One thing I’ve heard myself say a lot since returning to Portland: I moved here during a fascinating time.
More on that in a moment.
I am a 42-year-old Latino who is the son of Mexican immigrants. My mother is from Jerez, Zacatecas and my father is from Ayutla, Jalisco. They met in Los Angeles in the early 1970s and dated for about four years before getting married in 1976. I was born a year later, and because we only spoke Spanish in our home, I was raised bilingual. English came to me courtesy of the TV (cartoons and Dodger games) and school, of course.
I had a pretty stable life in East L.A. My father was a garbage man, my mother and aunts who lived with us were garment workers. They were all able to become legal residents thanks to the amnesty bill signed into law in 1986 by the Reagan administration, with my aunts eventually achieving U.S. citizenship.
That stability was tested when I was 14 years old, when I very suddenly received a scholarship to go to a prep school in Massachusetts (think the movie “Dead Poets Society”). I had to decide and then fly out to Boston on three days’ notice (a story for another time, perhaps). My life would never be the same, and I would be exposed to experiences neither me nor my family could have conceived of: Getting past the 12th grade and going to college, living in cities all over the country, working in some of the most reputable places in journalism and the nonprofit sector, and so on.
But the experience of going to prep school also taught me at an early age what it meant to be an “other.” And incredibly enough, it cut both ways. In Massachusetts, out of my graduating class of 95 people, there were three who identified as Latinx, and I was referred to as “a walking affirmative action” – sometimes to my face. Back home, I was a “sellout” for going to a “fancy school.”
Yes, it was a life-altering experience. But fundamentally, I was still the son of Mexican immigrants who spoke pretty fluent Spanish, and my last name was still Guzman. As long as I stayed true to myself and my family, it would be fine. There were definitely times when that felt easier said than done, because it was a harsh lesson that played out in different ways over the years. But it was an important lesson that has stayed with me and kept me going.
After graduating from college, I worked as a journalist for more than 18 years, starting in Portland at The Oregonian. My first time living here was from 1999-2002 before moving away to places like New York, Washington DC, and Seattle. In a few ways, my snapshot of this area from back then has held up. But on the whole, it feels different in my second go-around with Portland (I moved back with my family in the summer of 2018).
And for that, I am heartened and grateful.
Back then, it felt like the Latinx community was more on the periphery. That was true in a literal sense for me; I had cousins who lived in McMinnville. But now? I see the Latinx community making a difference in so many walks of life and leaving a lasting impression in various parts of our infrastructure. Again, heartened and grateful, because representation matters as the Latinx population only continues to grow in Oregon (it’s increased by 72 percent since 2000). The national political climate may feel frightening for POC, but at least on a local level, it feels like we’re trying to do something about it.
I once spoke to a class of college kids who were aspiring journalists, many of them POC. We saved time for questions at the end, and one student prefaced his by saying, “Let me just say how refreshing it is to have someone who looks like you in a position like yours.” I stopped him before he could ask his question and said: “Thank you. But the goal is to make the ‘refreshing’ seem ‘normal.’”
And that’s what I see within the Portland I inhabit in 2019: a thriving, brilliant, fierce and yes, fascinating Latinx community that is going to make the refreshing seem normal.
I’m so glad to be here for it.