When I was in 7th grade, on our way to her house, my dear Mexican friend asked me not to tell her mother that I am Salvadoran. “If she finds out, she won’t let me be your friend anymore.”
In college, my close Mexican friend got drunk one day and asked me, “why do we all hate Salvadorans?”
Growing up Salvadoran in Los Angeles was punctured with moments like these against me and my family, and without ever seeing any positive representations of our culture on television, or radio, in English, or Spanish, I didn’t have ways to make sense of them.
I use my classroom now to dissect the structures and mechanisms that lead to the perceived animosity between groups. I urge students to contextualize and name who benefits from our divisions.
Today, as I witness what’s happening in Mexico, I know there is a bigger, more nuanced story that needs to be told, but for now, it just hurts.
There's an added heaviness. We have been dealing with the vile white supremacy and unbounded greed of the Trumps and Bolsonaros of the world.
We just witnessed the power of corporations that easily bought elections in "progressive" California to keep profiting from displacing the most vulnerable.
But there's a deeper pain at witnessing the hate del pueblo Mexicano. The childhood wounds of exclusion hurt and I am deeply fearful for refugees in transit.
As tensions rise and violence becomes more common, I pray for the LGBT members of the exodus, for the children, single mothers, and everyone who left their homes in anguish.
I pray, too, for our communities here, where Mexicans and Central Americans share spaces in schools, job sites, neighborhoods, and homes. May we all unlearn the narratives that serve to keep us fighting each other.
May we locate the source of our struggles in white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism. And may we see each other’s humanity in all of our interactions as we come together to demand justice.
