Let's get one thing straight: I am Cuban. I am also Italian. I always knew I was Italian; nights of pasta and days of anise were commonplace. However, I didn't know I was Cuban until 2000 when the census began including the term "Latino" in their demographic information on standardized tests. On the day of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, my parents made me aware of this new question, and noted that I should mark that I am Caucasian under race, and check the "Yes" answer box for the separate question asking if I identify as Hispanic/Latino. The fine print on the bubble-in form listed the specificities of what falls under this category, including Mexican, Argentinian, Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, Cuban... It was in this moment that I put the pieces together for at least a few seconds before diving into a multi-hour standardized test.
By the time I hit middle school, I started receiving mail addressed to me from people I didn't know. I would open printed cursive invitations to apply for a scholarship I was apparently eligible for, but I could never understand the letters because they were always written in Spanish. I didn't understand why these institutions thought I was deserving of Latin-centric scholarships when I couldn't even read their invitations. The pieces were slowly moving, but they weren't quite together just yet.
I can't pinpoint the exact moment, but by the time I was finishing up 8th grade, I started to realize that I am in fact Latino. It may have been the new Ecuadorian student who briefly joined my friend group, or a laser-focus into my brother's complaints to my father about having to take Spanish with Señora Palmer. My experiences growing up Latino were revealed to me in small cues that I failed to pick up. By the time I hit high school, I made friends with lots of Latinx students: Puerto Rican, Dominican, Venezuelan... but to them I was white. Their experiences were different than mine in a lot of ways, yet there were some moments of commonality hidden in the details.
Thus, I began a full reflection on what I knew about my family, and what I needed to learn. The first thing I started with was that I've always known that my grandparents were Cuban. It was undeniable.
I always knew my grandparents were Cuban because although my grandfather's skin is practically translucent, my grandmother's skin is unmistakably olive. Both of them speak with thick, unapologetic accents, and will stumble into Spanish and Spanglish without batting an eye. My grandfather reveled in teaching my brother and I the Spanish curse words, which my father allowed free usage of: mierda, cojones... and then there was the favorite, "There was a farmer had a dog and coño was his name-o!" What I didn't know was that their Cuban-ness made my father a full-blooded Cuban, which makes me 50% Cuban, which makes me a Cuban, which makes me Latino.
I always knew my grandparents were Cuban because every Tuesday, my grandmother would pick my brother and I up from school and take us to her place. We would be welcomed by a porcelain sign reading "Bienvenidos. Mi casa es su casa." -- you know, the one with the sunflowers along the edges, the one in every Latinx household. The message would shortly be interrupted by an aggressive black chihuahua, Tito, that wanted my head on a stick. Telemundo or Univision would be on so the dog had something to watch while he was home alone. My grandmother would swiftly head to the kitchen to prepare a snack of galletas with margarine and Malta Hatuey, which I would enjoy carefully so as not to get crumbs over the Fabuloso scented floors. What I didn't know was that galletas and Telemundo and Mi casa es su casa were products of my grandmother's heritage, my father's heritage, my heritage.
I always knew my grandparents were Cuban because despite being a notoriously bad cook, my grandmother still managed to serve dinner for six on Tuesday nights. Some days it was burned bistec empanizado with moros, other days it was ham steak fried in an un-oiled pan and microwave maduros. More often than not, it was a modified picadillo, in which the raisins were replaced with extra olives, forcing me to do my finest archeological digging around the briny palette destroyers. After dinner, I would run off to watch a cartoon on the second-floor television while political conversations or family updates remained downstairs over warm cups of cafecito. And no matter what, there was always pan cubano; my grandmother made sure to get a loaf any time she left the house seeing as it is her primary source of nutrition. These dishes are common menu items in Tampa. What I didn't know was that these dishes are common menu items due to the large population of Cubans in Tampa, like my grandparents, like my father, like me.
But let the record show, I'm not just Cuban. I am also white. And because of this, my upbringing was uniquely assimilated to the point where I was unaware that I was Cuban, even if I was aware that my grandparents are Cuban. Spanish was never spoken in my house unless my father was on the phone, and to this day I still give him hell for not raising my brother and I as bilingual. We bought Lysol, not Fabuloso. We ate breaded steak, not bistec empanizado. Saltines with PB&J trumped galletas and margarine. Telemundo never played. Cafecito was "your father's coffee." We regularly watched "I Love Lucy," the conversation always being about Lucy and never Ricky or the songs he sang that were closer to me than I knew. We never spoke of Cuba, what it was like, or how my grandparents ended up in the states. I couldn't identify Cuba on a map for longer than I'd like to admit.
I am not mad at my parents. They didn't hide my heritage, but they didn't make me hyper aware of it either. Rather, I was exposed to it as normalcy. If anything, I'm mad at myself for not recognizing how these aspects of my childhood are unique to my heritage. I'm mad at myself for not asking questions sooner. I'm mad at myself for taking so long to find pride in the things that were right in front of me. As a child, I had no true awareness of culture or heritage. I was simply living out my days as me, a white kid. I didn't know I was Latino. Now, I identify as Latino. I don't know that identifying as Latino changes anything about me, but it does change my outlook on certain aspects of my life.
I am white presenting, and therefore will always be viewed as white. Additionally, I still do not speak Spanish (though I can understand it quite well), making any attempts at verbal interactions in Spanish appear tone deaf. There's a culture of condemning Latinos in America that can't speak Spanish, and there's also been a lot of flex on how that doesn't negate a person's identity as a Latino. Either way, I still feel a level of guilt for struggling to speak the language and for not having a semblance of an authentic accent when I do try to speak it.
Though I have been out of the acting world for quite some time, I've become aware of how much being white presenting has influenced what has happened to me in my acting career. I have been able to play decidedly white roles (Sonny Malone in Xanadu, Jerry Lukowski in The Full Monty, and "Rinso-white" Berger in Hair), but not Latino roles. This is not a complaint, but it does make me examine my experiences in recognizing how my heritage has and hasn't influenced what I bring to an audition room. I've talked myself out of ever auditioning for In the Heights given my white appearance and lack of Spanish speaking skill, yet I also recall watching a full-blooded Italian student play the role of a migrant worker in a high school production of Working and sing "Un Mejor Día Vendra", while I was cast to play a racist white store manager that calls a Mexican character "Poncho." As a freshman, this didn't strike me as odd -- I was just lucky to be cast as a freshman. In reflection, I cringe.
Furthermore, my white presentation has made me incredibly privileged, and I acknowledge that. I have 100% benefited from looking and being white, and it's not okay that others get discriminated against for presenting as non-white. "One Day at a Time" referred to this as "passing" and "blanquita," and it was one of those rare moments where I felt like someone tapped into my brain. I'm still grappling with this. I want to be a part of a world that everyone can benefit from equally and be part of the change, yet I'm not sure how to do this. Being half white, it almost feels like I don't have a right to speak for the Latino experience given that my upbringing was primarily and publicly white. I continue to struggle with how to proceed, but I am certainly working on it. I fear being a white savior.
I don't cook Cuban food much. In fact, I don't cook it much at all. My grandmother, as mentioned before, does not take pride in her cooking the way most Latina matriarchs do, so I never stepped into her kitchen as sous chef. Meanwhile, Cuban culture was so palpable in the rest of my hometown of Tampa (re: Ybor City, downtown, off Kennedy Blvd.) that my very white wife picked up nuggets of knowledge on Cuban cuisine, and has a firmer grasp of the ingredients and flavors than I do. I am working to become more knowledgable on the food of my Cuban heritage, and developing recipes inspired by both my childhood and the parts of my culture I don't yet know about. I have already tested out a few recipes that I'm very eager to share on this blog.
If you're wondering about the history of my grandparents, here's the SparkNotes: My paternal grandparents are refugees and fled Cuba during the height of the madness. My grandmother was an elementary teacher. My grandfather was a Cuban revolutionary, having been arrested for protesting during Castro's Cuba. They met in the United States, after achieving citizenship on their own accord. My grandmother found work in the states as a seamstress, and later went on to sew my mother's wedding dress and baby blankets for myself and my son. My grandfather taught himself English, and later built a business as well as his own little real estate empire in Tampa. He's quite literally the definition of "American Dream." This led to him being able to build a large house on his own property. My grandfather has since been back to Cuba. My grandmother refuses to go. "It's not my Cuba," she says. I don't know that anyone blames her.
My identity and my exposure to my own heritage are complicated. I remember my high school having a Latin-American cultural celebration one day, and despite being the only senior Latino in the musical theatre department, I was not even made aware of the event let alone asked to participate. I also remember that not hurting, because the students participating were fully immersed in their culture with appropriate cuisine, garb, unique dialects, and music, which had been a part of their upbringing from their birth to that moment. I didn't have dances and clothes and dialects to share aside from "...and coño was his name-o!" But that doesn't mean I couldn't have brought something to that celebration. Yes, my experience with my heritage is blended, but that doesn't mean it is any less authentic.
My son is a mutt: An Irish-Polish-Italian-Cuban mutt. People might not believe him when he says he's a quarter Cuban, but I want him to be just as proud and knowledgable about his Cuban heritage as he will be with his Irish, Polish, and Italian heritage.
I'm Latino. My skin hides this fact. My inability to speak Spanish hides this fact. My lack of knowledge on Cuban cuisine hides this fact -- for now. But I will never hide this. I will continue to embrace it. I love being Latino, and I'm learning every day how to embrace the parts of my past that I somehow missed, and allowing them to shape my future as a Latino in modern America.
Con comino y emociones,
~c.j.
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