En Busca de una Identidad

There is nothing more painful than someone feeling an outcast for having a mixed culture. Having to feel different from others, or even your people; feeling invisible. People who mostly feel different and confused for having a mixed ancestry, often question “where do I truly belong”? Modern Culture in Latin America became the living adaptation from Indigenous and European roots; A mestizo child. There is no such heartbreaking word to call someone other than a “Mestizo”. Being labeled as a Mestizo meant a first generation of two different worlds colliding into one, adapting two languages into one, learning two cultures as one creating a “third” culture after the colonization.

In “La Conciencia de la Mestiza” by Gloria states that being a woman within a society of patriarchy, being a mestizo person confused of identity, creating a third culture from being mixed, the struggle of how the country became what it is now from the colonization. Being a Mestizo person is frustrating to cope with, we are often filled with patriarchy, losing our own way to fulfill our identity like a missing puzzle piece that was never completed.

The majority of the Latin America traditions adapted their native roots and Spaniard/Portuguese and influence strongly the new traditions. For example, where I’m from, Mexico, most of the traditions are borrowed from the Aztecs and is also borrowed from the Spanish, one particular tradition such as Christmas. During this holiday in Mexico, we practice posadas which are recitals from the bible when Mary and John seeked shelter we use our traditional piñata made of clay (the Aztecs made clay jars as offerings for a God) filled with fruit and all ages participate to break it and take the fruit after when the piñata breaks. This is a third culture in Mexico, adapting both cultures creating our modern culture. This goes also for my other siblings of Latin America though we were colonized and taken away our unique culture, we are able to celebrate a modern tradition.

-- works cited --

Anzalduá, Gloria. “La Conciencia de La Mestiza / Towards a New Consciousness.” In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1. ed., 99–113. Chicana Studies. San Francisco, Calif: Aunt Lute Books, 1987.