Gringa Latina: An Article by Anahí Ruvalcaba
“Se dice…”, a phrase I know all too well. In Spanish, an expression of correction that is used to express “It is said like this.... and not like that”. A phrase I hear too often to have learned Spanish as my first language. A phrase of embarrassment.
When I was younger, I took shame in speaking Spanish. I automatically associated Spanish with inferiority and humiliation. I suffered from internalized oppression, which was programmed to me at a young age and something I blame the American educational system/structure on (but that is another conversation). My mind was at its most malleable state, and like most things that are colonized and conformed by this country, I believe I was robbed and manipulated to judge my own culture.
After fifth grade, I moved from my home town populated by the majority (80%) Hispanic to the Silicon Valley, with just 5% of its population being people of color. I suddenly found myself conflicted about where I belonged. I was born and raised in this country, yet my transition from my majority Hispanic populated home town to Silicon Valley has always made me feel like an immigrant of “societies”. Living in these two communities has shaped my estrangement between cultures. I’m not an immigrant from another country but rather from another lifestyle. It’s a concept in which I always fail to do its justice in explaining. It’s a feeling of never being able to fit in, more or less, being told I’m too white for one and too Mexican for the other. People have often praised and found my experience unique, so I’ve learned to play it out to my strengths. In interviews and applications, I emphasize the fact of how my experience of living in two vastly different communities, has shaped my communication and capacity to get along with various groups and others. However, they fail to see that behind my strength, I hide that it is the cause of my greatest weakness and insecurity. That insecurity and weakness being I am “whitewashed”.
My reason for moving to the Silicon Valley was influenced by my mother’s mission to give me the best accessible free public education, which further impacted this feeling of not fitting in (Salinas or the Silicon Valley). Here’s how: My mother valued education immensely because she believed in the American Dream concept that if you get an education and work hard, you can succeed in this white man’s land (not that I disagree with the fact). After moving, I fell behind partially because my education quality previously had been “behind” as a whole. For example, although I stopped being proficient in Spanish after the third grade, upon my arrival to Silicon Valley, I was told (by being given ESL and ELA administered tests) that I wasn’t proficient in English either. Being the oldest in a Mexican household, I was expected through my independence to strive after being thrown into a fast-paced and competitive school system. When I failed to do so, I faced the consequences, and lectures reminding me of the goal: strive in opportunity. Focused on my education, English, networking, and making friends, my priorities changed to match Silicon Valley’s mold; A survival of the fittest methodology in terms of educational and academic social hierarchy.
The largest difference that I have observed between the Salinas and Silicon Valley community is the people’s values and priorities. With no question is it more challenging to succeed in higher education or career-wise when growing up in Salinas due to the abundance of obstacles the population often has to overcome. Most of which the economically privileged population (as a whole) of Silicon Valley (with respect: much more privileged people) will never understand. That being said, after visiting family, I realized we no longer felt apart of the same world. I saw my family lacked an understanding of the things I was achieving. I could speak to my family like my grandparents, and no doubt are they proud of me, but I don’t believe they exactly understand my goals or education, just that it is “good”. At visits, If I speak of educational opportunities like internships, projects, programs, or volunteering (extracurriculars), I often receive blank stares. This is because many never had the privilege or opportunity of such resourceful education, and soon as you can imagine, it made it feel difficult to relate to them. As education became my life, I let go of cultural stereotypes like my purpose as women being solely bearing children and catering to my husband (norms and customs some of my family still believes in). This only is one of the many examples (good and bad) where I became disconnected from my culture, trying to assimilate to a world dominated by whites to fit in.
However, I never felt like I genuinely really fit in to be apart of Silicon Valley. Surrounded by a salad bowl of community, It was difficult to get along or relate to the other students the way they did. I didn’t feel like culturally I knew anything about myself, nor could I share what I thought I did. I often found myself lost and incapable of building connections with students who always knew privilege but failed to recognize it.
As time went on, living with divorced single parents who were both finishing their education, raising a younger sibling, and working full time all the while being so far from my family which was what tied me down to my culture; naturally, I began to drift away. Becoming more and more of a “gringa” (white girl), they would say. I don’t think my parents intentionally tried to take me away from my culture or rob me of that experience; I just think they forgot to remind me of it? And by the time they realized I was so whitewashed, I had already been destroyed and a lost soul by modern-day society.