Hispanic Family Has Affected My Political Views And Socialization

Being born and raised in Brownsville, Texas by a Hispanic family definitely impacted my political views and socialization. Brownsville is about 4 miles from the Mexican border, meaning that the population is approximately 99% Hispanic. My mother was born and raised in Mexico and my father in Brownsville, but spent most of his time in Mexico. Due to this, the small amount of political conversations or opinions that were shared in the house were a mixture of both American and Mexican politics. I have two brothers and I am the middle child, which put me in the position where I was influenced by my older brother but still held the responsibility of setting an example to my younger one. As a family, we were never politically involved, but at a young age, my

Most of it was because of the situations we faced when we were kids, the community we grew up in, the school we attended, our religion, and our friends.

Both my parents were custodians supporting a family of five. We were a middle-class family living in one of the poorest cities in the nation. During my childhood, I had everything I needed. However, during the beginning of my teen years, we constantly found ourselves in need of money, which put me in a position to try to help my parents economically. By the time I was 15 years old, I was trying to find a job, and once I did, most of my paychecks would go to my parents to help pay bills. Being in the situation did not allow us to focus on politics. Furthermore, my mother received her education in Mexico, and even though my father studied in the U.S., he was never academically engaged. Their lack of knowledge caused them to have almost no political