Cecilia Polanco I just graduated from
UNC last May and contrary to the bio
they just gave I’m really just a
glorified pupusas flipper by day and a
TEDx figure by night so that’s what I do
but I’m really excited to be here today
to talk to you about Oh God and what Oh
God means to me what home means to me
and the journey that I’ve been on and
how its manifested into something you
all got to experience today like the
pupusas food truck so good pupusas so oh
god significa donde Vives Segura dad
como de da de pertinency ai Calma ho
means or can mean where you live
somewhere where you feel secure and safe
or comfortable somewhere where you
belong and somewhere you feel calm I’m
starting to feel a little at home on
this stage I might not leave I’m just
saying you know I could talk about this
all night and I’m going to tell you a
little bit about my development my
journey about what ho means to me and in
order to do that I have to start here my
story of home begins um in El Salvador
because in order to get you to
understand how I’ve come to understand
home to me I have to talk about who my
ancestors were where they came from so I
can understand myself so my parents were
born and lived in El Salvador and they
were a gente del Campo we lived in a
little village outside of a little
village that nobody knows and they were
from opposite sides of the river so is a
real developing world love story if you
may and this was their home and it would
have been my home too if it weren’t for
the civil war that wrought El Salvador
in the late 20th century
or the early 80s to be more specific
tens of thousands of people lost their
lives
and my father was serving in the
military in his in his youth and he had
two daughters with my mother so far and
he decided that he had to get us out of
there it was to the point where either
you were on this side or you were with
them or you were against them but
neither side wins and just a lot of
people ended up dying so he wanted to
get us out at 26 he decided to leave Oh
salvadore he decided to leave the only
home he knew where his wife and his
children were his mother the rest of his
family to come to a country where he
didn’t speak the language and didn’t
really know anyone he was 26 when he
left Oh salvadore was detained and spent
two weeks in a Mexican prison and
eventually arrived to Los Angeles
weighing in around 115 pounds the
journey took him about a month he missed
the birth of his third daughter my older
sister and during that time Salvadorans
fleeing the civil war were able to apply
for political asylum in the US but I
don’t want to mislead you although we
did get asylum and later residency and
later citizenship we all became
naturalized my father entered the
country illegally
he then brought my mother into the
country legally a year later and then he
brought all three of my sisters into the
country illegally he did this because he
wanted to reunite our family and he did
my family lived in Los Angeles where I
was born in 1992 I’m the only one of my
sisters born in the hospital they love
to rub that in my face and I’m also the
only one that can be President they also
hold me accountable for that so so this
is where we came we ended up in Los
Angeles California I was born there and
this became home this became what we
understood his home and from around they
lived there from around 1985 to 1993 I
was about a year
old when my father decided we would
migrate yet again and this time we would
go from California to Durham North
Carolina and after his journey from
Central America to Los Angeles I was
like what made you decide to get up and
go and not just to like Nevada or
Arizona but to North Carolina in the
early 90s and it was opportunities job
opportunities and he he told me I didn’t
take my family out of El Salvador
fleeing danger fleeing death fleeing
fleeing the threat of death to then be
faced with race riots and gang violence
in Los Angeles that’s not the future
that he was searching for for his sister
so my family again found themselves
fleeing violence and we’re looking they
were in search of safety and security
that feeling of home opportunities for
their family the prospects of jobs and
my father relocated his family once
again so while I’m not talking
I am sorry O’Brien okay and that brings
us here if we fast forward you might
recognize this it’s on the back of my
truck it’s on the button some of you
might have gotten and yeah pupusas are
my life I talked abou says way too much
all my friends call me the pupusa
princess because my mom is the bleep of
the Queen so don’t get it twisted so
home for me personally has had many
manifestations and I’ve learned more
about what home means to me through
different things and and one of those
things has been my gap year I’m going to
rewind a little bit because during my
gap year before I came to college I took
a year off before between high school
and college and that was the first time
that home really meant this my gap here
was one of the first times I thought
about myself in a global context
where home meant being an inhabitant of
this planet a fellow human being
number of society of humanity and all
the beauty and complexity that comes
with that which helped me understand
myself and my purpose when my home
became this you would see yeah I worked
so hard my whole life to get to UNC and
then I decided to take a gap year my
parents just could not understand that I
we didn’t leave outsider for this we
didn’t then leave la for this you need
to go to college and I was like I
promise I’ll go but I need to take this
gap here and so do we remember what Oh
God meant what ho means yes snap if you
remember security safety feeling like
you belong feeling calm so snap if you
at some point I felt that way at
Carolina you felt at home ok a little
bit a little bit snap if at some point
you have felt the opposite whether you
felt vulnerable or uncomfortable or out
of place what does that mean about home
now what does that mean about Carolina
can Carolina truly be our home even if
for a little while if we’re feeling kind
of these this whole spectrum of emotion
I like many of you have had a multitude
of experiences and feelings while at UNC
across the spectrum of secure and
vulnerable comfortable and out of place
I realized ways in which in my life
there are some circumstances in which I
was disadvantaged but also some
circumstances in which I had many
advantages I recognized which ways in
which I was privileged and that helped
me place myself in society as a Tar Heel
as a scholar as a woman of color and
that things where I play that were much
bigger than my individual actions there
are things I play that are systemic
institutional and hard as hell to change
and yet I and you have agency to change
those circumstances and those situations
we can influence and change the outcomes
of our circumstances and those are the
people around us especially
here at home home for me is the United
States it is North Carolina
it is UNC it is Durham and it is pupusas
I’ve been eating pupusas my entire life
and I thought that after starting his
food truck I would get tired of it but I
don’t and it’s a problem because I can
have them all the time non-stop please
please go finish the book boosters that
are on that truck because if I take them
home it’s gonna be it’s gonna be a
problem
so pupusas proposed to signify home for
me
they represent my mother who makes the
best pupusas my sister made these today
so she’s hers alright hers a good two
and my mother who has also taught me the
tradition of making pupusas traditions
which take efforts they take time they
take investment of learning something
that’s difficult so that’s how we
maintain and pass on our traditions and
I feel safe I do I feel comfortable when
I’m eating pupusas I’m calm and I’m like
yes bubbles so I love it food is a
powerful symbol of home for many and
what better way to be a businesswoman
what better bay what better way to be an
entrepreneur and what better way to make
a difference in this world and with this
staple of the Salvadorean
diets to make some people who have never
tried them feel a little vulnerable feel
a little out of place while
simultaneously making the Salvadorian
diaspora very very happy i run a social
justice food truck called circle pupusas
and a nonprofit scholarship fund called
pupusas for education because in this
place I call home not everyone has the
same opportunities not everyone has
access to education like I had not
everyone has the compassion and the
empathy to love their neighbor as they
love themselves and that produces
injustice
lots of injustice in our world lots of
lots of injustice in our homes I’ll
remind you that my parents and my
sisters entered this country illegally
their experience is not my experience
and although they were able to become
residents and become naturalized
since there are still millions of people
in this country that are undocumented
for one reason or another and that very
well could have been me it could have
been my sister’s it could have been my
parents and if we don’t start taking
attacks on our fellow human beings
personally then we become the target
there will be no one left to object so I
object for the attacks on my fellow
human beings for the attacks on their
humaneness on the criminalization of
their bodies their experiences their
their travels their livelihood I object
against that so when children from
Central America show up at our southern
border and Syrian refugees reach our
shores and everyone else anyone from
anywhere else in the world shows up at
the United States anywhere at your home
at the doors at the front steps of your
doors do you know what you will do do
you know what you will say because
everything I’ve done has been a
culmination of this empathy that I want
to show towards others to show towards
my fellow human beings in this place I
call home in this place that I want them
to feel like home so when they people
show up when anyone comes seeking
anything who has felt attacked or
anything like that what will you say
because I know what I will say I will
say welcome home thank you [Applause]