Collective Amnesia

Collective amnesia sometimes makes the dominant culture forget families like mine belong here...are from here.
It forgets those Latino families who are not from the immediate region, have as much claim if not more to be here because of their indigenous ancestry to the continent. Luckily our culture is not petty that way.
They forget we are the mixed race descendants from people and part of a culture of people, that has always divided its time and shared resources between north and south.
Collective amnesia forgets, we are people who's families, continue to be spread out between north and south, across borders imposed on us.
Amnesia forgets families like mine, which no less than three generations ago, lived during a time when "California" and Baja California, the land of my Great-grandmother, were one...when Coahuila and Tejas, the land of my Great-grandfather, were one.
Collective amnesia overlooks our nomadic ways, which continue to this day, regardless of where the border is.
Collective amnesia overlooks the efforts we make to keep our families together and fan the flames of our culture to keep them burning....generation after generation, despite the figurative buckets of water being dumped on it, day in and day out.
"Go home!" they say with insolent gall, expecting us not to answer, perhaps scared they will have to remember who they are talking to. "Go home!" they say, forgetting who they are talking to. What a nerve!!!