I Know This Because I Have Seen

By Marlen Diaz / Winter 2021

My Friend,

I started to lose my innocence when I was 10 years old. Tijuana started to become one of the most bloody and dangerous cities in the entire nation. The war between different cartels was leaving a lot of families without a mother, father, or even a little and innocent son. People were so scared to even go out to buy some food because it could mean not coming back home and seeing their loved ones never again. That's when I started asking myself “Why are there evil people around the world?” , “Why are so many innocent people dying?” and at that moment I realized that I was not that naive girl anymore that used to think that the world was like in the movies where everyone lives happily forever after.

Moving to San Diego was of course the first option but the thing was that my mom decided to give birth to my brother and I in the U.S. illegally. She did not have any type of legal papers to even cross the border at the time because she was accused of fraud and it was impossible to even try to make an agreement with the U.S. Consulate. On the other hand, my father was going through the migration process to get his green card. He was waiting to get his appointment with the U.S. consulate and it would take approximately two long years to complete the entire process. It seemed like we would never get out of the dangerous city that Tijuana had become.

Two years went by, Tijuana was becoming a safer place to live despite the high rate of drug use among teens. I was starting my second year at la secundaria when my mom decided that no matter what, I was moving schools to one that is in San Ysidro near the border. My first reaction of course was rejecting the move because how could I move alone? How could I move without knowing English? How could I leave everything I've ever known? Of course my parents didn't take my opinion into consideration and they told me that it was something that would benefit my future and eventually ensure my safety.

It was late August when my real challenge started. Having to learn English wasn't the only difficulty that I was facing, I had to wake up at 5:00am or even earlier depending on the season to cross the border every day. During these next two years, I experienced a lot of racism at school. My classes were not bilingual anymore. It was all English, and I wasn't ready to start speaking the language because I felt like I was going to be a total failure because of my mexican accent. In my regular English class all of my classmates knew the language perfectly. There were two teachers and both were mexican. They used to have those annoying sticks with your name on it and used them to call students randomly to answer questions related to the topic we were working on. It was the second week of class. The teachers asked me a question and I felt so uncomfortable answering it because I wasn't truly understanding the lecture. I remembered that day going to one of the teachers almost at the end of class to tell her that I was an ELD student and that there were some words that I would not get at the first time and instead of helping me she started to yell at me asking “Who placed you in this class if you don't know English?” I stared at her nervously for a minute and answer “My counselor”. She started to look over her computer and embarrassed me in front of everybody yelling “If you don't speak English you should go back to Mexico where you are supposed to be!” All of my classmates started to laugh at me, even the ones that came from my same background and also shared my experience. That day I remember going back home thinking if I was doing the right thing. It made me question myself a lot if studying in the U.S. was worth it, if all of those racist comments, crossing the border everyday, and trying to do my best at school was worth a high school diploma. I have never shared this episode with anyone because I think it is just something too personal.

As I mentioned before, I had to wake up at 5:00am or even earlier depending on the season to cross the border every day. One day, I was crossing the border alone to go to school like I usually did. The officer called me and asked for my passport. Once I was in front of him with my passport in hand, he started to ask me why I had a Sentri, I answered that because I needed it to get to school on time. I don’t really know how it started, but he got mad out of nowhere and started to yell at me that I shouldn’t have a sentri. Once he started yelling, I got really scared because I was crossing the border alone, I was thirteen years old, and I didn’t know what to do. I panicked and started to look around. The officer started to snap his fingers at me, and continued to yell. He sent me to second revision. Now, I don’t really know what he told the officers over there but, they started to ask me if I had any drugs, if I was sure that I was going to school, if I was sure that my passport was really my passport, and made me lift my shirt in front of everyone who was crossing the border. They saw that I didn’t have anything and let me go, but at that point I was almost crying out of frustration. To me, it seems that it was a discrimination situation, Why? because clearly officers don’t do all of those things to people who are white even though they might cross the border drunk without shoes, and I know this because I have seen many.

Now that I am 20 years old, I would go back and tell myself first, that everything is going to be ok and not to be so hard on myself. I always thought that all of those situations were my fault because I wasn’t the perfect fit for the United States. I didn’t know English, my skin is brownish and I don’t have green eyes. Nowadays I understand that people are misinformed, uneducated, and close minded. People don’t acknowledge that we live in a diverse country in which we should respect and love each other despite our differences. Now I understand that I am not alone and many people experience racism. It is something that we need to fix and hopefully one day we will do. I do think that those situations shape the way I am now and made me try harder and I feel like I am succeeding.