As a Latina, I'm more than concerned by the shocking news that yesterday history was made, but not in the sense we expected. It was supposed to be the moment for the first female president in the US history, a moment to remember, as has happened in every country where the presidential glass ceiling has been broken.
However, it was the moment when the contrary was proven right: an egocentric, without any kind of qualification to be in that outstanding position of power, was elected to be the successor of Barack Obama!
The election of a person that has treated Mexican immigrants as thieves and even rapists, showing that lack of respect and capable of such lies without remorse, it's more than outrageous. All these years of being a silent minority have come to an end, and now the pride and strength of the Latino community in the US is something real. I wonder what will happen with those children that feel with pride the belonging to our common heritage. I wonder what those mothers and fathers are thinking about the country where they now have built a life.
Are they going to be treated as second class citizens? What will they do if that happens?
As a woman, mother of two wonderful daughters, and of a granddaughter that will be born in the US on February, I'm alarmed and disappointed as I realize that machismo and discrimination against women are stronger than before. We supposed that feminist movements around the globe have accomplished a certain level of respect for women rights without precedent in human history. There were a lot more goals to conquer, of course, but we should have guessed that a declared misogynist could be the next president of the most powerful democracy in the world.
Trump has humiliated women all over her campaign, through his words, his behavior, and especially by the way he mistreated Hillary Clinton.
He has been so violent that a silent lesson of this election is that if a woman wants to thrive and succeed in the public arena she not only has to be an overachiever in every domain - as she is always going to be questioned about her level of preparation or expertise -- but also has to develop an incredibly thick skin, that can protect her and her loved ones of all the violent and personal remarks, rumors and claims that will come.
Hillary Clinton is a case study in this sense. She's been called so many terrible things that the "nasty" insult sounds naïf. All her accomplishments were downgraded and besides that, she had to respond, every day, for the wrong deeds of her husband! The machismo of this American presidential campaign is so omnipresent that American people preferred Trump without considering that Clinton was by far the most prepared for the job.
The glass ceiling is today thicker and more painful than ever. It's simply not fair.
How could we think that the so-called "land of the free" was even more machista that our Latino countries?