"Dreamer."

I am Latina, a ½ generation immigrant. I am undocumented, a dreamer. Argentinian blood runs through my veins and bubbles up past my stomach, through my throat, and out of my mouth forming words in Spanglish. I am passing, my white skin and green eyes clothing me from the harsh glares of the oppressor. The White man. El Blanco. They think I am like them. Until they ask me my name - Camila Ozores Silva; a name that forces you to test it out in your mouth a few times before you spit it out. Until they hear my language, quick words slurred together telling my mami how much she inspires me; the one thing that reminds me my skin color will never erase my culture. Until they ask me why I never travel back to my home country and I am forced to come up with lies as to hide the crushing reality of my status. “It’s too expensive.” “It’s never the right time.” “My family likes to visit us in the States, instead.” But what I want to say is, if I leave the country I can’t return. I am confined by the walls of these man-made borders that tell me I do not belong here. I am consumed by the dissociation that comes with this ghost identity of growing up in a country that rejects you. Ni aqui, ni alla. Not here, nor there. Who knew the question, “where are you from?”, could bring so much anxiety.

I am a dreamer. That’s what they call us. That’s the narrative they created around our stories to make people want to fight for us, to support us. But the thing I never understood is, aren’t we all dreamers? Documented or not. Educated or not. Latinx or not. We all dream, we all fail, we all climb, we all fall, we all dream. These dreams don’t have to be dreams that will support your family or cure cancer. These dreams can be to love yourself, to be happy, to travel. They call us dreamers and they say it’s our parents fault we are here so “give them a break.” Pero lo que no entienden (what they don’t understand) is that any parent would climb mountains to give their children even a small chance at a better life. My papis pushed past barriers far bigger than the walls they are threatening to build to keep us out, and that is enough. They are dreamers. Our parents, who were engineers and doctors and professors back home, who clean houses and pick strawberries and drive without a license, they are dreamers.

So what does dreamer really mean? When all I see in the news are negotiations of how much my existence is worth. How many dollars can “el presidente” (*cue puke noise*) charge for my body, for my humanity, for my life? Well, let me tell you one thing. My life and your life are worth so much more than any idiota can ever charge for a wall. Our lives are art, resistance on the move, and we get to define what “dreaming” means to us.

So carry on, getting degrees or driving taxis, we deserve it all and we hold value by just being alive.