Picture Prompt

Yeah, That's me all the way on the left screaming. God i look weird in this picture,thinking back to that day; it was crazy. Lets start from the beginning. It all started when i was kid. In Mexico we didn't have much and my parents wanted to move to America, the land of dreams( they used to call it). Yes, that's also me, wrapped in that flag. My dad bought it for me, saying that America was our new homeland. The land of opportunities. He said as soon as we had enough money. We would go to America. I, of course, was very excited. I danced around with the flag saying "America, America! Mi nuevos casa;la tierra de los suenos"(america, America! My new home, Land of the dreams)



My dad was excited but also worried. How would we get there, what would people think of us? I knew we'd fit right in. A couple months later my dad said we could legally get into America and make that our new home. I knew I'd miss all my friends but i didn't realise how different America would be then Mexico. As soon as we walked out of the airplane i said "Oh, Dios mio...no en mexico ya."(Oh my god...we're not in Mexico anymore) My dad said to me, "nina no tengas miedo, te va a encantar".(Don't worry little girl, you'll love it here) Let me tell you, my father was right. I had nothing to worry about, i loved America. I loved the diverse culture and all the different people i met.



America was my homeland. I Pretty much grew up here. Don't get me wrong, I still kept my Spanish culture, but I learned English too. I mixed my culture. We ate Spanish foods some nights and of course i was bilingual. Some nights I'd make Italian dishes that my friends had showed me. Here, me and my family were living the American dream. My dad had opened a small Spanish restaurant and hired many new people. I met them all, they became like our second family. It was so different here, in Mexico it was generally all Spanish people, here, everything was mixed. At the restaurant, the people dad hired, were Spanish, Chinese, German, all different cultures, and I loved it.



Everything was great until one day, we got stopped on the street by the police. My mother and I were just going to get groceries, I didn't understand what was going on. My mother said,"Callar!"(be quiet) They took me and my mother to the police station and questioned us on how we had gotten here(in America). When my mother answered the airplane, he harassed her and said we were lying. He said, "your obviously confused Miss, you're an illegal immigrant. You hopped the fence and went over our border, who helped you?". I didn't understand my dad had the papers, we did nothing wrong. My mom said she knew what was going on, he thought, just because we were Mexican, we were illegal.



Even at the young age I was, I new what kind of discrimination that was. I was offended and upset. So me and my mother got a group of people and formed a riot against the police. They couldn't treat us this way. That's where the image of me and my mother with the sign comes in. We ended up making a difference. The police got in trouble for harassment. They couldn't just take us into custody for assuming we were illegal. They couldn't judge us on our looks, and i guess that's the moral to my story; don't judge a book by its cover.