Antonio Solorio and Leslie Mix are Northern Nevada residents who participated in the One Small Step conversation program. In partnership with StoryCorps, KUNR connects people with different political values through dialogue.
Antonio and Leslie shared how their experiences living with both Latin American and U.S. influences have shaped their political and social values.
Antonio was born in Tucson, Arizona. He grew up in both Northern Nevada and Mexico. He’s a first-generation college student who graduated from UC Berkeley and works as an economist.
Leslie Mix was born in the U.S. and raised in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Nicaragua. She is a long-time leader representing Northern Nevada’s Hispanic community. She is also the former president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Nevada.
Antonio Solorio: So Leslie, how long have you lived in Nevada?
Leslie Mix: My family moved here permanently in 1978. We were from Puerto Rico, so I spent most of my time in Puerto Rico.
Antonio: I was going to ask you that too, where you were from.
Leslie: We moved out of the country when I was a baby. So I was brought up in English and in Spanish. I’ve always known both languages, both cultures, and was educated in Spanish.
Leslie: Antonio, how would you describe your political values when you were younger and what they are like now? Are they changing?
Antonio: So when I was younger, undocumented parents, so I’ve always been super pro for immigration reform. But when I was younger, I didn’t really didn’t understand fiscal policy, monetary policy, foreign policy. So I didn’t really have an idea about that. All I knew is that I just wanted my parents to have legal status because I wanted them to enjoy all the same rights and benefits that everybody else gets to enjoy.
But as I got older and I started economics, I started to get more opinionated when it comes to fiscal and monetary policy.
At 18, one of the first things I got to do as an adult was sign my father’s bail bond. I can tell he’s holding back tears. I have a knot in my throat, but I’m the only one that can tell him what’s happening with his lawyer and his case. That really cemented my beliefs.
Leslie: Yeah?
Antonio: Yeah.
Leslie: Even though I had been involved for a long time and had helped start up other Hispanic business organizations, [the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Nevada] was recognized by the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as the best Hispanic Chamber in the country.
Antonio: I didn’t know about that.
Leslie: I was invited to speak at the next convention on chamber best practices and there’s 300 or 400 people in the room and I’m walking up to the podium. This lady says in Spanish, as loud as she can, “¿Pero qué hace esa guera aquí? ¿Qué sabe ella de nosotros los latinos? ¿Pero qué hace esa mujer blanca? What is that white woman doing coming here, talking to us about Latino things? She doesn’t know anything about the Latinos.”
The whole room goes dead quiet. I’m angry. My ears are red. I’m like, livid, and I had learned to start all my speeches in Spanish because otherwise, everybody’s sitting there looking at me thinking like, “What is she doing up there?”
And I had a little more passion on my topic than usual, you know, and I wrap it up and I get a standing ovation. That’s when it finally connected to me that just because one person was ignorant and bigoted and biased, everybody else in the room was saying, “We accept you, we approve and we are going to show you that.”
Antonio: Yeah, I remember in college I had a classmate telling me that racism didn’t exist. He even asked me, “Have you experienced racism?” I just kind of looked at him like, “Are you really asking me this right now?”
Antonio: I know we come from different generations, right? I’m 28.
Leslie: I’m way older than that.
Antonio: So one of the questions that I wanted to ask is: What differences do you see between my generation and yours?
Leslie: Well, some of the positives that I see are pretty substantial. There are so many more young people that are educated. They’re first gen, they’ve got their college education. That makes my heart really happy because all that hard work that was done before opened that gateway and that pathway to bring in that generational leadership. And you’re not even our future, you’re our present, because you’re so educated and you’re so cross-cultural, you see both sides. You’re not just looking at things through a small narrow scope. You guys give me hope for this country.
Antonio: Yeah, I really appreciate the conversation that we had. I learned a lot about you and I’m so glad that you seem to be so passionate too for the work that you do. It means a lot to me to know that there’s somebody out there who’s trying to fight for the issues within the Hispanic community, too.
This conversation was facilitated by María Palma and Natalie Van Hoozer and produced by Alysha Cancino. It was shared with Noticiero Móvil as part of our content sharing agreement.
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Nevada Humanities is a key community partner for this KUNR program.
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