This past year I have been insulated, generally, due to the nature of my job as a writer, and where I was living up until recently. I write a lot about my family and my cultura. Miami's Latinx make up about 70% of the population and I rarely meet non-Latinxs and it is even rarer to meet people who HATE Latinxs. If you HATE Latinxs, you do not move to Miami. End of story.
But here I am, a year later, returning to the city that has been the whitest city I have ever lived in: Nashville, Tennessee. And within less than 24 hours, I see my first "Make America Great Again" cap. I had this moment of both fear and it was a triggering situation. As a Latina, seeing someone who, by wearing a red cap, is making a violent threat to your entire being -- my parents, my sister, my raza. This is probably something nobody will understand unless they are a person of color who is aware of themselves and their race in relationship to the entire political narrative of the country right now.
To see someone wearing that red cap, which I knew what it was the minute I saw it FROM BEHIND, jolts you. You become really aware of the color of your skin. And not in the sort of way that you become proud and glow from all that melanin. No. This awareness comes from a place of fear, because you know that someone does not like you/want you to thrive/want you to live because of the color of your skin. This awareness of the color of my skin comes with a terrifying reality that it does not matter what you do, how many rules you have followed or broken, how many white friends you have, how much you've altered your name to sound better and more accommodating in foreign tongues, you are still unwanted. This awareness joins us. This awareness makes us kin. This awareness means I cannot reject you, no matter how unwilling you are to say you're from Guatemala, and instead you say Chicago. This awareness makes me stand up for you, and for me, when I spew my angry reactions toward these situations.
A year ago, I moved away from Nashville because white supremacy felt like it was suffocating my orgullo out of my brown skin. A year ago, I moved away to re-encounter myself and my familia and my nicaraguita. A year ago, I was leaving to save myself. And now here I am back, stronger and as ready as I am going to be, to have these conversations where everything feels more dangerous and more feels at stake: the [white] Bible belt Tennessee, with its southern culture which usually means country music to outsiders. But to those who know better, it means racism.
Today I saw my first "Make America Great Again" cap, and I know I am in the battle fields. I am in the trenches, and I am about to emerge from this with a fervor that you all will not recognize because racism is real and white supremacy hurts, but this Latina has been gaining my strength to make you remember that America was never great to us, and your cap cannot be any more misinformed.
So, racist Nashville, keep your Bibles and your southern charm, I am here to remind you that Latinxs have been here and you are extended guests on indigenous lands.