Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the interviewer and the informant.

Informant: So when I was in 6th and 7th grade, the kids at my school would play this game during lunch called “La Migra”, it means ‘immigration’ in Spanish. Basically it’s like tag, whoever is the ‘catcher’ would run around and try to catch people. If you do catch someone, you yell “La Migra” and the one who got caught becomes the catcher, and so on.

Interviewer: Were the students participating in the game mostly Latinx? Or did kids of all ethnicities join?

Informant: I went to a really Mexican school, so everyone was pretty much Latinx yeah. I’m not sure if someone who’s not Latinx could even play this game, because so much of it is like, self inflicted harm (laughs).

Interviewer: Can you describe that further?

Informant: We were all very much around immigration and ICE and stuff our whole lives, like whether that be someone in our family or just someone we know. All that stuff, boarder patrol and whatnot, is just something that’s always present in our culture, and it’s really fucked up that it is. I think this game was kinda created because of that, for kids to like process this messed up reality into like a lunchtime game. Or maybe it was jut middle school kids being stupid and edgy as they all do, I don’t know.

Background:

My informant is of Latinx descent, and currently resides in Santa Ana, Orange County, a city where majority of the population is made up of Latinx people. The city of Santa Ana also has had city-wide protests against the mayor for failing to provide a safe environment for undocumented immigrants, as ICE raids increased and the city police provided aid to ICE during these raids.

Context:

The conversation took place on the phone, and the informant was in her room by herself.

My thoughts:

Middle schoolers can be really dark for the sake of being dark, it’s something about that age and puberty starting that makes everyone gravitate towards being ‘edgy’. But I think this game is more than just being provocative, I think it shows the very reality of children growing up in a hostile environment, coping with such stress by making a ridicule out of it.