I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to be categorized as an American (The generalized term for U.S. citizen students). William had already informed me that everyone could tell an American apart from all the other international students just by looking at them. It was in the way they walked, stood, their posture, the way they spoke—always loudly, as if wanting to be heard by everyone. It didn’t sound very positive, so I did my utmost to be the opposite. I didn’t want to bring any kind of negative attention from anyone.
Because I was in Central America, I wanted to blend in as much as possible. I wanted to look and feel as if I belonged ther. But I didn’t want to be identified with the overly raucous group of girls who happened to be—Americans. Everyone stared at them, including me. American students in general were usually looked up with a level of admiration. Everybody talked about them and watched them. Students thought we were all wealthy, lived in beautiful two-story homes, and thought we could afford brand clothing and many other unrealistic things. Many were surprised that some of us were already fluently bilingual. It would have been easier for me, to fit in. I was American, I spoke English, maybe I could have tried to play the part, but it wouldn’t work out.
I wouldn’t fit in at all. They were the exact opposite of how I was raised. Having been homeschooled, I would remember my mother adding her own old fashioned teachings—“A lady never draws attention to herself.” She had meant that women were not supposed to be attention seekers, and that is what they appeared to be. I was unused to this behavior. At home, I never minded being the center of attention, but outside of those walls I tried to blend into the background. I was a misfit beside my fellow countrymen and a novelty besides the many Latinos on campus. I never thought the word ‘Gringa’ would ever have been applied to me by what I had long considered to be my own kind. Not when I had grown up beside my fair colored brothers who were thus called hueros by others. Instead, my kind continued to look at me as an oddity when I refused to take the classes without English translations, scrubbed my clothes by hand beside them at the pilas[1], or hanging my clothes to dry along theirs on the metal wires. I went about campus in my homemade clothing made tediously with my mother’s loving hands. They would stare and ask, “But aren’t you American?” As if that meant that I shouldn’t be washing my clothes by hand, that my Spanish should have a bigger accent or that I should be less frugal. No one believing that I was a simple American at first. I felt like an alien.
I watched my paisas as well-the Mexicans, my ethnic roots. They were almost just as boisterous as the Americans though. I had thought I would have related better to them, but there was no nationalistic bone in my body, so I couldn’t really identify myself with most of them. I remember their table growing quite once when an Ecuadorian girl happened to mention “Mexico”.
Having been sitting in front of her I knew she was innocently talking about the distance between Mexico and Guatemala. But the group of Mexican girls sitting in the table behind her quieted at hearing her say, “Mexico”. They watched her apprehensively as if she were about to say something negative of their homeland. After affirming that nothing wrong had been spoken, I saw them nod at each other and continue filling the room with their voices. Seeing that kind of behavior discouraged me a bit.
As classes would begin to roll around and I began to know my classmates sitting by me, I realized I puzzled them. I wouldn’t have thought I would have come to question my own identity in a Latin country with international students.
“Que eres?” James, an Ecuadorian classmate asked. It was a simple enough question in an international school. What exactly am I? I mentally searched for the right words to categorize myself. Back home in California whenever anyone asked me, I simply answered, “Mexican” which covered my racial roots. Sometimes I answered—“I’m Mexican American” and people were satisfied with this answer. No more questions followed. But in Guatemala, that wasn’t enough. I was constantly placed under a microscope. I felt like a piece of data that they were stuggling to know where to file. No tab seemed to fit my category The following is only one of many similar conversations I had during my time at Bible school.
“O, ¿naciste en México? No pareces Mexicana ni hablas como ellos.” I shook my head. In Guatemala, to claim a Mexican identity insinuated that I was born there. So what am I? And what was this? I don’t look Mexican? What is a Mexican supposed to look like? I thought. As for my non-Mexican accent, that was easy enough to answer. I was raised in the U.S.
“¿Donde naciste?” the interrogation went on.
“I was born in the United States” I answered.
“Pero, tus papas. ¿De dónde son?” he persisted, trying to key my physical characteristics in the right category in his mind. Once my classmates like James learned that my parents were fully Mexican, they simply would shake their heads as if they were not satisfied with my answers. As if something was missing. What are they looking for? I thought so many times. When I asked them. They couldn’t answer me.
I usually received, “I don’t know, but you don’t look Mexican.” From just within my own family like my father who was moreno[2] and my mother who was blanquita[3], I knew that there existed diversity amongst the Mexican race, so it surprised me when I received the same response from my Mexican roommates and classmates. They would shrug their shoulders and say, “You look American.” It was a mystery to me, but unless I was being questioned I didn’t really dwell on it until I came back home and had time to reflect on my Guatemalan experiences.
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