Growing back some cut roots

I've always hated the idea of blogging. The thought of people reading anything I may think, feel or do, makes me cringe...literally. In all honesty, I am not exactly sure why I chose to make one of these things. I think it's this newly-created fantasy I've created for myself. What's the fantasy? Well, I have this half-thought-out hope that my all of my post-graduate experiences will have only one purpose: to have absolutely no purpose.Or rather, to not have what I once thought was a purpose, what I thought was stability. This blog is meant to have no purpose: I don't actually think anyone gives a damn about what I have to say; I don't think I'm hear to preach, teach, or enlighten; I'm not showing you how awesome, life changing, or beautiful something is. Nope, this has no purpose except to have no purpose. This shit-show we call post-graduation has shown me that all those half-assed goals I tried to nail down into my brain with a nail that couldn't quite fit  were just goals I thought I should have in a society that pressures everyone to have the house built by the time you are 25. So fuck it, I'm tearing down my metaphorical half-built house on no base. I'm starting from scratch. I'm digging up my house and going straight for the roots. My roots actually.

So, I'm in Mexico. Yah, I know, I've heard that before and rolled my eyes too. Like I said, writing this shit out in a blog post never sounds as profound as you think of it in your head. Not for me, not for anyone. I'm sure that's a kind of problem with revealing something internal that maybe can't be placed within the context you find yourself. I guess more simply, blogging is an issue of revealing your identity. (Not in the Clark Kent way obvi). So--actually, I take it back. This blog does have a purpose. It is to help contribute to me facing my identity during this time in Mexico. 

My identity is all fucked up. Mostly because I can't decide what it is. I lost my roots sometime in the past 22 years. When you think of roots, you think of the beginning of a being. Roots are the bases from which things grow. To not have a root is stunt growth, to kill something. Since I was young, I was chopping down at my Mexican roots, in an effort to survive in the American context I was in. Here was my logic: I see Mexican guys treating girls like shit, I'm going to date white dudes, I see half the Latino kids getting into trouble with their friends, Im going to hang out with white kids, I see people American culture as revered while Mexican culture is shunned, I'm going to reject my Mexican traditions. Its some fucked up logic, but it was the subconscious mentality I embraced growing up until the end of my college years. Of course, as an adolescent I didn't realized that all those observances that caused me to throw my Mexican-ness out the window were outcomes of a system of structural inequality and racism in America targeted at people of color. I didn't know what half those words meant when I was twelve.  

Your roots, your identity is not easily given up. Me giving up my Mexican identity is proof of the way identity is negotiated within the context in which you are embedded. Within the dominant American context, the rhetoric we find everyday concerning race and language is that it is inferior to diverge from the dominant white, male, English speaking norm. I mean, for god sakes this kind of shit exists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJfS1v-fU0. Especially when children of Mexican parents are found in between two contexts--that of the Mexican setting and that of the American one--it is impossible for a child to fully understand the impact that jumping between two identities, melding two identities, or rejecting an identity can have not only individually, but on the grand scale of socio-political realities within the United States. The history of my ancestors, the luscious traditions found in my family, or the long-established pride of being Mexican in my community, was not enough to stop the history of racism, neo-colonialism, and gloablization in the American context from dominating my psyche. My burned, broken, and cut roots are evidence of modern colonialism that we ignore.

I'm tired of being ignorant to it.

Welcome to my journey to replant the fruit of my ancestors' labor. I welcome you to join the movement.