Every ending is also a new beginning. 

Or perhaps that may only apply to the Hispanic population — a collective that has long suffered the impact of the Trump administration.

On Jan. 20, it was time to turn the page on four years of discrimination toward specific minority groups in the U.S.

Over the past four years, Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens have been subject to discrimination, slurs and other types of aggression ­— something that would seem unimaginable, at least under the U.S. Constitution.

Having lived overseas during my childhood and early teen years, I have always been exposed to multicultural and multilingual communities where no one was singled out for speaking their mother language.

Thus, all that changed for me when I moved back to the U.S. just over four years ago.

At the time I moved back, the impact of the discriminating slurs was not quite as tangible, however, that surfaced quite quickly and very soon it felt merely unsafe to speak my so-called mother language: Spanish.

Whenever I chose to speak Spanish with my immediate family out on the street, I would be stared at blatantly, as if Spanish-speaking was not allowed on U.S. soil by any means. 

But that was not the only habit I had to change.

The situation also forced me to slightly alter the spelling of my name — again, a thought that would have never crossed my mind.

Having lived in Spain, I was used to spelling both my first name and last name with what is known in Spanish grammar as a tilde, or the accent that goes on a vowel to emphasize that respective vowel.

Over the aforementioned span of four years, I have learned to accept my new identity within the constraints of a society that greatly fails to accept other ethnic and racial minorities.

All of that, even taking into account that the Hispanic minority is the largest minority in the U.S. Yes, I said the largest.

Maybe the impact is simply greater in Stuart, Florida, just because there is a greater presence of Hispanics compared to that of Oswego.

Nonetheless, as  Joe Biden said in his inaugural speech as the President of the United States, “it is time for us to come together as a nation to heal.”

“What’s past is prologue,” wrote Shakespeare. History truly does repeat itself.

Now, looking ahead, the light is at the end of the tunnel for the Hispanic community under the Biden-Harris administration.

Photo from Flickr