Hispanics: No, We are Not All Alike
by Have you ever shopped at Wal-mart, Food Lion or the Piggly Wiggly and found yourself on a mission to locate the Spanish aisle? When you ask an employee to lead you to the “Spanish” aisle, immediately, you find yourself on aisle six with the Mexican food products.
The clerk always seems baffled when you reply, “Sorry, I don’t mean Mexican items, I mean Spanish…umm, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Nicaraguan” and then you get that shoulder shrug and “Isn’t it all the same thing” question.
What about the moment someone hears your accent and (if you’re brown or dark skinned) the first question thrown at you is, “What are you? Dominican? Panamanian? Cuban?” I used to become annoyed at the inferences, but now I just shoot ‘em a look and correct them.
I used to think it was total insensitivity, but now I realize that some people just don’t know or understand the differences. Back in 1994, the Hispanic population in Onslow County wasn’t nearly what it is today. Back then, migrant workers flocked to the area seasonally. Today, thousands live and work here yearly. With this change, stores like Wal-mart and Food Lion added aisles marked “Hispanic” and stocked them with a lot of items all Hispanics do not use except maybe Mexicans.
For awhile that was okay because we had mercados like Mi Casita on Henderson Drive that sold just about everything from all Latin American cultures: Mexico to Puerto Rico to Colombia. Sgt. Major Deleon carried it all. I could shop at Mi Casita and buy whatever I needed to make an entire meal from my country.
Just so you know:
No, all Hispanics do not speak the same dialect of Spanish
We do not all eat the same foods
We don’t all know one another
No, we’re not the same just because we share a complexion
No, we’re not border crossing moochers who come here to “steal” jobs from Americans
No, all of us do not use the same ingredients to cook
Colombian culture is beautiful and exotic steeped in diverse ancestry. About 75 percent of Colombians are of mixed heritage. We have Zambos who are of African and Amerindian ancestry and live primarily on the Caribbean coast, the historical center of the slave trade. Mestizos who are of European and Amerindian ancestry, Mulattoes make up 16 percent of the population. Our official language is Spanish except our indigenous populous in the Amazonian basin. In major cities English is spoken, but many of the older Colombianos take pain-staking measures to preserve Castilian Spanish.
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