Ramona's Story.

My name is Ramona. I am 17 years of age and I attend a boarding school in the United States of America for the rich and needy. I don't fit in because I'm not like everyone else. My family is from Chiapas, Mexico we are undocumented immigrants who have somehow found their way into the richest neighborhood in America.

Every turn I take I am greeted with the face of a white man who somehow feels he owns me and believes he can walk over me. I watch the words I say knowing one wrong move can cost me the very air I breathe. 

There is a man on my street that always has his hands on his hip ready to pull out his gun on me. He scares me because he has the highest chance of being the absolute death of me. How is it that he is afraid of me when he is the evil which holds a weapon? My only crime is not looking like him.

 In Chiapas, although we were poor there was a great sense of community because we didn't have to think about losing our lives to a white man or trying to fit in. Mi Madre would cook Tamales to reassure me that one day we all could live in peace, Together but she didn't get to see a future as such. 

Before my 16th birthday, I lost the most important person in my life, mi mama. She died at the hands of an ignorant police officer who mistook her for a Latin American woman who robbed a grocery store where my mother worked. His excuse for killing her was simply that she found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He even blamed it on how all Latinas look the same. 

I will never forgive him because after killing my mom he came after my community. He killed yet another Mexican this time a little boy, Andreas who was diving into a trash can to collect a Spider-Man toy he saw sticking out. Officer Michaelson faced no jail time only 3 weeks of suspension. 

After my mother's death, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) discovered that my mother was undocumented and took me from the comfort of my dorm room and deported me and my family to Mexico. We hadn't been here in 5 years we went home only to discover that our home was destroyed by Hurricane Irma. We were homeless, without a plan, and had nowhere to go. 

I wonder if a God does exist because I keep getting disappointed by him. I cried out to him many nights begging that he would save me but no response came. I felt as though I was talking to a brick wall. I kept praying for 3 months and he finally delivered a promise. He told me to come home. I didn't understand what he meant till my brother came back from working in the fields telling me a white man was Building a Church in the city and helping people find themselves. I went and I somehow fell in love with him and his ministry. He helped me to find God and my purpose. 

I realized that it wasn't the white man I was scared of but rather being forced out of my home, the one my mom created in America. I was scared of losing my place in the white man's country. God took me from it and showed me that America isn't the only place to make a home. I stayed in Chiapas even though I got the opportunity to study in America. 

I have three beautiful children that remind me that one day Unity will come. Not only were they Mexican but they were English. They are the very reason for my continuous fight in a world with love.

My name is Ramona Vargas Ortiz and this is my story.

Written by Aja' Allen