A Weekend that Changed my Latina POV
My good friend Mariah invited me to this meeting called La Fe, or, The Faith. I was under the impression that it was a one day meeting in which it was named “La Fe Identity Weekend.” Designed in a more spiritual and yet relatable aspect to discuss how being Latin is connected with God.
I walked in the host’s house to the smell of tostones being fried and Salsa music playing in the background. “Wow this awesome,” I thought. I love being in an environment where I feel naturally comfortable.
Now was time for the ice breaker: Blind-folded sense test. We needed to guess what was the object given to us by smell, taste, touch, and of course we couldn’t see! A challenge of course, but I was definitely up for it. I’ll admit, I was a little hesitant since some of the objects were different sizes and smells, but overall the objects were to see how “connected” we were to our Latin culture. How connected were we really???
After that we had another project: draw our Latin timeline. It was a creative approach that had to go back to when we had a positive or negative event that challenged our culture. I must say to go back to when I was ridiculed for being “too loud,” or too curvy, or in their eyes, “too fat.” I had to reflect on that moment. I wanted to experience and write more, and tell why my culture was overall AMAZING. Surprisingly, we all had a similar event that affected us: MIDDLE SCHOOL. Oh how we wished to go back and speak to all the non- Hispanic kids that treated us unfairly, but we realized that their ridicule led us here, and built us even stronger.
The time had come for the important, well in my eyes the most enjoyable: feast. The host, who was Puerto Rican, had told us that her husband, a Caucasian, had prepared arroz con gandules; impressed was the highest compliment I could give. The rice was perfect! Made with meat, light salad on the side, topped with sliced avocados, and washed away with Piña soda. Oh it made me think of family dinners all over again…
Later that night we had broken off into groups to read scriptures of the Bible, who we had a guest speaker, author of “Being Latino in Christ,” Orlando Crespo. Soon after, it was time to go on a field trip: experience Latin food trucks.
I only saw briefly from the movie Chef that food trucks are becoming a cultural awareness towards society, but walking around the parking a lot at 10 pm and smelling the seasoning and hearing the mixture of Latin music from the food trucks as well as the pimped up cars blasting, it was one to remember. My friend Michelle, who is half Venezuelan and half Dominican, introduced us to her favorite dish, an arepa. “It’s made from heavenly goodness”, was the only explanation she gave me of how it’s made. I had my first bite into it and I understood what she meant completely…heavenly goodness wrapped with meat and cheese.
We went back home around 1 am and it was one those experiences that made us so proud and of course full of our Latin culture.
The next morning we ate at a Cuban café and had worship, from there it we had to depart.
I can say that cultural identity was present in everything we did. How we mesh with the American lifestyle, but at the same time relate to our own culture. Le Fe created a new feeling that like Michelle said, was heavenly goodness…