \u201cwhat are you?\u201d is not an uncommon question (although a little rude, at times).\u00a0 I was born <\/em>in the US, sure, but I am <\/em>Mexican.\u00a0 It\u2019s the defining category I check on forms and the experience that I live. \u00a0It\u2019s what many see when they first look at me. \u00a0It also means culture, traditions, a way of thinking, food, and family.<\/p>\n

Ni de aqu\u00ed, ni de all\u00e1: neither from here, nor there, <\/em>is a state that many children of Mexican immigrants are familiar with.\u00a0 The feeling of belonging in neither culture can strain a sense of identity and self-acceptance.\u00a0 As a second-generation Mexican-American, I am blessed enough to have felt this only rarely.\u00a0 I have privileges such as citizenship, fluency in English, and others that make me more \u201cacceptable\u201d to the standards set by American society. \u00a0Still, the characteristics that make me more acceptable to American society can sometimes seem to be distancing me from my heritage.\u00a0 Am I less Mexican because I\u2019m vegetarian? Because I don\u2019t understand a lot of the Mexican slang my peers speak and hadn\u2019t visited the country in six years?<\/p>\n

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Interviewing a farmer in Tlaxcala Photo Credit: Santa Clara University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the field in Mexico, in my Nike sneakers and unaware of local farming traditions, units of measurement, and local geography, I often felt it was glaringly obvious I didn\u2019t belong. \u00a0\u00a0Despite my efforts to retain my culture, in Mexico, I was American.\u00a0 My grandparents might have been born in Mexico, but I was American.\u00a0 When people looked at me, I was a foreigner.\u00a0 The way I dressed, took pictures of every meal, and the Spanglish <\/em>I fought to suppress exposed me.\u00a0 The culture that I loved and felt coursing through my veins did not view me as its own.\u00a0 It stung a little.\u00a0 Still, instead of the skepticism that I expected, the people that we met welcomed us with open arms.\u00a0 Sistema Biobolsa clients opened their homes to show us their biodigesters and animals, while potential customers shared their experiences and hopes for obtaining a biodigester. \u00a0They answered our surveys happily and even thanked us for choosing them to visit.\u00a0 Not one person we visited refused to lend us their time or denied any questions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Cows don’t care where you are from as long as you are nice. Photo Credit: Santa Clara University<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My status as an outsider that I assigned to myself didn\u2019t affect the way the people I met treated me as much as I had expected it to.\u00a0 Labels and backgrounds can play a huge role in who we are and how we feel if we chose to let them; however, I found that they don\u2019t always affect how people treat you.\u00a0 The farmers and Sistema Biobolsa employees that we met certainly didn\u2019t let it affect how they treated us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you\u2019re from the US, why do you speak Spanish so well?\u201d\u00a0 This was a question I faced just about every time I met anyone in Mexico and Nicaragua.\u00a0 Internally, I would think \u201chow could I not?\u201d\u00a0 Not speaking Spanish would mean not knowing three out of my four grandparents who didn\u2019t speak English. \u00a0Speaking … Continue reading A Mexican-American in Mexico<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1734,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"jperales","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/author\/jperales\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"\u201cIf you\u2019re from the US, why do you speak Spanish so well?\u201d\u00a0 This was a question I faced just about every time I met anyone in Mexico and Nicaragua.\u00a0 Internally, I would think \u201chow could I not?\u201d\u00a0 Not speaking Spanish would mean not knowing three out of my four grandparents who didn\u2019t speak English. \u00a0Speaking…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1734"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/jperales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}