As a Mexican American, you always question your identity. “Ni de aquí, ni de allá.” 

You always consider yourself Mexican because you’re not American enough for America, yet not Mexican enough for Mexico. The reality for millions of us is constantly questioning ourselves. Why do we have to be enough for one culture over the other? It seems like we’re in a race trying to prove to each identity that we’re enough for Americans and Mexicans.  

Our ethnicity labels keep us closer to our madres, the ones who show us the ins and outs of our culture. But I felt left out of the conversations about what it’s like living in Mexico. Why move from Mexico, for what opportunities? What “American dream”? The land of the free? Was it all just a lie? Were the opportunities just for Americans? According to the Pew Research Center, in 2021, 26,600,000 Mexicans were U.S.-born, making us the largest growing Hispanic origin group. American Latinos are still pushed to justify our authenticity towards our labels for both countries.  

I have consistently battled with answering these questions in my head. It wasn’t until a conversation in my SPAN 303 class my professor, discussing Spanglish, that I began to understand them. It hit me: my identity isn’t simply inherited, it was negotiated. 

I’ve always tried my best to prove so hard that I am Mexican now. Always being called white-washed, constantly getting corrected while speaking Spanish, and feeling like I need to fit in a certain stereotype. I take pride in my heritage, continue to learn Spanish, and try to look the part.  

I aspired to be an American girl when I was a child because that’s where I lived. My brown hair and eyes were never like the American girls I would see on TV. I envied them. I begged God to make me like those skinny American girls, the ones with blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes. My mom had that look. Why couldn’t I have those pretty green eyes, fair skin, and dye my hair blonde like hers? I hid my brown skin from the world, constantly covering myself to seem more American. I needed to prove to the world that I wasn’t a Mexican girl, I was American. English was the language I must speak, so why should I learn Spanish?  

My identity crept up on me anyways. I learned Spanish in less than 3 months at a dual-language school. I begged not to go to a new school just to learn it. I still remember how ten-year-old me felt. I cried moving to a school where I had to speak Spanish. I didn’t want to learn Spanish. While there was some pride to call myself Mexican, I never cared for the label. I still thought my traditions and culture were estranged for America. I shouldn’t speak about it. But I am Mexican.  

Every form I fill out, I’m white, but then I need to specify if I’m Hispanic or Latino? What the hell are these labels? “Just check it off, it’s you.” I’m spilt again.  

Labels…why are labels so important in America? Why do I have to identify myself as one or the other? I am Mexican and American. But still, why are we so self-obsessed with labels? It doesn’t matter. I feel so torn between one or the other. 

The obsession with labeling isn’t a new phenomenon; it’s institutional.  

It’s a constant battle in your head; you lose your mind over it. All my papers and opportunities are American, yet now I feel so apart from being an American. However, it was always included in my identity, Mexican American. I don’t belong to either one.  

Research shows that the U.S. census has struggled for decades with what labels to put on us, Mexicans, Colombians, Argentinians, Salvadorians, Puerto Ricans, and more. Latinos, Hispanics, we do not fit neatly into your American racial boxes. Cristina Kim from KPBS says it herself, Not only do more people of Latino/Hispanic descent understand themselves as having a distinct racial experience, but they are also less likely to select white and more likely to perceive themselves as multiracial. Any Mexican American or other “Latino/Hispanic” will tell you that no racial category reflects our background, especially when checking off that “White” box. The result of this? A feeling of erasure, not being able to truly represent yourself no matter what.  

Labels may help census data, but not us.  They’re trying to erase us now with mass deportations, just like how they did in the 1930s with the Mexican Repatriation, blaming us by saying we are the problem. But we are not. We actually help the GDP. Latinos had the fifth-largest GDP in the world in 2021. Even without a social security card, immigrants use an IITN to pay taxes because they’re not eligible to obtain a social security number to still pay and process their taxes. Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows foreign-born immigrants are more likely than citizens to work in “natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations; and production, transportation, and material moving occupations.” So, we’re not “taking” your jobs, undocumented workers often must take lower paying job that most do not take. In 2021, over 2.5 million Latinos in the U.S. have advance degrees like master’s or doctorates. Those degrees are often in Arts, Science, Social Work, Business Administration, Doctor of Medicine, Dental Surgery, Veterinary Medicine, and Law.  

Whether or not we help the United States, the labels may help for those of us who live between the two cultures. Yet it still doesn’t erase the fact that it reinforces a false idea that an identity must be singular and measurable. For most Mexican Americans, our identities are layered. We’re both and neither nation. Our languages are blending into one. Our society is shifting along with our culture across borders. Our rich cultures belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  

I wish I could tell my younger self that it doesn’t matter if you belong to one culture or the other. But the truth is this: you belong to both because you are both. Not half. Not either.  

Pura Mexicana. Pura Americana.  

Cuando me corto la piel sangro igual de rojo en los dos países. 

Yo no necesito prove a ninguna persona quién soy.