by K. Osorio-Teamer
There is a saying in Spanish that translates to, “not from here, nor from there.” I identified with this statement once. I felt lost in my identity as a mixed-race first-generation Nicaraguan American because I didn’t have that language at the age of 11 when my gym coach asked me if I was mixed and proceeded to discuss my racial background with another coach while I stuttered, “I’m Hispanic.” I began to understand the concept of race and ethnicity at an early age. I can’t pinpoint the first time I heard the story, but I knew about my parent’s border crossing by the time I was 8. My mother would pull down a box from her closet and we’d sit on our green rug. She’d tell me the story while showing me the pair of toddler boots my brother wore as they traversed el Rio Grande. I don’t remember ever asking for the tale, but I do remember it happening after my parents were pulled into nostalgia by a few Budweisers. I understood then that we weren’t from here. We didn’t belong here, and the goal was always to go back home. The concept of home got harder to pin down the more assimilated I became into American society. When I started school, I became embarrassed of my culture as we lived with the limitations and fears that come with undocumented life. Assimilation and code switching made the most sense in order to survive in the world outside of my family while living what I thought had to be a dual life – Nicaraguan at home and American in school. Living in majority Latin American neighborhoods, being exposed to Chicana literature, and learning about Nicaragua through oral history from my elders helped me stay connected to my identity. Because of these things, I can say with pride that I am both. I’m from here and from there.
I grew up in two countries. My grandmother’s, aunt’s, and my home were Little Nicaragua. Parakeets and finches serenated us at first light in the jungle of potted plants that filled nearly every space near a window. Our picture albums held evidence of the Nicaraguan influence in our homes. Wicker furniture, wooden artisanal pieces with brightly colored towns hung on multicolored walls of teal, pink, and yellow. My grandmother’s home is still a portal into Managua, Nicaragua. I often take pictures of her carved wooden parrots that have block letters that unnecessarily spell out the name of our homeland. There’s no mistaking it, that bird and the wall on which it hangs are Nicaraguan. School was a whole other story! The most shocking part about school were the amount of Latino kids in my class and that not one was Nicaraguan. Spanish was my first language, but I started learning from my older cousins and by watching The Simpsons. I also started taking transitional classes in third grade so I could switch from English as a Second Language (ESL) classes into regular English classes. The American culture was another shocker once I made the switch. In a few short years, I was fully enveloped in American culture. This reminds me of the Americanization efforts of the early 1900s, when settlement houses were created to provide social services to immigrants while making their children into “real” American children. I felt so different walking into those classes. My classmates seemed to belong in this country with their perfect accents and parents who didn’t need them to act as translators. The school system was where I became Americanized and committed to it with a disdain towards my own culture. Meanwhile the city of Houston and my parents desire to be with other Latinos helped sever that need to be seen as and live by an Anglo-American standard.
I’ve lived in southwest Houston for most of my life. I grew up in low-income neighborhoods that were predominantly Latino, black, or a mix. I never felt pride for my city or neighborhoods as a young person. They were the opposite of what I saw on Sister, Sister and Dawson’s Creek. Regardless, I was used to washing clothes at the laundromat next to the Frutilandia Market. We did our shopping at Fiesta or Foodarama, and only bought fajita from La Michoacana. We cut our hair at shops owned by Latinas and took our cars to Latino mechanics. It was an exclusivity that made me feel like an outsider when I went to a Whole Foods or Rice Epicurean Market. I was exposed to my culture in grocery stores because these were communal spaces where anyone was a potential neighbor and friend. When I moved out on my own, I lived in Greater Eastwood near 2nd Ward, a historically Mexican American area. Before learning its history and significance to Mexican American activism, I could already feel the Latino culture in the streets of the neighborhood. I watched as more and more of the area became gentrified and feared that I was a part of the problem. A twenty something who loved the new trendy gamer coffee shop and spent many weekends at 8th Wonder Brewery, where I took a picture of the infamous and colorful “I Love Houston” sign on my birthday a few years ago. I had seen it from my car in different areas of the city, but had never been close enough to get a good picture. This sudden pride in my city was somewhat new and it came from that neighborhood. I saw a place where Latinos were in the forefront on the street art and cultural spaces like the Esplanade on Navigation, where the original Ninfa’s stands. The taco trucks on every corner, the Tlaquepaque Market with shops filled with Latino art and goods, and the dads drinking beer in their garages made this part of town feel like home while reinforcing my heritage. Although I’m not Mexican, I felt connected by language and the many cultural similarities. Mexican immigration into the U.S. surged multiple times throughout the early twentieth century. Refugees and soldiers came due to the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, and the need for labor during WW I and II brought more Mexicans onto this side of the border. Although there were efforts to Americanize immigrants and any who were deemed as foreign, the consistent influx of new immigrants and Juan Crow segregation laws consistently reminded Mexican Americans that they were different and reinforced their counterculture. The barrio was a place of community where its inhabitants held transnational beliefs and interests. This city held on to its Mexican culture and thanks to it, I maintained a connection to my own latinidad.
As the youngest girl in a Latino family, my gender rules were simple. My job was to be well mannered, extremely studios, quiet, help in the kitchen, and only move out of the house with a college degree and an engagement ring, in that order. I played the part well and lived up to the “calladita te ves más bonito” doctrine. This translates to, “Quieter, you look prettier.” Having an older brother constantly provided me with evidence of the double standard we lived by. He could be out late, sleepover at friend’s houses, and have girlfriends by the time he was twelve. I was still asking for permission to go out at the age 20. We lived very different lives. Having to stay inside all the time meant I had to find fun things to do at home, and books were at the top of my list. My third picture is of a stack of beautiful books that have enlightened or inspired me. Sandra Cisneros makes multiple appearances in the stack. I started reading her books in my 20s. It was my first encounter with Latino characters that had linguistic and cultural barriers with their parents. Some lived in poor neighborhoods like the one I grew up in. Books like House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek opened me up to the possibility that I didn’t have to marry a man to be freed from my home. I lost my parents in my early twenties, and my remaining family expected me to move in with my brother, as he was now head of the household. I felt this desire to break away from everyone and do things on my own, and a part of that spark came from work by Cisneros and other Chicana literature icons like Gloria Anzaldua, as well as newer names like Yesika Salgado, a Salvadoran poet living in Los Angeles. This exposure to Latina authors has shown me the many faces of the Latina woman. There is pride in the work that mothers do to raise children and maintain households. There is also pride in the work of a woman that fights cultural standards and has no children. Without realizing, I was living a feminist struggle that women before me had been fighting. Organizations like Las Adelitas de Aztlán and Hijas de Cuatemoc and publications like El Grito Del Norte and and La Mujer from the 1960s and 70s were working to destroy misogyny in the Mexican American community. My stand against these expectations was to live on my own and do what I wanted. My independence and selfishness were my form of activism, and the Chicanas from this movement cleared my path.
My connection to Nicaragua comes in waves; at times it is strong, and I feel like a full blown Pinolera. Other times it is low and imposter syndrome kicks in. I’ve never been to Nicaragua, but my parents and family taught me enough about it that it legitimately feels like home. My cousin returned to the homeland for a mission with her church, and said her accent returned to her mouth within days and she was speaking in voseo, a popular tense in Central America. I feel my most Nicaraguan when I eat traditional foods like arroz a la valenciana, gallo pinto, bajo, and vigoron. I usually eat these at my grandma’s house. Before the pandemic, I started to take pictures of the Nicaraguan dishes my grandma made me. Vigoron, a dish made with yuca, pork rinds, and cabbage salad, holds a special place in my heart because it was one of my mom’s favorites. She used to tell me stories of her and my grandmother selling vigoron in the streets of Granada. My mother helped by carrying sacks of yuca from the market to my grandmother’s stand before heading to school, so that my grandmother could prepare the dish for the breakfast rush. At this time, school wasn’t a priority for their family so some of my aunts didn’t go to school, but my mom never quit. She was dedicated to her education and graduated at the age of sixteen. After working for a few years to save money for higher education, she started college and was only a few semesters away from graduating when Anastasio Somoza was run out of the country by the Sandinistas. I never learned unbiased Nicaraguan history, so when my mother told me communists were bad people and Sandinistas had ruined her life, I believed her. I was proud of stories of resistance during the civil war like when my parents sold eggs clandestinely to avoid punishment. Food was rationed out by the government at this time, and my mom and grandma would often complain that one pound of beans for the week was never enough to sustain the family. The egg business was a way my family fought back against what they viewed as oppression.
Although both my parents came from humble beginnings, their economic status changed in the early eighties. They had multiple market businesses and were able to hire domestic workers, including a nanny for my newborn brother and a cook. The way I look at my parents’ story has changed from one of complete reverence, to a broader understanding of history and human nature. More than likely, my mother hating the Sandinistas and communism had to do with the civil unrest, but I also know they were privileged in some respect. They were entrepreneurs and had enough capital to fund an illegal immigration to the United States. I didn’t know Somoza was a dictator until I read it in our textbook. Nor did I know he had support from the U.S. or that they assisted in taking the Sandinista party out of power. Regardless of my parent’s privilege, the imperialistic and capitalistic pursuits of the United States led my family to leave Nicaragua and eventually make a home out of the country that displaced them. This kind of immigration was a contributing factor to the nativist sentiment that arose in the 1970s and 80s. The irony is stark and heartbreaking, but it does give me a better understanding of the history of a country I consider home. Learning this has helped supplement the oral history my parents left behind, while helping me understand who they were as people, too, and not just parents.
In my journey of understanding my identity, race was the toughest concept for me to grasp. For a long time, I thought all Latinos were mestizos, like most of my family. Even though I saw a lot of white Latinos on TV, I didn’t make a conscious distinction between their ethnicity and race. My father’s stories about his mother made me question the myth of mestizaje. He said she had long curly hair like me and that she was darker than he was. When he mentioned his skin, I had this moment of realization. It was like the first time I really saw his dark skin in comparison to mine and my mom’s. Looking at a picture of me on his lap, while he holds a classic red and white Bud can, I can’t believe it took me so long to see it. I knew he was different, but I didn’t make the connection to indigenous and black ancestors until years later. I heard stories of my grandmother bullying him for his indigeneity when my mom first brought him home. My father laughed at these stories as an adult and I laughed too. I had no idea my grandmother had been prejudiced against my father for his race. For most of my youth, I would be asked about my race and whether or not I was mixed. I understood mixed to mean a child with parents from different races. I didn’t think that was me because my parents were both Latinos, so I would answer I was Hispanic. That was an easy explanation for me and the curious onlooker. A known label that was introduced and promoted in 1970s, and that lasted even thirty years later when I was in middle school erasing my black and indigenous blood lines with a term that only identified my colonizer. If I were the mixed question now, I’d answer yes. Yes, that after 500 years of miscegenation, I was what came out of the mix. A first-generation Nicaraguan with indigenous, black, and Caucasian blood. A legacy of miscegenation. Stories of Nicaragua and of my family back home were a lifeline to culture for me even more so after my parents’ passing. It was through their oral histories that I was able to make connections to my racial makeup and Latino culture.
biSKITs & gravy 