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In this episode, it's our host's turn to tell her own story! Growing up in Texas, May Ortega thought she had a pretty good idea of who she was. But but when she became a journalist, she realized that to report on other people, she had to figure out her own story. Host: May Ortega Produced by: Erin Jones Lead producer: Luis Antonio Perez Editors: Rebekah Romberg, Ana Campbell Mixing: Pedro Lumbrano Additional production: Jo Erickson Theme music by Pedro Lumbrano; additional music courtesy Universal Production Music Cover art: Mia Rincón Executive producers: Brad Turner, Kevin Dale Thanks also to Hart van Denburg, Jodi Gersh, Clara Shelton, Matt Herz, Kim Nguyen, Brittany Werges and CPR's Latino Audience Working Group.

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[SOUNDBITE OF YOUNG MAY ORTEGA AND HER MOTHER MAYDA ORTEGA]

Mayda Ortega (on recording): Que cuentes en inglés. En inglés. En inglés. One…[coaching May]

May Ortega (on recording): [Counting in English from one to ten] One. Two.

May Ortega: It's me, May. And that is also me. I used to make a lot of home videos as a kid.

May (on-air recording): Polis also signed a bill into law Monday that creates a fund to help two river basins meet groundwater sustainability targets. This is CPR News and KRCC. I'm May Ortega.

May: The way I've told stories has changed, but I've always been a storyteller. When I became a journalist though, I realized that to report on other people, I had to figure out my own story. In this episode, we're gonna change things up a little bit. This time I'm going to go back to the beginning and tell you my story.

From Colorado Public Radio, this is “¿Quién Are We?” exploring what it means to be Mestizo, Nicaragüense, Latina, or however you identify and diving into the beautiful things that make us who we are. I'm May Ortega. And an important person from my life is gonna help me tell you my story.

Mayda Ortega: Well, I’m Mayda Ortega, I'm the mother of this little person that became a, a woman [laughter] and I’m married to the most wonderful man in the world. I have never worked in my life because he takes care of me and my family and everything. So I have always, always taken care of you guys. But I'm super happy, and I'm a wonderful mother. I hope [laughter].

May: Yeah, I think so. Yes. So te recuerdas when I was little and I only spoke Spanish?

Mayda: Oh yeah, we would play lotería, and you would always do, “la rana, la [unintelligible].” And so you, you would always do it because your voice was so beautiful and tiny and you know [laughter].

May: Entonces, ¿cuándo crees que me enseñé? When did you think I learned how to speak English?

May: I grew up in south Texas. I grew up in a really small town called Rio Grande City. Very rural area right on the border with Mexico too. The border was literally behind our Walmart. There's a lot of mezquite plants. I think. I don't know. I think in English it’s just mesquite. And a lot of cacti were the main flora of the area and coyotes, tarantulas, rattlesnakes. A smell that I do associate with growing up in Rio Grande City is the smell of carne asada, which is, you know, like – you go out, you'd barbecue outside. Yeah. So I am the oldest of two kids. I have a younger brother, and we're like seven or eight years apart. My parents are both from Mexico. My dad was undocumented for a while. He's a citizen now. And my mom had dual citizenship because she was a migrant worker when she was growing up. And they started dating in the eighties.

Mayda: We were at – I was at a cousin's wedding. I didn't know who your dad was. And I asked my cousin who was sitting next to me, “Hey, who's that guy?” And she said, “Oh, that’s Choco.” “Oh, I’m Mayda.” And that's it [laughter].

May: You all met in the eighties, right?

Mayda: Oh yeah. I met him in January of 1988.

May: Wow. You've told me que he had a perm when you met, pero que él dice que no. Is that true?

Mayda: Yeah. Yes. He, he said it was natural. And I said, what? And you know how it stinks at the, at the beginning, you know? The perms back in the eighties? [Laughter] Oh, no, this was natural. And I said, okay. I guess [laughter].

May: They got married, moved over here. And then I was born a few years later. Once I started school, so what, I was around five or six? Is when you start pre-K. I don't know if this is still a thing, but they were trying really hard – like the administration and the teachers were trying really hard to Americanize the students.

Mayda: At the beginning, at pre-K, it was English and Spanish. In first grade, we noticed that everything was in English. And even though we talked to you in Spanish, everything would come back in English.

May: So sometimes like they would, I remember that they would, like, slap the back of your hand with rulers if you were speaking Spanish when they would tell you not to. And this was like a thing throughout most of my elementary school.

Mayda: And then we said, oh my God, what's gonna happen. What's – what is this? We need to keep speaking Spanish. And we do, this is a Spanish-speaking family. But no, you kept – because all day you were in school and everything was in English.

May: So yeah. Y all my friends también. All my friends spoke English.

Mayda: Yep. Everybody here is just English.

May: And at the same time my parents were at home trying to learn English. My dad was trying to learn how to speak English. So I was just like – my whole world revolved around English for a good while to the point where I just forgot how to speak Spanish. Like almost completely. Like 90, 95% of it just, like, poofed out my head.

Mayda: Well, it was tough because when you would see your grandma or we went to México to see your other grandpas and grandmas – couldn't understand you, you know? Yeah. And your cousins from México, they would make fun of how you speak because when you tried to speak Spanish it sounded weird to them. Like they said you sounded like a cartoon or something, and I would get mad and I would try to, you know, keep calm. But yeah, I would. It was, it was tough.

Mayda: I try, I tried, I always told my mother, your, your abuelita, que try to speak to her in words that are easy, you know? Not too complicated. En español. You know? Que no fueron – something like, I don't know, something too hard. So, like, easy words. So you can talk to each other.

But I remember how I felt around that time in school: that I just felt confused and discouraged. ‘Cause like, this is all I know. And I didn't realize it was a bad thing, ‘cause it – I mean they frame it as a bad thing, and I didn't think of it as a bad thing. So I just remember feeling not good about it, but I mean, I didn't really have a choice. Right? So I just kind of went with it. I didn't complain to my parents about it or anything because I guess when you're a kid, you don't totally understand why things happen. So I'm just like, well it's happening to everybody. So this must be normal. But I was actually able to find a way to communicate and express myself that crossed language and cultural barriers.

May: I had an affinity when I was pretty young, when I was like 10 or nine for making home videos.

Mayda: Oh yeah, you would take videos all day of everything. It was a little complicated because it was the first thing and it was rough and big and plastic. And you would take videos and we would try to download them to those big computers back then. [Laughter] And it was difficult, but oh my God, you would take it everywhere and take videos of everything. Low quality of course. But it was there [laughter].

May: It was something that I made [laughter].

May: When I started making these videos, it was around the age, the time of my life, where I felt like I was ni de aquí, ni de allá. Right? That I wasn't from here or from there. I felt not Mexican enough, but also not white. And I think, yeah, making these videos was a way to kind of express myself. Not directly, like I wasn't making videos critiquing like race or identity issues in America obviously ‘cause I was like a child and I didn't understand that. But I think that was one way that this like half and half – these two split identities or one split identity were kind of like meeting.

So what about when I was in middle school? What was I like then?

Mayda: Well, you were in your emo thingy. You were dressed in black [laughter]. You had your hair in half the face. I couldn't see one of your eyes never.

May: [Laughter] When I was in middle school, I was this kind of kid who wore black a lot. I dressed like emo as they say. So at home I was being teased about not speaking my native language. Meanwhile, at school I was being teased because I dressed like a freak, quote unquote, is the, the word that they would use a lot. And I think looking back now, a lot of the kids who would tease me that way at school were kids who were more Mexican, I guess, who did speak Spanish, who like dressed of the type.

I think maybe back then I was trying to push back against what was expected of me with how I dressed, and I was bullied for it. But around this time I also started to find a new type of storytelling I was passionate about.

So when I was in high school, you know, I was in media tech like from my freshman year. Do you remember [mother laughs] when I created the news show that we had, porque it was like in my last two years or something. Do you remember anything about that?

Mayda: Oh yeah. It was great. I was so happy. I was so, so impressed with you, and you guys did that, and it was the first time, and it was amazing. I mean, I loved it. I would tell everybody and everything. I wanted to go to school every day so I could see you [laughter].

May: [Laughter] So, because I had this experience in, like, newscast, news world, kind of dipping my toe in – once I got to college, naturally I think journalism was an obvious choice. Plus, you know, there were those old home videos. Recording the world around me was where I felt most like myself. And then I realized that it could help other people too.

I'm like 21 at this point. I started looking into a local juvenile prison because we had received a tip that there were guards who were, like, breaking kids' bones and handcuffing them and making them shower handcuffed while people, like, watched them – like really demeaning situations. So I started looking into that and talking to the parents of these kids who were affected and talking to the people in charge. The Texas Department of Justice hated me for a good while. ‘Cause I was requesting all these documents and I was doing my thing.

Mayda: At first, we were scared about it because we thought – she's gonna go in there? To see all that and to talk to them and, and all that? And said, well she's a very strong girl. And she loves what she do. So let's let her do it. Hopefully nothing happens.

May: A lot of the families were Latinos who didn't speak English super well. And I didn't like that I couldn't get my thoughts out when I was talking to them because I didn't know how. So I thought, well, this one instance is really frustrating. If I'm gonna stay in journalism, and I want to be able to have these conversations with more people who may traditionally not have the space to talk to someone about these issues because they don't speak English well, I have to learn – not just for me, but for them, you know. It's just, I think it's, it's a given that I have to be able to speak Spanish so I can talk to more people and thus tell those stories better as well.

So I did. I, like, taught myself. I started reading things. I just started kind of like digging – ‘cause it was there. It was in my mind, it just was pushed back, and I never used it, and I never pushed myself to use it. So eventually I, like, pushed myself and I learned to the point where I could have a conversation at least, which was step one. And eventually, you know, I was doing all these different front page stories, critically looking at the things that were going on with proof and everything. The superintendent eventually resigned because I was really putting the pressure on.

Mayda: It's gonna be a great story and she's gonna come out … How do I say it?

May: You can say it in Spanish. It's fine.

May: That I’ll come out like on top.

Mayda: …De lo que hizo. Yes. And everybody's gonna recognize you and, and read the story. Nobody knew about it. You know, nobody knew about it. It was the first time. So it was amazing when it came out, it was, oh my God. It was like, we could cry and everything about the stuff you wrote. Yeah. It was poor kids, pobrecitos. You know?

May: After that happened, they changed some of the policies and they were becoming more communicative, you know, with the families of the people being incarcerated and everything. So that really made it clear to me that, oh, this isn't just for like New York Times people, you know. Journalists at every level can provide meaningful work and, like, effect change through just, like, doing your job well. It felt like I was standing up to bullies, but not mine, which was fulfilling in a whole different way. And I don't say you're like giving a voice to the voiceless or whatever. Everyone has a voice. I'm just the vehicle. I'm giving you a megaphone to make your voice be louder.

So I was proud of myself for beginning to relearn my native language, but I had no idea that connecting with my heritage like that would raise even more questions. After the break it turns out in Albuquerque people saw things differently than in the border valley where I lived my whole life.

All this time, growing up, I was bullied because I didn't dress Mexican enough. I didn't speak Spanish. I didn't feel Mexican enough. And so when I grew up, I learned Spanish and did everything I could to reconnect with my Mexican roots. And now all of a sudden in Albuquerque, I started wondering maybe I wasn't Mexican. Albuquerque was the first place that I moved to as soon as I graduated from college. So when I moved to New Mexico, I had already had this identity of Mexican American. That's how I used to identify when I moved to Albuquerque.

And then I just kind of started realizing that while my last name was very uncommon where I grew up in very-Mexican Texas, in very Spanish-New Mexico, it was super common. There was, you know, tons of Ortegas everywhere. On the campus where I worked for my radio station, there was an Ortega Hall. And so that kind of was the first inkling for me where I was like, wait, this is more I'm – there's more Spanish here than I ever really considered there would be.

I learned how it worked, right? How, like, Spanish people came to Mexico, ravaged the land and they, you know, killed, raped, pillaged, all this stuff. And eventually I am kind of like the product of that, I guess. And so learning all these things, it was a lot. It was like an identity crisis. Because I grew up somewhere where, like, you're Mexican. Mexico is the whole thing. We’re Mexican, we’re Mexican, we're Mexican. And then I'm in Albuquerque where it's like, well, I mean, there are Mexicans here, but also like a lot of people here are Spanish, blah, blah, blah. And so I had to be like, am I white? There was a little while where I was like, am I a Caucasian individual?

So I just kind of had to grapple with those things and the guilt of, like, being the product … The odds of everything leading up to me being here in terms of my lineage being consensual – I don't think the odds are super high of that. So it was just a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, and a lot of, like, anger, ‘cause it's not my fault. But still, I wish those things hadn't happened.

But when I was doing all this learning in Albuquerque, I learned that Hispanic describes people who are from Spanish-speaking countries. So that includes Spain. And Latino is people who are from Latin American countries, and that does not include Spain. So I mean I'm from Mexico. My parents are from Mexico. I don't even know how far back my family is from Mexico. I wanted to acknowledge and honor the fact that I am Mexican American and not like Spanish American. I think I had to honestly sit with those questions about identity and where I came from. And eventually it sort of felt clear. I felt okay with who I was – proud even. And going through that made me start thinking about my journalism differently.

Those hard hitting investigative pieces were really important, but maybe there were ways to tell stories like what I had been through and maybe they could make people happy. After all, I like being happy. And I want other people to feel that way too. If I have a chance to help people feel better in their day-to-day lives, why wouldn't I take that?

I had been in New Mexico, in Albuquerque, for about three years. I had already gone through this whole, you know, grappling-with-identity thing. And by the time that we were getting ready to come to Denver, I felt pretty secure in who I was. And I had also found some forgiveness for myself for things that were beyond my control. I spoke Spanish super well. I was doing entire interviews in Spanish with some people if they needed me too and all these things. So I felt very capable. And I felt very, like, Latina. I felt very – I felt a way that I had never felt before in my life, like very proud of who I was and very secure in that. I'd covered wildfires, shootings.

May (on recording): He had risked his life to protect others during the attack.

May (on recording): The CDC and the state government have eased pandemic restrictions once again.

May: And it was honestly getting to me. So I started to get back into stories that could help balance all the bad stuff.

May (on recording): That's the sound of some little monkeys called Gibbons.

May: And that sort of led me to an idea for a podcast about Latino experiences, about joy. And suddenly I got a sign that maybe I was on the right track.

I remember it was snowing so hard. So because New Year's had just passed, this was like January 2nd or third, I hosted on New Year's Eve. And I had said something like, “I don't know about you. I'm not really one for new year's resolutions, but this year I'm making a resolution to just be happier because like, things are so generally not great these days.” And so I said that just off the cuff, you know, something to fill the, the air time and hoping that maybe people would care. But I, I got into a Lyft, and it was this young man. He actually drove me to my location and when I was done doing my thing, I called a Lyft and it was him again. [Laughter] Which has never happened before. On the ride over, we didn't really talk. On the way back – because I opened the door and we were both like, “Hey, it's you!” We kind of just started talking.

He was around my age. Like, he looked like late twenties, early thirties. We started talking and he asked me what I do for a living. I told him I work for CPR. And he was like, “Oh my God, I can't believe I have May Ortega in my car.” And that stuff happens sometimes. And I'm like, this is so weird. [Laughter] But he said, you know, “Oh my God, I'm so starstruck. I can't believe I have May Ortega in my car right now,” what or whatever. So he and I are talking and then he says, “You know what you said the other day that really made me happy?”

And he quoted that back to me. And he was like, “That made me so happy.” [Laughter] And I always cry when I tell the story, because it's so sweet and I didn't expect it. He was just like, “That just made me really happy and made my day because you're right. Like – it's – things are really bad right now and there’s a reason – it's good to be reminded that there are good things and that you can be happy, whatever. So I really appreciate that.”

And I was like, oh my gosh. You know? So I felt a type of fulfillment that I had never had before when working in journalism.

So if you're listening to this podcast, I want you to take away just happiness and joy. And like you feel seen. There's something interesting in you. There's something to be told. We all have something fun and fascinating that we can share about ourselves with other people. And if you do, you never know, you might end up making someone's day, making them laugh or making them smile. I think that's, that's great.

Figuring out your identity is maybe a lifelong project. But now I know I'm a bilingual Latina journalist whose mission is to spread joy. And understanding my own story helps me better understand yours too.

I'm May Ortega. This episode was produced by Erin Jones and mixed by Pedro Lumbrano, who also wrote our theme music. It was edited by Ana Campbell and Rebekah Romberg. You can find a list of everybody who helped make this episode in the show notes. “¿Quién Are We?” is a production of Colorado Public Radio.

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¿Quién Are We? is a podcast from Colorado Public Radio exploring what it means to be Latino, Hispanic or Chicana ... or however you identify. Host and journalist May Ortega shares stories about our wide-ranging identities and the beautiful things that make us who we are.

¿Quién Are We?

May Ortega learns that to help others tell their stories she has to learn more about her own story.

The Journalist (May's Story) | Colorado Public Radio

The Journalist (May&#8217;s Story)

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