What is the main conflict in the short story, "American History" by Judith Ortiz Cofer?

I would argue that this excellent coming-of-age short
story is actually centred around an internal conflict within Elena herself, and the gap
between her dreams and hopes and the brute reality that she has to face because of her
ethnicity. This of course also is manifested in the external conflict in the way in
which Eugene's mother treats Elena when she goes to his house, and is foreshadowed by
the way in which Elena's mother warns her daughter about what she is heading
towards:

You
are forgetting who you are, Nina. I have seen you staring down at that boy's house. You
are heading for humiliation and
pain.

Thus it is that Elena's
conflict is between the hopes that she has for herself and her friendship with Eugene
and her ethnicity and the way that it makes her different from others. The death of her
hopes is of course paralleled with the death of JFK, who himself tried to campaign for
equality.