Vale La Pena

El Paso, Texas fell victim to the rage of a white supremacist. 

Mississippi saw the largest immigration raids in a decade. 

Latinx people in the U.S. have been told their entire lives they don't belong. We've been told we are leeches on all the good the U.S. has. We've been reduced to caricatures of rapists, drug dealers, lazy, dirty, generally undesirable. The current occupier of the presidency himself reinforced these sentiments. 

All this is happening while the border crisis continues and children are separated from their families. All this continues while our Central American siblings face harsher treatment by traveling through a generally discriminatory Mexico to find the USA destroying their families and treating them as animals in cages. Despite knowing how terrible the journey is, despite knowing the racism they ultimately face in the U.S. these people still make the trip. Imagine knowing the journey to the U.S. is still worth it despite the violence waiting for them...imagine having no choice but to make the trip. 

I've never felt a darker moment for Latinx people in the USA. Gloria Anzaldúa said, "I am a turtle. Wherever I go, I carry "home" on my back." I've never felt this more than I feel now. I carry home, my Latinidad...but I also carry all the wounds inflicted on us this week.

You have Latinx people murdered by bullets. You have our families separated at the border. You have a broken immigration system that continues to make families wait over 15+ years to see loved ones in what some champion as the "right and legal way". You have both immigration raids and the threats of immigration raids every month eroding any sense of security and sanity of the undocumented.

Collectively, the anti-immigrant rhetoric spoken by the right and the lies of progress and action by the left leave us displaced. 

Forgive me for being a little more stressed, a little more tired, a little less trustworthy, and a little less forgiving these days. I work in diversity, equity, and inclusion by choice and by passion...but somedays...nowadays...I understand more and more why people leave the field.

Yet I still believe as Gloria Anzaldúa said, "Do work that matters. Vale la pena!" 

Vale la Pena.

It's worth it. 

Love to all my Latinx siblings.