De Aquí y De Allá

Dear Mexico,

On September 16, 1810, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla gave the Grito de Dolores, calling for the people of Mexico to rise against the Spanish rule. It marked the beginning of Mexico’s fight for independence. I knew the date long before I understood the history. It was the day the flags came out, and the streets of Chicago felt proud to be Mexican.

I have spent most of my life trying to understand you.

Maybe that is what happens when you leave somewhere before you are old enough to remember leaving.

I was only five years old when I came to the United States, too young to understand what it meant to cross a border. I grew up with R&B and hip-hop, block parties, and the corner stores of Logan Square.

But Mexico was never far away.

It lived in my family, our language, our food, and in the traditions that somehow survived the distance.

For a long time, I didn't know what to do with that.

I wondered if being raised in Chicago made me less Mexican. If being born in Mexico meant I was supposed to feel a connection I couldn't always put into words. I was constantly trying to find myself somewhere between the two.

It took me a long time to realize I wasn't lost; I was living in the in-between, and there is a strange kind of beauty in that place.

You learn that culture isn't something you leave at the border. It changes shape. It follows you. It finds its way into the way you dress, the way you speak, the way you create, and the way you raise your children.

I think about my mom and the choices she had to make. She came here carrying her own version of independence, the chance to build something different for her children. My parents made sacrifices I didn't understand as a child, creating a life out of whatever they had. I grew up inside the possibilities they created, and now, I get to decide what I do with that foundation.

Maybe that's why this year feels different.

I've spent the last few months rethinking what I'm building with my business and where I want it to go. I updated my business plan. I even submitted my very first pitch in Spanish.

There was a time when I couldn't imagine myself sitting in those rooms, speaking boldly about my ideas, and asking people to believe in something I had built from scratch.

Now, I'm doing exactly that.

Sometimes I wonder if my parents ever imagined this version of their daughter when they were making the hard decisions that brought us here. I wonder if they knew that the things they sacrificed would become the launchpad for someone else's dreams.

Hispanic Heritage Month gives us a collective reason to look back at all of this not just at the history we inherited, but at what we have built since.

It’s about the families who started over. The businesses built from kitchen tables. The artists who carried traditions into entirely new forms. The communities that forged a sense of belonging where there was none.

Culture doesn't disappear because someone crosses the border. Sometimes, it evolves into something entirely new. That is what I have come to understand about myself.

I am not less Mexican because Chicago raised me. I can carry both.

Growing up de aquí y de allá has given me the ability to look at where I've been without feeling like I am trapped there. It has taught me to honor what was given to me without being afraid to evolve it. Somewhere in the spaces between two worlds, I found my own way to belong.

This September, I’m thinking a lot about that little girl holding her Mexican flag.

She didn't know all the history yet.

She didn't know what independence would eventually come to mean.

She just knew she was proud.

Maybe she was right all along.