I just meet my first really good Mexican male friend. I met him at the Latino Graduate Student Association “Welcome to Reno” event in September of 2013. When we first met he told me he totally knew I was Latina because I walked into the room and quickly took over it, I was loud and fearless, but then he saw a few tattoos and he knew I was different.
As our friendship has grown, I find him often telling me to be more Mexican. “Quit acting so white Maria.” I hear that a lot. He says I look Mexican on the outside but I am white on the inside, my response to him is always “I am who I am.”
He finds it amusing to send me jokes and emails having to do with “being Mexican.” I will be honest and say that he has introduced me to many things I had no idea existed, Latino USA on NPR being one of them. I chuckled when he sent me the link above.
I often times referred to myself as the worst Latina and after the last few months, as I grow more confident in who I am and what I am doing, I have vowed to not do this anymore. As God said to Moses, ” I am who I am.” This is exactly what I emailed back to my friend.
I am the Latina that calls her father “Dad” and inserts an English word when I can’t remember what the translation is when I am talking to my parents. I am the Latina who hunts deer in the fall and wears camo. I am the Latina that blends my two cultures, my American and my Mexican culture, into one. Never choosing one over the other, always choosing both and always blending both. I can walk into a Mexican bakery and order my favorite pan dulce and then walk into my favorite wine shop and order my favorite bottle of red.
Yes, I use to think I was the worst Laitna because I can’t handle spicy food, or because I don’t like menudo or because kids scare me. I use to think I was the worst Latina because I didn’t have a Latino friend or spent every Sunday with my parents.
I am the best Latina. I can go help my dad put in a new sprinkler system and then come home, wash up and help my mom make tameles and set the table for dinner for the family. I can call dinner refried pinto beans and a few slices of queso fresco with some homemade salsa as much as I can call a burger and fries dinner. I am me, I am who I am and I am the best Latina.
Native Nevadan Latina 