Anna Lee Mraz Bartra / Pensula 360 Press
When I was 5, I told my parents that I was half Mexican, half American, and half Catalan. They laughed at my terrible math skills (to this day) but accepted the thrust of my statement, which was that I considered myself part of all three cultures.
My father is American, he grew up in California in the 50s, he met my mother in the 80s in the USA and moved with her to Mexico City where I was born 5 years later.
My mother was born in Mico to Catalan parents who fled the civil war in Spain.
I grew up listening to The Eagles, Joan Manuel Serrat and some Cuban salsa. My mother sang me children's songs in Catalan and I listened to her speak with her mother, her brother and her cousins in this language.
I don’t have a drop of Mexican blood in my body. I have blue-green eyes and yellow hair that I inherited from my Catalan grandfather. I don’t look “Mexican,” but I open my mouth and can recite the entire alphabet of slang profanities, I can sing all the lyrics to Café Tacuba’s songs, and my accent is no different than any other accent in the southern part of Mexico City.
I haven't always understood that this is what comes with privilege, white privilege. Even though I don't come from a rich family and my parents have worked hard to earn every penny they own, they've probably had it worse than people who look Indian, brown or black.
Every time I get into a taxi in Mexico City, the driver usually asks me where I'm from, I answer truthfully “from here to around the corner” -“you speak with an accent”-, he reacts, I laugh and wonder what accent he could be referring to, the conversation ends there. I understand that people see a white woman and that doesn't always match their description of what is Mexican, so for them, there must be some other explanation. They do charge me more at the market because white, in Mexico, means rich.
But I understand that being treated differently also comes with getting a better job and having access to certain places that come with a lot of benefits (i.e. privileges). Even though I don't have a lot of economic advantages, I do know that I have more formal educational advantages than immigrants and people of color. I can only try to use those advantages to step aside to make way for them and learn from disadvantaged people, so that the playing field is leveled.