October 2024 El Perro Chicano by Leslie Rivera

A mutt is a mixed breed of dog, it is used as an insult when used to describe a person, particularly someone of mixed heritage.

Somedays, it feels like no other word describes what I am; it’s easier than telling people I’m half Mexican, half Salvadorean with some Spanish ancestry and Indigenous ancestry, and potentially French. I could say that I am Hispanic or Latino, but then people ask me what country my parents are from, which defeats the purpose of calling myself Hispanic or Latino. As much as I know that DNA, blood, and borders do not define me, part of me wants to be enough of one thing to be allowed to claim it. I want to deserve to call myself something that isn’t up for debate, to have something that belongs to me and can’t be taken from me.

Some days, I feel too American, too domesticated to claim my Latino heritage. On other days, I feel too agrestal to be among my peers who never felt the shadow of colonialism, who never had their culture, land, and dignity stolen from underneath them. I desperately want to connect with my Aztec ancestry, but I don’t know if I have the right to anymore, that the blood of the Spanish colonizer runs too deep for me to return to those roots. I also lack the support of family, who view the practices of our ancestors as witchcraft and sacrilegious. I am aware of the ways old superstitions and stories have endured and embedded themselves into today’s Hispanic/ Latino culture, scraps of what used to be. Is it greedy of me to ask for more? Why is this plaguing my soul so much? Why can’t I accept that I am a product of a violent and brutal legacy, that I am the child of the colonized and colonizer? I am what is left of such a history. I fear the unending hunger; the entitlement for more is a gift from my Spanish ancestors. Maybe I want to know what I am in hopes that maybe, just maybe, it will help me figure out who I am. I hope that this will give at least one person a sense of validation that they are not the only person in the world who is figuring out their place in this world.