Two Day Magazine

Hola!

My name is Anya Alvarez and I am the least Mexican chica you will ever meet. Sure, I like chips and salsa. I can even make a mean burrito. But, that’s about as far as my Hispanic cultural knowledge extends. I am a second generation Mexican. My father came to the United States in the 1970s, met my mother, moved to back to Mexico for six years, then decided to become a permanent resident of the U.S. in the early 1980s. He later became a U.S. citizen in 1989. My sister was born in Mexico in 1979. Ten years later, I arrived in New Mexico.

Growing up, I learned how to speak English. My father didn’t speak to me in Spanish, and neither did my mother (although she had become fluent). They had spoken to my sister in Spanish, but I guess got lazy with me. My dad tells me he just wanted me to learn one language well. Without learning the language meant I didn’t learn much about my culture. In my household, we were Americans. We didn’t refer to ourselves as anything else and with that I had forgotten that I had Mexican blood.

It wasn’t until I attended college and had to take foreign language classes that I began to see that I had been robbed from my culture. Here I was, with the last name Alvarez, and I couldn’t even structure a sentence asking where the nearest bathroom was in Spanish! I felt like a such a phony, especially when my Spanish teachers assumed I would be able to speak Spanish and would call me in front of the class to read from the book. Ay papi! Talk about embarrassing.

My inability to speak Spanish didn’t trouble me as much as it did my sister when she went to college. She minored in Spanish and decided she wanted to be an immigration attorney. Now, she helps any Mexican she can to stay in the states legally. She speaks perfectly fluent Spanish with a little bit of a country accent. She is certainly more Mexican than I am, or at least that’s how I feel.

While I was certainly embarrassed that I couldn’t speak Spanish proficiently, I didn’t really start paying attention to what it meant to be Mexican until the talks of “Border Wars” became political heated debates. I found myself getting angry with politicians refering to undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. as “illegal aliens”. I cringed at the word alien because it was such a dehumanizing word. Undocumented Mexicans aren’t aliens for crying out loud. And, illegal? There is no such thing as an illegal person.

I would listen into conversations people had over immigration, tearing Mexicans apart by calling them lazy, free loaders, and dirty. I started thinking of my father, someone who came to the U.S. and worked from sun up to sun down to provide for his family. I started to think of my time at the golf course when playing professional tournaments. Through golf, I have met many Mexicans and it’s not because many of them play golf. It’s because they were mowing the grass, clipping the hedges of bushes, raking the bunkers, and fixing up the range so I could hit golf balls. Their hands got dirty, but they were not dirty. In college, for one of my classes, I decided to research the history of Hispanics that serve in the U.S. military. I discovered that Hispanic men and women make up the largest percentage per capita in the military and that more Hispanics have died in combat than any other race.

The more I started to pay attention to what it meant to be Mexican, the more I began to see how good it was have Mexican blood. While my father didn’t speak Spanish to me, I saw how much he enjoyed speaking Spanish with fellow Hispanics when he got the chance. If our waiter had a Latin accent, my father would strike up a conversation in Spanish, and they would laugh and laugh. I would sit there wondering what they were talking about. My dad has pride in his native language. When I realized that, I began to have pride.

With this understanding, I started to become defensive and hostile towards people who made calloused jokes against Mexicans. Not long ago, while hitting golf balls at the range, two men hitting beside me said they would like to see the green cards of the Mexicans that work for the golf course since they probably jumped the fence.

I went over to them and asked, “Do I look illegal to you?”

They gave me a look, confused, and said, “What?”

I could see where their confusion came from, considering that my blonde hair, green eyes, and fair skin didn’t necessarily equate to their idea of what Mexican looked like. I proceeded to tell them that my father is Mexican and so am I.  I continued with stating that I could almost guarantee that documented or undocumented, Mexicans that come to the United States appreciate the rights guaranteed to them here more than they do. If they really had a problem with Mexicans then they should stop playing at a golf course that hires them. Why contribute to a people they clearly don’t care for?

I may not speak Spanish, and I may not have the best cultural understanding of where my people come from, but the more I confront people’s prejudices against Mexicans, the more I realize they know much less than I do about a group of people who come to the United States hoping for a better life than what Mexico can give them.

Not too long ago, I found a poem that I wrote when I was thirteen. I’ve always wanted to be in touch with my Mexican side. Now I’m just beginning to accept it.
   
BAD MEXICAN

Speaking Spanish

I just listen

Trying to weigh in 

On the conversation

Everyone telling their 

Different stories

By no means 

Are these people boring

They look at me

To see if I understand

But I can't help it

I'm just a bad Mexican

Everyone is laughing

Hands flailing around

The circus my friend

Has arrived in town

They talk to their dogs

And they understand

Spanish better than I do

Their dark brown eyes

Look at me once again

Thinking to themselves

"Poor, poor you"

Whenever I walk 

Into the room

They exclaim "Que bonita"

And in English

I reply, "Thank you"

Everyone is so sad

That I don't speak Spanish

But I can't help it

I'm just a bad Mexican

People ask me all the time

Why I never learned my

Native language

Well, I wasn't born in Mexico

I was born in America

First things first

I don't look Mexican

I don't act Mexican

Heck, I don't speak Mexican

(Whoops, I mean Spanish)

My poor father

Is just so disappointed

He learned English

Why can't I learn Spanish?

Well, I tell him

I'm just a bad Mexican

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Follow @anyaalvarez on Twitter for updates about her golf career and how she is taking steps to embrace her native culture.

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