I am from North, South and East Portland. From Gresham to Sellwood to the Ville. PDX to me is home out of others that I’m also creating. I was born in Van Nuys, CA, but moved to Portland, OR soon after. Portland is where I’ve grown up my whole life. Living in PDX though there have been and still are times where I find it challenging to be with and surrounded by the communities that I identify with since I am in “the whitest city of America.”
Growing up people around me always assumed that I was Mexican and I would never correct them because I was afraid of being outcasted by the only community that I felt some connection and relatability to. As a little girl I would see/hear others around me being excluded because they weren’t “Mexican enough.” I didn’t want to be that person who got excluded for not being Mexican or who had to prove themselves. Reflecting back on this part of my childhood I don’t blame myself for feeling and believing that I had to be dishonest about a part of my identity and conform in order to “survive.” I don’t blame and shouldn’t be hard on myself about it for many reasons. One being because I didn’t know that I was living in a city where there’s a lack of representation for a variety of people of color and POC communities especially. I wasn’t aware of what that meant for and how that would impact fellow poc/youth of color and myself. A small city plus a very white one at that with a racist history is a recipe for gaps within and lack of culturally relevant resources, education, diversity and inclusivity of poc voices.
Finally getting the opportunity to travel to Van Nuys, CA and Guatemala this year (2019) and seeing representation of different cultures that I don’t see/experience in Portland (e.g Guatemalan/Central American culture(s) etc.) outside of my home on a regular basis has helped me in reconnecting with a part of myself that I believed and at times still believe isn’t “good enough.” Centro America is/has been left out of many conversations and I don’t, personally, see Central American people, communities and/or cultures represented at all here in Portland - or at least to a small extent. In comparison to how much more apparent Central American communities are in larger and more diverse cities in the States.
Although, this may be the case I know that we, Centro Americanos, are here. Maybe not in huge numbers, pero estamos aquí! The latinx community as a whole suffers from a lack of representation in different ways here in Portland. And although some cultures within the latinx community (e.g the Mexican community) might experience more representation of their cultures in comparison to others, whether in PDX or somewhere else, that doesn’t mean that’s all there is here in Portland or elsewhere. Latin America is a melting pot of indigenous/different cultures and traditions. I hope people remember that and that that fact becomes more of an awareness to more people. And that folks stop lumping latinx people and communities together, as a whole, as if we are all the same and not in some way, shape or form different from each other. This especially goes for white people/the white community(s).
*Pictured above: a collage of just a few photos that I took while I was visiting my family in y mi tierra madre, Guatemaya (aka Guatemala)