A few weeks back, an 18-year-old by the name of Mayte Lara Ibarra tweeted about her outstanding accomplishments at the end of her high school career. She graduated as valedictorian of her class, with a 4.5 GPA, a collection of 13 cords and medals and cost of tuition covered at the University of Texas. She also publicly announced her undocumented status, sparking a harrowing backlash of responses, some of which were congratulations but many of which claimed she had no right to the success she had attained.
Today, I am not commenting on whether she deserved to be awarded for her hard work. Today, instead, I wish to affirm that Mexican excellence exists. Today, I wish to assert that the Mexican blood in our veins is inferior to nothing; today I wish to contend that, like anyone else, we set our minds to something, and it gets done. Today I want to insist que si se puede, because time and time again I have seen this to be true.
During a Barstool Sports broadcast for Fox Sports a few weeks after the tweet, Emily Austen responded to Ibarra. “I didn’t even know Mexicans were that smart,” Austen remarked.
And that’s were we pause.
Mexicans are smart. Mexicans are intelligent. Mexicans go to great colleges. Mexicans fix things. Mexicans build things. Mexicans create. Yes, we have — like any other people — our fair share of humans that don’t do any of the specifics listed above. But for so long now it has felt like excellence is something we cannot claim for ourselves. It feels like any sort of achievement has been brushed off as a result of our blackmailing someone with the Mexican blood coursing through our veins. So I am stepping up and saying it now.
Mexican excellence is a beautiful thing. And for many in the United States, achieving it is a validation of the Mexican experience in a country that often forgets we are human, too.
I have met many Mexican and Mexican-American students at MIT. I know Mexican students at Harvard, just down the road. I have Mexican-American acquaintances studying in New York and Rhode Island; I have Mexican-American friends who will be going off to California next semester. A vast majority of the Mexican and Mexican-American students who graduated from James Pace Early College High School this year are going to amazing state and private schools in Texas, to study anything from computer science and engineering to political science and journalism. My own twin sister enlisted in the Marine Corps, and I can name two Mexican-American acquaintances to enlist in each branch of the armed forces. These are students who graduated from Brownsville ISD alone.
Excellence was a driving force for many of us. Some of us saw our parents struggle to put food on the table. Some of us couldn’t have our parents at graduation. Some of us were mocked because of the way our Rs rolled off of the tongue. We saw how some people wanted to tear down what we were building in a country that was supposed to be full of endless opportunity. But success was part of the American Dream, and the fight didn’t end until we’d achieved it.
I saw a close friend graduate from MIT this year in spite of the struggles her family went through. She had a full ride to MIT but still worked three jobs to help sustain her single-parent family. She was so ridiculously strong, and always said about her parents “Por ellos yo soy.”
I saw two girls I used to go to high school with place fourth in the nation at National History Day, and two different girls get the Gates Millennium Scholarship.
I saw my father teach himself how to fix any machine he laid his hands on, despite dropping out of high school to get a job and help raise my sisters and myself.
When I pause to think about it, my corner of the Mexican community is only a small part of the vast number of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the United States. If we alone have accomplished this much, then I can rest easy knowing my Mexican family is out there, playing the game of life and doing so well.
When I pause to consider the amount of Mexican-American excellence the Rio Grande Valley has produced, I stand in awe that a community so often trashed on by outsiders has shaped such amazing individuals. But awe is such a late response, like being surprised that Mexicans are that smart instead of having no doubt about it. And what I want above all is for mis hermanos, and mis hermanas, and mi familia Mexicana to remember that Mexican excellence exists; that our success is never handed to us, but earned; y que si se pudo.
