• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s ELA Music Stories
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Blogs / THINKING LATINA with SARA INÉS CALDERÓN 5.05.13

THINKING LATINA with SARA INÉS CALDERÓN 5.05.13

May 6, 2013 by

HOW MANY GENERATIONS UNTIL LATINOS BECOME “AMERICAN?”

I consider myself Latina, close even to my family’s Mexican culture, bilingual and happily comfortable in that identity. But, more often than not, it seems like everyone else is trying to corral me into some other identity, or telling me that mine is not sufficient.

The neighborhood where I live is the perfect example.

I live in a neighborhood that’s split in two: one part of it is gentrifying rapidly, and the other part is filled with Mexican and many immigrant families. I live in the part that’s more Mexican, which makes me in all my professional hipster-ness stand out sometimes, but people still speak to me in Spanish and oftentimes I just become part of the scenery. But then there are other times…

I was speaking to a gentleman in the local bright pink-colored laundromat recently when he started to tell me about “Ustedes,” “You people,” in reference to the rich hipsters who are populating the other side of the neighborhood. The fact that we were speaking in Spanish, that I told him my family was from Mexico, mattered little.

Those are the moments that I find myself wondering about that identity I felt so secure in just a few moments before. What it means to be Latina to me isn’t the same as being Latina to someone else, and as our country moves towards being ever more Latino, I wonder what exactly that’s going to mean to the next few generations. I might be ethnocentric to them, or perhaps I’ll just be whitewashed. There’s no way of knowing.

These moments — where I’m torn from the reality into the reality of someone else — seem very abrupt to me. Because of where I live, they happen every so often, and every time they do, they catch me by surprise. This is probably mostly due to the fact that, when I leave my neighborhood and go out into the greater Los Angeles area, the number of Latinos who speak Spanish, who have molcajetes and cazuelas in their house, who actually cook Mexican food for themselves every day, who went to college and don’t feel the need to mispronounce their names in English — is slim.

I think about this often. Is it because I’m light-skinned and green-eyed that I don’t feel any shame about being Latina? Is it because my father is an educator who taught me from a young age to be proud of who I am? Because of how I look, or because I went to college, or because I purposely cling to my culture, there are moments when I stick out like a sore thumb amongst people I feel a kinship with. But more often than not, they see me as an outsider.

So what are my alternatives?

I don’t want to become one of those “vendidas” who pretends like being Mexican never happened to her. I don’t want to spin some myth that I’ve managed to overcome huge obstacles because I grew up with college educated parents. I don’t want to pretend that, despite my features, I’m mostly “Spanish,” or that my family’s history means nothing to me.

So, what I do instead, is recognize that I live in a world that changes everyday. What it was to me growing up in LA in the 1990s in the era of Proposition 187, what it was to me in 2010 during the era of SB 1070, what it is to me now when Texas representatives target Latino studies courses in colleges for elimination, is complex and escapes definition. It changes, it evolves, devolves, and then we find ourselves asking the same questions we’ve asked before.

Thus, when I find myself being picked apart and divided and categorized according to someone else’s criteria, I think about it, and then I let it go. Because when everything is changing so quickly, there’s no real way to keep track of who’s opinion counts, as we move forward in time, there’s no way of telling who’s going to “count” as Latino.

Copyright 2013 by Sara Inés Calderón.

Sara Inés Calderón
sarainescalderon.com
@SaraChicaD
Skype: SaraChicaD

la vida es dura, pero es bella

Filed Under: Blogs, Sara Ines Calderon Tagged With: Sara Ines Calderon, What is an American?, who is an American?

TALES OF TORRES 05.25.23 LETS GET RID OF ACTIVE SHOOTER DRILLS

May 26, 2023 By wpengine

Let’s get rid of the presumed need for “active-shooter drills” in our schools Desafortunadamente, we observe a horrifying anniversary this week. A year ago, this country was convulsed by the deadly mass shooting of innocent children at an elementary school in the largely Mexican American town of Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen children and two adults were […]

LATINOPIA GUEST BLOG ANGELA VALENZUELA ON UVALDE 5.26.23 (ORIGINALLY 06.03.22)

June 3, 2022 By wpengine

Reflections on Uvalde by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. Note: This article was originally published on June 3, 2022. Because of its relevance it is reprinted now, on the one-year anniversary of the Uvalde mass killings. We just got back from Uvalde, my friends. My husband, Emilio and I, took a quick, weekend trip to pay our […]

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT – CESAR MARTINEZ ART ACQUIRED BY MOMA

May 26, 2023 By wpengine

Cesar Martinez’s Art Acquired By New York Museum of Modern Art The prestigious Museum of Modern Art [MOMA] in New York City, in conjunction with the Ruiz-Healy Art Gallery of New York and San Antonio, recently announced the purchase of three paintings by San Antonio artist Cesar Martinez. Patricia Ruiz Healy noted that the MOMA […]

LATINOPIA HERO GLORIA MOLINA – A CHICANA PIONEER

May 20, 2023 By wpengine

GLORIA MOLINA: A CHICANA PIONEER. Like many, many others, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Gloria Molina. She had battled cancer for three years. Accolades poured in from public officials, civic leaders and just plain folks who admired her and her accomplishments. She was, unmistakably, a pioneer in the civic sphere. She […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA FOOD “JALAPEÑO SODA BREAD” RECIPE

By Tia Tenopia on March 14, 2011

Jalapeño Irish Soda Bread The sweetness of traditional Irish soda bread ingredients—raisins, buttermilk, some sugar—are richly complimented by jalapeño heat. Here’s a soda bread recipe from Ireland brought to the USA from Galway by Mary Patricia Reilly Murray and later transformed  with her blessing by her daughter, Bobbi Murray, who added jalapeño chile.  A real […]

Category: Cooking, Food, LATINOPIA FOOD

LATINOPIA EVENT 1966 UFW PEREGRINACIÓN (PILGRIMAGE) MARCH

By Tia Tenopia on March 19, 2013

The effort to organize farm workers under a union contract has been a long and difficult struggle. In 1965, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta created what would become the United Farm Workers Union. From the onset they  faced many obstacles, not the least of which was how to get dozens of California grape growers to […]

Category: History, LATINOPIA EVENT

LATINOPIA MUSIC ANGELA ROA “TOCO DESAFINADO”

By Tia Tenopia on June 22, 2014

Angela Roa is a Chilean singer and lyricist residing in Los Angeles, California. Her songs are about the Latino experience in the United States and in Latin America. Here she performs an original song, “Toco Desafinado” (Out of Tune). She is accompanied by Fernando Losada, Rich Silva and Thiago Winterstein..

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

© 2023 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin