San Agustin Catholic Church, Isleta Pueblo
I spent half my life knowing the word gringo as a way of describing White people. It has more than one meaning, it also can be derogatory. It holds a whole deeper meaning. As I mature and process the emotions that comes with witnessing life, injustice, and grace, I find it hard to use gringo as a term to simply distinguish a group of foreign people. It has become too superficial of a use. In my adolescence and early adulthood it served its purpose and allowed me to express my belonging to a Chicano culture, by helping me believe I could discharge my vengeance and vindicate my own Latino pride. Education and understanding has defused this arrogant energy. Life has broken my pride and dignity down enough to allow compassion to seep into my soul's crevices. The compassion has infiltrated my defenses, it has manipulated my hatred. Unfortunately for my primitive mind this is the downfall to my ignorant thought process. I still come to judgment when I meet an arrogant white person. My defenses and radar for arrogance is honed, probably because I held so much myself for so long, that I can smell it...sense it. I see it in every one, the gringo quality that is. The term "Gringo" is a mentality.
I have my prejudice and it steers me wrong most times. So I am trying to deal with it. I could say that it reveals my ignorance, wounding, and my humanity. My stereotypes and bitterness are being broken apart, slowly, but certainly. Today was a great example. After working out and preparing to shower, a mature white man had his clothes sprawled on the bench. Significantly, symbolically, we were both naked, and he apologized for having his stuff sprawled out. Then he said words that don't seem that profound, but rocked my conscience sternly. Paraphrasing he said sorry mate, I am like a refugee, i don't have a locker. I connected because I don't have a gym locker either.
For the first time in my life I was forced to see a white man declare himself as a refugee. Again, "Gringo" may only describe a mindset. It could very well describe someone who is a foreigner for opportunistic or self-serving reasons. It could describe the refugee or the imperialist. Regardless now I can recognize the refugee in the white face, crushing my rooted understanding of the stereotypes that white means selfish, individualistic, oppressor, and restless. All I can conjure is an apology, to who, I don't know, all my animosity is never truly acted on. I try to seem pleasant to everyone. But bringing this out, makes me guilty of living it. I have grown into a thinking that I condemn in others that have the same gringo thinking.I recognize how my ancestors were "Gringo" to this land. The archetypal quality of an inspired immigrant shares the gringo's beliefs, and is a hopeful refugee full of ideas. I am a Gringo, to my Chicano communities because I don't dress, appear, or talk barrio I am gringo to my American institutions because I resent them for the culture and community they've created. I am gringo to myself because each identity that I am insecure with, ashamed of, and embarrassed by i suppress, reject, and oppress. I think if we were to look at our immigrant selves as refugees we might recognize the rejected, suppressed, and oppressed.
In honor of my white internal refugee, may I keep close the pain I left behind, be mindful of suffering I can create by arriving, and I give the respect that I wish I had received in the place I abandoned.
Somos Peregrinos
