I’m Not a Taco-Flavored Dumpling

You know that teenagers of today are not the sponges of knowledge they used to be when they read a Chicano novel and only walk away with the newfound ability to shout “La Migra!” If this is the capacity of the next generation, then I’m positively terrified. Especially with the growing percentage of Mexican immigrants who live in California, young adults need to know about our neighbor Mexico. Sadly, the truth is that only one of ten teenagers know that Mexico is made of more than poverty and Taco Bell, and that the misunderstood powerhouse has its own immigrants, too.

One of the most notorious cities in Mexico is Tijuana, which lies very near the border. However, if a modern teenager has to say the first thought that comes to their minds when they hear “Tijuana”, it would most likely be “poverty.” During my freshman year at my high school Polytechnic, I sat through an array of speeches written by some of my classmates who were running for the Community Service Representative. Each candidate offered to organize a trip to an orphanage in Tijuana, all of them believing that the place is a harmless, poverty-stricken dump where homeless children dot the street. The reality is much worse. There are financially challenged and mentally deranged people in Tijuana who will attack buses full of tourists, kidnap them, demand a ransom, and shoot their captives. All five students were ignorant to the danger they would put themselves and others in if they traveled to Tijuana. They believed they were “safe”.

The reason I know what Mexico is really like is because I am part of a small minority group that live near the border, a rare trait I inherited from my parents. They are both Chinese-Mexican-Americans, crossing the border almost every day of their lives to go to school. My Chinese-Mexican-American background greatly influences my lifestyle. My name “Éli” is the Mexican version of “Ellie.” I am more advanced than most of my classmates in Spanish class because both my parents are semi-fluent. However, I am not a stereotypical Chinese or Mexican. My favorite subject is not math, it’s history; and I don’t speak Chinese at home. I don’t have a Chinese or Spanish accent when I speak in English. Every teenager knows what to think when they hear “Chinese” or “Mexican”. But what would they think if they were confronted with “Chinese-Mexican”? My own friends had a very unpleasant reaction in seventh grade. Apparently, rumors spread fast, which I painfully realized when I told one close friend that I am Chinese-Mexican-American. The next day, I arrived to my World History class to find an article about Chinese-Mexicans taped rudely to my usual seat. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed and hurt when I read the highlighted words “smuggled” and “rich.” Even to this day, I have no idea who committed the insulting deed.

The situation was worse when I started attending high school, where nobody knew that a Chinese-Mexican existed until they met me. When I tried assimilating into a clique during the first days, I started to tell people that “I am a Chinese-Mexican-American.” In their eyes, I suddenly morphed into an exotic creature. Students began to come up to me and ask me how ghetto I was when I was a child. I have never been and never tried to be “ghetto”, and I actually connect it with some caveman origins. Just because I said I was Mexican by culture, they assumed that I donned “doo-rags” in my youth and spit out grunts and gang symbols as communication. The only city they were able to name on the spot was Cancún, and the most authentic Mexican food they’d ever tasted was Taco Bell. The teenagers I attend school with seem to know Mexico like they know the moon.

Teenagers making racist jokes about Chinese or Mexicans wouldn’t know what to say about a Chinese family living in Mexico. They also wouldn’t know what to say if they were shipped to Tijuana to work on an orphanage. I would be ready to crash an organizing meeting for the trip and warn them all about the dangers of traveling to Tijuana, but the stubbornness teenagers have might be a barricade strong enough to keep the logic far, far away. Their ignorance is a handicap that will blind them to the rising power and danger in Mexico.