My first language is Spanish. Until the age of five I spoke nothing but Spanish and when I began school I was placed in an ESL program for kindergarten and first grade. I really loved those first two years of school at PS 182 in Jamaica with Ms Rodriguez. Early on there was a boy that was picking on me and she told me, "if someone hits you, you hit them back twice, if someone kicks you, you kick them back twice, don't let anyone take advantage of you". Those words stuck with me and, though I'm a pacifist, I recognize her good intentions. She was also the one that recognized that I needed glasses because I was having trouble seeing the board during class.
I also really liked that, even though we were learning English, the program didn't reject our Hispanic roots and we also learned Spanish vocabulary in class. At home, I would watch TV in Spanish, my favorites were Chespiritu and Carusel. I also watched Sábado Gigante with my folks on Saturdays and had to tolerate my mom's novelas.
At home, being Latino was and continues to be an intrinsic part of me. I couldn't live without pupusas, beans and rice are staples and I'm a domino fiend. Living abroad in Spain I finally got the opportunity to hone my Spanish and now I'm capable of not only speaking fluidly but also thinking in Spanish.
It wasn't always peaches and crema, though.
At some point during my teen years I had a bit of a crisis. I rejected my heritage and wanted nothing to do with it. My parents would speak to me in Spanish and I'd respond in English. I would trade homemade food for fast food almost on a daily basis; the cashier at Wendy's recognized me and even offered to make me homemade food one day.
Growing up in a rough neighborhood, and to overprotective parents, meant that I spent a great deal of time at home watching TV. I watched hours and hours of TV. I've watched complete series, Empty Nest, Golden Girls, Seinfeld, Saved By The Bell, The X-Files, Hercules, Xena and the list goes on. As a result my accent is an amalgam of accents and doesn't truly reflect my hometown.
In my late teens it all started to make sense, however. I met many more Latin-Americans like me, kids born to central- and south-American immigrants who also yearned to find a niche in the American patchwork. Kids who spoke Spanish with their parents and Spanglish with me.
When I first came to Spain the first thing I did was look for a Salvadoran restaurant. Whenever I made breakfast it was almost always an American one, two eggs and toast, the eggs with ketchup and jalapeños, of course. I can make pupusas and Philly cheesesteaks from scratch. Sometimes I make fresh Salvadoran tortillas and beans to go with it. My favorite cheese is Salvadoran, queso duro, though I do miss American cheese and American heros, bocadillos pale in comparison.
It was difficult adapting to life in Spain, adapting to their customs, but three and half years on I've come to love European life. This morning I ate at the bar out front, had toast with salt, olive oil and tomato spread. I'm a huge fan of the tapa and the caña, a tiny glass of beer, and can spend hours at a bar placidly having both.
The thing is, here I'm more Latino than American because of the way I speak Spanish. I refuse to change the way I speak, refuse to adopt the vosotros, and see it simply as unnecessary, like if I were to live in the UK and all of sudden began speaking with an English accent. The consequences of my choice sometimes reflects in my treatment by spaniards, Americans are held in high esteem whereas Latin-Americans are regarded as an underclass. I often can see this paradox, many people don't know how to treat me or how they want to treat me and it's this conflict that I've had to live with my whole life.
I'm American as flan. As Salvadoran as ketchup on my eggs. I use "vos" with my family and curse like a sailor after a few drinks, the ghetto boy from Queens, NY is never far behind. When I stub my toe I yell, "coño", but my preferred language, in many ways, will always be English. And I think that dichotomy's quite all right, it's as American as pizza and hamburgers.
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