Maria Vargas > Recent Status Updates

Because I have my papi’s Brownness but mi mami’s gender, a curse—I was born female and Brown, in a cultura that hates females and especially hates the darker ones.

We did not create anti-Indigenous sentiment; we were taught it, we were forced to accept it, and then we internalized and perpetuated it on our own. That is the insidious nature of colonization. Many people have survived by assimilating toward the dominant group’s values, and this internalized racism continues to traumatize entire nations.

I call short-term white “helpers” voluntourists because that is what they were doing: touring our country and our people and disguising their tourism with the “good deeds” of helping us. Do not let them fool you into believing otherwise.

As a non-Black and also a non-white person, I am often prompted to pick a race category that does not include me. I am either given a white or black box to check, and I did not always understand where I belonged.

Your laugh carries liberation in it.

Race is not biological. It is political and personal.

Latino is defined as a person whose origins are in Latin America, or who have ancestors from Latin America. The linguistic roots of the word aside, Latino was a term invented in the United States.

The weight isn’t a burden, but it is a heavy load to carry. I want to take care of my mom. I want to help my family. But family is supposed to be a mutual support system. When one person becomes an ATM for the entire family, when the help they expect is always financial, then beautiful values devolve into open wounds.

Why don’t you speak English? Why don’t you speak Spanish? Being Latino in America means the answer to both of these questions holds us to an impossible standard to prove we’re both sufficiently American and authentically Latino.

It is not against the law to speak Spanish. In fact, it is not the law to speak English, as the United States does not have an official language.

The volume of my voice offended just as much as my manner of speech. After my boss told me I was too loud, I learned to tame my laughter. This was a reminder that taking up space will make others uncomfortable because they only want to see us quiet and thankful.

Papers do not define undocumented people, but the lack of them certainly outlines much of our lives—what we can and cannot do, what we do anyway. I didn’t remain undocumented because I wanted to—no one does.

A white person today can simply say, “I am white; therefore I am American,” but a Mexican with centuries of history in this land must explain where we are really from.

“There is nothing more potentially hostile than the indigenous ego interpreting the laws of his conqueror upon his own people.”

I love us. I believe in us. We don’t need the kindness of the white gaze to celebrate ourselves. We don’t need our stories to be translated so white people can see us as human. They are not our saviors. We are.

We are all caught up in a system designed to help advance white supremacy by replicating the behavior of our oppressor, sometimes out of ignorance, for protection, or because we have a false belief that we, too, can become white, and therefore have the power, money, and privileges white people do.

The lies of assimilation culminate in telling immigrants that if we do it “the right way,” we’ll be welcomed with open arms. But there is only one correct way to exist in America, to have unquestioned belonging, and that is to be white.

I didn’t find freedom in assimilation because there is no freedom in racist ideas. Assimilation requires that the story we tell about the United States and about white people is an uplifting, inspiring, sugarcoated version of the facts, in which the whip, guns, and racist motives must remain hidden.

Americanizing was supposed to help me fit in, but even after I learned English, became a citizen, got my coins, I still wasn’t welcomed.

Having an accent said I was from someplace else; sounding like a white girl fooled me into thinking I could belong in the United States. If I sounded like I was from here, who would question whether I should actually be here?

It’s terrifying knowing that people can dig their fingers into our lives and twist things around.

We have so little control over what we’re dealt in life.

Everyone has a little poison deep down somewhere. Even the people you trust.

Just because our experiences have been different doesn’t mean we can’t understand each other.

“If you want to get away with murder, do it on an Indian reservation.”

These girls are going missing, dying, and nobody is getting justice for any of them.

For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.

Sofia is going to humble the Count 🤣 and here for it!

That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love.

By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.

For the times do, in fact, change. They change relentlessly. Inevitably. Inventively. And as they change, they set into bright relief not only outmoded honorifics and hunting horns, but silver summoners and mother-of-pearl opera glasses and all manner of carefully crafted things that have outlived their usefulness.