MUSING
Do you identify as Hispanic/Latino?
YES or
words by
“Chaw-, Chav-, Sh-”
aubrey chavarria
“ I am hispanic, This was my normal, I had never questioned my identity before. I was just another white girl with an “exotic” last name. But I wasn’t just another white girl. I’m hispanic and white, my dad is Nicaraguan, immigrated to the US at age 12. Grew up in LA from age 12, met my mom at 23 and the rest comes to now. He didn’t talk about it much with me growing up, and people brushed it off because I grew up in a small isolated part of suburbia. They knew my dad, thus they knew my story, and that was the end of it. I would just brush it off.
From 5 to 18, all I ever answered about being Hispanic were superficial questions. Diversity boxes on surveys or for school information, “Do you identify as Hispanic/Latino?” A check mark always placed in the “Yes” box. “Oh my god you’re so tan! Is it natural?”, yeah it is, I’m half hispanic. “Do you speak Mexican?”, and with the biggest eye roll I could produce I would say “It’s Spanish, but no.”
16 | UNTOLD
The questions I have received in the last 2 years here at Hamline from my friends, teammates, coaches, classmates, and professors have challenged me to look at those answers I gave in high school and go, why did I ever answer it that way? I met people and when I said my last name, it wasn’t a laugh and saying that they’ll just say Aubrey. People asked how to pronounce it, where it came from, where my parents were from. Questions galore. Questions that after 18 years made me really look into my identity below the surface level. Why did I ever say, half hispanic? I am hispanic, no ratio or percentage takes that away from you. What did being hispanic mean to me? What does my heritage mean to me? Why did I ever push it away?
“
“Here, I’m here, Aubrey, just you don’t have to try.” I spent the first 12 years of my education living that moment every first day of school, substitute teacher, school assembly, and orientation. It doesn’t make me special, and it doesn’t make me different. But it did make me feel self conscious, about who I am for 12 years of my life.
NO
no ratio or percentage takes that away from you. I turned to finally confronting the reason, it wasn’t shame, it was fear. Fear of not being accepted for who I was. Fear that I wasn’t enough, enough for this identity I was coming to realize is me. That I was too white washed for the hispanic community. A girl from Arizona with an immigrant father, who could not speak a lick of spanish. Too basic white girl to express my interest in Spanish music, art, and culture. That I was too hispanic for the white part of my identity, that I stick out like a sore thumb. The tan, the eyes, the obviously dyed blonde hair.
