by Jorge Ramos
We never spoke again.
The media, both in the United States and internationally, focused its attention on the fact that I was kicked out of the press conference: a direct attack on freedom of expression and an apparently unprecedented event in a U.S. presidential campaign. Everything I had asked Trump was relegated to the background. However, in his responses, we can see the foundations of the anti-immigrant proposals that he would look to implement once he set foot in the White House.
The road proposed by Trump was fraught with danger. I saw it. Many other Latino reporters saw it as well, and together we denounced it. Trump’s words were a real threat to millions of immigrants. And I always took them seriously. To consider him a clown or a madman would be a grave mistake. He’s neither of these things. In fact, one of the most troubling features of Trump’s personality is that he almost never laughs. I haven’t seen this happen once.
As reporters, we would have to be a lot tougher with him in the wake of the announcement of his campaign. His attacks on immigrants were brutal. But by the end of summer 2015, Trump had become a true media phenomenon, and the major television networks were willing to give him nearly all the time he wanted in exchange for ratings.
To be frank, Trump was almost always willing to give interviews and make public statements on multiple issues. The other Republican candidates were not nearly as accessible. And by the time they realized their mistake, it was too late.
But this policy of open access was never extended to the Spanish-language media in general or to Univision in particular. Despite the candidate’s promise that we would speak again, we had, for all intents and purposes, been banned.
Despite the fact that Trump had said he would be willing to talk with me further and possibly even grant us an interview, his anti-immigrant rhetoric and agenda would no longer allow this to happen. He was operating as the enemy of the undocumented, and his confrontation with me was just one more way of advancing his message.
And what was that message? If Trump was willing to forcibly eject a legal immigrant with a U.S. passport and a nationally broadcast television show from a press conference, he would have no problem expelling the more vulnerable immigrants from the country. Granting an interview or engaging in a dialogue with a Univision journalist—or any other Spanish-language media outlet—just wasn’t suited to his plan to criminalize a defenseless minority.
Trump had defended his position, and so had I.
I’ve been accused of being an activist. I’m not. I’m simply a journalist who asks questions.
But when there’s a politician such as Donald Trump who consistently lies, who makes racist, sexist, and xenophobic comments, who attacks judges and journalists, and who behaves like a bully during a presidential campaign, you cannot remain neutral. To do so would be to normalize his behavior. And such behavior is not a good example, especially for children. Our primary social duty as journalists is to question those who have and those who seek power.
That’s why I did not sit down and did not shut up at the press conference in Iowa. In one way or another, I had been preparing for that moment my entire career.
For more than three decades, I have had the opportunity to work with absolute freedom as a reporter in the United States. Censorship was why I left Mexico in the first place, and I wasn’t about to shut up now.
But the nation that had offered me complete freedom of speech and the promise of equality was changing dramatically. A certain segment of American society, often outside the eyes of mainstream media, was displaying a growing anxiety and resentment against minorities and foreigners. This segment was mistakenly blaming them for their personal misfortunes and the larger problems affecting the nation.
This phenomenon was not a new one. It started gaining momentum after Barack Obama first took office, and despite the inherent sense of irrationality, it had been searching for legitimacy and representation among the more conservative groups in the country. Trump wasn’t the leader of that movement, but he read it well and worked it to his electoral advantage.
This is how I gradually became a stranger in the country where I had lived for more than half my life. The land where my two children were born.
In the end, I have to admit that when I heard the cry of “Get out of my country,” it took me by surprise.
In fact, it still rings in my ears to this very day.
Far from Home
“You can’t go home again,” wrote the Spanish author Javier Cercas, quoting Bill Bryson. And after reading it in his book, Agamemnon’s Truth, it made me want to scream. Don’t tell me that, Javier! Please! I’ve spent half my life thinking about returning home!
Returning home is almost an obsession for those of us who left. Sometimes there are concrete plans, but otherwise there is simply an intense desire to recover the sense of security and happiness that we once enjoyed.
When we say “home,” we’re not necessarily talking about a specific place. More than anything, it has to do with the idea of belonging to something, of feeling that we come from a specific slice of the planet and that the people who continue to live there will still love and care for us.
The problem is that this “home” is an idealized one. It started changing the very moment we left. The dynamics are modified when one of the family members leaves. Further, the internal perception of what our “home” is can be tied to a specific moment. The home that I miss is where I grew up as a child and later as a teenager in the 1960s and 1970s. And while I could physically live there again, the home I long for is gone now. But still, I keep looking for it. Each and every day.
The subtitle of one of my books is A Journalist’s Search for Home. That’s what I’m talking about here: searching for my place in the world.
I have moved so many times between Miami and Los Angeles that I’ve forgotten the addresses. But I’ll never forget the street—Hacienda de Piedras Negras—and the number of the house where I grew up in the Bosques de Echegaray neighborhood of massive Mexico City.
I left, but I didn’t want to.
Immigrants don’t leave home because they want to. They are almost forced to become foreigners in a new land. A very powerful force is expelling them while something equally strong is drawing them to another country. It’s much more than a simple exploratory adventure. When the conditions of expulsion and attraction line up, the decision to emigrate is made.
Who would want to leave their family and friends? The idea should be to grow, work, and live alongside those who love you. But that’s not always possible.
“Little is more extraordinary than the decision to migrate, little more extraordinary than the accumulation of emotions and thoughts which finally leads a family to say farewell to a community where it has lived for centuries, to abandon old ties and familiar landmarks, and to sail across dark seas to a strange land.”
These words, which John F. Kennedy wrote in his book A Nation of Immigrants—which was published in 1958, the same year I was born—make me think that the assassinated former president understood perfectly well what it means to be an immigrant. After all, his eight great-grandparents all crossed the Atlantic after leaving Ireland for the United States.
And I agree. Becoming an immigrant was the most difficult—and the most extraordinary—decision of my life.
Along with my gratitude to the United States for having welcomed and accepted me, there is a genuine longing for what I left behind in Mexico. The geographic proximity, the shared border, shared cell phone and digital technology, and hundreds of flights have kept me in close and frequent contact with Mexico during all these years. But as much as I’ve made an effort to be aware of what’s going on in my country of origin, distance and ignorance have been imposing themselves little by little. Reading about Mexico and seeing reports about what’s going on there on television or the Internet isn’t the same as living there.
Much to my regret (and sometimes painfully so), I have come to the realization that I have lost the ability to endure the spicie
st of Mexican salsas. What I wouldn’t even have blinked at years ago would now make me cry…and I say “would” because I won’t even dare try them anymore. My tongue and stomach have been keeping their distance for so long that they’re beginning to impose their will on me. And something similar has been happening between me and the country itself. Of course, Mexico is not the same nation it was when I left, and I have been losing touch with what the Mexican people love and with what makes them cry. I can imagine it and sometimes I can even see it, but after thirty-five years of separation, I can no longer claim to understand it all…regardless of what my taste buds might have to say.
Stranger
The English word “stranger” reflects, both accurately and painfully, the way I often feel here in the United States. A stranger is someone who doesn’t belong here, who comes from somewhere else. An intruder who poses a danger to the group. But most of all, a stranger is someone unknown.
I’ve been working in Spanish-language television in the United States for over three decades and I am still a stranger to millions of Americans. Of course, some may have seen me on a television show in English, read one of my articles, or followed me on Twitter or Facebook. But that doesn’t mean that I feel like a part of their community.
I will always be a stranger.
I am the Other.
I am the outsider.
I am a stranger.
Despite the fact that my two children were born in the United States. Despite the fact that I have become an American citizen and carry a blue passport. Despite having lived here since 1983. Despite having done everything that has to be done in order to integrate: learn English, pay taxes, study the customs, respect the traditions, and contribute as much as I can to the nation that adopted me.
But none of this seems to have been enough.
Maybe the problem was with my expectations. Yes, I’m an immigrant, born in Mexico. But I thought that after having spent more than half my life in the United States, I would feel totally accepted by my new country.
But that hasn’t been the case.
The plan didn’t quite take shape. One would think that an immigrant would be able to integrate with relative ease into a nation created by immigrants. But I never expected there would be so much resistance trying to prevent this from ever happening.
I’ve often thought that it might be my own fault. I have many friends and colleagues who are Americans and speak only English. But once I came to Los Angeles, I connected with people who speak Spanish—people who are foreigners like me—and perhaps it doesn’t help much that I have always worked for a television network that broadcasts in Spanish for Latinos and Latin Americans. People could, to some extent, blame me for getting away from the essence of the nation—even though that essence is rapidly changing—and for choosing to live on one of the coasts: the outskirts. But to be honest, that’s where I felt most comfortable.
I am one of those people who speak with an accent, who move between cultures, who jump from country to country and from language to language. One of those who come from somewhere else and have grown accustomed to being a minority. We did not inherit money, power, or influence. Everything we have came as a result of hard work. Our natural state is to move, to shift, to change.
We have undergone many transformations along the way, beginning with the way we refer to ourselves. Sometimes we are Mexicans, Guatemalans, Venezuelans, or Argentines. Other times we’re Latinos or Hispanics. Maybe we’re Cuban Americans or some other compound nationality that ends with “American.” Perhaps we’re just Americans. Often it’s all of the above or a curious combination of terms: my son, Nicolás, for example, considers himself Ricancubanmexicanamerican, and my daughter, Paola, is Cuban, Spanish, Mexican, and American and could have up to three passports.
But commingling seems to frighten some Americans. No matter how hard we try to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in perfect English or sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with gusto, we will never be seen as truly a part of the same melting pot as them.
I am one of the Others.
Saying that the United States is our country, too, is a move that is both daring and—to some—unforgivable. Once, during the broadcast of the Lo Nuestro Awards, which honor the best of Latin music, I was invited to give a brief speech. It was less than a minute, but it was there that I said, “This is our country, not theirs.”
Donald Trump had just taken office, and some of his constituents assumed that the time for retribution was near. But in spite of that, I said the United States was our country…because it is.
The United States is for all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or ethnic origin. It is not just for the white majority, for those who voted for Trump, or for the wealthy. It is even less so for the racists or the white supremacist groups that have been appearing with alarming frequency of late.
In many ways, the United States also belongs to the immigrants and foreigners who have contributed so much to its greatness. How could we take credit away from those who feed us, those who build our houses, those who care for our children? How could we diminish all the international students and visitors who teach in our schools and conduct research at our universities?
How could we forget all the immigrants whose investments, contributions, and inventions have placed the United States at the forefront of the scientific, artistic, financial, and medical fields? According to a report published in 2011 by the Partnership for a New American Economy, over 40 percent of the 2010 Fortune 500 company founders were either immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. This report also states that major U.S. brands such as Apple, Google, AT&T, Colgate, eBay, General Electric, IBM, and McDonald’s, among many others, were created by either immigrants or their children.
So, yes, the United States is our country.
It belongs to all of us.
Foreigners and natural-born citizens alike.
It’s as much mine as it is yours.
After saying something as simple as that, I received multiple verbal attacks on social networks and from some of the more conservative members of the national media. My critics found it inconceivable that they should have to share “their country” with us. Their minds couldn’t grasp the notion that others—the outsiders—could also be part and parcel of the United States.
Of course, some assumed that when I said “our country,” I was referring only to Latinos and immigrants. That was not the case. Immigrants from Latin America and the rest of the world, who have spent years living here in the United States, do not want to be—nor could they ever be—the sole proprietors of this nation. But at the same time, no one can take away our right to say that this country belongs to us as much as it does to anyone.
But there is still a great deal of resistance when it comes to integrating all the varied groups that make up the United States. Just look at Twitter.
On March 12, 2017, Iowa congressman Steve King referenced Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders, tweeting that “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
What civilization does Congressman King and others like him want to restore? Does it include all of us or only white people of European descent?
During the 2016 presidential campaign, director Catherine Tambini, producers Verónica Bautista and Dax Tejera, and I were filming a documentary called Hate Rising. Our goal was to denounce the dangerous growth of racist groups and their expressions of hatred across the United States. But even more important, it was about trying to understand why those who hate us do so.
We toured the nation. I spoke with a Muslim woman who was attacked in a restaurant—her face was cut and bloodied by another customer wielding a beer mug—for talking with her relatives in a language other than English. I listened to tearful schoolchildren who were afraid their parents would be deported when Trump’s new anti-immigrant policies were implemented. I stood with a homeless Mexican canc
er patient who was kicked in the streets by supporters of the Republican presidential candidate. I witnessed the tragedy that afflicted the LGBTQI community in the wake of the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. I received information from the valiant and invaluable Southern Poverty Law Center on how white supremacist groups operate in the United States. And I interviewed members of the Ku Klux Klan and the so-called alt-right movement.
One of the people I interviewed told me, to my face and without the slightest hint of irony, that eventually I would be forced to leave the country simply because I am Hispanic. He said that he fought for white people the same way that I fight for Latinos. The difference—the big difference—is that I’m not trying to exclude anyone from this nation, while he is hoping to exclude me and other minorities.
But that wasn’t the only sign of rejection I received.
At a remote Texas estate on private property, one of the local Klan leaders assured me that he was superior to me by the simple fact of being white. When I told him that—despite whatever else he may think—the United States is our country, both his and mine, he couldn’t contain himself and spat out three words: “It is not.” I did not shake his hand after the interview. It was clear to me that he didn’t even want to touch me.
These are the reasons I feel like a foreigner in America.
The truth of the matter is that I will never be American enough for many Americans. Just as I will never be Mexican enough for many Mexicans.
I live the life of a stranger.
My Road North
My process of becoming Americanized has been a long, unpredictable, and incomplete one.
When I was a child, all I knew of the United States was the television show Combat! and the songs of that era, which I listened to on the radio in my dad’s car.
I don’t think I was even ten years old when I came here for the first time. My paternal grandparents, Gilberto and Raquel Ramos, would drive from Mexico City to Laredo, Texas, once a year to buy all the things they couldn’t get in Mexico, from clothes and medicine to cooking utensils and toys for us.