Latin Women

Latin Women (mujeres latinas)

When it comes to women, I have to start with my wife, or maybe my mom. Either way, they are my standard of excellence when judging and knowing women. Neither of whom, the one who raised me, or the one I have begat progeny with, are Latinas; but, they both have some things in common with women from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Latin America. One is currently alive and the other is deceased, as of 2019, which is also similar to Latin women I know. All of them have things in common, alive and dead. I value them. They have impacted my life for the good.

All women of all lifestyles and cultures do have things in common, naturally, and many men, too.

My wife has a lot in common with some Latin women: she speaks Spanish, she sings well, she is very domestic and putting family needs ahead of herself. She is hard working and entrepreneurial. She is industriousness and makes a lot out of little. That is the spirit of most Latina ladies I know. Yeah, she, like them, externally and internally, is beautiful as well.

My mother, born in 1940 and having passed on in 2014, ended up being  a bit like a Latin mom: independent, feisty, at times saucy (picante), more often tender and emotional. Compassionate, caring, meticulous, and strong-willed. 

The first Latina woman in my memory is Ruby Bumzahem; a Panamanian-born immigrant who always kept her vivacious and gentle spirit of Central America to her last year, when she was going to turn 97. Since my distant biological grandparents passed away by the time I was 12 in the early 1980s, Ruby ended up being like my emotional and effectual grandmother. I knew her my entire childhood, and as an adult I felt like I was truly home when I was around her. Her ways of talking, thinking, cooking, moving, praying: she was a perfect role model for me. She, as a child on a Pacific Island, may have been more native than European, I am not sure. But pure Latina. She became naturalized and Americanized throughout her adulthood in the Midwest, in big city Chicago and smaller town Bloomington, but of course many Latinas do. She married a Brazilian immigrant who died before I knew her in her later, older years. She was wise and acerbic, a sage among the hoi polloi of adult influences in my life.

Next, as an example of Latin women for me it might have my third grade Spanish teacher, who was from Spain. She had blondish hair in a puffy bowl cut; she helped me hear and see the language of the Latins. It's called Romantic, but Romance is so much more than love and pathos. It's deeper than that. So are Latin women, as they all are. Romantic, no?

I think of my Bishop Martinez's wife, who though Fillipina, from the Pacific rim, also had a Latin aspect to her. I did not know her that well, but I remember her presence as a foreign influence when I was a small child; different than the American women that I knew through family, the church, the neighborhood, and community of women surrounding my mother and sisters, and my friends and their mothers and sisters.

Television and movies were another thing. Rita Moreno on PBS Electric Company was flamboyant, and epic in West Side Story and other motion pictures, but not to be superseded by the gentle-hearted Maria on Sesame Street. She was nice, muy simpatica. She was either Puerto Rican or Mexican, but all sweet. I suppose quite a few library books and some records inserted a few archetypes of Latin America into my awareness, too.

There were some young ladies in elementary and middle schools who were Hispanic, like Lisa Velasquez and later Raquel Avila. I thought Raquel, who was fiery but attractive, was then cousins of my foster brother and sister Joey and Sophia. I found out decades later it was their sister. She moved to another school by high school, probably for the better. 

Michelle Acito was some type of Latin girl in middle and high school. Gorgeous and sweet-natured. I think the look was appealing, darker features. But not all Latinas have dark features, you know. It was inner beauty that was most appealing. I don't know, maybe she was Greek. But thus I categorize Latinas.

It takes all kinds. However,  I am saying that some Latin American girls, or women, are pretty amazing looking. Sophia Loren. Sofia Vergara. Eva Mendez. Penelope Cruz. Jennifer Lopez. Salma Hayek. I could go on. Point made, enough said. Some stereotypes typify sultry beauty.

I was called on a church mission to South America, which was great for me since I had studied four years of  high school Spanish after my previous third grade foundation years prior; I visited Spain for three weeks just after high school graduation shortly before my mission call. European Latinas have their own charm, I observed, but then I was among the Latinas of Chile for almost two years. Fortunately I also had a powerful social experience with my brethren first and foremost, which was the primary reason to do the work there. Although all people deserved to hear our message about Jesus Christ, it was the men that really needed our preaching the most, I came to find out. However, we never really refused anyone. But in many churches, the ladies tend to outnumber the men.  They were abundant in numbers in those at church and willing to hear our message.

I digress with the talk of Latino males. Back to the Latinas! Las mujeres is what this is about.

I lived in different homes with different mamitas of varying natures and temperaments. I learned about these women up close: the first was a widow, and had recently lost her son. She worked hard with other seamstresses in her house.

The next was a mother of three who struggled to make ends meet while her husband stole our check. I don't know if they knew that that was my money he stole and not the church's. She was nice and tried, but things were unfortunate due to circumstances.

We moved on and had a younger mother of two small girls, happily married to a strong priesthood holder. She was great. As was the next, a mother of one who was helping raise a grandson. She was partially lame, but moved with tenaciousness and verve.

Then there was the one that my wife fourteen years later would get to know better when we spent a week in her pension with our small girls. A "businesswoman", as my wife says, but certainly funny and fun.

And lastly, at least during the mission, (because there was one more later in Chile when I returned as a student), was the poor mother of three in Coihueco, who would sigh with pleasure when she stayed to pray with us over our meals. She was very spiritual and God-fearing.

Meanwhile, as a missionary outside my residences, I got to know all types of Latinas in our respective areas. Tall, short, skinny, fat, verbose, laconic, loud, soft, poor and rich. Snobby and humble, the whole gamut, generous and mean, frugal and flighty. We were always forewarned by our church leaders to "lock our hearts" and not fall for any young women; I caught myself being attracted only rare times to a few young ladies here and there; to my credit, I think, and those contacts did not last, mostly by fate. Fate was good.

When I left Chile to the United States and I wound up feeling a greater reverse culture shock then the culture shock of living there in the first place (Yes, Earth Girls are Weird! or: American girls can seem coldly foreign), I decided that chilenas were so nice to my way of thinking that I would give American women a year, or so I thought, and then I would return to Latin America for a spouse if things did not work out up north, the chances might be better down south. Famous last words.

Long story short, I did go out with some American girls, those trysts did not work out as I thought, and I did go back to South America and I did cultivate a relationship with a Latina. But most of the relationship was long distance and it dried up. There were others I went out with, both loopy and standoffish, but always kind.

And there was the last mamita, the young widowed sister Lida Mendez and her daughter Jimena, when I was the younger student from BYU, trying to find my way... They gave me their home and their hearts, 25 years ago.

While at BYU in Provo I met some nice Latina young ladies; among women and men from all over the world. Each individual, beyond their native cultures and national styles, are unique and endearing. My first summer I interacted with many Mexicans studying in my dormitories. They taught me appropriate communications in their lexicon, so near yet so far from Gringolandia.

But alas, Provo was not for me! At least not for a permanent connection for marriage. But all the friendships and connections were great.

And, there were all the professors: the Portuguese advanced English teacher, the Uruguayan-born teacher on Spain, the Argentine Book of Mormon teacher, the co-teachers of Spanish at the Missionary Training Center... I worked in Utah another two years and worked and rubbed shoulders with other Latinas, celebrating Cinco de Mayo with them and spending times visiting places, including a memorable trip to California and Mexicali with two sisters from Brawley, Imperial County. That trip also included a Filipina-American, a distant echo of Latin America, I feel.

There were fellow students: Italians and Portuguese and Spaniards, and their mothers or sisters, like one in BYU housing from Juarez, who showed the finer side of Latin behavior and interaction.I learned that dirty dishes in Mexico are sastres, not loza such as in Chile.

When I returned to Indiana again, I became friends with the witty and quirky Sandy Padron, a Mexican-American from Texas. I enjoyed her lively spirit and her Hispanic groundedness, a no-nonsense attitude that I respected and thrived off of. She was all silly but totally smart. I respected that. I had colleagues and professors from Spain, Argentina, Peru, Cuba, Mexico...

I visited with Mexican-Americans sand other Hispanics in California, Indiana, everywhere I went. I listened to their songs on the radio, watched their films and television shows. The feisty one on Lost, the actress who also played a seamstress in the LA sweat shop. I ordered horchatas and other Latin cuisines and treats, drinks and artistic works, introduced in every venue from the Pacific to Arizona to Florida and south further... Tamarindos and a hundred other delicacies.

There were other women and girls, here and there that I grew to admire or disdain (not all are pleasant. A few are quite vicious, which gives the rest a better baseline of goodness). Later as I married my wife, I would go back among the Latinas: the ones I taught at high school or adult school, the ones I attended church with, like a few I conducted marriages for or funerals and baptism, on top of regular weekly sacraments and activities; others that I taught with and studied with at other schools, in the military, wherever I worked or meandered. I had a great Brazilian Portuguese teacher at UCLA; she was a  fond professor when it came to learning, making that an enriching experience. I have interacted with many people of Brazil, and even Equatorial Guinea while in Afghanistan, of all places (how is that for juxtaposition of cultures!) The Portuguese speakers of Brazil and Africa evince their Latin charm and grace as well. One young lady I befriended in Provo ended up becoming mayor of her town in Brazil. Very nice getting to know Romana. (Pronounced Homana).

I saw Latinas more in movie roles, I read the books and stories of Latinas, notably Isabel Allende but many others, and their characters roaming from Europe from mid-evil Quijote (Dulcinea) to modern, Paulo Coelho's femmes  de la literature, the ones of Paz and Fuentes and Borges and Cortazar, Lupita de la Manana, and others...

My ever conscientious overlord professor from Chile, Dona Hilda de Rojas, and others; she was the one who reproved me with my street Spanish of the Chilean people the most.  Ay Lalo! Who speaks like that!?  Who talks like that? There was the other flighty Chilean professor lady that I convinced to say "hulabaloo" instead of the grosser expletive she would announce ad nauseum in her limited but exuberant dirty broken English.

I had Latina bosses and co-workers in my Spanish linguist job here in Northern Virginia. So many: Lucero, Mercedes, Natalia, Ruthie, Margarita, Julia, and many others. From Colombia, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Central America...

Ahh, gran auteur Isabel Allende and your spells! We cannot stop reading your novels and tales... You inspired me to write this very dedication to you and your kind. Making literature of the ineffable, that is a divine gift.

I was in Chile in this century, 2005, way down in the Ninth Region, when the first lady, first woman, of Chile became the first feminine Commander-in-Chief, Michelle Bachelet. She made her husband the First Man of the nation.

I thank them and the hundreds, if not thousands of others across the continents that I have met, witnessed, and known. The ones I know and the ones I have not. The ones that have contributed to millions who contribute, both now and in the past. And the hopeful future. Stay strong and firm, Latin women, mothers, wives, aunts, abuelas, sisters, friends.

And, they are still there, dead or alive, they are eternal. They bless forever. Para siempre.

Latinas of all climes and times, I salute you.

I see them now everyday at work, some crunching numbers and data, other sweeping and cleaning the floors and stalls. A few are the chiefs and bosses with their private offices as well. I serve with some Latina women as soldiers.

Latin Women: gracias por ser quienes son y quienes sereis, para mi, para el mundo.

Thanks for being who you are and who ye will be, for me, for the world.

Que benditos somos. Que benditas son.