A Letter
to America

To the people of the United States,

I am writing this from abroad.

I am an American citizen living away from home—not because I stopped loving America, and not because I stopped believing in the things that made me want to become an American in the first place.

I am here because somewhere along the way, amid years of fear, division, politics, COVID, accusations, anger, and things that happened to me that I still struggle to understand, I became separated from the country and from many of the people I once called family, friends, colleagues, and community.

I don’t write this letter to ask America to agree with me.

I don’t ask you to share my politics.

I don’t ask you to share my conclusions about COVID, government, science, policing, immigration, gender, economics, or anything else.

You have your beliefs.

I have mine.

You have the freedom and the right to pursue the things you believe in.

That freedom is one of the reasons I became an American.

And I believe that freedom has to include me, too.

I dedicated much of my life to this country.

I learned to code as a child. I became a scientist and engineer. I worked, built systems, solved problems, taught people, helped organizations, created businesses, and spent decades trying to understand how things work.

I was never particularly good at staying inside the lines simply because someone told me the lines were there.

I questioned things.

I tested things.

I looked for evidence.

Sometimes I was wrong.

Sometimes I was right.

And when I was wrong, I wanted to learn.

When I believed something was wrong, I felt obligated to say so.

That is not always comfortable.

But I believed—and still believe—that a society needs people willing to ask uncomfortable questions.

I never expected everyone to like me for doing it.

I never expected everyone to agree with me.

But I never imagined that disagreement could eventually become something so absolute that people who once knew me could stop seeing me as a human being.

That is the part I am still trying to understand.

Somewhere during those years, I stopped being Joaquín to many people.

I became a label.

A political label.

A COVID label.

A scientific label.

A story.

A rumor.

A person someone had already decided they understood without speaking to me.

And I watched people I loved disappear.

Friends.

People I trusted.

People who knew me for years.

People who had seen me work.

People who knew who I was before the arguments began.

I kept asking:

“Why won’t anyone just talk to me?”

I wasn’t asking them to agree with me.

I wanted them to hear me.

I wanted someone to say:

“Tell me what happened.”

Instead, I often felt as though the world had already decided what happened before I was allowed to speak.

And there were moments when the isolation became so profound that I felt as though people were effectively asking me to disappear—to remove myself from the world because my existence, my opinions, my questions, or my refusal to conform had become too uncomfortable.

I want to say something very clearly:

I did not want to die.

I wanted to be heard.

I wanted to live.

I wanted to go home.

I wanted to work.

I wanted to build.

I wanted to contribute.

I wanted to be the person I had always been.

And I am still here.

That matters.

Not because I won an argument.

Not because I proved everyone wrong.

Not because everyone else was wrong.

It matters because a human being survived a period in which he felt profoundly alone.

And perhaps that is where we should begin.

Because I don’t believe America is fundamentally made up of bad people.

I believe we were frightened.

I believe we were manipulated by fear, by information, by algorithms, by politics, by institutions, by our own communities, and sometimes by one another.

I believe many people genuinely thought they were protecting their families.

I believe many people genuinely thought they were protecting their neighbors.

I believe some people genuinely believed that people like me were dangerous.

I don’t hold a personal grudge against everyone who believed that.

Some of you were afraid.

Some of you were following what you sincerely believed was the safest course.

Some of you were trying to protect your children.

Some of you were trying to protect your parents.

Some of you were simply trying to survive an extraordinary period in human history.

I understand that.

And I ask you to understand something about me.

I was also afraid.

I was also trying to survive.

I was trying to understand what was happening.

I was trying to protect what I believed was true.

And I was trying to remain myself.

Perhaps we were all doing the same thing from different places.

Perhaps that is the tragedy.

We were fighting each other while believing we were protecting the things we loved.

So today I am asking America for something very simple.

Can we stop?

Can we stop assuming that someone who disagrees with us must hate us?

Can we stop turning neighbors into enemies?

Can we stop reducing human beings to political categories?

Can we stop believing that disagreement itself is violence?

Can we stop demanding that everyone think alike before we are willing to recognize their humanity?

You don’t have to believe what I believe.

You don’t have to forgive me for things you believe I did.

You don’t even have to like me.

But please don’t erase my humanity because we disagree.

And I will extend that same promise to you.

I don’t want revenge.

I don’t want anyone’s children to suffer because of what happened to me.

I don’t want political opponents destroyed.

I don’t want people who believed differently from me punished for having been afraid.

I don’t want America divided into permanent camps where every person must choose which half of the country they hate.

I want something much more difficult.

I want us to heal.

Not by pretending nothing happened.

Not by rewriting history.

Not by demanding that victims forget.

Not by forcing everyone to agree on what happened.

But by allowing people to tell their stories.

By listening.

By investigating when investigation is warranted.

By correcting what was wrong.

By forgiving what can be forgiven.

By holding accountable what genuinely requires accountability.

And then, eventually, by letting people live again.

I am fifty years old.

I have spent decades building things.

I still have things I want to build.

I still have ideas.

I still have work to do.

I still want to contribute.

I still love science.

I still love technology.

I still love America.

I still believe human beings can accomplish extraordinary things when they stop fighting over who is allowed to belong.

And I believe our planet deserves better from us.

There are children who need food.

Families who need homes.

People who need medical care.

Scientists who need the freedom to investigate.

Entrepreneurs who need the opportunity to build.

Workers who need dignity.

Communities that need rebuilding.

An environment that needs protection.

A generation growing up inside an information system that increasingly struggles to distinguish truth from noise.

There is so much work to do.

We don’t have time to spend the rest of our lives hating one another.

So this letter is not a demand.

It is an invitation.

To my fellow Americans:

Let’s put down the weapons we created out of words.

Let’s stop trying to destroy one another.

Let’s stop assuming the worst.

Let’s talk.

Let’s listen.

Let’s investigate the things that deserve investigation.

Let’s admit when we were wrong.

Let’s forgive where forgiveness is possible.

Let’s protect those who are vulnerable.

Let’s help those who need help.

Let’s teach our children that courage does not mean agreeing with everyone.

It means being willing to stand beside someone whose beliefs are different from yours and still recognize that person as a human being.

I am not asking America to choose me over anyone else.

I am asking America not to make people choose between being themselves and belonging.

I am an American.

I became one because I believed America was big enough for people like me.

I still believe it is.

And someday, I hope to come home—not merely geographically, but into a country where disagreement does not automatically mean exile.

Until then, I am here.

Still working.

Still learning.

Still building.

Still questioning.

Still trying to understand.

Still loving the people I have lost, even when I don’t understand why they left.

And still believing that somewhere underneath all our arguments, there are ordinary people who want exactly the same fundamental things:

To be safe.

To be free.

To love their families.

To have dignity.

To have a future.

To matter.

Perhaps that is enough common ground to begin again.

America, I am not asking you to agree with me.

I am asking you to remember me.

Not as a label.

Not as a political enemy.

Not as a story someone told you.

But as a human being who loved his country, devoted his life to contributing to it, became lost somewhere inside its divisions, and is still trying to find his way home.

Let’s heal.

Let’s forgive.

Let’s help one another.

And let’s build something better than what we inherited.

I am still here.

And I am still willing to help.