A year ago, my family and I had a little family reunion at my grandpa’s house in the San Benito. As the night progressed and the pile of empty Bud Light bottles grew, the focus of the conversation shifted to politics.
The presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was in full swing, and my dad decided that his political opinions needed to be voiced.
He hailed Trump as a hero that would rid the country of all the illegal Mexicans that had taken our jobs and made the nation a place where you couldn’t even trust anyone who looked Hispanic.
This assumption equally confused and disturbed me, considering that we were all Hispanics whose not-soancient ancestors migrated from Mexico to the U.S. Either way, the night ended with a nice cocktail of vulgar insults, frustrated tears, and cold shoulders.
At the time, I didn’t understand why my dad’s remarks had shocked so much, why he was calling out people of the same race as us.
As a year passed and I was working my way through college, I realized that I was beginning to view the world differently than I had before.
In my hometown of San Benito, Texas, the population is predominantly Hispanic, and the influence of Mexican culture is impossible to escape.
Since I was surrounded by “Mexicans,” as everyone I knew prided to call themselves that, I thought that everyone who was Hispanic, whether they were born in the U.S. or not, formed a brotherhood of Spanishspeaking people who all have ties to the other side of the border.
When I moved to Austin, I realized I would be living in a community where not everyone was a Valley Mexican, but where numerous races and cultures would be living together almost harmoniously. Being exposed to so many different groups who all claimed to be full-blooded Americans really broadened my scope of what it means to be American.
In high school, I believed that only white people had the pride to call themselves Americans, while everyone else called themselves black or Mexican.
Now, when I call myself a Mexican American, I acknowledge my heritage as a young Hispanic man while also declaring my unending loyalty to the United States.
However, I’ve also come to realize what my dad truly meant in his drunken rant.
He had called out Mexicans on their illegal border crossing, bringing crime and drugs with them, and stealing jobs from hardworking U.S. citizens, all of which are common stereotypes against the Mexican people.
While his words may betray my father as being anti-Mexican, he is very much proud of his culture, as he shows by speaking in Spanish with his parents, listening to Tejano music, and his love for “real Mexican food.”
Paradoxically, my father is proud to call himself a Mexican, even though he may not necessarily support further Mexican immigration.
Only recently was I able to decipher how my father views himself regarding his Mexican culture.
He embodies the Mexican American, one who is both Mexican and American, but not too Mexican.
No, the Mexican American prides himself/herself as being a citizen of the United States of America and as also having a Mexican heritage, minus all the negative associations someone from Mexico may be forced to deal with.
The Mexican American identifies as a Mexican, but also doesn’t want to be considered a Mexican.
This way of thinking is extremely common in San Benito, likely even in all the Valley, with people choosing to accept only part of their Mexican heritage.
Many people will go to great lengths to preserve this paradox, as they show with their fluency in Spanish but their support for a more fortified border, with their love of tortillas made by abuela but their anger for their jobs being stolen.
I have come to terms with the idea that not all people who are considered Hispanic are necessarily the same type of people.
Two different people may speak the same language, eat the same food, wear the same clothes, but one of them lives in Mexico and another in the U.S., worlds apart.
Isaias Hernandez Austin
