The compartmentalization of ourselves in America begins at a young age.
Grease seeped through my paper bag lunch and stained my backpack. It was 2nd grade and I wondered why I didn't have tupperware filled with mac and cheese like Elizabeth. My papas con carne melted on my small tongue, but the embarrassment of being "too mexican" stopped me from eating. My stomach pinched me like my abuelita's fingers often pinched my chubby cheeks. I was seven years old, and it was the first time I threw my lunch away.
Back then my mom dressed me in bright yellow dresses and rainbow sandals, a popular outfit found at the local flea market. She would braid my hair. It was so painful that I cried for hours. I once successfully convinced her to not brush my hair a few days in a row. I didn't know how much appearances mattered at that age. I just went along with what adults told me. My best friend’s family adopted the nickname “chuntie” and “beaner” for me, and since they laughed while calling me that, I thought it was funny too.
Clumsy mistakes we make as children teach us how to code switch. When we reveal our home lives to strangers at school and are corrected to keep those behaviors private, that's when we learn. When I was younger, it was not “cool” or “smart” to speak two languages, well actually it just wasn’t cool to speak Spanish. I straddled home and school, English and Spanish, not-that-Mexican, and Mexican. And I lived in a highly Latino area.
Eventually, my parents taught me how to code switch with language. At home I spoke in broken Spanglish, and at school it was bully English, for survival. I was quick with my words, looking for the most vulnerable part of anyone and parading it in front of the class. I knew who to strike before they attacked me.
My parents immigrated to Los Angeles in their twenties. They learned new systems, identities and communicated with all kinds of people during their assimilation into American culture. They are still learning how to, and so am I.
Code switching is a beginners guide for travel. I’ve recently heard it to refer to switching into parts of your identity to fit into the cultural scenario of the moment, though for me it originated with language - going from English to Spanish and back. It’s a powerful tool that can transport you outside of your comfort zone and into someone else’s. You are straddling identities, time, moments. It is essentially the rough draft for culture shock.
According to the 2010 Census data, 97% of the population in East Los Angeles identified as hispanic. So of course I needed to experience culture shock in my life.
Growing up, my family and I were lucky to travel. People like us just generally could not afford road-trips, our parents could not take the time off work. Sure, sometimes our families went to Mexico to visit a dying relative or just reconnect, but we didn’t have National Lampoon’s vacations every summer. My friends were roughly in the same boat.
We grew up knowing it was just like that for us. We saw classmates, acquaintances, and friends pass away before we turned 18 in my neighborhood. Code switching then turned into something else for me. I would change and alter my behavior and language to fit into different clicks, institutions, and it helped me step out on moments of grief.
I could talk to the homie about some mess regarding the latest shit that happened on the block, but know that my teacher’s didn’t pigeonhole me. It was fucked up. But it also saved me from a life I probably wasn’t smart enough to survive. I knew how to try new things, bad things, which inevitably hurt me. But I also knew how to run away with it, and I knew how to hide from a lot of things that could have drowned me. And with that, came my love for traveling. Which you'll read about. Maybe you'll think about similar experiences.