April 11, 2025 • 28 mins
What does it mean to be Latino/Latina/Latinx in 2025?
Is Latinidad a fiction?
Should Latino be considered a race?
On this episode of Latino USA, Maria Hinojosa asks those questions in a conversation with Jean Guerrero, journalist and columnist, and Julissa Arce Raya, author and activist.
They also speak about colorism, recent headlines, and how simply existing as a Latino today can make you a target.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dear listener, before we start, just a warning that suicide
is going to come up in this pace.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Take care.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
I do think that Latino should be considered a race,
and I do think that we should hold on to
this marker because even with all of the diversity that
exists within Latinidad, the way that I think of it
is like a chain and each link is different, and
we are stronger when we stand together.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
What I agree with is the idea that we are
stronger together. But I don't know how much I agree
with the idea that Latino should be a race. This
homogeneous concept of Latinidad is the problem because it enables
democrats to treat us as a monolith, to obscure these
distinctions that exist within our communities that are important.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
From FUTU media and PRX, It's Latino Usa. I'm Maria
in Rosa today. Let me look at what it means
to claim the identity of Latino or Latina in twenty
twenty five, and we ask the question, should Latino be
a racial category or is Latini dad simply a fiction?
(01:15):
And how do we answer these questions when simply existing
as a Latino today can make you a target. Dear listener,
Latino and Latina thinkers, critics, academics, professors, journalists. Many of
(01:38):
them are meeting the moment that we are living through
in twenty twenty five. Today, we're going to hear from
two of them. Jin Guerrero is a journalist. She's a columnist.
She's the author of Hate Monger Stephen Miller, Donald Trump,
and the White Nationalist Agenda. She's also the author of
(01:59):
a recent column in The New York Times titled How
I Crossed the Border Back to Myself, And in the
essay she writes about the complexities and criticisms of Latini dad,
of Latino and Latina as a blanket identity. And You're
gonna hear from Julisa Araya. She's an activist and a writer,
(02:22):
a thought leader who shared her story of growing up
undocumented in her first book, It's called My Underground American Dream,
My true story as an undocumented immigrant who became a
Wall Street executive. Julissa is also the author of You
Sound Like a White Girl, a book where she looks
at the myth of assimilation in the United States. Jean
(02:45):
Guerrero and Julisa Arseraya have both written extensively about the
benefits and the trappings of claiming a Latino or Latina identity.
They've both gone through the journey, Jean at times rejecting
the identity.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
At the time I didn't strongly identify as Latina.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Julisa in her younger years, being glad she sounded like
a white girl.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
The truth is that speaking Spanish can be dangerous for
some people.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And then both have come to terms with the solidarity
and the flaws of Latini dad and how Latinos and
Latinas are being targeted today.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
That's the unleashing of what I think we are the
ugliest parts of America.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So let's jump into our conversation. Jin Guerrero and Julisa Arseraya.
Welcome to Latino USA. It's good to have you on
the show.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Great to be here. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Jean, you actually, in your essay that you wrote
for The New York Times about finding your Latinidad and
really being in your Latinida, you were kind of internally
fighting in your own home. Your mom is Puerto Rican,
your dad is Mexican, and this became like weaponized in
(04:13):
your family. You were essentially fighting these two parts of yourself.
I mean this is a difficult way to grow up, right, Yeah,
own your Latinidad, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
It gets at this idea of Latinos being very contradictory
and many times at odds with one another in ways
that we I don't think talk about enough. My mom,
who is from Puerto Rico, she told me that when
she was pregnant with me, my father's cousins campaigned against
his relationship with Gringa because you know, Puerto Ricans are
(04:47):
US citizens, so they were using that as kind of
like a derogatory term to lump her with white people.
And then when my mom was raising me mostly by
herself after my dad succumbed to addiction and they split up,
whenever I would misbehave as a child, my Puerto Rican
grandmother would blame the Mexican in me. She would say,
(05:08):
that's her father's blood coursing in her veins. And there
was a time when eventually my mom forbade me from
going to Mexico, which I didn't strongly identify as Latin.
I remember sometimes I would call myself Hispanic, but even
that term was something that I started using only after
this white guy that I'd been dating would call me that,
and more often I referred to myself as Mexican and
(05:30):
Puerto Rican, which was my way of being like, no,
I am both of these things.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
And I'm just wondering for you, Julisa, you're growing up Mexican.
Your path that you write about in Sound Like a
White Girl really talks about how you were attempting to
fit in to the United States. If Jean's identity was
really battling internally, raging between the Puerto Rican and the
Mexican in her own home, how do you see your
(05:57):
understanding of your Latini.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Dad, Yeah, I definitely went through a transformation where when
I first immigrated to the United States when I was eleven,
I very much wanted to fit in. When a boy
I had a crush on told me I sounded like
a white girl, I took that as a compliment.
Speaker 6 (06:14):
I was like, oh my.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
God, yes, I sound like a white girl, because to me,
that meant I fit in.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
To me, that meant my accent was gone. I spoke English.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Now I sounded like I was supposed to, quote unquote,
And so I went through a long period of really
almost rejecting parts of my mexicanness, or rather that I
was Mexican at home, and then when I was in
non Mexican spaces, I didn't want to be the Mexican
in the room, right Like, I just wanted to kind
of blend in with everybody else. And over time, I
(06:45):
think as I became more aware of the history of
my people in this country, as I learned about why
the term Latino even exist, how much we had to
fight for our rights, I sort of became radicalized in
a way, in a very good way of like wanting
(07:07):
to own my mexicanness, wanting to own my Latinidad, and finding,
by the way, the belonging that I so desperately wanted
my whole life. In the Latino community, that is where
I have found the most welcoming people, the most supportive people.
And so for me, it's been somewhat of a different
experience because I do think that where I have found belonging,
(07:28):
others have not. Others have been subject to the same
sort of like racism and otherness that we experience in
the bigger sort of American framework. Because by the way
of what you were talking about, Gene just reminds me
of the white supremacy framework, right of like who's better
than who. And by the way, like colorism, all of
(07:49):
these things like exist in Mexican culture, in Latino culture,
like that it's not exclusive to the United States. And
like the thing that I heard growing up was that
it was she a really good thing to marry someone white,
to marry agringa or gringo because and.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Let's just use that phrase that we all know.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, but which just.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So people understand, Like I remember hearing that when I
was six years old. Yeah, I was six years old,
and you're hearing a concert better the race, I kihosa,
What does that mean? Oh, you want the baby to
be more white? Like it just is so clearly out
there in front of us.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, And it's also like I don't think that like
my mom, I don't think that she realized what that
was really saying and what that was doing to my
self confidence. Because if you're saying that I need to
better the race, that means I'm not good enough. That
means I need to better myself. Like my child needs
to not look like me. And by the way, like
(08:54):
I am beautiful, so like you know, like my child
thinks fully does look like me, and her dad he's
also a brown Mexican, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So there you go.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
Mom.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
So I want to go into the fact that Eugene
saw the term Latino as really reductive, and then in
twenty fifteen you actually take on the term Latina. So
let's talk about the reductive to owning it.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
In Mexico, I was reporting on commodities, so I often
saw Mexicans and Central Americans who identified as white or
as Mestizo working with transnational, sometimes US based corporations or
cartels to exploit and displace their Afro and Indigenous countrymen.
(09:57):
There was this racial hierarchy south of the border that
just isn't acknowledged in the United States. I was somebody
who had grown up in a country that profited from
the extraction that was displacing people across this region, and
I just I couldn't claim to be in the same
category as the people who were being robbed of their
(10:20):
resources and their lands, even though in the United States
we would all be Latinos. But then I moved back
to the US. It was just a few months before
Trump announced his candidacy, and I remember listening to him
make that announcement and started by insulting Mexicans, and I
felt very personally attacked. I felt he was attacking people
(10:41):
like my dad in the way that I had seen
my dad and mexicanists be attacked within my own family.
And so it was then I began to very strongly
identify as strongly and simply as a Latina. To me,
it Trump was attacking me and my loved one, and
the term gave me a sense of solidarity and safety
(11:04):
in numbers.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
I thought by linking arms with other.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
People in the Scapegoaded community, we could stand a chance
against the mag of movement. And it just it was
an entirely different context from the one in which I'd
been reporting in Mexico. In this case, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans,
we were all under attack, and I found it extremely
important to identify as a Latina and to defend my
(11:30):
people and to show that I was proud of who
I was and who my family was.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But soon, Jane, you would write that the Latino Unity
actually turned out to be something of a fiction, and
you're going to tell us why you said that. That's
coming up after the break, not dem I. Yes, Hey,
(11:56):
we're back, and we're going to pick up my conversation
with journalists jan Gerero and author Julisa Arceria.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So I actually I'm going to read something, Julisa. Actually
it's something that Gene wrote, but I want you to
react to it, Julisa.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
So, Jean, you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I wanted so badly to find the words to unite
us and by extension, all us Latinos. But our unity
had always been a fiction. In our desperation to be
seen and heard, many of us had embraced a palatable
theater of Latini dad, one that ignored our contradictions. So, Julisa,
(12:40):
you've mentioned before that listing Latinos as an official race
in the US Census would actually benefit Latinos and Latinas.
So what's your reaction to Gene saying that Latino identity
and unity might just be a fiction.
Speaker 6 (12:58):
Julisa, I think there's a lot of truth in what
you're right, Jean.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I want to start off, just Maria, something that you know,
you can only be Latino in the US, that like
Latinos don't exist outside of the US, and that's often
an argument that I hear against Latinidad. I think that
we do have a very unique identity in the United States.
Our experience in the United States is very different than
it is for Mexicans in Mexico, Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico,
(13:24):
even though they're US citizens. And so to me, it's
understanding where Latino came from, why it even exists, and
to me, that telling of our desire to find our
own place in this country. I do think that Latino
should be considered a race, and I do think that
we should hold on to this marker because even with
(13:46):
all of the diversity that exists within Latinidad, the way
that I think of it is like a chain, and
each link is different. There are black people who are Latino,
there are white people who are Latino, there are Asian
people we're Latino, but we're all still part of the
same chain, and we are stronger when we stand together,
even if each of those links is distinctly different.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
That is to me a pretty controversial idea, right, Jean,
what's your opinion on this?
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Well, what I agree with is the idea that we
are stronger together, But I don't know how much I
agree with the idea that Latino should be a race.
What I was arguing in my essay is that this
homogeneous concept of latinis as is the problem because it
enables Democrats to treat us as a monolith to obscure
(14:37):
these distinctions that exist within our communities that are important.
And then at the same time, the Republicans have used
our differences that the Democrats are not acknowledging to pit
us against one another. And so what I argue for
my essay is that it's time for our politicians and
(14:58):
for our fellow Americans to see latinos as co authors
of the American story. And so I think we need
to reimagine Latini that to convey this idea that we
include black people, we include people who identify as indigenous,
we include people who identify as white, we include people
who identify as Asian, so that our fellow Americans began
(15:20):
to treat us as equals to them.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
You know, one of the things that happened is that
Donald Trump has decided that English should be declared the
official language of the United States.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Which one of you wants to go first.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
Well, gee, I look like you're ready.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Well, I mean, it just reminds me of going to
an elementary school in South San Diego when I was
a kid and it was against the rules to speak Spanish.
If we were caught speaking Spanish, we had to write
one hundred times, I will not speak Spanish. And this
was back in the nineteen nineties when there was this
(16:04):
big anti immigrant hysteria going on, and now we're seeing
that really.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah yet again.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Now we're seeing it again. And this really goes back
to the white nationalist agenda that I've written about. I mean,
the English as an official language thing. This goes back
to John Tanton, the Michigan i doctor who is the
father of the modern anti immigrant movement, who created think
tanks like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and all
(16:33):
these different organizations that were rooted and restricting immigration.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I mean, it feels so silly.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Here we are, Julisa in the year twenty twenty five,
when Latinos and Latinas are clearly demographically the future of
the United States. The issue of language is a little
bit more complicated, but it just feels so completely retrograde
that we are having this conversation yet one more time.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And it's also really interesting because I'm having all these
conversations with I'm a Newish mom. My daughter's almost two,
and I'm having all these conversations with other moms, some
of whom are white. And you know, everybody is thinking
about sending their kids to dual immersion exactly schools, right,
(17:21):
and so it's like aout right all the white parents
are thinking about how do I give my child an
edge by having them speak a second language. So it
really just for me, is just to kind other sign
of what I wrote about. And you sound like a
white girl, which is that white people want our language,
they want our culture, they want our sasson, but they
(17:42):
don't want us right, so they want to be able
to speak Spanish, but they don't want us to speak Spanish.
And the truth is that speaking Spanish can be dangerous
for some people, like you've seen these two women in
Montana be detained by border patrol because they were speaking Spanish.
There were schools where you were not allowed to speak
Spanish in the twenties and thirties and fifties and sixties.
(18:05):
Students would be beat if they were speaking Spanish in schools.
The real danger to me is two things. One is
the risk of seeing Latinos once again retreat from Spanish,
that maybe we don't want to teach our children Spanish
again because of the fear of how that might affect
(18:25):
them in the future, the fear that they might be discriminated,
which is a big reason why a lot of Latinos
don't speak Spanish. And the second thing is there was
an article in New York Times that said that the
executive action was mostly symbolic, and I disagree with that.
I think it's more than symbolic. I think that they
are going to be real consequences from things like just
(18:47):
even from emboldening people to discriminate against those that are
speaking another language, particularly Spanish, to things like federal documents
not being you know, if you go into court, and
not having the translator, voting materials not being translated, all
of these things that maybe we take for granted because
we see translations in a lot of places, but by
(19:09):
the way, somebody had to fight for those translations to happen.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I want to take a moment to just uplift somebody
who we never met, but who is now a part
of our reality, and that is an eleven year old
girl by the name of Jocelyn Drojo Caranza. She was
from Texas and she took her own life after allegedly
(19:54):
being bullied and being told that Ice was going to
come and take her parents away, Gene and then I'll
ask you, Julisa, just your thoughts about losing a little
girl like Joscelyn Broho Caranzo.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
It's devastating. It's devastating, and it just speaks to how
Trump is emboldening vigilantism and the terrorizing of immigrants by
not only his administration and his border patrol, but by civilians,
as people who are dressing up as Ice and going
(20:29):
into immigrant communities just to scare people. And now this
situation with Jocelyn, it's just horrific. It's the unleashing of
what I think are the ugliest parts of America. You know,
a permission slip to be the worst kind of bully.
(20:51):
But we can fight back. And I think what this
case reminds me of is Stephen Miller, who I wrote
my book about. When he was a teenager, he would
go around bullying his emmigrant classmates. According to students that
I interviewed, then he would go up to people who
were speaking Spanish and you would yell at them, you know,
speak English, go back to your country. And fortunately there
(21:13):
was people there to stand up for them. There was
a Latina classmate of Steven Miller's name, Madiev Vivanco, who
would go up to him and be like, pick on
people your own size, pick on people that can actually
argue back with you, because he was deliberately seeking out
people who struggled with English. And so to me, it's
just an example of the importance of when you see
this kind of bullying, when you see this kind of
(21:35):
harassment and these attacks on our communities, it's just so
important to if you have the privilege and if you
have the power, to stand up to not let it happen.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah, your thoughts to Lisa, It's devastating that she was
such a young girl, But the truth is that were
to have power and they have consequences. I feel like
during his first term, we could say when you have
the president saying these things, but now it's not just
the president. It feels like so many people, just like
(22:09):
everyday people are so emboldened to say whatever they want
and to do whatever they want. And you know, I
dedicated my book to the people of Elpaso, Texas because
we all remember what happened on August third, twenty nineteen,
when a white nationalist went into Walmart to try to
kill quote as many Mexicans as possible, because he was
(22:32):
trying to prevent an invasion. That is the same thing
with Jocelyn taking her own life because people were bullying her.
It is the direct consequences of the rhetoric that is
coming from the White House, from Congressmen, from senators, from teachers.
You had teachers who were tweeting at Trump telling him
that her school had been overrun with illegals.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
To send eyes to her school is up to us
who can who.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Still have energy to speak out against this, to stand
up for our community, because otherwise it's going to keep happening.
And this is why I keep saying that, you know,
I'm not interested in how other people see us, but
how we see ourselves. Because we can spend all of
our time trying to change people's hearts and minds and
we might not get anywhere, or we can spend time
(23:25):
infusing us with the confidence, with the knowledge, with the
community that we need to withstand the attacks.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
I would rather spend my time doing that, Jean.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Recently, you and I had a conversation and I told
you that I love watching you on Instagram because you're
doing something You're either on your skateboard or you now
are dancing, and you told me that actually turning to
Latin dance, all different forms of Latin dance, and you
basically said, this is what has saved me.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I mean we started this conversation by talking about Trump
trying to make English the official language of the US,
and fundamentally that is about creating a permanent underclass in
the US and making us shrink away from who we are.
Now is the moment to embrace who we are because
it's magical, it's healing, it's empowering, its safety, it's.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
Exactly what we need.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
We are so big and complicated as Latinos, and we
should embrace that, and we should insist on that. Like
this impulse to reduce us, to explain us, to put
us in a box that is part of the white
supremacist movement, and I think like we need to just
insist that we are also untranslatable. We defy categorization, we
(25:10):
defy explanation, and I think that we to me, that
makes me more inclined to do things like salted dancing,
about teta dancing, because it's like I'm more than just
one thing.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I'm all of these different things that Latini that offers.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
And I can be a writer, I can be a
public intellectual, I can be a dancer, I can be
you know, I'm not a mom, but I recently rescued
a French bulldog who's my son, and I'm like, I'm
all of these things. And I think too often this
country tries to reduce us to caricatures and to stereotypes.
And when we talk about Latini that we need to
(25:47):
resist that reductionism. We need to be like, Latinos are
all things. We're my dad who loves Trump and loves Trout,
Tucker Carlson. We are that, and we are also progressive
mothers who do everything to hold up their entire families,
their entire communities were just as complicated and untranslatable and
(26:07):
fathomless as the Whitman's of the world.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Bien vicho, muchas Grassias, Jean, muchas Grassias, Julissa. Thank you
so much for sharing your thoughts and your hearts with us.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Thanks Maria, Thank you, Maria.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
That was Jan Guerrero, journalist and author and activist and
author Julisa arse Praya. Our episode was produced by Renaldo
(26:59):
Lean Junior, with production assistants from Tasha Sandoval. It was
edited by Fernande Echavari and it was mixed by JJ Carubin.
The Latino USA team also includes Rosa Na Guire, Julia Caruso,
Felicia do Minhez, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Estrada, Dominique Estrosa, Stephanie Lebau,
(27:19):
Andrea Lopez Gruzado, Luis Luna Marta Martinez, Monica Moreles Garcia,
Nour Saudi and Nancy Trujillo, Bennie Ramirez, Marlon Bishop, Maria
Garcia and myself are your co executive producers and I'm
your host, Mariano Rossa join us again.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
On our next episode, Dear listener.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
In the meantime, I'll see you on all of our
social media and you know what I'm gonna say, rote
maayas Jao.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising
Simons Foundation, Unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities more at Hsfoundation,
dot Org, Skyline Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, working with
visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide.
Dear listener, before we start, just a warning that suicide
is going to come up in this pace.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Take care.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
I do think that Latino should be considered a race,
and I do think that we should hold on to
this marker because even with all of the diversity that
exists within Latinidad, the way that I think of it
is like a chain and each link is different, and
we are stronger when we stand together.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
What I agree with is the idea that we are
stronger together. But I don't know how much I agree
with the idea that Latino should be a race. This
homogeneous concept of Latinidad is the problem because it enables
democrats to treat us as a monolith, to obscure these
distinctions that exist within our communities that are important.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
From FUTU media and PRX, It's Latino Usa. I'm Maria
in Rosa today. Let me look at what it means
to claim the identity of Latino or Latina in twenty
twenty five, and we ask the question, should Latino be
a racial category or is Latini dad simply a fiction?
(01:15):
And how do we answer these questions when simply existing
as a Latino today can make you a target. Dear listener,
Latino and Latina thinkers, critics, academics, professors, journalists. Many of
(01:38):
them are meeting the moment that we are living through
in twenty twenty five. Today, we're going to hear from
two of them. Jin Guerrero is a journalist. She's a columnist.
She's the author of Hate Monger Stephen Miller, Donald Trump,
and the White Nationalist Agenda. She's also the author of
(01:59):
a recent column in The New York Times titled How
I Crossed the Border Back to Myself, And in the
essay she writes about the complexities and criticisms of Latini dad,
of Latino and Latina as a blanket identity. And You're
gonna hear from Julisa Araya. She's an activist and a writer,
(02:22):
a thought leader who shared her story of growing up
undocumented in her first book, It's called My Underground American Dream,
My true story as an undocumented immigrant who became a
Wall Street executive. Julissa is also the author of You
Sound Like a White Girl, a book where she looks
at the myth of assimilation in the United States. Jean
(02:45):
Guerrero and Julisa Arseraya have both written extensively about the
benefits and the trappings of claiming a Latino or Latina identity.
They've both gone through the journey, Jean at times rejecting
the identity.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
At the time I didn't strongly identify as Latina.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Julisa in her younger years, being glad she sounded like
a white girl.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
The truth is that speaking Spanish can be dangerous for
some people.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And then both have come to terms with the solidarity
and the flaws of Latini dad and how Latinos and
Latinas are being targeted today.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
That's the unleashing of what I think we are the
ugliest parts of America.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So let's jump into our conversation. Jin Guerrero and Julisa Arseraya.
Welcome to Latino USA. It's good to have you on
the show.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
Great to be here. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So Jean, you actually, in your essay that you wrote
for The New York Times about finding your Latinidad and
really being in your Latinida, you were kind of internally
fighting in your own home. Your mom is Puerto Rican,
your dad is Mexican, and this became like weaponized in
(04:13):
your family. You were essentially fighting these two parts of yourself.
I mean this is a difficult way to grow up, right, Yeah,
own your Latinidad, right exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
It gets at this idea of Latinos being very contradictory
and many times at odds with one another in ways
that we I don't think talk about enough. My mom,
who is from Puerto Rico, she told me that when
she was pregnant with me, my father's cousins campaigned against
his relationship with Gringa because you know, Puerto Ricans are
(04:47):
US citizens, so they were using that as kind of
like a derogatory term to lump her with white people.
And then when my mom was raising me mostly by
herself after my dad succumbed to addiction and they split up,
whenever I would misbehave as a child, my Puerto Rican
grandmother would blame the Mexican in me. She would say,
(05:08):
that's her father's blood coursing in her veins. And there
was a time when eventually my mom forbade me from
going to Mexico, which I didn't strongly identify as Latin.
I remember sometimes I would call myself Hispanic, but even
that term was something that I started using only after
this white guy that I'd been dating would call me that,
and more often I referred to myself as Mexican and
(05:30):
Puerto Rican, which was my way of being like, no,
I am both of these things.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
And I'm just wondering for you, Julisa, you're growing up Mexican.
Your path that you write about in Sound Like a
White Girl really talks about how you were attempting to
fit in to the United States. If Jean's identity was
really battling internally, raging between the Puerto Rican and the
Mexican in her own home, how do you see your
(05:57):
understanding of your Latini.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Dad, Yeah, I definitely went through a transformation where when
I first immigrated to the United States when I was eleven,
I very much wanted to fit in. When a boy
I had a crush on told me I sounded like
a white girl, I took that as a compliment.
Speaker 6 (06:14):
I was like, oh my.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
God, yes, I sound like a white girl, because to me,
that meant I fit in.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
To me, that meant my accent was gone. I spoke English.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Now I sounded like I was supposed to, quote unquote,
And so I went through a long period of really
almost rejecting parts of my mexicanness, or rather that I
was Mexican at home, and then when I was in
non Mexican spaces, I didn't want to be the Mexican
in the room, right Like, I just wanted to kind
of blend in with everybody else. And over time, I
(06:45):
think as I became more aware of the history of
my people in this country, as I learned about why
the term Latino even exist, how much we had to
fight for our rights, I sort of became radicalized in
a way, in a very good way of like wanting
(07:07):
to own my mexicanness, wanting to own my Latinidad, and finding,
by the way, the belonging that I so desperately wanted
my whole life. In the Latino community, that is where
I have found the most welcoming people, the most supportive people.
And so for me, it's been somewhat of a different
experience because I do think that where I have found belonging,
(07:28):
others have not. Others have been subject to the same
sort of like racism and otherness that we experience in
the bigger sort of American framework. Because by the way
of what you were talking about, Gene just reminds me
of the white supremacy framework, right of like who's better
than who. And by the way, like colorism, all of
(07:49):
these things like exist in Mexican culture, in Latino culture,
like that it's not exclusive to the United States. And
like the thing that I heard growing up was that
it was she a really good thing to marry someone white,
to marry agringa or gringo because and.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Let's just use that phrase that we all know.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, but which just.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So people understand, Like I remember hearing that when I
was six years old. Yeah, I was six years old,
and you're hearing a concert better the race, I kihosa,
What does that mean? Oh, you want the baby to
be more white? Like it just is so clearly out
there in front of us.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Yeah, And it's also like I don't think that like
my mom, I don't think that she realized what that
was really saying and what that was doing to my
self confidence. Because if you're saying that I need to
better the race, that means I'm not good enough. That
means I need to better myself. Like my child needs
to not look like me. And by the way, like
(08:54):
I am beautiful, so like you know, like my child
thinks fully does look like me, and her dad he's
also a brown Mexican, you know.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So there you go.
Speaker 6 (09:04):
Mom.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
So I want to go into the fact that Eugene
saw the term Latino as really reductive, and then in
twenty fifteen you actually take on the term Latina. So
let's talk about the reductive to owning it.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
In Mexico, I was reporting on commodities, so I often
saw Mexicans and Central Americans who identified as white or
as Mestizo working with transnational, sometimes US based corporations or
cartels to exploit and displace their Afro and Indigenous countrymen.
(09:57):
There was this racial hierarchy south of the border that
just isn't acknowledged in the United States. I was somebody
who had grown up in a country that profited from
the extraction that was displacing people across this region, and
I just I couldn't claim to be in the same
category as the people who were being robbed of their
(10:20):
resources and their lands, even though in the United States
we would all be Latinos. But then I moved back
to the US. It was just a few months before
Trump announced his candidacy, and I remember listening to him
make that announcement and started by insulting Mexicans, and I
felt very personally attacked. I felt he was attacking people
(10:41):
like my dad in the way that I had seen
my dad and mexicanists be attacked within my own family.
And so it was then I began to very strongly
identify as strongly and simply as a Latina. To me,
it Trump was attacking me and my loved one, and
the term gave me a sense of solidarity and safety
(11:04):
in numbers.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
I thought by linking arms with other.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
People in the Scapegoaded community, we could stand a chance
against the mag of movement. And it just it was
an entirely different context from the one in which I'd
been reporting in Mexico. In this case, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans,
we were all under attack, and I found it extremely
important to identify as a Latina and to defend my
(11:30):
people and to show that I was proud of who
I was and who my family was.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But soon, Jane, you would write that the Latino Unity
actually turned out to be something of a fiction, and
you're going to tell us why you said that. That's
coming up after the break, not dem I. Yes, Hey,
(11:56):
we're back, and we're going to pick up my conversation
with journalists jan Gerero and author Julisa Arceria.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So I actually I'm going to read something, Julisa. Actually
it's something that Gene wrote, but I want you to
react to it, Julisa.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
So, Jean, you're right.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I wanted so badly to find the words to unite
us and by extension, all us Latinos. But our unity
had always been a fiction. In our desperation to be
seen and heard, many of us had embraced a palatable
theater of Latini dad, one that ignored our contradictions. So, Julisa,
(12:40):
you've mentioned before that listing Latinos as an official race
in the US Census would actually benefit Latinos and Latinas.
So what's your reaction to Gene saying that Latino identity
and unity might just be a fiction.
Speaker 6 (12:58):
Julisa, I think there's a lot of truth in what
you're right, Jean.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I want to start off, just Maria, something that you know,
you can only be Latino in the US, that like
Latinos don't exist outside of the US, and that's often
an argument that I hear against Latinidad. I think that
we do have a very unique identity in the United States.
Our experience in the United States is very different than
it is for Mexicans in Mexico, Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico,
(13:24):
even though they're US citizens. And so to me, it's
understanding where Latino came from, why it even exists, and
to me, that telling of our desire to find our
own place in this country. I do think that Latino
should be considered a race, and I do think that
we should hold on to this marker because even with
(13:46):
all of the diversity that exists within Latinidad, the way
that I think of it is like a chain, and
each link is different. There are black people who are Latino,
there are white people who are Latino, there are Asian
people we're Latino, but we're all still part of the
same chain, and we are stronger when we stand together,
even if each of those links is distinctly different.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
That is to me a pretty controversial idea, right, Jean,
what's your opinion on this?
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Well, what I agree with is the idea that we
are stronger together, But I don't know how much I
agree with the idea that Latino should be a race.
What I was arguing in my essay is that this
homogeneous concept of latinis as is the problem because it
enables Democrats to treat us as a monolith to obscure
(14:37):
these distinctions that exist within our communities that are important.
And then at the same time, the Republicans have used
our differences that the Democrats are not acknowledging to pit
us against one another. And so what I argue for
my essay is that it's time for our politicians and
(14:58):
for our fellow Americans to see latinos as co authors
of the American story. And so I think we need
to reimagine Latini that to convey this idea that we
include black people, we include people who identify as indigenous,
we include people who identify as white, we include people
who identify as Asian, so that our fellow Americans began
(15:20):
to treat us as equals to them.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
You know, one of the things that happened is that
Donald Trump has decided that English should be declared the
official language of the United States.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Which one of you wants to go first.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
Well, gee, I look like you're ready.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Well, I mean, it just reminds me of going to
an elementary school in South San Diego when I was
a kid and it was against the rules to speak Spanish.
If we were caught speaking Spanish, we had to write
one hundred times, I will not speak Spanish. And this
was back in the nineteen nineties when there was this
(16:04):
big anti immigrant hysteria going on, and now we're seeing
that really.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah yet again.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Now we're seeing it again. And this really goes back
to the white nationalist agenda that I've written about. I mean,
the English as an official language thing. This goes back
to John Tanton, the Michigan i doctor who is the
father of the modern anti immigrant movement, who created think
tanks like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and all
(16:33):
these different organizations that were rooted and restricting immigration.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I mean, it feels so silly.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Here we are, Julisa in the year twenty twenty five,
when Latinos and Latinas are clearly demographically the future of
the United States. The issue of language is a little
bit more complicated, but it just feels so completely retrograde
that we are having this conversation yet one more time.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And it's also really interesting because I'm having all these
conversations with I'm a Newish mom. My daughter's almost two,
and I'm having all these conversations with other moms, some
of whom are white. And you know, everybody is thinking
about sending their kids to dual immersion exactly schools, right,
(17:21):
and so it's like aout right all the white parents
are thinking about how do I give my child an
edge by having them speak a second language. So it
really just for me, is just to kind other sign
of what I wrote about. And you sound like a
white girl, which is that white people want our language,
they want our culture, they want our sasson, but they
(17:42):
don't want us right, so they want to be able
to speak Spanish, but they don't want us to speak Spanish.
And the truth is that speaking Spanish can be dangerous
for some people, like you've seen these two women in
Montana be detained by border patrol because they were speaking Spanish.
There were schools where you were not allowed to speak
Spanish in the twenties and thirties and fifties and sixties.
(18:05):
Students would be beat if they were speaking Spanish in schools.
The real danger to me is two things. One is
the risk of seeing Latinos once again retreat from Spanish,
that maybe we don't want to teach our children Spanish
again because of the fear of how that might affect
(18:25):
them in the future, the fear that they might be discriminated,
which is a big reason why a lot of Latinos
don't speak Spanish. And the second thing is there was
an article in New York Times that said that the
executive action was mostly symbolic, and I disagree with that.
I think it's more than symbolic. I think that they
are going to be real consequences from things like just
(18:47):
even from emboldening people to discriminate against those that are
speaking another language, particularly Spanish, to things like federal documents
not being you know, if you go into court, and
not having the translator, voting materials not being translated, all
of these things that maybe we take for granted because
we see translations in a lot of places, but by
(19:09):
the way, somebody had to fight for those translations to happen.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I want to take a moment to just uplift somebody
who we never met, but who is now a part
of our reality, and that is an eleven year old
girl by the name of Jocelyn Drojo Caranza. She was
from Texas and she took her own life after allegedly
(19:54):
being bullied and being told that Ice was going to
come and take her parents away, Gene and then I'll
ask you, Julisa, just your thoughts about losing a little
girl like Joscelyn Broho Caranzo.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
It's devastating. It's devastating, and it just speaks to how
Trump is emboldening vigilantism and the terrorizing of immigrants by
not only his administration and his border patrol, but by civilians,
as people who are dressing up as Ice and going
(20:29):
into immigrant communities just to scare people. And now this
situation with Jocelyn, it's just horrific. It's the unleashing of
what I think are the ugliest parts of America. You know,
a permission slip to be the worst kind of bully.
(20:51):
But we can fight back. And I think what this
case reminds me of is Stephen Miller, who I wrote
my book about. When he was a teenager, he would
go around bullying his emmigrant classmates. According to students that
I interviewed, then he would go up to people who
were speaking Spanish and you would yell at them, you know,
speak English, go back to your country. And fortunately there
(21:13):
was people there to stand up for them. There was
a Latina classmate of Steven Miller's name, Madiev Vivanco, who
would go up to him and be like, pick on
people your own size, pick on people that can actually
argue back with you, because he was deliberately seeking out
people who struggled with English. And so to me, it's
just an example of the importance of when you see
this kind of bullying, when you see this kind of
(21:35):
harassment and these attacks on our communities, it's just so
important to if you have the privilege and if you
have the power, to stand up to not let it happen.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah, your thoughts to Lisa, It's devastating that she was
such a young girl, But the truth is that were
to have power and they have consequences. I feel like
during his first term, we could say when you have
the president saying these things, but now it's not just
the president. It feels like so many people, just like
(22:09):
everyday people are so emboldened to say whatever they want
and to do whatever they want. And you know, I
dedicated my book to the people of Elpaso, Texas because
we all remember what happened on August third, twenty nineteen,
when a white nationalist went into Walmart to try to
kill quote as many Mexicans as possible, because he was
(22:32):
trying to prevent an invasion. That is the same thing
with Jocelyn taking her own life because people were bullying her.
It is the direct consequences of the rhetoric that is
coming from the White House, from Congressmen, from senators, from teachers.
You had teachers who were tweeting at Trump telling him
that her school had been overrun with illegals.
Speaker 6 (22:55):
To send eyes to her school is up to us
who can who.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Still have energy to speak out against this, to stand
up for our community, because otherwise it's going to keep happening.
And this is why I keep saying that, you know,
I'm not interested in how other people see us, but
how we see ourselves. Because we can spend all of
our time trying to change people's hearts and minds and
we might not get anywhere, or we can spend time
(23:25):
infusing us with the confidence, with the knowledge, with the
community that we need to withstand the attacks.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
I would rather spend my time doing that, Jean.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Recently, you and I had a conversation and I told
you that I love watching you on Instagram because you're
doing something You're either on your skateboard or you now
are dancing, and you told me that actually turning to
Latin dance, all different forms of Latin dance, and you
basically said, this is what has saved me.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I mean we started this conversation by talking about Trump
trying to make English the official language of the US,
and fundamentally that is about creating a permanent underclass in
the US and making us shrink away from who we are.
Now is the moment to embrace who we are because
it's magical, it's healing, it's empowering, its safety, it's.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
Exactly what we need.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
We are so big and complicated as Latinos, and we
should embrace that, and we should insist on that. Like
this impulse to reduce us, to explain us, to put
us in a box that is part of the white
supremacist movement, and I think like we need to just
insist that we are also untranslatable. We defy categorization, we
(25:10):
defy explanation, and I think that we to me, that
makes me more inclined to do things like salted dancing,
about teta dancing, because it's like I'm more than just
one thing.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I'm all of these different things that Latini that offers.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
And I can be a writer, I can be a
public intellectual, I can be a dancer, I can be
you know, I'm not a mom, but I recently rescued
a French bulldog who's my son, and I'm like, I'm
all of these things. And I think too often this
country tries to reduce us to caricatures and to stereotypes.
And when we talk about Latini that we need to
(25:47):
resist that reductionism. We need to be like, Latinos are
all things. We're my dad who loves Trump and loves Trout,
Tucker Carlson. We are that, and we are also progressive
mothers who do everything to hold up their entire families,
their entire communities were just as complicated and untranslatable and
(26:07):
fathomless as the Whitman's of the world.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Bien vicho, muchas Grassias, Jean, muchas Grassias, Julissa. Thank you
so much for sharing your thoughts and your hearts with us.
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Thanks Maria, Thank you, Maria.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
That was Jan Guerrero, journalist and author and activist and
author Julisa arse Praya. Our episode was produced by Renaldo
(26:59):
Lean Junior, with production assistants from Tasha Sandoval. It was
edited by Fernande Echavari and it was mixed by JJ Carubin.
The Latino USA team also includes Rosa Na Guire, Julia Caruso,
Felicia do Minhez, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Estrada, Dominique Estrosa, Stephanie Lebau,
(27:19):
Andrea Lopez Gruzado, Luis Luna Marta Martinez, Monica Moreles Garcia,
Nour Saudi and Nancy Trujillo, Bennie Ramirez, Marlon Bishop, Maria
Garcia and myself are your co executive producers and I'm
your host, Mariano Rossa join us again.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
On our next episode, Dear listener.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
In the meantime, I'll see you on all of our
social media and you know what I'm gonna say, rote
maayas Jao.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the Heising
Simons Foundation, Unlocking knowledge, opportunity and possibilities more at Hsfoundation,
dot Org, Skyline Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, working with
visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide.
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