Understanding the Impact of Nationality on Identity

Many things shape us into who we are, sometimes we choose them, sometimes they choose us. When I am optimist about it, I often think our nationality chose us for a reason, that it chose entire generations for a reason. Because we remarkably influence our country, and it also largely influences us. Nationality, more than a characteristic, it’s a close relationship.
However, like all relationships, nationality requires acknowledgement and nourishment. Every citizen has the duty to recognize the problems that afflict the country and have the courage to solve them. Having a nationality therefore, is no easy task. Everyday, even the little we do contributes for what is wrong with our country, and what is right. And the only difference between these two opposite sides is precisely what makes us citizens. The acknowledgment of our relationship.
I remember the day I finally came to the conclusion that I am

Mexican. Having lived 16 years in Mexico, anyone could assume that I already knew that, but it was not the case. It was only after the tragedy of Ayotzinapa, that I finally understood what means to be Mexican.
By January 2015, a video of a protest had gone viral on Facebook. Despite its very low quality, it made an incredible impression on me, I felt hit by a lighting. On the streets of Mexico City, students had gathered to cry and accuse the government of killing 43 college students. They walked slowly and sang the same lyrics over and over. “The people walk together, we want Mexico to wake up. From Tijuana to Chiapas, is the fight against power. We are not all gentlemen, we are missing 43. This corrupt government gentlemen, wants us to disappear”. They called the video the Weeping Ayotzinapa.
In Mexico there is a legend about a woman, called the Weeping Lady, who drowned all her children in a river and then drowned herself. Rumor has it that her ghost wanders around Mexico City, weeping for her dead children, asking for forgiveness. Mexico has also drowned her children. One night of September 2014, 43 freshman college students disappeared and were never found.
But the outrage of that video, soon enough, left. While looking for them, our government found another 20,000 unclaimed bodies. The number still resonates in my head, it wasn’t the first time we had lost our children. That was the real tragedy: their death was just more of the same. In my country, people are killed, kidnapped, tortured, abused, and disappeared. And people are too tired to care. Even young people.
After watching the video several times, I felt compelled to take a political stand and I started my first protest at school.

But I couldn’t do it, only the principal and senior girl wanted to help. Everyone else thought like my best friend, that these 43 were just dead like all dead people. We lived in the second most dangerous city in the country and the 15th most dangerous city in the world. There is just so much death you can stand for.
That day, as I looked quietly into her eyes, I understood many things. The acknowledgement I needed. For the first time in my life, I saw my country, and I felt a pain that is only felt by citizens, for a country that is falling apart.
My best friend had been right, we have too many corpses already, ours is a pollution of death, pain, and sadness. The pain that I carry with me, for my nation, is what ultimately makes me Mexican, and shapes me into who I am. The tragedy of the 43, gave me my nationality, and the firm belief that there is no more honorable purpose than to fight for my nationality and help others to fight

theirs.