Dia del Amor y la Amistad

Alexandra and I met in 2017 during the Hispanic Summer Program held at Northpark University in Chicago. Although we weren’t in the same course, we quickly found an affinity with each other through our similarities. Being both Puerto Rican and from the same city, Bayamón, it was easy to go from there to find the ways our academic interests and projects aspired to the same goal: to visibilize Puerto Rico and speak for our archipelago. From that moment, we continued to coincide in different spaces like Raíces Latinas and the Hispanic Theological Initiative – the place that has been witness to our laughter, our joy, and our complicity throughout the past five years. Throughout the six years, we have known each other, our friendship has come to mean many things. In each of these spaces, we have not only been friends in our complicity and company to each other, but we have also become interlocutors, accountability partners, translators, and grounding forces to each other. In a time and a field that is so hard and that encourages us to compete against each other, our friendship is a way for us to emphasize that we are stronger together.