Walking in Two Worlds

I've been reading through some of the wonderful posts in regards to struggling with speaking Spanish and the challenges of living in two cultures , just some thoughts ;

I grew up in the U.S. in a small mining town located in southeastern Arizona . When my father's family left the villa in Los Altos , they settled in Miami and Jerome Arizona. He came to the states when he was just 2 years old. All of the men in my fathers family were miners, as was my father when he returned to AZ after a stint in the military. My father's first language at home was Spanish, he said he really didn't start speaking English until after he began elementary school. He knew first hand the challenges of not being able to speak english well so he always stressed to my sister and I how important it was to know BOTH languages, it was he said , to our benefit to know more than one language and he was right.

The trouble was, growing up in the Southwest the early 70's, we were not allowed to speak Spanish at school. If you did, you got a trip to the principle's office, or sent home...sad but all too true. We still spoke it at home, but as we continued in school and made non Spanish speaking friends, we used it less and less. That was my first brush with the idea that there was an US and a THEM. Many of you can relate to this I'm sure. Growing up in the States I was just like any other American kid, I listened to Rock and Roll, not corridas , had long hair and loved hot rods. I played football not soccer . Although I loved to hear stories about my family history , I knew nothing of Los Altos...it was another world to me. Many of my friends were in the same boat, some of our familes had been in the US for three or more generations. My mother's people were some of the first settlers in the Tucson area, before Arizona was even a state, who had the right to tell me I didn't belong ? We kidded each other in Spanglish...mixing both languages, a hybrid, just like the culture we were growing up in. Back then there was no lable like Hispanic, or even worse, Latino...if you were a Mexican American , you were a Chicano or, if you came from Spanish stock like we did, you were a Hispano, which is a Southwestern term to denote ties to Spain, not a Spanish version of Hispanic.

My home town is 8 or so miles from the Mexican frontera of Sonora. As my friends and I entered high school, we came into contact with other kids who lived right on the border of Sonora and AZ in a small town called Naco. These kids roots were in Sonora proper, their familes were in the US for maybe a genration at the most, they still had strong ties to Mexico and towns like Agua Prieta , Hermosillo and Nogales. Once again I got a taste of US and THEM. We were told by some, not all, that we were not Mexicans, we were pochos, we were lost people who's parents sold out and wanted to be gringos. It had nothing to do with a difference of appearence,it had everything to do with the side of the border you happened to be born on...you were from Mexico or el otro lado, the motherland or the other side, and there was no way to change it, period.

So not only did we have challenges in the Anglo world , constant reminders that we were different . Things like not being able to go swimming at the local Elk's Club pool, or not being able to date certain non Mexican girls, even though many of us, myself included ,were constantly confused with being anything but Mexican because of our light skin . We also had to deal with what I call reverse racism, from other Mexicans who felt we didn't have the right to call ourselves Mexicans , not all of them of course, I must stess this, but to a good amount of Mexicanos we were just pochos.

That is what put me on the path to learning about my family's roots, I was no longer content with what I learned from text books, none of it fit...and forget about movies or pop culture ! To this day everyone with a Spanish surname in a movie is either the bad guy or the girl that gets bedded by the Anglo hero, it's getting better, but not by much. I came to understand totally why people do family research, why I do research... to find MY ancestors. The group that I belong to and cannot deny me entry by right of blood, WHO EVER and WHAT EVER they were...is what I AM.