Spanish Culture

Growing up and living in a region where there is two cultures can be difficult. One culture lays your families’ roots and ancestry those of your parents, grandparents, and aunts & uncles; the other is the one that your cousins, siblings, and you have come to known as yours. Do you take the new step and start a new culture different from your family’s roots, or make adapt to both cultures?
Growing up my family was very Spanish dominant speaking; actually I don’t believe ever hearing anyone speaking English when I was a young boy. Both my grandparents had emigrated from Mexico and settled in Edinburg, where they started their family there. My mother was born a United States citizen my father was born in Mexico, but eventually found himself in the United States on a work visa. Their culture was very Mexican based with many of the things they did where the same things they were accustomed to doing in México.
Now all my cousins and I had been born United States citizens. We had grown up hearing English eventually learning it through school with majority of us phasing out of our first born language, being Spanish, and speaking only English. Many customs that we saw friends do who didn’t have strong ties to any Mexican culture seemed so different than what we were used to seeing. This left us confused. As if we were in a battle to choose a side.
We often felt discouraged. Many of our cousins from Mexico would tease us calling us “bolios” and “gringos”. The fact that we were born in across a border seemed to make us different to them. Was there such a difference? We both did have the same family tree, we spoke Spanish just like them, and we were family. I assume they saw us different because not the way we were raised but because of where we were raised. There wasn’t a great difference between us, if anything it be like they liked soccer and we liked football.
The reason I say that growing up where two cultures is hard is because there will be critics everywhere.