A Chicano refers to someone who is of Mexican descent, but speaks English as their primary language at home and with their friends. In other words, a Chicano is someone who is ethnically Mexican but has either been forced or chosen to assimilate into Anglo American society. But being Chicano isn’t actually an ethnicity, being Chicano is an enlightened identity learned through years of internal struggle.

My mother came to the United States when she was five years old. She was raised by her immigrant mother while simultaneously growing up in the American school system, a conveyor belt of forced assimilation. She was beaten by nuns and bullied simply for speaking her native tongue with her sister on the playground. Out of survival, she learned to cleanse herself of her Mexicanidad. She learned to speak English without an accent, and tried as much as she could to blend in with the dominant society. I often think about how painful that must have been for her, and I realize my process of assimilation happened long before I was even born. 

I used to spend summers with my grandmother, Lorenza Salazar, who crossed the border four times before she was able to establish roots in Houston, Texas in 1958. She used to drive my sister and I around our inner-city neighborhood of Spring Branch in a tiny red pickup truck after playing Lotería all day. We’d walk to Wendy’s in Houston summers and escape the heat with some nuggets off the dollar menu. She could never afford to crank the AC as high as they did, so we’d bask in the cool air until it was time to walk back. She used to speak to us in Spanish and we’d always respond in English. When my grandmother passed away when I was 12 years old, it felt like our direct connection to Mexico went with her. No longer did I have Spanish spoken around me in the house, no longer did we play Lotería for hours, sweating incessantly. We stopped going back to Michoacán to visit family members.

I was so young, but I remember being relieved to release myself of the burden of the Otherness that she brought to my life. Now we could silently go on with our lives pretending as much as possible that we were a “normal” white family that deserved to be a part of American society. Time went by and our strong ties to Mexico faded into the background. Our friends, coworkers and relationships became American, our language American, and therefore our thoughts, values and beliefs American. It happened slowly, so slowly we almost didn't see it happening at all.

There was always this idea that we needed to behave better, an anxiety that we were guests in someone else’s house. That we were here to perform for someone else, and the more approval we gained from Anglo culture, the better of a job we were doing. We didn’t know how to accept ourselves, we had only been taught to reject and hide who we were. Without a proper guide on how to process and understand these emotions of shame and rejection of oneself, I resorted to a blind imitation of the society around me and in that process, a further disconnection from my otherness. I unconsciously chose the route of assimilation as many Chicanos do out of confusion. 

As I got older and began to examine my identity further, I started to notice that my story was not that uncommon. In fact, most of my first-generation American friends  could relate to a strikingly similar degree. The details of their story might be different, but the thread was the same: we lost touch, sometimes by choice and sometimes forced, with the past of our ancestors and ultimately with ourselves. We knew we were different, but we didn’t understand why. 

It’s crucial that Chicanos know who we are, where we come from. There’s so much at stake for all of American society. In 2016, Latino Americans represented 12% of all eligible voters. Of that 12%, close to 30% voted for Trump despite blatant racist and offensive statements made during his campaign trail (Pew Research, 2016):

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

- President Trump, 2016

We’ve learned to discriminate against ourselves based on the inherently negative and fear-ridden view of the Mexican race as a whole. Our society becomes whatever we deem normal, and normal becomes whatever we refuse to question. 

We’re products of our environment and our circumstances, but we’ve been put in places where we suffer without resources, where we learn to turn on each other and then to turn on ourselves. We should all feel safe and a love for oneself, but how can we when our communities are hurting and neglected?

We must stop trying to navigate the systems put in front of us because these systems weren’t built for us.

We must envision a new system starting with empowering those who feel ashamed and don’t believe they deserve to have ambition. It’s crucial that we reverse assimilate to heal from the oppressive dominant powers that have conditioned us. 

As a Chicana living in Mexico City, what attracted me so viscerally about coming back to Mexico as a first-generation Mexican-American was simply an intuition that my years of struggle with identity would be answered by returning to the root. Moving back here forced me to heal by remembering the past that I tried so hard to bury inside of me. When we accept ourselves, we can evolve as a whole for greater acceptance of all of our counterparts.