Olympic Gold and The Taste of Bittersweet Irony
Put forth on August 19, 2008 by XicanoPwr
Posted in Immigration
Henry Cejudo, son of undocumented Mexican immigrants, wins Olympic freestyle wrestling title at 121 pounds.
From Henry Fernandez at Think Progress.
Henry Cejudo’s uniquely American story started with a single mother who taught him what it meant to truly fight. His mother Nelly – an undocumented immigrant — moved him and his siblings several times chasing work and opportunity, scraping by, ensuring her kids got an education. And along the way, the family found a channel for both the tough resilience she modeled and the country they loved through the sport of freestyle wrestling.
With the brothers he shared a bed with growing up cheering from the stands (as well as his sister), Cejudo repeatedly got off the mat to come back and win in a tough match against Tomohiro Matsunaga of Japan. And now America has both an unexpected gold medal and a new hero.
Oh what bittersweet irony it is. Congratulations Henry Cejudo, you deserve to bask in the glory of your hard earned win.
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Tags: Henry Cejudo, Immigration, Latinos/as, Olympics | 
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
2 Responses to “Olympic Gold and The Taste of Bittersweet Irony”
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You gotta love his last name…I bet he got teased.
My favorite part of the story: how his mom was soo proud!
I can hear the bigoted right wingnuts already… “Them damned foreigners coming here and stealing our jobs! Stealing our gold too!”
Congratulations to Cejudo!
And now I am wondering what HispanicPundit is talking about?
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