Mexico, a country first formed because of the colonization from the Spanish Empire thanks to a conquistador with the name of Hernán Cortés, is a country rich with culture and wealth and oppurtunities for its young people. However, many see it as a country riddled with poverty and violence, while in reality Mexico is more than the one-dimensional side portrayed in TV and movie. However, I am not saying that it doesn't have poverty-stricken people and unfathomable corruption in the government, but what I am saying is that Mexico is more.

As a girl that was born and raised in Mexico for more than a decade, I can testify that I never knew poverty or crime for I was cozied in the layers of the urban high-middle class, never straying too far from a comfort zone that consisted of my school, my city (Santiago de Querétaro), one of the safest cities in Mexico, and the beaches. My life, when I moved to America, didn't change much. I already spoke English as I studied in one of Mexico's elite schools and often traveled overseas to the United States and Europe, learning and submerging in their culture for as long as I could. I lived in a nice house in a great neighborhood, something that was replicated in Georgia. My mom, a college-graduate, handled/handles her company with grace and audacity. My dad, also a college-graduate, works a job as an IT guy for a German company that requires him to move a lot, hence my family's switch from Mexico to America in a legal way that consisted of Visas and embassies. Safe to say, adaptation wasn't a struggle. However, what I was shocked to discover, is that people in America saw my beloved country as a place where only drug lords and poor people existed to the point where I had been asked stupid questions like:

"Does Mexico have electricity?" YES.

"Does Mexico have internet?" Yes, it does. And the best service among spanish-speaking countries as mentioned by Forbes.

"Isn't the economy in Mexico, like, really bad?" Mexico is the 15th largest in the world in nominal terms and the 11th largest by purchasing power parity, according to the International Monetary Fund

"Isn't everybody in Mexico dirt poor?" NO. However, 45.5% of mexicans live in poverty according to Mexico's National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL), but Mexico's middle class increased 11.4 percent during between 2000 and 2010, as highlighted in Forbes.

"Aren't all Mexicans illegal?" I can't begin to emphasize the lack of culture, or even general respect for a human being, for someone to ask this question. BUT, the country with the greatest number of "green card" recipients is Mexico, as mentioned in CNN. However, the majority of Mexicans are still illegal.

I, a Mexican, come from a country of great wealth, but this has been diminished by the repeated assaults and abuses by the colonnial powers like Spain, France, and America. And so, our global narrative, is one of hunger and strife, when Mexico could have been an international power and is slowly on that path, trying to regain is traction from what colonialism did to Mexico's history- it rewrote it. So, what Mexico could have been was hindered by colonialism when it could have been more than what it is now. And that, is the truth in Mexico.