00:00I never really felt fully at home anywhere.
00:02I always felt somewhere in between two worlds.
00:05My skin color plays a really big role in me trying or people trying to make me feel less
00:11than.
00:12I'm gringa.
00:12I would never fit in with true Latinos and Latinas.
00:16You're blonde, you're blue-eyed, you're born in the United States.
00:19Your dad is not Latino, so that means that you're not.
00:24And it's so fucking frustrating.
00:33I have a very complicated identity.
00:36I'm half Eastern European, I'm half Guatemalan.
00:38I grew up between Canada and the US.
00:41I don't really have one way of identifying.
00:43Being Brazilian, I'm the only country in South America that speaks Portuguese.
00:48Moving here, my mom didn't really have other Brazilian friends, so the closest thing she
00:53had were other Latinos, but they all spoke Spanish.
00:56I would feel like I wasn't adequate or I wasn't Latina enough.
01:00And I remember one girl saying to me, but you're like, you're not really Latina, like
01:04you're kind of like white, you're a gringa, like, and I remember being so offended.
01:09Just because I don't speak Spanish, I'll never be as good as anybody else who does.
01:13I'm like on a seesaw where it's like, do I fit in with these groups of people?
01:17Do I fit in with these groups of people?
01:18I felt like I had to not only be super Brazilian at home and live within that identity, but
01:24then when I'm out with my Latino friends, I have to overcompensate for not speaking Spanish.
01:30As a kid, I was just freaking confused.
01:33I was like, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I am, I don't know what's going
01:35on.
01:36I don't see myself represented at all in my community.
01:39But as I grew older, I kind of grew into myself and understood that it's okay to have this
01:44complicated, nuanced existence.
01:46I remember when I was in high school, once this kid called another kid a spick, and
01:51I was like, whoa, you cannot say that, that's unacceptable.
01:56And he responded to me and looked at me, he was like, why do you care, you're white?
01:59When I was in school, I joined a dance troupe called Culture Shock.
02:02When I joined the dance troupe, they gave me a name and it was called Foreign because
02:07I was Puerto Rican, West Indian, Jewish, and German, you know, and I was automatically like
02:12put in a different like frame.
02:15I think there's a cultural obsession with being traditionally Latina because in the media,
02:19we see one image of what a Latina looks like.
02:22You don't see Afro-Latina, you don't really see white, blonde, blue-eyed Latina.
02:26You see usually maybe fairer skin, dark hair, big breasts, like a Sofia Vergara type.
02:33Latinx people can be any race.
02:34You can be black, white, brown, anything in between.
02:37Latinidad or being Latinx is not a monolith.
02:40There isn't just one way to exist and I think we can all do a lot better when it comes
02:46to
02:47understanding that there are different experiences other than our own and accepting those experiences.
02:51You can make one person happy if you speak Spanish but then the next person's like, but
02:57do you know how to dance?
02:58And then the next person's like, do you know how to cook?
03:00Do you know how to do this?
03:01So I think there's always that idea that we're not going to be enough and just realizing that
03:06we are enough who we are.
03:09Being Latina to me means being part of a super rich history and culture.
03:15Seeing other Latinx people makes me so happy because even though we might not always look
03:19the same, I know that deep down we are.
03:21I'm proud to be Latina because I'm a part of such a beautiful, vibrant, large community of people.
03:28I'm proud to be Latina because family is so embedded in my cultural identity.
03:33I'm very proud of my roots because of my mother and what she's done for me.
03:38How I, you know, see and view the world is because of the perspective that she gave me.
03:43I feel like the modern Latina is just like, unstoppable.
03:46Like, we don't stop at just knowing how to dance or knowing how to cook.
03:49Like, we keep going. We keep pushing the ceiling.
03:52And I think it's really also important for Latinos to come together
03:55and to not say to other Latinos, you're not Latino enough.
03:57We stand stronger together.
03:59We are a Latina and proud!
