‘An ongoing process’: Latino students discuss efforts balancing US, Latin American roots
Oct 9, 2024, 6:00 AM | Updated: 12:33 pm
(Tim Vandenack, KSL.com)
TAYLORSVILLE — Growing up in St. George and attending a predominantly white high school, Louise Fernandez, the child of immigrants from Latin American, felt she had to “close off parts of myself” to fit in.
Only after enrolling in Salt Lake Community College, with a more diverse population, did that start to change, did she start feeling comfortable embracing her Latino roots.
“It wasn’t until I moved up here about 1½ years ago that I can finally embrace, completely, who I am and where my parents are from and the language I speak and the way that I grew up as a child,” said Fernandez.
Still, she went on, “it’s an ongoing process.” While she was born in California, her dad is originally from Mexico, and her mom is from Honduras.
Complications Latino students can face
Uprooting from abroad as a child to move to the United States can be fraught with problems. The same can be said of being the U.S.-born child of immigrants. Fernandez and several other Latino Salt Lake Community College Students addressed the conundrum during a panel discussion on Tuesday. They noted the mixed feelings that can come with having feet in two cultures, wondering whether either one is an appropriate fit.
“A lot of people, when it comes to being told you’re not from here, not from there, you often get very discouraged. You feel you’re not part of the culture. You feel like you don’t belong anywhere,” said SLCC student Fernando Rodriguez Camarena.
He helped organize Tuesday’s discussion, titled “Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá” in Spanish or, in English, “Not from Here, Not from There.” The panel discussion was tied to Hispanic Heritage Month, which goes from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, and the focus was on SLCC’s sizable Latino population, about a quarter of the college’s student body.
Carolina Bloem is the director of SLCC’s Center for Latin American Studies. She moderated Tuesday’s activities, and said no one belongs to just one culture. She suggests that U.S. Latinos with roots in other countries aren’t alone in contending with a cultural balancing act. “A lot of us struggle among different cultures constantly, sometimes even without thinking about it,” she said.