In November of 2024, I signed up for my first program and attended my first meeting of the National Hispanic Institute (NHI), and in all aspects, I should have hated it.
My first experiences with the NHI were everything I would’ve liked to avoid: the activities brought attention to me and the interactions felt fake, or, at the very least, forced. The ideas I was taught went against the logic I had been following my whole life. These doubts lingered even months later, through my final rounds at the Texas Great Debate, where I preached ideas and solutions on ideas I had solidified in my heart. I had gone farther in my category for my region than anyone and made the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight.
But even there, at the pinnacle of what the first year of this program had in store, I still questioned: “What am I doing here?”
Perhaps through the rhetoric of modern media or the environment that surrounds me, I had fallen into a pit where I categorized my identity as a Latino as a background aspect, something of my reality that was just there. That wasn’t to say that I wasn’t proud, but I placed my care for who I am and where I come from much lower on the ladder of importance. I did that because at the time, I placed more value in being “cool” and passive than standing on what I knew to be true.
Events like Hispanic Heritage Month were just that, just events. I didn’t feel the pride or attachment to them that I do now because I didn’t realize that I was allowing the people who surrounded me to dictate subconsciously how I needed to perceive my identity.
It was only after my time at the Great Debate, thinking upon the four days I had spent there, that I realized this thought pattern. Then I knew that for all my life, I had been allowing these outside influences to have a say on what I was, without actually having formed any belief myself.
The combined opinions of family, friends, strangers and even the President of the United States, had all, regardless of being on purpose, put in a small chip of an idea not of my own making.
And I wanted it to stop.
It was there that I began to remake who I knew myself to be. I reassessed what actually mattered to me, taking from the lessons of the National Hispanic Institute and applying my interpretation of them to my life. I realized that, actually, I cared a lot about what was happening to my people, and this time, I actually had something to say. I now knew that my identity was for me solely to define, because I am the only person who actually has a say. I no longer believe that it is possible to be passive on the issues that press my community, because the truth simply matters more. NHI did not make my identity, but it made me aware that I had to make my own.
I’ll end with this: People will say many things about who you’re supposed to be, but you are the only person who will ever have the authority to decide your identity.