Essay: What comes after 'Viva Mxico'? Rethinking Mexican nationalism and Latino identity

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Set us as preferred This summer, I cheered — and at times, secretly sneered — in crowds of Angelenos cheering for the Mexican national team during the World Cup.Friends, colleagues, strangers who had grown up in Southern California arrived at watch parties prepared with the players’ names, stats and even deep lore on what the World Cup meant to each country.Such was the beauty of shared diaspora with other countries in my city of Los Angeles.Then, it occurred to me: As a Mexican-born immigrant, I should know the players’ names too, right? Should I know the national anthem and maybe even shed a tear as it plays? Maybe I’ve grown cold, maybe bitter, annoyed even, at the fervor, I thought.But it wasn’t until Mexico was eliminated in its match against England (curse you, Jude Bellingham) that I, on the drive home, sobbed into the steering wheel.

Soccer England scores two goals in a two-minute span and overcomes a relentless Mexico attack after going down a player in a 3-2 World Cup round-of-16 win on Sunday.I realized many questions then, which led me to investigate this piece: Why did I finally feel what everyone had been feeling? Why did the World Cup piss me off? Was it only the corruption? Or was there something stranger inside me? There’s no simple answer, but I will start with one word: nationalism.Suited up in the cardigan of excess privilege, which is my UCLA education, I can easily be trapped in my own musings to identify, assess and even profess what I think should be the truth about what “country” is to me.My “undocumented-ness,” too, however, is not a golden ticket to absolute genius in my country, nationalism, or cross-border identities.

For the Chicano Studies-initiated, there are libraries full of books to help answer this question; but here, I posit a few things to chew on.After the deluge o...