Some Latino families feel they’re living at a time when a kind of painful history is repeating itself.
There are Latinos whose families have been on this land since long before the Statue of Liberty greeted newcomers from New York Harbor, before the Civil War and the Declaration of Independence.many have found themselves reflecting, wrestling with their place in society and asking questions about how their heritage, their language and their skin color has shaped them and the way other Americans perceive them.
She read the gunman’s manifesto on her phone and found herself, angry and hurt, asking the shooter in her mind, “Why do you hate me so much?” “It feels as if all these things that belonged to me, that were my birthright, were stolen from me,” she said. But acting white didn’t stop people from hurling racist invective at her. Not in elementary school when a little girl told her, “Get out of here, you’re just a dirty Mexican.” Or at a slumber party when another girl mocked her: “You wetbacks have those hard-to-pronounce names.”
“When the campaign started, I was just an absolute nervous wreck,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything.” Soon after the exchange, she went to the DMV and had “Ruis” put on her driver’s license. Now she uses it all the time: Monica Ruis Morton.Mike Estrada— Mike Estrada, on the stories he was told about his family historyA few days after the shooting, Mike Estrada found himself at a dining room table surrounded by family, tiptoeing toward a topic that’s triggered arguments in the past: the politics of Trump.
Growing up with a fair mix of Republicans and Democrats in the Central Valley in a Mexican American family that’s been in the U.S. for more than a century, there’s bound to be political differences. In college, Estrada took a series of courses that gradually helped him understand American history and motivated him to become a political science professor. The more he learned, the more progressive he became and the closer he paid attention to race and politics.
“It hurts that we see things so differently, but it’s also complicated,” Estrada said. “I don’t want to create more distance with my family.”“I turned around to my husband and said, ‘It’s here. They’ve come to kill the Mexicans.’”Arlinda Valencia displays a portrait of her great-grandfather Longino Flores, who was killed at age 44 by Texas Rangers in the Porvenir massacre of 1918.
The families that survived the attack fled to Mexico. Some never returned. But Valencia’s great-grandmother, Juana Bonilla Flores, did. She fought for years to hold the U.S. government accountable.In the decades after the massacre, Valencia’s family continued to struggle against anti-Mexican sentiment. Her mother was determined to move the family out of the barrio. They saved money and managed to convince a builder to sell them a new home where only white families lived.
“I didn’t have to hear his words,” Valencia said. “I turned around to my husband and said, ‘It’s here. They’ve come to kill the Mexicans.’”“They want us to go back to Mexico,” she said. “What they don’t understand is we were here. They crossed us. This is where we were.” Tim Rosales, the sixth child, planted Republican Party roots early on. Rather than watch cartoons, he loved listening to “the Great Communicator,” Reagan, on television.
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