Making Latino Babies in the US
With the birth of a daughter this past year I made a couple of small decisions that will affect her for the rest of her life. With any luck it will affect Latinos as well. First we gave her a fully Spanish name with two middle names, opposing the US American tradition of one. Second we made the decision to raise her bilingual. Behind the scenes I've been preparing myself to pass down the traditions frequently left behind by others in my family.
Making Latino Babies in the US
Dateline: 02/08/00
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With the birth of a daughter this past year I made a couple of small decisions that will affect her for the rest of her life. With any luck it will affect Latinos as well. First we gave her a fully Spanish name with two middle names, opposing the US American tradition of one. Second we made the decision to raise her bilingual. Behind the scenes I've been preparing myself to pass down the traditions frequently left behind by others in my family.
Why the Spanish name? The responses many people give includes "You better teach her to fight" and "No one is going to be able to pronounce her name". I kindly pointed out that, in this hemisphere, there are only two non-island nations in this entire hemisphere where the general population might have a problem pronouncing a Spanish name, and that is only due to a lack of awareness and education - or practice. My wife and I simply picked out beautiful names that had meaning to us. We took one of the names from my abuela, and another comes from the name of a friend of my wife when she lived in Mexico. Regardless of what I do, my children will eventually experience a type of xenophobia against Latino culture, particularly as it grows in the United States. It might be the name, it might be the language, or it might be the food she eats. It will likely be broad political statements and agenda working to homogenize US American culture. Why the xenophobia? The rest of this hemisphere is comfortable in Iberian or Latin languages. The four main European languages in this continent are Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English. The Anglo-British influence is still crumbling away in the New World being and is being replaced by the New World Latino. This is why we see a concentration on our southern border, and little mention of our north. This is why there is a movement to be sure government business is done in English and employers have the right to restrict employees to speaking in English. It's not a takeover. It's the world.
When I was a child learning to write my name the teachers consistently corrected me on the spelling of my last name. The name is most commonly spelled 'Vasquez' rather than 'Vázquez', and they corrected me to the most common, rather than the actual spelling. No matter how strongly I insisted, they insisted more. Luckily, the only after effect they had was the mispronunciation of my own name for many years, which I later corrected.
Not only will my children be able to pronounce their names, but also they will have a second language and culture to be proud in. In reaction to xenophobia and even blatant prejudice, you have the choice between blending in to the main culture in every way, reacting in shame, or reacting in pride. With a breastplate of knowledge and a shield of pride, a child doesn't have to look around them to find out how to be American. They can be American and Latino.
Why raise her bilingual? Why not? The thing that has amazed me for years is the propaganda behind demonizing bilingual life. Children will have difficulty with learning the English language at the same time, Children will have difficulty in their studies, Children will have speech disorders. Children absolutely will not have any of these problems as a direct cause of bilingual language learning. Most orthodox Jewish children grow up learning Hebrew to some degree. In Israel they learn Hebrew, Arabic, and English depending on the region. In India, the typical language learning includes Hindi, English, and local dialect depending on region. That nation has a population ready to dominate technology some day. Every time I hear someone mention one of these drawbacks, I feel like bruising my lungs by yelling "Myth!!!"
I've purchased books to read to my newborn so she learns to love the sounds of Spanish. My Latino music collection has been growing. I've searched for videos with Latino culture and stories, instead of Disney translation - and have had little luck. Why don't I do this in English? The rest of the United States of America will do that for me. When she's 10 and trying to figure out how to be popular, the image in the books and movies won't be a bilingual dark haired woman with Indigenous, African, and Spanish heritage. She won't have a problem being American. Being Latina will be more of a challenge. And she needs to be educated and proud.
No matter where your ancestors come from, even if they're indigenous, they were here with a language, values, religion, food, and more ancestors in a long train behind them carrying even more. When this New World as we know it began to form, it struggled and bits of it survived to create you, them and us.
Not every Latino makes the effort to raise their children with a conscious focus on their ancestry. Not everyone feels the need. And unfortunately many give into the myth that anything other than pop culture and English only assimilation will alienate their children and make them unsuccessful. When I stayed up until 4 o'clock Christmas Eve to make pasteles, a traditional Puerto Rican dish that took me 9 hours to make, I thought about the Christmases to come when my daughter would help me grind the platanos and yautía, and cook the pernil. I thought of when she would think that this was normal life as I did. The rest of the world would be waiting to teach her that it's not the norm.
How will my decision to raise my children bilingual, with Spanish names, loving
our food, and dancing our dances affect the rest of Latinos? They'll be able
to see that there are others around them and that the Babysitters Club, Nancy
Drew, GI Joe, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are not the only heroes and stories
to be told.
It's easy to be American. It's great to be Latino and American.
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