Growing up Latina in America often meant I lived in two worlds: feeling too Mexican for the Americans but too white for my own culture. I very much encapsulated the saying ni soy de aqui ni soy de alla– neither here nor there.
This saying also applies to another struggle that even the Latino community rarely discusses: being Latina with an invisible disability.
My experience
I was born with nephrotic kidney disease and later received a kidney transplant. Since then, I’ve been on steroids whose side effects include memory loss and vision issues. In September 2023, I was diagnosed with amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome. By 2025, I learned I had a neurological disorder that causes developmental delays and memory issues.
I felt these challenges in my education every day. My mother advocated for me, asking experts why I was falling behind in math. She always got the same response: “It’s her medicine.” Without a proper diagnosis, my school continued to place me in lower classes. Only in 2024 did a therapist conclude that it wasn’t stress but rather a neurological disorder. Ultimately my appearance, not my medical history, defined my education.
The misplacement of disabled Latinos
Being a Latina with an invisible disability often meant having to face harmful stereotypes. Educators saw me as “the lazy Mexican.” I got in trouble for falling behind or missing school days, and teachers mistook my memory issues for a language barrier which lead to English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, a type of program designed to help English learners, which I never needed.
What I really needed was a consistent Individualized Education Program (IEP), a legal document that secures the rights of disabled students like me.
Instead, my school district consistently failed to renew my IEP or follow its accommodations.
Conchita Hernandez Legorreta, founder of both METAS (Mentoring, Engaging, and Teaching All Students) and the National Coalition of Latinx with Disabilities, shared a similar experience in a 2020 article:
My mom believed that the school was doing us a favor by giving us the bare minimum, when in reality they were failing to provide us with services that were simple basic rights. Now, as a professional in the field of disability, I realize that our situation is not unique. I have repeatedly seen first-hand how schools disregard immigrant families, especially those who do not speak English.
She makes a fair point: often educators mislabel invisible disabilities as laziness or a language barrier. Consequently, students like me go without the many resources which they’re legally entitled to.
What makes us feel unseen?
I had the privilege of interviewing Conchita. As she put it at one point during our conversation: “Latinos are called ableist and careless for their disabled child, but the lack of resources make it harder for families to gain a basic understanding of the rights needed for their disabled child in classrooms.”
Of course, many Latino families don’t know English; however, that doesn’t make them uninterested in their child’s rights.
My mother was well involved in my academics and health. Throughout my childhood, she was the one who fought for me to be taken off of harmful medications. When I was finally diagnosed with amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome, she left her job to take care of me and fought alongside me to get my IEP reestablished.
Witnessing my mom being my only activist is what is lead me to understand that negative stereotypes also play out in health care. For example, there’s often a delay in autism diagnoses for Latino children because of assumptions that families can’t understand the health care system.
In her article, “Why Latino Children Tend to Be Diagnosed with Autism Later than Other Children,” educator Kristina Lopez explains this:
I was diagnosed with multiple doctors assuming my parents did not understand the medical system enough to navigate it to support my care. In my professional experience working in special education and early intervention, I witnessed many instances where racial/ethnic minority children and their families were discriminated against by the very systems set up to support them in their care.
However, schools often ignore these failures of the health care system. They fail to recognize how stereotypes limit the resources available to Latinos. In this case, assumptions of language barriers make it easier for schools to dismiss Latinos.
How cultural barriers play a part
One of the biggest misconceptions about Latinos is that we are immigrants who don’t speak English. ESL is a big part of that.
I want to be clear: ESL is not bad. It greatly benefits many children. However, it’s problematic when school administrators place disabled Latinos who speak English well into ESL classes because of racist stereotypes.
Part of the issue is that many schools don’t acknowledge the fact that Latinos speak better English than Spanish. As the Pew Research Center reports, “71% of Latinos ages 5 and older speak English proficiently.”
Schools also frequently overlook the fact that Latino children are forced to advocate for their parents and navigate complex systems themselves. As the translation center Dynamic Language put it in a 2019 article:
Ad hoc interpreting can lead to pressure and stress. Especially, if the children have to interpret matters that are beyond their age and maturity level. They feel overburdened because they are given a responsibility that requires the skills of a trained professional interpreter. In addition, to sometimes being exposed to issues and situations beyond their understanding. As well as, exposing them to be aware of things that are not age-appropriate.
In our interview, Conchita Hernandez spoke well on this issue: “As a kid, I would just make things up because I didn’t understand what the teachers were saying. When talking about my IEP or my grades, they used these larger vocabulary terms that I didn’t know the word for in English, so half the conversation with my family was awkward because I would stumble to find the right word.”
More exacerbating challenges: IEPs
As Latinos, our names and faces fit the criteria for ESL placement; as Latinos with invisible disabilities, we fit the criteria for the “dumb classes,” where educators often ignore our needs. Yet school districts underuse one of the biggest tools that could actually help: the IEP.
Like Conchita, I was a victim of this. My IEP, which included accommodations like grid paper, extra time on tests, and private exams, was often neglected by teachers. So I ended up failing classes.
My experiences made me question the school system. I kept asking myself, “What good is an IEP?”’ In both Conchita’s and my experiences, the implementation of IEPs was lacking. And that had consequences. As Conchita put it: “Because I didn’t have the accommodations I needed, I failed state testing and was put in ESL.”
Conchita and I discussed why schools don’t care about IEP’s. She summarized it simply: “Teachers don’t see themselves as special education teachers.”
Unfortunately school districts don’t properly train certified classroom teachers to understand IEPs, which mean that a lot of invisible disabilities are often mistaken as laziness, or in the case of disabled Latinos, language barriers. Schools know whose parents are Spanish speakers, so that allows them to disregard Latino families, leading to the lack of parental involvement in special ed classes.
The bigger picture
The American school system consistently fails disabled Latinos. Schools need to understand our struggles, not rely on stereotypes. This should start with acknowledging invisible disabilities, following IEPs, and providing translators for parents. Educators should also receive continued training regarding teaching to different disabilities.
However, as disabled Latinos, we also need to defend our own rights. Under Trump, more Latinos are facing harmful stereotypes based upon our looks. But if we continue to let stereotypes limit us, we will never get past them.
I hope that my story and Conchita’s not only raise awareness, but also give you strength to speak up for yourself.
