Sanchez: My grandparents' sacrifice built the foundation for my future — and my identity

Growing up as a kid in the 1990s feels like a huge identity in and of itself. Add growing up in a Mexican family in El Paso in the '90s as a second-generation, non-Spanish-speaking kid with the last name Sanchez and you get a whole lot of identity crisis.

While attempting to answer the question “What does Hispanic mean to you?” I am reminded how I still wrestle with identity and belonging like many Mexican Americans do.

But my identity will always come back to the foundation my grandparents and my parents built for me.

My dad, Jose Sanchez, was born in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. and my mom, Ida Torres, was born in Allende, Mexico. They emigrated to the United States with their parents when they were young, and completed high school in the U.S.

My tata on my dad's side, Jose Luis, was able to gain citizenship by being sponsored by a farmer. Pop singer Linda Ronstadt was from Arizona and her grandfather owned a farm that my tata Luis worked on. In short, my family owes Linda Ronstadt's grandfather a huge thanks and my tata a huge thanks for working out in the fields so his family could have a better life in the U.S.

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My tata on my mom's side, Felix Torres, gained his citizenship by working out in oil fields in Central Texas. He was deported several times and always found work back in the U.S. His continued fight for a better life is never lost on me. I thank him for giving it one more try and for doing the grueling labor of working out in the oil fields on pump jacks so that his family wouldn’t go hungry.

My nanas were the backbone of the family. My nana Torres and nana Sanchez both raised eight children, making sure they were never without. My grandparents' history has so much depth that it's impossible for me to walk around without it as a constant part of my own identity.

Because generational trauma took a toll on my parents, they did not teach us Spanish and it's always been another part of my identity that I wrestle with.

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But as time goes on, the only identity that matters is the one my grandparents gave me and the one I choose to carry with me.

What does Hispanic mean to you? It means existing wholeheartedly in each space I take up.

The grueling labor of working out in the fields, the oil constantly embedded in fingernails and clothes, all the children that had to be bathed and all the meals that had to be made, all leading up to the privilege I have to walk into a newsroom and take up space.

They existed wholeheartedly in everything they did and I am forever grateful to my grandparents and my parents for the sacrifices they have made so that I have a seat at the table.

They built the table, they built the chairs, they made the meals, so that I could sit.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Sanchez: Hispanic identity stems from grandparents sacrifice