For me, it stems from another simple phrase: My family is from Mexico. Sharing that fact alone never feels like enough to give people an idea of my lived experience. I like to add that we are from two distinct regions of Oaxaca; my parents were raised in villages where only during my lifetime has electricity, running water, and a paved road finally arrived. Our features, language, and traditions are Zapotec, Mixtec, and Spanish randomly fused. Our nationalities are a mishmash of Mexico and the United States. Our blood is mostly indigenous to America, yet I can’t deny the few drops from Europe and Africa. All this is to say that we must be multiracial. Yet, that isn’t what comes to mind when people hear that my family is from Mexico.
The one thing that has kept my ever present “identity crisis” at ease is change. The billions of lives being lived in parallel to mine are in a constant state of change. Naturally, the way we communicate is also continuing to evolve. Typically, I describe myself with some combination of the aforementioned labels. However, when speaking broadly I refer to myself as Latina/e/x, because not only am I from “Latin” America, I am also a bisexual queer woman who recognizes that though labels and change can be uncomfortable, they can also be useful and welcoming. I view this trend of replacing a’s and o’s in Spanish with e’s or x’s not as whitewashing, but as a beautiful, nonbinary-inclusive layer added to everyone’s multicultural cake by Spanish-speaking LGBTQ+ people.
