Intro to Social Justice By Miguel Hernandez-Delgado

Families are very complex bodies of a community. A family nurtures and makes the life of a young person a wonderful experience. Many of us don’t know much about our families except that they are there for us. To get to know my family better and compare their experiences with what I have learned in class, I participated in a Family History project, where I interviewed and took pictures of Elizabeth Delgado (my mother), Rudy Ortiz (my father), and Sayra Delgado (my sister).

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Throughout the process, I learned more about them and their culture. As a Latin American, it has been very hard to keep track of my culture, as Beverly Daniel Tatum writer of The complexity of Identity article from the RDSJ book, points out “Attending closely to the dominant group [American culture] may leave little time or energy to attend to one’s self.”(pg 9). The adaptive environments from the predominantly English culture have slightly drifted me and my brothers away from our derived identities and culture. In an effort, my mother and father do their best to help us embrace their cultures via folk tales, traditional cuisine, and many other things.

For starters, I was born in Trenton, New Jersey but raised in Veracruz, Mexico with my grandparents. This lovely Mexican city near the gulf was the same one in which my mother grew up. As she explained in more detail in her interview, she had grown up in severe poverty. As young as 10 years, she had to work and provide for her family to have food on the table. Her chances of getting an education were far from possible. She along with all of my uncles were denied a decent education because of their social status. But my mother has proven to endure such challenges, in her pictures, she shows joy and happiness and exemplifies a strong hard working female character.

Furthermore, my mother describes how valuable family is for her as something that, “...doesn’t compare with nothing in the world.” This resembles her appreciation for her family. While still in Mexico in 2003, my mother was 16 years old. She was the only female out of her 4 male brothers. She touched on how the opportunity of coming to the United States was mostly and foremost offered to her male brothers first and not her because of her gender. Due to her insistence and her brothers not being brave enough to travel, she was the first female in her family to make the long and dangerous journey through the hot desert and into United States soil. By doing so she showed off her determined leadership power and braveness.

In addition, something which both my parents have a say on is their immigration status and how that has affected their present decisions. In March of this year, my grandmother passed away, and my mother, unfortunately, due to her immigration status, wasn’t able to travel and bury her. Instead, she had to bear with the sober pain of not being able to see her mother for the last time. Ever since she left me in 2006 with her, she never got the opportunity to see her in person again. While planning to go to Mexico, the fear that she endure was like that of the many Latin mothers like Irene- a diabetic mother with deportation- from Raising Children Amid the Threat of Deportation: Perspectives from Undocumented Latina Mothers, leaving us alone and having a discussion with similar phrases in our mind that “one day their [your] mom could be deported” and “right now she might be here, but one doesn’t know what could happen next”. Similarly, my father discussed his insecurity about being deported from the U.S. which has played a key role in his financial decisions. A great part of his income goes towards his land in Guatemala. A primary reason for this, as he explained in his interview, is that he is not a U.S. citizen and nonetheless possesses a social security number or a residence card. He fears that if he invests in making a good standing in this country and he is suddenly deported, the government would take all of his goods and he will arrive in his native country without anything. It is this nightmare of citizenship status that makes him feel anxious and worried about his money and family.

To end in a positive light, my sister’s pictures and interview illustrated to me what her wonderful brain thinks, as a growing child, she has become very playful and jokes a lot. As mentioned before, my parents have further explained where, when, and from who do I come from. I’m a proud son of a hardworking Hispanic family who didn’t come to murder or cause trouble, but to work very hard and bring more diversity to this nation. This is the land founded by immigrants, therefore anyone should be welcomed regardless of their country of origin. It is a dream and hopes that millions of Hispanic families wish and pray for and that will soon be fulfilled.