My name is Steven Colin, the proud son of two Mexican immigrants. Although my family has always struggled in this country with obstacles like language and cultural, that has never prevented us from pushing past the limits. I don’t take for granted the countless hours that my father couldn’t spend with us because he was occupied with hard, back breaking work to provide a roof over our heads and food on the table. Nor will I ever forget, in elementary school, the times my mother would help me with my mathematics homework, then she would stay up late those nights to learn the next day’s lesson in order to help me out the following evening.

In twenty three years, they’ve both made sacrifices that haven’t gone unnoticed in my eyes. I remember growing up with the fear that my parents would be torn apart from me because CHIRLA told my parents to prepare me for the worst. I owe my parents absolutely everything. My parents with the help of my teachers from CNCA and my after school instructors from HOLA pushed me to become part of the top ten percent of my high school class and encouraged me like other Latino students to expand my horizons. In the United States, I will now complete my third year at the fifth best liberal arts college with a double major in Latin American Studies and Education.

Although I was born an American, I had the privilege of being raised in my parents culture and language. M.E.Ch.A. taught me the importance of saying I’m a Mexican-American, a Xicano, especially in times of political unrest for my people because people like President Trump have made the oppression of the Latino community their priority. How do you look your mother in the eyes and tell her everything is going to be fine, after a man with so much hate is elected to be the President of the country we’ve come to call home, instead of explaining that you’re not surprised with the outcome because Latinos are a historically marginalized community. Becoming informed about the struggles of Latinos coming together to form organizations that address problems within my community made me realize that what I should have told my mother at that moment is “we continue to fight on mamá just as you and papá have all these years.”

I refuse to be seen as part of another prison, dropout, gang, or death statistic because we, Latinos, have so much more to offer this fine country. Several of my high school friends that went on to college and some of my college peers now, whether their parents immigrated from Guatemala, El Salvador, La Republica Dominicana, Ecuador, Peru, Central America, or South America, know of this struggle all too well. This website gave me the opportunity to learn about grassroots community organizations that influenced my youth and Latinos that live within my state, California. The development of this assignment made me realize that we, Xicanos, need to become future latino leaders that pave the way for the next generations to come because immigrants built this country and they will continue to build this country.

In Cesar Chavez’s wise words, “Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate a person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”