This year has been a year of letting go of fear and living in the essence of pure love and light. This year has been a true test of loving myself and listening to my inner voice.  

As with so many people who grow up within a broken family unit, I didn’t have the best childhood. I also didn’t have the worst. I think growing up coming from a lower middle class family as a minority, I naturally have dealt with a lot of adversity in my life. I’ve had to fight off the negative stories and expectations. I’ve had to prove myself harder not just as a woman, but as a minority woman.

Since so much has come out this year on the topic of racism, I wanted to touch on that briefly in this post. I am mostly Hispanic mixed with Native American and have some white from my dad’s side. Both of my parents are hispanic from New Mexico. My parents had me when they were just out of high school. My dad joined the military at 18 to give us a better life than what he experienced in his childhood. My mother came from a traditional, large hispanic family on both sides. Neither my parents nor grandparents went to University.  Being Hispanic from Santa Fe is a big part of my identity. I grew up next door to my grandparent’s on my mother’s side. I was very close to both my grandfather, Abelino and my Grandmother Cora Lee Solano. Whenever I was hungry or bored, I would just go next door and see what my Grandpa Lino had cooking on the stove. He always had something to eat. I had a suitcase that said “Going to Grandma’s” and I often stayed at her house. Eating traditional hispanic food like beans, chile, tortillas, and chicharrones was the daily norm. Every harvest, my grandfather and I would grind red chile from the dried out red chile pods. A long with roasting and peeling green chile, it was a yearly tradition. My grandfather taught me how to make the best New Mexican food and reminded me to never forget where I came from. 

Because I grew up in mostly private christian schools, the majority of my friends were all white and upper middle class. I never felt like I fit in growing up with my peers. I also went to several schools growing up in Santa Fe, in and out of private and public school. At public middle school, ironically, I was bullied and jumped for being “white” and ganged up by the hispanics. Little did they know that I was actually hispanic. This is the dilemma I have faced growing up mixed race or just growing up as a light skinned hispanic. You aren’t actually white, you don’t feel white, but you sort of look white. My experience has often been invalidated by other minorities and whites. I never have thought I looked “white” and my skin isn’t exactly white either. My face looks like I am hispanic and native to most people.

 Santa Fe is an interesting place how it claims to be tri-cultural. The three dominant cultures of the Natives, Hispanics and Anglos are what give it the nickname “tricultural.” However there is a much darker side to Santa Fe. The “tricultures” don’t exactly live in harmony. Santa Fe has problems with structural racism, just like anywhere else. Since it is an old city, the roots run deep. My parent’s entire generation of Santa Feans is a group that were mostly not taught to speak Spanish from their parents, even though their parents spoke Spanish and it was their first language. Blending in with the Anglo culture, which was becoming more predominant in Santa Fe back then, was more important than preserving hispanic heritage. I have also heard stories of nuns in the local catholic schools that used to hit students on the hand with a ruler if anyone spoke Spanish. In the grand scheme of things, New Mexico hasn’t been a state for that long, only since 1912. It was part of Mexico before that. It’s sad that a place with so much heritage and culture is loosing it due to gentrification.

I think it’s important to respect each other’s unique background and differences. Historically, African American’s have no doubt had it the worst in America’s history. Let’s not forget about our Native American brother’s and sisters and what they sacrificed and went through. Let’s not forget about the struggles that all minorities in this country face.  My ancestors have been in New Mexico a long time and I’m not going anywhere either. Like we say, I was born here all my life. 🙂