Growing up, I always knew that I was Hispanic. I watched El Chavo Del 8 and Pocoyo every Sunday morning before church, ate arroz con pollo for dinner and woke up to my mom blasting salsa music early Saturday morning to clean the house. During family dance parties, my sister taught me batchata and cumbia.
But when I was in fifth grade I learned that my mom was from Puerto Rico and my dad was born and raised in El Salvador. And as I got older I realized that there was a large difference between my two cultures.
Going from eating empanadas during the week to eating pupusas on the weekends was something that I got used to because I lived with my mom and visited my dad on the weekends. Not only was the food different, but the way things were communicated and the family traditions were, too, like the way birthdays were celebrated and the food we ate at thanksgiving was different. Then, when I was eight my dad moved away to Rhode Island, I went from seeing him every weekend to only seeing him a couple times a year. It happened just as I started to really understand who I was and where I was from, and I struggled to find a balance between the two cultures.
Living with my mom, I found myself leaning towards my Puerto Rican culture more. When I would visit my dad and his side of the family I often felt uneducated about Salvadoran culture and felt as if I didn’t belong.
In middle school, while filling out school registration forms and demographic forms in the doctor’s office, I often came across the question “what’s your ethnicity?” I never knew which option to click, and didn’t want to tell my entire backstory.
That is when I realized that I needed to find a middle ground between the two.
I started to ask my dad about our culture and I became more interested in learning about where he grew up and just everything about his life when he lived in El Salvador.
Now, as a junior in high school, I still have so much to learn about both of my cultures. Being Hispanic doesn’t mean you know everything about your culture, but rather embracing your family history and putting forth the effort to continue to learn about who you are and where you come from.
