3–0
The cheering roars above my head. Dozens of voices turn to loud screeching that all sounds the same. Mexico had just scored against Czechia for the third time, and the California bars have flooded themselves with jumping brown bodies in green shirts. We’re cheering for a country that isn’t ours, and yet it feels like we are cheering for ourselves.
The interesting thing about nationalism, or quite frankly belonging, is that it is not dependent on any particular type of connection. To belong to certain group relies greatly on an abstract intuitive sense of belonging. This may manifest self superficially as concrete as pertaining to looks. We belong together because of our skin color. It may abstract itself further. We are from the same region. We speak the same language. We have the same accent. Music taste. Similar memories. Demeanor. In truth, the idea of belonging can become so abstract it might as well have been fabricated, perhaps completely created to supplement the very human desire for connection. Something perhaps more personal than the mere fact that we are all human
I think about this, as I witness the pride so painfully prominent in the faces of people that just a year ago were voting against the best interest of a great majority of Mexican living in the united states that lacked legal status. To many this may seem paradoxical. How the hell can you vote against the Mexican immigrants one moment, and wear their colors the next? The answer, of course, is that they do not believe the color belongs solely to the immigrants. At the same time, they do not believe the colors exclude them. After all, they are just as Mexican as the “illegals.” At the same time, they are also not ‘illegal.’ It is like three bubbles that overlap in some parts, and yet allow a sort of safe haven to exist separately from the connection in others.
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In this way, these non-illegal Mexicans can choose to ‘hop the border,’ if you will, in within this bubble they exist in comfortably, in accordance to both their convenience and what seems logically sound, and in some ways it might be. It supplements the complexity. An undocumented migrant has experiences that are in many ways alien to Mexican-American, and vice versa. In this way, we can acknowledge our difference, and bask in a strange sense of comfort that this level of ignorance can allow. It is of course, more in the best interest of Mexican American that these circles remain small than it would be for the Undocumented migrant.
See the migrant, cannot as easily jump into realm of the ‘legal Mexican.’ They can pretend. They can ask for belonging but ultimately, they are confined to the their identity of undocumented migrants. More ‘un-American’ than Mexican Americans. When Mexico scores, they cheer. They rave alongside Mexican-Americans who have momentarily migrated to their realm of existence. When ICE arrives. when DACA is under fire. When green card petitions get denied, there is no more cheering, and thus, no reasons for Mexican-Americans to cross over.
Now, this is not to say there is any real obligation for the Mexican-American to remain in the realm of the immigrant beyond the point of convenience, nor is it necessarily to distinguish in terms of authenticity those that only take part in the ‘Mexican experience’ when the moments of slander and danger and bigotry have subsided. It is true, in any case, that Mexican American, remains a Mexican as much as they are an American. It is equally true, that they may be permitted to permeate towards the American realm, that which gladly excepted them during voting season. It is even believed that they are welcomed there permanently, some might even say unconditionally. Of course if there were any conditions, they would be associated with language, and probably skin color.
It is perhaps in this fact that the most glaring resemblance between the undocumented and the documented becomes most obvious. They don’t really, completely belong at all. As a matter fact, I would argue that there is enough ‘bubbles,’ enough cultural division to argue that, in the end nobody does. In the end, I guess we can all cheer for Mexico. And the migrants can treat us, like we are one of them, and perhaps, we can be obliged to do the same.
