Struggling With My Mexican-American Identity

Born to two Mexican immigrants, growing up in a predominantly hispanic town, and speaking Spanish at home, I still did not feel like I was allowed to call myself a Mexican. 

My mother, who does not know a lick of English, was the only person I was around 24/7, so naturally, Spanish was the language that I spoke for the first few years of my life. However, as I got older, the world around me demanded that I speak English. Whether it was my siblings speaking to me or going to an English speaking school, English was the primary language of my hometown.

Slowly, I began to feel how I transitioned from speaking Spanish almost fluently, to being unable to speak a sentence without uncertainty. The shift from my mother tongue transitioning to what is now my botched second language is a painful reality that I endure. Although my mother speaks only Spanish, my father and siblings speak both, so she was primarily my only source of having full-on Spanish speaking conversations. As my Spanish got worse, I started to become resentful of kids whose parents forced them to speak Spanish at home. Because of the color of my skin, people assumed that I spoke impeccable Spanish. I was ashamed when I would then speak in front of people outside of my family. I feared being seen as an imposter. What was worse, other than my Spanish, was the strain that I felt with my own blood and heritage. 

I grew up in a small border town in the Rio Grande Valley, meaning that almost 90% of our population consisted of hispanos. I was constantly surrounded by people who were brown like me, who spoke just as much or more Spanish than I did, and were also (the majority of the time) also the product of immigrant parents. Despite this, I felt like I was still not Mexican enough compared to my classmates. My family never had ofrendas with pan de muerto in November, or Rosca de Reyes in January, and even though we celebrated 16 de septiembre with vestidos para fiestas patrias campesinos, and hosted Christmas on the night of December 24th, I thought that because we did not celebrate “enough” traditional holidays, I was not Mexican enough. 

Funnily enough, it wasn’t until I came to UT that I started to feel less of an imposter in my own skin. When I got to Austin, I felt liberated. I was excited to be around so many different types of people, and to enjoy experiences that weren’t possible in the valley. Talking to org members at tabling, having a random conversation with a classmate, and getting to know my co-workers were all experiences that I craved. I learned a lot about other cultures and backgrounds in such a short amount of time. That’s when I realized that I didn’t care how much or how little they were submerged into their own culture. I didn’t judge them for how well they knew their heritage, and I never questioned how well they knew their mother tongue. We were all students at UT and that was all that mattered. 

I still struggle with comparing myself to other latinos, but it is something I have thoroughly worked on, and it isn’t such a daunting thought anymore. I am proud to be Mexican-American, and I never have to prove to anyone how Hispanic I am. I simply am, and that is enough.