Stay low, stay quiet, keep to yourself. Por la sombrita. Don't provoke. Don't stand out. Don't give them a reason — a survival manual for a body the state always presumes guilty until it produces the right documentation, no matter who is in office.
For generations, governments have raided our neighborhoods, doubted our citizenship even with the documents in hand and treated our skin like probable cause. Somewhere along the way, existing in the open became the radical part.
This year, from Sept. 12 through Sept. 20, Latinx/e Conservation Week asks of us something riskier than getting by: to be visible, to laugh, hike, breathe, plant our feet in the dirt of this land and take up space that's already ours. This year's theme, "Rooted in Nature, Thriving in Community," isn't a pretty line; it's a battle cry.
Our roots run deeper than any border wall, deeper than any Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center. They run through the Grand Canyon, the trails of the Sonoran Desert and the Colorado River. The Hispanic Access Foundation established Latinx/e Conservation Week in 2014 to get our gente outdoors.
Under a government that treats our existence as a crime, that mission...