I grew up 0.4 miles from the Rio Grande River that divides the United States and Mexico.
To be more explicit, I grew up 0.4 miles from the ten-foot, steel fence outlining it.
The border marking where Ciudad Juarez, Mexico ends and El Paso, Texas begins is strongly
surveilled.
Despite this, El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are deservingly called “Sister cities.”
They share interdependent economies and ancestry.
They have constant movement of people across their ports of entry.
And their teamwork in making the most delicious foods you’ll probably ever taste, are what
make them familia.
A family.
Crossing borders is central to my region’s identity.
When I came to Brown, I knew the merging of two nations in my Mexican-American hometown
was the reason I enjoyed high levels of spiciness unlike my friends.
It was also why I could integrate Spanish words into my English sentences.
But I thought that for the most part, my time living in the space between the circles of
a Venn diagram had come to a close.
Being at Brown, however, has been characterized by overlapping worlds.
As we come together from different bloodlines and lived experiences, Brown is a borderland
similar to the one I call home.
At Brown, we cross borders when we stop viewing ourselves as static.
We are malleable beings en route to becoming better versions of ourselves.
We cross borders when we take our identities into our hands.
We learn how those identities interact with, and impact, the communities that surround
us.
Life on college hill has been about grappling with the idea that the DNA in our chromosomes
can categorize us.
It us up to us to understand the privileges we inherited.... and their cost.
Life on college hill has been about locating the fences that we, and those before us, have
built.
But more importantly, in our lives on college hill we have begun to remove these fences.
First year at Brown, I was angry.
I internalized what differentiated my life as a low-income student, and resented what
I thought nobody could understand…..
So I built a wall.
I dwelled in my own consuming thoughts, eventually sitting through a four-hour, final exam only
to turn it in completely blank.
I returned home disillusioned.
I hadn’t carried my community on my back.
I hadn’t done great things.
But in the comfort of home I realized that despite the difficulty of performing at an
academic institution like Brown’s, I had been trained to cross borders before I arrived
throughout my lifetime.
The values of hard-work, community-building, and collaboration I learned from those in
the borderland equipped me with the tools to build myself at Brown.
Regardless of our achievements as soon to be Brown graduates, we must learn from the
hard-work of those outside the Van Wickle Gates.
My mother is a Mexican immigrant and a homemaker.
Her aching body symbolizes decades of community healing that is often overlooked.
My father is a groundskeeper with sun-darkened skin.
He gains respect from others only when he uses complex words in carefully crafted arguments.
It is people like my parents, those who make up a large proportion of our country and the
world, whose resilience we must recognize and aim to understand.
It is my mother’s fearlessness that taught me to engage in inter-generational networks
in ways that no classroom ever has.
Mami, te quiero mucho y este honor es para ti.
From her, I learned relational skills that guided vulnerable conversations with friends
in the staircases of our libraries.
These skills will lead communication with my future patients as I become the first medical
doctor in my family.
Through my father, I found my voice that now literally echoes on campus.
To this day, I experience language come to life when he translates legal documents for
Spanish-speaking neighbors, or interprets health care systems for others who are medically
uninsured like himself.
The calloused hands of those in my community overflow with generosity despite our own financial
constraints.
The families of first-generation college students, many who are in the audience, transcend barriers
every day.
I hope you feel great pride as you see your children reaping the fruit of your sacrifices.
We arrived at Brown educated by the paths that led us here.
Even on campus, many of the people who have taught us most have not stood in front of
us in lecture halls.
Whether it’s the way Gail greets us when we walk into the Ratty, or how Jose does magic
tricks with our IDs, we have learned from each other's joy.
We have also benefited from great role models.
For many of us, one of those role models was Maryori Conde.
Maryori was the daughter of an El Salvadorian mother and the first in her family to graduate
from college in 2018.
She pushed boundaries when she used her Brown education to amplify the voices of populations
like mine.
Maryori pursued a Master’s at Brown in hopes of teaching students of color about the power
of their own histories.
She often encouraged other Latinas to say our names proudly, regardless of how hard
those names were to roll off of other people’s tongues.
And it was a tremendous loss when five months ago, Maryori crossed another border when she
lost her life in a tragic accident.
Class of 2019, let’s continue the work Maryori started.
We can all use our passions to leverage the voices of those who are not in the same positions
of power.
We hold the responsibility to create spaces for others to speak up and be heard.
It is essential that we do this for those who have been, and continue to be, silenced.
We must recognize the privilege of having a place on the main green, protected by fences
that often represent exclusivity.
The privilege of being surrounded by bright red bricks, and grass that is even green in
the winter.
As we walk through the doors that Brown unlocked for us, let us hold them open for others to
follow.
At Brown we have been alongside friends who use algorithms to detect blood flow in the
brain, who use transportation routes to study infant health, and who use art as a form of
healing.
Brown has taught us to practice disciplinary disobedience.
To redirect the lines that dictate one field from another, and find their point of intersection.
We’ve been called to cross borders; to find the humanity through the lenses of our microscopes,
the communities in our codes, and the person in our politics.
As we admire our first year dorms once more and wave goodbye to Blueno the bear, our goal
must be to have conversations with people outside our circles.
To share meals with those who don’t look like us.
Who don’t talk like us.
Who don’t stand on the same side of the fence.
Only then can we transform our degrees into agents of real change.
Let’s make our futures a borderland too.
La Lucha sigue, y si se puede.
Congratulations Class of 2019!