La memoria es un ejercicio indispensable porque construye y reconstruye nuestra identidad permanentemente. Somos aquello que nuestra memoria encarna. Y sería imposible que pudiéramos planificar nuestros futuros personales, familiares o colectivos sin tejerlos en una red de memorias compartidas y dialogando entre si. .
Los y las inmigrantes tenemos, en ese sentido, desafíos no menores y que nos son propios. Por muchísimas razones, nuestras memorias tienen menos posibilidades de entrar en diálogo con las demás. Son memorias que corren mayores riesgos de quedar encapsuladas y ajenas (en el más literal sentido del término).
Una mujer joven ejercitando su memoria
Ornella es una usuaria de Twitter que en la red se define a sí misma de este modo:
I like politics and a piece of my heart is in Latinoamérica. Tweets in English and Spanish. Lucy’s assistant and Flor’s mom. *Opinions are my own*
y hace algunos días publicó un hilo que no sólo resume sus experiencias personales como niña y adolescente atravesando sinsabores y angustias, sino que refleja estados de ánimo y situaciones que eran y siguen siendo comunes a cientos y miles de personas que no siempre tienen la posibilidad de desnudarlos y compartirlos.
El disparador de esta serie de tweets de Ornella es de estricta actualidad y toma como punto de partida las dificultades que se le pueden presentar a una persona indocumentada para ejercer su derecho a ser vacunada, pero rápidamente la autora da un salto hacia atrás y se (nos) ubica en su propia niñez.
Siendo Diálogos una apuesta a la palabra y al poder que las palabras tienen para situarnos en el mundo, nos ha parecido que reproducir su hilo de twitter puede ser una forma de que sus experiencias y su forma de relatarlas (concisa, despojada de ornamentos pero clara y emocionalmente relevante) sean un aprendizaje y un ejemplo.
An undocumented person I know that just got the vaccine was told by a physician that they couldn’t vaccinate a person without a health card but a nurse could. Is this a thing? Can someone point me in any direction where I might find info on this?
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) April 30, 2021
One of the things that really bothered me about learning that this happened is how it was communicated to this person. It was loud and everyone heard…for an undocumented person that is embarrassing and terrifying.
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
When I was a kid/teenager/young adult and undocumented going to a doctor or a hospital gave me so much anxiety. We’d often get asked WHY we didn’t have a health card and if we had the $$ to pay for our visits.
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
So hearing of this persons experience really bothers me in a special kind of way.
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
I don’t think many people truly understand the kind of traumatic stuff that undocumented persons have to experience in this country. [a personal thread]
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
I am a person who spent 16 yrs of her life as an undocumented person and the trauma is something I didn’t even fully realize until I started therapy in my 20s.
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
This thread are just some things I remember experiencing as an undocumented, white Latin American. The experiences of undocumented POC are vastly different and that is very important to remember.
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
This experience made me the person I am today. I don’t even know myself without this part of my life. Some things I remember:
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
1- having to make up stories about why you don’t have a health card and can’t go on most school trips (because in Ontario you always had to present your health card in case you got hurt on said trip – not sure if it’s like this now but it was like this when I went to school)
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
2- going to catholic school because public school asked way too many questions about status and required more documentation
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
3- not having many friends because what are you going to talk about when you can’t talk to them about this key part of your identity? There was always fear around talking about being undocumented. It was a big family secret that no one could know
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
4- fear of police because we knew family and friends who had been picked up by them and subsequently deported
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
4- fear of police because we knew family and friends who had been picked up by them and subsequently deported
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
6- always having a plan in case immigration came to our school (because yes, that was a thing that happened to some undocumented children)
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
7- having a distorted sense of ‘home’ because ‘home’ was neither here nor there. Would we stay? Would we go? Would we ever fit in here if we stayed? Would we ever fit in over there if we were deported?
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
8-listening to my parents call immigration on their birthdays from a landline to say “I am calling immigration to report”. This gave immigration certainty that we were where we said we were and not “on the run”. At this point we were waiting on a response on our last resort app
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
9- listening to an immigration officer tell my mom not to worry she wouldn’t be deported today as a response to the fact that she was so nervous she could hardly communicate in English (in front of her children)
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
10- having to ask teachers and our priest for ‘support letters’ that we could attach to our humanitarian and compassionate grounds application and bursting into tears because you had never spoken the words ‘undocumented’ and ‘immigration’ outside your home
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
11- losing faith and never stepping foot in a church again after the priest made my mother cry for not being generous enough with her Sunday donations and subsequently denying her the support letter stated above because she was not generous enough to be worthy of a letter
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
12-listening to my sister tell me that a teacher made an immigration joke after she opened up and asked for a support letter. They were heading somewhere with the class and a cop stopped behind them. My sister was visibly nervous and he said “don’t worry, they won’t deport you”
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
13- not seeing family for years and years and years because you can’t go back home and missing them so much your heart literally aches
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
And that’s it for now. There are so many more like this. I could go on for years. Undocumented persons are everywhere contributing a great deal and doing it all with anxiety, depression and sometimes absolute loneliness.
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
In this thread I haven’t even talked about migrant workers, in depth experiences with language barriers and so much more. This is just a tiny glimpse. Something I rarely talk about but that has shaped me entirely.
— Ornella😷 (@so_sofia_rm) May 1, 2021
Hace pocos días, en Calipso, Ulises y Penélope: contar lo que nos pasa para superar la pendemia, relacionábamos lo que nos enseña un relato que tiene ya 2800 años de antigüedad para romper aislamientos y construir futuros: hablar; contar lo que nos pasó; compartir emociones a través de la palabra..
Eso es exactamente lo que ha hecho Ornella en su hilo de Twitter y sólo nos queda agradecerle muchísimo que haya aceptado compartirlo con nosotros. La dosis exacta de sensiblidad, inteligencia y capacidad de comunicación que habitualmente despliega en la red, nos ayuda a todes.
