Thoughts, Reflections, and Experiences

Powerful song. "Our folks forced out of their country. You must be crazy, no one crosses the desert ‘cause they want to. It’s a necessity… a sacrifice for the family. You don’t call them illegals you call them Economic Refugees "

An article on Generation 1.5 Hispanics , written by Jose Villa, caught my attention during my researching, with the following sentence: Some are foreign-born and moved to the U.S. as children. Others, however, were born in the U.S. and raised in all Spanish households and neighborhoods, rendering their U.S. upbringing functionally identical to their foreign-born counterparts. They are not second generation but are not first generation in the traditional sense. They are a group functionally, culturally and linguistically in the middle. I attend a church comprised of mostly second-generation Hispanics, although our parish has a lot of 1.5 and first-generation Latinos [and non-Hispanics, too]. Over the summer, our girls’ small group read through Orlando Crespo’s, Being Latino in Christ, and I learned more about the different stories that each one of us had, as well as about the common history that we shared. I can’t say that reading that book was the beginning of my journey towards e...

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/04/hispanic-college-enrollment-rate-surpasses-whites-for-the-first-time/ This article should make me feel better than I feel, right? The thing is, I don’t think I’ve truly  known  what it meant for my ethnic group to be  prospering  like this. Growing up, Hispanics always had the lowest high school graduation rate, lowest college enrollment rate, and it seemed that everywhere I went, I saw people of Hispanic origin as the people that were in lower job positions (like cleaning crew, cooks, or waiters).  And I’ve been trying to fight it. To be the change. The hope. For myself. For my family. For my people.  Praise God, I’ve been successful so far… becoming the first person in my family to graduate high school, first to go to college and graduate, etc. But little did I know, other people of my same roots were doing the same. I mean, I knew more were going to school, but I escaped it all. I went to a college...