Undercover Latina: Chapters 29–35

Emily remarked that the house was nice. I attributed it to my decision to put away more of the big-eyed animals.

She waved her hand dismissively.

Ramón and I were holding hands, discreetly again, but with just the two of us together, it was pretty clear that we were...on a date or something.

“I know we’ve been sort of casually hanging out. And I’ve been sort of…shy about...or just sort of awkward because...I mean, I really like you.”

“What the hell are you doing?”
The two of us looked up, disoriented.

Reflexively, I shifted my feet to a fighting stance.

Suddenly, my energy dissipated. The seven steps to the house seemed like a million miles.

I trudged up them as if my legs were filled with lead.

I told her the whole terrible story, omitting only the kiss.

Our people come from Puerto Rico and Mexico. Even though we have a lot of the colonizers’ blood, and the fact is that their genes show in our faces, our lineage is of colonized people. And we’re part of the lineage of resistance, too—Indigenous and Black people who have resisted slavery and colonization.

But racism isn’t just part of white culture—it’s Latines, too. The prejudice is there.

“I thought that I could stand up against racism in the world and not have to look at my own family. And never reveal the ideas that were still in my own head. The racism I had internalized. But I had to stop pretending. I had to look at how racist ideas had hurt me. And how I had participated in hurting people who were darker than I was. I had to uproot all the bias I had.”

“But you can’t escape societal biases altogether, and you’ll have to grapple with your own light privilege as you grow up, too. Just know that we’ll be here to talk with you about it whenever you want.”

On the eve of our trip to San Diego, Jerrold updated me with all the details of the operation. He asked if I had any questions.
I had several about the logistics.

“They just don’t have the same natural danger radar and vigilance that teens of color have.”

There’s a whole body of research that shows discrepancies between lighter- and darker-skinned people of color. Disparities in income, occupations, education levels, health outcomes...you name it. We have the data on color. We can map it, graph it, and a lot of outcomes get worse for darker people.

There’s a whole body of research that shows discrepancies between lighter- and darker-skinned people of color. Disparities in income, occupations, education levels, health outcomes...you name it. We have the data on color. We can map it, graph it, and a lot of outcomes get worse for darker people.

If we defined racism only as having your village razed and getting forcibly sent to an abusive boarding school, or only being barred from entering the country, we’d ignore slavery and anti-Black racism.

But if we define racism as only what happens when people exploit your labor, we’d ignore other aspects of Native genocide.

If we only define it as mistreatment based on perceived difference in skin color or appearance, we’d ignore a lot of important facets of racism: appropriation, exploitation, exotification, so many issues.

We had spent the plane ride studying the updates to the ComxCon schedule and getting acclimated to the convention app on our phones.

The first day, there was a huge session called “Triángulo: How Latin America Took Over Comics and Cards This Year.” We decided that was the kind of thing that would attract Dave—a totally articulated threat to white supremacy.

Imani came out of the other bedroom in her Olumide costume. It was even flashier than mine. The unitard and mask were dark blue, but the boots, trim, and cape were covered in turquoise sequins.

I resigned myself and posed reluctantly.

There was a palpable energy around us. People were excited.

It was full and there was overflow into the hallway. Everything bottlenecked, and it took a while to get through.

“There’s a man they have in custody here, and I think he might be your identity thief,” he said. “I work with Barbara in cybersecurity, and I think they caught the guy here up to some kind of shenanigans.”

“He was positive. Now we’re just waiting to make double sure with the in-person ID. But at this point, it’s just a formality.”

You just furnished the critical piece of information to stop a terrorist attack.

They come face-to-face with the original Naturalezo, the young enslaver, before he was fully corrupted by the magic that was never meant for him.

When the panelists started the discussion, I closed my eyes and basked in the Spanish and Portuguese accents and the sprinkling of Spanglish, especially by Angelica Dominguez, whose New York accent sounded so much like my mom when she wasn’t undercover.

I finally pulled my phone out, and on the lock screen was a text from Mom in all caps: “WRONG MAN IN CUSTODY! TERRORIST STILL AT LARGE!”

It took me a moment to get hold of myself, for rational thought to return.

I looked on the stage and saw the panel of creators.

I had no choice but to back off.
I had failed. I prayed he was bluffing.

But then a man in a suit came up to the moderator and spoke to Angelica.

I was back to pretending to be a normal fourteen-year-old. A “spunky Latina teenager” and “a cosplayer turned real-life hero” and “a ComxCon true crime crusader.”

The thought of first kisses made me wistful but not regretful.

“But there’s more to it,” he said, scrutinizing me.

“Stopping white extremist terrorism is always a tasteful gift.”