A few weeks back I came across an article written by Sara Calderon in newstaco.com on the difference between US born and Mexico born and as she pinpointed there is a difference for all reasons. Yet the part that got my attention was the response by people on facebook especially the Mexico born. Some of the comments read, "you think you are better; this is White wash; what happened to you; unemployment has really messed you up" and the list continued.
I was actually surprised because I actually thought that Calderon's article was stressing something vital which is quite easily sweeped under, which is the belief that Mexican Americans and Mexican Nationals are the same. And in the eyes of White people that might be the perception especially from universities that prove that there is no distinction between US born and foreign born but I guess the 14th Amendment does not matter. University ignorance is so prevalent they just lump undocumented Mexicans, legally admitted, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Cuban all as one. Though we the actual people they profess to be teaching about distinguish instantly. If Puerto Ricans and Cubans who are island brothers don't share the same culture even if they speak the same how is someone from the deserts going to share anything with a Latin America.
Yet as I have aged into my mid forties the characteristic of being Mexico born in my eyes has become that much more prevalent simply because being Mexico born and central and southernly born implies for me an entirely distinct cultural animal. Though this is not a new feeling, it has always been present since I can remember. The first actual cultural fact is the culture into one is born and due to the fact that the majority of Mexico born are not born in Baja California but from hundreds to thousands of miles away in lands I never saw until I was 18 years old and have never seen because most people come from small cities or pueblos I'll never see because I don't have a personal or family connection to. Those differences were even visible with cousins born in Baja California just across the entry point to Baja California because somehow we were of a different culture and we were though we shared many common cultural norms beyond just family and they seemed to be copying US customs too from the cholo dress to love of trucks, danish pastries to the constant usage of English in their Spanish. And grammatically they spoke correctly using raite, pichell, marketa, pickup, carro to Anglocizing their nicknames, Antonio to Tony, Maria to Mary, Pedro to Pete and Miguel to Mike. Nobody thought of it until southern Mexicans showed up and began correcting them and us on the US side to an abnoxious point. Hence if I noticed differences with people within the same region and similarities, I really noticed the differences with people from Sinaloa south.
For one I could never comprehend their word usages because they used words I did not comprehend and them correcting my California Spanish got to my nerve because they felt they culturally superior and they let it be known. I saw this with Mexico born girlfriends and a Bolivian foreigner too. I came to dispiss them because I felt they were all trying to impose a proper way of being without actually accepting me for who I was. I further saw we ate different foods, never quite liked their foods and even then they would try to say that isn't real Mexican food but it was to me California Mexican food and the most obvious difference was space.
Spatially much like the neighborhood definitions of defining ethnicity I saw them not spatially the same as me even with US born with their families originating from Zacatecas or Michoacan for the simple reason that my people were from both California/Baja California border region in Calexico. Even my mother doesn't see herself related to people from Sinaloa or Durango and neither do I. So culturally we are not the same and my grandmother being an Apache Yuma born in Arizona and never denying but stressing that she grew up speaking Apache Kunahuati Chalea Turi and practicing brujeria I was raised with that culture from the desert that did make us different from somebody not born in that region. Even my mother would stress that we were Apache (not her) because of my grandmother and was proven to me when people from Jalisco would tell me I looked like I came from Sonora, Indios.
Even from the US side I see myself different from Phoenix or New Mexicans and much less Tejanos--who likes them-- but when I was warmly received in Zuni or was asked what tribe I belonged to when visiting Acoma west of Alburquerque I can't help to notice I do belong to those desert ranchos where I originate from. Or better yet when I'm not viewed as a Mexican by recent arrivals because they don't view my spatialnicity related to theirs and neither do I. I was even told by Zamora, Michoacan people that my children didn't look Mexican even though their abuela Teresa was born in Los Angeles, their grandmother in Clifton, AZ, their great grandmother in Isleta, Texas and the great grandfather in Safford and they were Apache Mexican Americans. Even my great grandfather was born in Yuma from my Apache grandmother and only my father turns out to have been born in Baja Ca/ the Mexico side for protection. Birth certificates were not given to my grandmother born in Yuma but she didn't learn Spanish until age 10 so Baja Ca was more of a refuge place. Yes being US born does matter and it's not the same as Mexico born much less born 1000 miles south.
And there is also the 14th Amendment but why discuss that, it's no big deal. But the part that irritates me the most is this, who are Mexico born people to judge those of us born in the US? Do we need their permission to express how we feel? Are they the torchbearers of Mexican American culture? Do we need their permission to express ourselves or their reaffirmation because somehow we are Mexicanless in their eyes? Are they our cultural bestowers? Do I only exist because of them? Or as I just heard the other day, "I wasn't raised as Mexican American because my family stated they were all cholos and cholas", like the southern Mexicans knew what that was. Please don't speak for me. I don't speak for you nor profess to know Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit or Zacatecas culture. Plus I don't really like those foods.
Mexico born even if raised in the US need to stop thinking they know how we US born think because you don't, you don't have the same cultural upbringing and definition muchless in my case where as an Apache, I continue to live in the desert no different than my great grandparents or my children. I don't go to the Federal Building to obtain my permission to live in the US, I was born into this animal.
No comments:
Post a Comment