A Wall is a Wall is a Wall
My Latinidad has become, in the age of Trump, an inescapable identity. When I go on Facebook hoping to waste time, I see videos of people holding my American flag and spitting in the face of immigrants who look like my family. When I turn on the news hoping to check in on current events, I see yet another wave of ICE raids - hundreds of families torn apart in an instant. It seems like this country has forgotten all that we Latinos have contributed to make it great. All of the hatred and disdain that White America was feeling towards my people culminated in one promise: the Wall. The hope was that the wall would keep us out: our people, our language, our culture, our dreams.
When we set out on our trip to Israel, I hoped to leave that all behind. I thought that if I went halfway around the world, I would cease to be Latino and begin to be American.
I forgot about everything that was happening back home and was instead enjoying a new continent and all that it had to offer. One day after another, I ate more hummus and pita than I thought possible, took pictures of unforgettable sites, and made memories with new friends. We engaged endlessly with the issues Israel faces: how to maintain democratic values in a state built for Jews, how to arrive at a peace agreement with Palestinians, how to deal with intensely delicate holy sites in Jerusalem. It was only halfway through the trip that I was brought back to my Latinidad by our visit to Bethlehem in the West Bank.
The first thing you see entering Bethlehem is the separation wall, a beast that stands eight meters tall, complete with guard towers and barbed wire. If I hadn’t recognized the similarities between this wall and the one Trump promised to build back home, the art on the wall would have screamed it at me. One piece depicted Trump wearing a yamaka, caressing the wall, with a speech bubble that whispered “I’m going to build you a brother.” Another piece was even more direct, simply painting the Palestinian flag beside the Mexican flag with a caption that read “stop these things.”
These pieces served to remind me that the struggles of Latinos in America were not unique, but universal. All over the world there are people facing similar, if not worse conditions under similar, if not worse regimes. I began to understand the Palestinian psyche of loss in a familiar language. All differences which previously seemed important began to fade for me: what was the difference between American westward expansion into Mexico and Israeli settlement expansion into the West Bank? What was the difference between a Palestinian and I? What was the difference between the separation wall and the border wall? After all, a wall is a wall is a wall.
