“What are they saying?” I wondered, shamefully and all-too-often, last year at the Lorenzo De Zavala Legislative Youth Session, a mock government camp where my own inadequacies felt painfully real. As an embarrassed monolingual English speaker with Hispanic heritage, I felt like a traitor to my culture every time I had to say “No hablo Español.” In fact, I felt embarrassed any time I had to speak.
Whatever the occasion, I worried: What if I fumbled with words? What if my voice cracked? What if I forgot what I was going to say? My misgivings were heightened by the seemingly evil Secretary of State, who was gavel-happy and would scream when parliamentary procedure was broken. Even roll call terrified me, so setting forth a proposal to benefit the Latino community was torture. Countless proposals had been rejected, punctuated by the horrendous slam of the gavel. The SOS then asked us to set up our own government with Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches to pass our own proposals. As she slammed that gavel down so hard it split in two, something in my gut told me to run for Senate—so, I volunteered.…show more content… What on Earth am I going to do? I despaired. I barely slept that night, knowing I’d be speaking in the morning. I woke up and put on my best suit, repeating phrases from my speech. When I got to the chamber, I trembled as I listened to the other speeches. I then saw my senatorial opponent take the floor. He smiled warmly and launched into a speech of perfect Spanish. “Aaron Flores,” I heard my name called, as the SOS slammed her gavel. She even pronounced “Flores” with a better Spanish accent than my own. I walked up to the podium to the cheers of my political party. I set down my notes and spoke. I started off shakily, then transitioned into slight confidence. The next thing I knew, I was walking to my seat, followed by the overwhelming sound of
