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Maria Hinojosa: Dear Latino USA Listener, before we start, you should know that if you wanna listen to this episode ad-free, just join Futuro+ and you can join for as little as $7 a month. Joining also gets you behind-the-scenes access and yes, some chisme. So click the link in the episode description and after you do that, then click play.
Let’s go to the show.
Dear listener, you know I meet a lot of people, but there are some people who I need who stick out. Some people who I know are going to have a big impact on American history. Yeah, I mean American history. One of those people is Cristina Jiménez.
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She has been regarded as one of the most important immigration activists over the last couple of decades, and I’ve been wanting to talk to her for several months.
Cristina Jiménez is the co-founder of United We Dream, which is the largest immigrant youth-led movement in the country. She grew up undocumented in Queens, New York, and for years. She lived in fear that she or her parents would be deported, worried that her family would be torn apart. Earlier this year, Cristina Jiménez released her memoir, ‘Dreaming of Home, How We Turned Fear Into Pride, Power, and Real Change.
She, like I, was a guest at the Raizado Festival in Aspen, Colorado, late in August. It’s a gathering that celebrates Latino culture, leadership, and creativity, and like a good activist, Critina captured the moment that we’re facing.
Cristina Jiménez: “The fear is here. I think it won’t go away. And what I’ll tell your listeners is that this is a moment of realizing that silence and hiding won’t protect us, but community will.”
Maria Hinojosa: (MUSIC FADES IN) From Futuro Media, it’s Latino USA. I’m Maria Hinojosa. Today my conversation with one of the very few American activists to ever win the MacArthur Genius Award. Her name is Cristina Jiménez. We’re gonna talk about the strength and need for activism in order to protect immigrant communities these days. Also, the fear of losing her own husband to ICE officers.
And Cristina and I both get quite personal about the constant need to make this country love us.
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Cristina Jiménez, welcome to Latino USA! I’ve been wanting to speak to you for, I don’t know, officially, maybe a year. So great to have you on the show.
Cristina Jiménez: Maria, it’s so wonderful to be here. I love Latino USA, and it’s such a dream come true to be in this conversation with you.
Maria Hinojosa: So, Cristina, you know, a year ago, I don’t know if you remember the conversation that we had. Basically, what you said to me was, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of my book releasing. I’m formally undocumented, I’m an activist.
Cristina Jiménez: Mm-hmm.
Maria Hinojosa: The book has been out now. So what do you think now about that fear that you had?
Cristina Jiménez: You know, Maria? Um, a lot of people in the book events I’ve been across the country asked me this question of: ‘So, when does your fear go away or how does that happen?’ And I have to be real and vulnerable that even though I am a naturalized citizen today. Though let’s be clear, under the current conditions in this government, people who are naturalized are not safe either.
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But even earlier in the year before many of the attacks on even naturalized citizens came up, the fear has not left my body because I have loved ones who have DACA, loved ones who are undocumented. I’m so connected to many members of my community and my family that are impacted by all that is happening right now. And I also know that my work; organizing communities, being out there fighting for people’s right and dignity, makes me a target. But the fear is here. I think it won’t go away. And what I’ll tell your listeners is that this is a moment of realizing that silence and hiding won’t protect us, but community will.
Maria Hinojosa: I don’t know if people understand that actually living undocumented is. A highly existential experience.
Cristina Jiménez: Mm-hmm.
Maria Hinojosa: And so I’m wondering about this notion of, you know, philosophically understanding that as an undocumented person, as an immigrant, not born in this country, that we have a philosophy of life that moves us, which is: ‘Bueno. We’re scared, tenemos miedo, we don’t know what’s gonna happen, but one foot in front of the other.’
Cristina Jiménez: Yeah, that’s what I learned from my parents, Maria. And in this book, it’s such an homage to the courage of my parents and what I learned from, you know, it’s not like they told me, mija, this is what courage looks like. They never had that like conversation on, you know, the dinner table with me, but it was by watching and seeing how they did. And in fact, you know, both of them passed away and they were unable to say their last goodbyes ’cause we were undocumented in this country. I watch that. I tell you, when I travel abroad and I have to come through customs again, I always, I always fear that I’m not gonna be let in and I have done nothing wrong other than being an immigrant in this country.
Maria Hinojosa: It’s interesting because, you know, the, the narrative by this administration is one that as immigrants, you and I are like, well, who is he talking about? You know, that we are takers, that we are losers, that we are, um, people who are prone to criminality. All of this is the opposite of what we actually experience.
And I often find myself, Cristina, just wishing that people could understand that strength.
Cristina Jiménez: Hmm.
Maria Hinojosa: And a lot of the theme of your book is you actually have power, immigrants, undocumented immigrants, you actually have power. And we’re heroes just to think about all of the mothers, fathers, families that come that risk so much their lives literally and survive so much, by the way, to cross different places to get here.
And I, you know, always remember when I was writing the book, Maria, there was this moment under the Biden administration in the first couple of months where Kamala Harris goes to Guatemala and she has a press conference with the president of Guatemala.
Kamala Harris: “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border.”
Cristina Jiménez: And the whole point of that press conference was to say, do not come.
Kamala Harris: “Do not come.”
Cristina Jiménez: And I sat with that in tears that the first black and immigrant vice president woman. Who had been a champion for immigrant rights was saying that, and that she was using this big powerful platform to send that message.
And I sat with it because it’s almost like a denial that there are greater forces that push people to leave their homes, as if we like dream, to choose to leave everything behind, not knowing what you know, what is gonna be a stake, risking our lives. We don’t do that out of fun and joy or because we dream of it.
When I wrote my book, I kept thinking about Toni Morrison and how she unapologetically wrote for black people. I wrote this book for the undocumented young girl, that was ashamed and afraid and had no hope, or felt powerless. I wrote it for that girl. I wrote it for our gente, for our people to also confront us, that sometimes we believe those lies.
I believe those lies and I tap into this vulnerability in the book to say like, ‘I don’t wanna just talk about the Americans that believe all these lies. I believe these lies.’
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I grew up in a 9/11 era, a New York City where everything I heard about being an immigrant, being not from this country was shame. Bad, bad, bad, bad. I internalized those lies. I believed that somehow me, my parents had done something wrong for coming to this country. I internalized the lie and my journey gets transformed; that idea and that lie gets transformed and gets shed because I meet undocumented young people that are fighting deportations.
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Maria Hinojosa: Take us to that moment when you decide after being very tenuous about the whole notion about being an activist. When you’re like: ‘No, no, no, I’m gonna go public now with the thing that has been the most shameful, hidden, scary,’ and you’re like: ‘Soy chiquita, but you’re about to hear me.’ What happened in that moment and why did you decide to do that?
Cristina Jiménez: The context is the early 2000s. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 happened, and the country moves in a direction of fighting terror. But the way that that looks like for domestic policy in particular, which was, you know, what many of us experienced was the creation of Homeland Security, increased resources for detention and deportation.
All of us become a target, you know, Muslim communities, immigrant communities, this notion of fighting deportations was not a thing in that day. And then I get to know about Marie Gonzalez. And Marie Gonzalez is the first undocumented young person, and her and her family, because of 9/11 policies in Missouri, ends up being targeted for deportation.
She has the courage to share her story publicly.
Marie Gonzalez: “I got off that stage and I had students come up to me and they said: ‘thank you,’ and I said: ‘for what?’ But they were like tears streaming down their face. I can’t tell my story, but it is my fear and you’re living my biggest fear.
Cristina Jiménez: So what do I have to lose?
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And then I saw all these people. I get invited to my first rally. So I joined this rally and I’m scared. I’m not even like chanting, but then I start chanting and I hold a sign and I become part of the crowd that is chanting. ‘Education not deportation. Education not deportation.’ And I start getting goosebumps like, ah, I’m chanting with all of these people that I don’t even know.
What I realized is that in that crowd, there were students from the City University of New York, some of them that I knew, but there was also a lot of Americans from all walks of life that don’t even know Marie. Nobody has met her in person, and yet they were fighting for her ride to stay, and that Maria was the moment that totally transformed things for me. Because if people that did not even know Marie were fighting for her, and if I was to be the next Marie Gonzalez facing deportation, I wanted that community to be fighting for me too.
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Maria Hinojosa: Coming up on Latino USA, the challenges of building a grassroots movement.
Cristina Jiménez: Conflict is gonna emerge. Differences are gonna emerge. Difference of opinion around strategy are gonna emerge. We had a conflict with the older generation.
Maria Hinojosa: Stay with us. ¡No te vayas!
Hey, we’re back.
(MUSIC FADES IN) Let’s jump back into the conversation with Cristina Jiménez and we’re gonna pick it up by talking about the making of the organization United We Dream, which happened in 2008.
You are now not just an activist, you are in fact, making history as an activist in the United States because you helped co-found United We Dream, which was an immigrant-led youth movement that frankly changed history. To me this is like when United We Dream shows up. Right? I’m wondering about how you see that transition too. It’s not just you as a one of many activists. It’s like, ‘no, now I’m gonna co-found an organization to help represent these hundreds and thousands of people.’
Cristina Jiménez: You know in, in my book, I tell the journey of my transformation of finding my voice and my power in this community of organizers, in this community of young, courageous people that are fighting deportations. Many of them have lost family members to deportations, and they are such a big source of inspiration for me to tap into that courage and my hope is that by people learning about this journey, they can also see themselves in it.
This book is for anyone who’s afraid right now. This book is for anyone who has ever felt like you don’t belong or that has felt powerless or hopeless, and my hope in people and readers, being able to follow my journey of ashamed and afraid to like unapologetically undocumented, unafraid, and leading the building of a movement and an organization is that we can do that too. You can do that too. And it is hopeful and it’s inspiring and it’s empowering, and also, Maria, it’s really hard. It’s really hard.
Even when we find spaces of community where we have a shared vision and share values, conflict is gonna emerge, differences are gonna emerge. Differences of opinion around strategy are gonna emerge. And then the question for us as leaders and organizers are, how do we deal with that? We had a conflict with the older generation.
Maria Hinojosa: The older generation didn’t want you guys out on the street pushing, right? They were saying, ‘no, no, no. Algo va a pasar. Why are you, why are you guys protesting? You’re drink, bringing attention to us. Don’t do that. ¡Cállese la boca!’
Cristina Jiménez: I wanna remind people the planting of the seeds and the work were happening in the early 2000s, so it takes over 10 years to get to this point, that moment what it does is that it shows us what power we have and what we don’t have.
Maria Hinojosa: Because 2010 is a huge defeat for the Immigrant Rights Movement for young immigrant right rights leaders like yourself, the failure of DACA to pass, the criticism from the older generation saying, ‘we should not be doing this piecemeal’, also, it should be comprehensive immigration reform.
Archival tape: “Thank you for having the courage to stand here today to demand immigration reform and economic justice.”
“Today, the Senate voted against the Dream Act. It would’ve offered a path to citizenship to some illegal immigrant students who plan to join the military or go to college.”
Maria Hinojosa: So Cristina was DACA Mistake. Was it not a mistake?
Cristina Jiménez: No. I stand behind DACA. Can I tell you why it’s not about being right? And you know, often in leadership, people not being open to recognizing mistakes. I could tell you about other mistakes that I think that we’ve made, but DACA it’s a huge victory for us to own because the millions of lives that have been changed we’re all worth it.
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There are millions of lives of DACA recipients who were able to pursue a college education, who were able to buy homes, who were able to get cars, who were able to support their family members, who were able to get insurance, health insurance for the first time in their lives, to treat the seeds that they have never been able to treat.
The number of people that then also happen to fall in love and you know, find a pathway through marriage. That DACA allowed for that to happen. DACA also allowed for many people to go back and see their abuelitos and their abuelitas and say goodbyes. Nobody will take that away from us. No one.
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And that impact the millions of lives that have been touched. People don’t think about this, but you know, if you wanna be a policy wonk about it, DACA was an out of poverty program.
Maria Hinojosa: I was about to say, people don’t talk about the fact that DACA actually had an impact on the American economy because you could employ them, they could buy the homes, they could get enrolled into college.
Cristina Jiménez: But it’s also, la vida de nuestra gente cambió. So there are the days and moments that I feel very tired and I feel very angry at myself for wanting this country to want us, Maria.
Maria Hinojosa: Oh my God! When you said that…
Cristina Jiménez: And feel rejected.
Maria Hinojosa: When you said that this fight of always wanting to have this country love you, and so we work so hard and we write books and we’re like doing 16 jobs, it’s like, will you just see us? It’s exhausting.
Cristina Jiménez: It’s exhausting. And so I feel sometimes mad at myself for still longing for this country to see me as one of their own. And I’m just, you know, crying right now.
Maria Hinojosa: I mean, the both of us are trying, this is ridiculous. Right?
Cristina Jiménez: And yet Maria, what I hold true is that it was, it’s also in this country where I found my purpose and I found my voice, and I found a community that comes from a rich tradition of civil rights fighters. Women rights, indigenous people, Black people that have been fighting for this country to really live up to those aspirational values of freedom and equality for all people, that we have yet to achieve. But it isn’t that rich tradition that you and I and many of us give to be part of it now and carry that lineage and that tradition forward.
And that’s also what this country has given me. This country has also given me, my family, my husband is all, is, is only here because Americans from all walks of life for, for his release from a detention facility in upstate New York and prevented his deportation. And Walter and I now continue to live in New York and have a 3-year-old that was born here.
That story it’s only possible because Americans made a choice to fight for justice.
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And that is what brings me hope right now because I see people all across the country fighting for their neighbors, immigrants, non-immigrants. This is like a multiracial moment where people are realizing this ain’t about just immigrants, it’s about all of us.
And for our Latinos and Latinas, trust me, we are now part of their vision that they have for this country. The folks that want to keep this country white and that want to weaken this democracy and leave under undemocratic conditions. They don’t want us, whether you have papers or not. When I think about the young Cristina’s out in the world right now, this is their moment.
And as a student of history, and also now you know, a professor at the City University of New York, I teach my students that when you look at the world, there’s never been social transformation without young people at the front.
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Maria Hinojosa: We’ll be right back. ¡No te vayas! (MUSIC FADES OUT)
Hey, we’re back. Here’s the last part of my conversation with Cristina Jiménez.
Okey, and now a difficult question because we’ve all lived through this, right? Which is your expectation, your prediction about how this is a moment where Latinos and Latinas are gonna be transformational yet again. ’cause have been throughout history, and yet Latinos and Latinas did vote.
Cristina Jiménez: Mm-hmm.
Maria Hinojosa: For Donald Trump in numbers that we had not seen before. What is your understanding of what to do with the conservative Latinos and Latinas who voted for Donald Trump and who many of them still are believing the rhetoric that the only people that are being targeted.
Cristina Jiménez: Mm-hmm.
Maria Hinojosa: Are the criminals.
Cristina Jiménez: Absolutely, and we have to be sober about this. Maria, I don’t think that the mass deportations and the mass pain and terror that it’s happening is magically are going to transform people, but I do think it opens an opportunity for those of us who are interested in social change and who are committed to it, and who are committed to building power for our community.
It, we have an opportunity in front of us, but it’s up to us to make that happen. They don’t feel like this administration has delivered on their economic interest. Like the price of eggs had not gone down because of mass deportations folks, right? Like it takes no science or no data to just like realize the deportation of the workers that are actually making our food chain possible.
And I think people are starting to notice who’s really to blame, people in power and billionaires that just wanna get more money out of this situation. So, I think that it is our job to be able to make those connections. Migration is a love story. We may not think about immigration as a love story, and what I try to do with this book is that it is, I witness my parents taking this great risk because they love me and they love our family.
I also experienced in seeing Americans from all walks of life, even right now, fighting against deportations, out of love for their neighbors, and their friends, and their family members. Like the, you know, high schooler in Massachusetts whose volleyball team rallied, marched, you know, took action to get him out of detention. And that’s love.
Archival tape: This was a very emotional day for these students, filled with tears, prayers, and a strong sense of immunity for Marcelo Gomez, and tonight remains in ICE custody.
Just judging by the size of that crowd, the students walking out of the school. Marcelo Gomez has a lot of people in his corner.
Maria Hinojosa: About your love story with your husband, Walter. You were very trepidatious at firstand yet when you jumped in with him, suddenly you’re now faced with not the trepidation of love, but the fact that your husband has been detained. He was not your husband at the time, right? But that your boyfriend had been detained.
Cristina Jiménez: Oh, we were not even.
Maria Hinojosa: Oh, not even.
Cristina Jiménez: So Maria, this is the thing that happens. Everybody around us is telling us like you all like are such a great match. Look at the energy that you all have when you’re with each other and you’re like such badass organizers. You all should date. And we’re telling our friends separately like. ‘No way. He’s undocumented. She’s undocumented. We don’t wanna do that.’
Like imagine put your, put your heart at so much risk of falling in love with someone who could potentially be deported tomorrow. No way! And the idea that I could be in a situation where I may never see him again was the thing that helped me recognize what sometimes we often ignore that is already in our heart and he had the same feeling and so we didn’t even have to talk much about it.
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I think we knew. That’s when we decided no matter what, like in what happens and the uncertainty of both being undocumented, we are not gonna let this injustice and this system that wants to take away our freedom, our freedom to love each other.
Maria Hinojosa: So the love story is actually thanks to the repression, that leads to the activism, that leads to the love story. No hay mal que por bien no venga.
Cristina Jiménez: It’s been a journey, but we are going strong, and if anything, just even more committed to making this world a better place for our son and for all of our kids.
Maria Hinojosa: We love a good telenovela story.
Cristina Jiménez: Yeah. (LAUGHS)
Maria Hinojosa: Where it ends with love. We love that. Cristina Jiménez, thank you so much for joining me on Latino USA.
Cristina Jiménez: So great to be with you, Maria. Thank you.
Maria Hinojosa: That was Cristina Jiménez, activist, organizer, and co-founder of United We Dream the largest immigrant youth-led movement in the country. She and I spoke in Aspen, Colorado after the Raizado Festival. (MUSIC FADES OUT)
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That’s it for today. This episode was produced by Adriana Rodriguez, it was edited by our managing editor, Fernanda Echavarri. It was mixed by Stephanie Lebow. Special thanks to Aspen Public Radio and Daniel Costello. The Latino USA team also includes Roxanna Aguirre, Julia Caruso, Jessica Ellis, Reynaldo Leaños Jr., Andrea López-Cruzado, Luis Luna, Glorimar Márquez, Julieta Martinelli, Monica Morales-Garcia, JJ Querubin and Nancy Trujillo. Peniley Ramírez and I are executive producers, and I’m your host Maria Hinojosa. Latino USA is part of iHeart’s My Cultura podcast Network. Executive producers at iHeart are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana.
Join us again on our next episode. In the meantime, I’ll see you on all of our social media and especially on Instagram.
And dear listener, remember, join Futuro+ you get to listen to the episodes without any ads. Woo! And also you get bonus content behind the scenes, chisme. Just do it. You’ll love it. Futuro+ now. Hasta la próxima. ¡No te vayas! Ciao!
Stephanie Lebow: Latino USA is made possible in part by The Annie E. Casey Foundation — creates a brighter future for the nation’s children by strengthening families, building greater economic opportunity, and transforming communities —. W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a partner with communities where children come first. And funding for Latino USA is Coverage of a Culture of Health is made possible in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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