Testimonio de historia latina americana by Guerrera De Amor

I was in the womb of my mother when she crossed the imperial, socially constructed border between Mexico and the United States of America. She climbed the mountain during the night and held my father’s hands but was dragged due to the steepness of the mountain. My sangre comes from the rural lands of Michoacán and Colima: Where my mother walked five miles to and from school every morning and evening 
 Where only the privileged kids continued with their studies 
 Where her family grew their own food for their family of ten 
 Where food was scarce and never abundant 
 Where North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) stole land, uprooting people from their lands 
 Where the Spanish colonized the Purépecha tribe and fought off the Aztecs 
 Where the meztisaje (Racial mixing) was created 
 Where my great grandmother grew up, during the Mexican Revolution 
 All of this occurred, and here I sit on a college campus after working multiple jobs to pay for the “American Dream” that comes at the cost of losing my native tongue, familia, and cultura. I was given the chance to be here because my parents and my ancestors made sacrifices. I overcame the No Child Left Behind Act but know others were indeed left behind prison bars and in disenfranchised toxic unsustainable environments. I chose to become an agent of change when I realized the way people of Mexican descent and other communities of color were being misrepresented in the history books. I encountered the magic that lies within the core of the forgotten.