I don't remember how it was brought up, but I remember talking to my grandma about applying for Salvadoran citizenship...mostly 'cause I thought it'd be cool, it'd be to cool to go to Cuba legally, or something; possibly to vote in the most important elections. Obviously, I don't know what applying for Salvadoran citizenship entails, and I don't even know if El Salvador allows dual citizenship. But my - maternal- grandma was totally frank with me. She was like "What?" "Sos hijo de padres salvadoreños. Es decir, tenés ascendencia salvadoreña, pero sos estadounidense," or "You're the son of Salvadoran parents. You have Salvadoran ancestry but you're American." I was happy to hear my grandma make that distinction. She's a wise woman.
Because it's customary to do so, I refer to my ethnic background when asked here in the U.S. But I could not call myself Salvadoran, simply because I live a different lifestyle, have a different sense of humor, I'm an atheist, have different attitudes towards certain things, and have certain ideas that are different from what a typical impoverished Salvadoran would have, due to our different circumstances. True, for the most part, my family in El Salvador in Guatemala is comparatively well off. However, I don't think of the upper and middle classes in Central America. But, rather, I think of the brown mestizo masses, impoverished and uneducated, without much opportunity to move up the social and economic ladder. So what if I have professor, lawyer, accountant, doctor and engineer relatives in El Salvador and Guatemala? They're not representative of the majority (I remember while I was in El Salvador asking my paternal grandma who lived there at the time why all my cousins went to private schools, and she replied "Only the poor kids go there"). So I consider calling myself a Salvadoran, an actual Salvadoran, a totally unjustifiable misappropriation of all that a typical Salvadoreño undergoes in life as my own.
Here in the U.S. we refer to ourselves and to each other by ethnic background. When we're outside the country, we refer to ourselves as American.
When I was in Buenos Aires, I went to see a psychoanalyst. Ana, the psychoanalyst, gave me her business card and I looked it over and saw her last name "Zandperl," a surname obviously not of Iberian origin. I was curious as to the origin of her last name, and she said it was German, her grandparents were immigrants from Germany to Argentina. As is customary to do in the U.S., I said "Oh, so you're German," instead of saying "You're of German ancestry" and she replied "No, soy argentina," "No, I'm an Argentine." Therein lies a big cultural difference between Latin America and the U.S...
In the U.S., I'm "Salvadoran" or "Salvadoran-American." Outside of the U.S., I'm just American.
I'm not the stereotypical Mexican. When most people think of Mexicans they think short, "brown", dark hair, dark eyes, lower part of the economic ladder, which is understandable only because the majority of Mexicans HERE in the U.S. are like that. I dont fit into many stereotypes of Mexicans, some of this is partly due to my ethnic background I am predominantly Spanish over mestizo and I also have Irish ancestry; I have fair skin (I cant even tan), I'm taller than the average Mexican (which still isnt very tall), my parents both went to college, my mother studied law and my father studied international bussiness, I am attending college now,when I speak Enlish I dont have an accent (if I have an accent it's just a California accent, a surfer dude valley girl mix), and when I speak Spanish I apparently sound like the middle/upper class from the Mexico City area (according to my cousins), I live in the suburbs in Orange County, the list goes on and on. This has all led to an identity crisis that I still cant truly resolve because everywhere I go it seems as though my identity shifts and changes; in Mexico I am an American and in the U.S. I am Mexican. Is fitting in too much to ask? What really bugs is that both identities can be seen as an insult under certain circumstances, sometimes my cousins in Mexico will use the word "gringa/o", which is more often than not used negatively against Americans, to describe me and my siblings. And here in the U.S. people often say very bad things about Mexicans that really make me angry. Ok I guess I'm rambling now, I'm sure you get the point.
--Pauperes Commilitones Christi Templique Salomonis--