Mexican Enough??

I'm currently reading Mexican Enough by Stephanie Elizondo Griest which is part travel journal, part soul searching testimonial of the author's Mexican heritage.  In the southwestern US, there are generations of Latinos who never actually lived in Mexico, but yet identify with being Mexican.  When the U.S. plays Mexico in soccer, we don't know who to cheer for.  When Oscar de la Hoya fights, we don't know if we should be wearing a Mexican flag or an American one (although I think De la Hoya solved this by creating a U.S/Mexico tapestry).  With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican War, the border dividing the U.S. and Mexico shifted with the stroke of a pen.  Hence, the now infamous saying:  "I never crossed the border, the border crossed me."

In the southwest, most don't grapple with the issue of being biracial like Elizondo Griest.  We grapple with being bilingual and bicultural.  There is an entire generation of 30+ Latinos in the southwest that speak little or no Spanish at all.  The reasons for monolingual, English-speaking Latinos range from acculturation to American culture to sheltered family upbringings.  With all of the discrimination our parents faced (my dad always says that he had the Spanish 'beaten out of him' in school) there was little incentive for parents to subject their children to the same discrimination to preserve our native language.  

Culturally, I feel incredibly connected to my Mexican roots.  The food, the traditions, the dichos of our ancestors are pillars of life in the southwest.  However, there is a dire condition with our second and third generation Latinos:  The loss of language.  I can run down the list of my Latino high school and college friends and only a very small percentage of them speak Spanish.  Of those that actually speak the language, most learned Spanish in high school and/or college courses--not at home.  When asked if I'm fluent in Spanish, I always say that I am functionally fluent.  In other words, I can order food in a restaurant, ask where the bathroom is and engage in real basic conversation with native speakers.  

Losing the native language is troubling.  It feels like something is missing.  I find it particularly troubling when engaging in conversation with native-speaking youth.  When conducting a recent focus group with Latino youth, I had a young person ask me about my ethnicity.  I replied, Mexican-American.  He looked at me with a blank expression and said:  Then how come you struggle to speak Spanish? (He was critiquing my Barney Fife delivery of a research question in Spanish).  

This is something that many southwest Latinos struggle with as a result of Manifest Destiny. Our land was highly-valued, but our language and culture were not (It took almost 65 years for New Mexico to achieve statehood after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo). 

So, we ask ourselves regularly:  Am I Mexican Enough?