“No Habla Espanol” 

Growing up in my Puerto Rican/Ecuadorian household was not for the weak. I am the youngest of my mother’s 3 children, and the youngest of all my cousins. I was everyone’s “baby of the family.” Being the baby meant that I had to live up to everyone else’s expectations and levels. Although it did not take much to live up to the educational expectations, the native basic expectations were never fully completed. As my mother was proud of my education more than my comprehension of my native language, my family on the other hand could not wrap their heads around this idea.  

The numerous amounts of times that I have been flagged down by someone who only speaks Spanish asking for directions, and my response was an ashamed smile on my face while politely stating “I do not speak Spanish” or “No Habla Espanol,” is too many to count or even recall every single one of them. It is the same mean mugged face someone puts on when they cannot handle a sour lime, purely disgusted by a fellow Latino male who lacks the real capabilities of being a man. It is traumatic what just one facial expression could do to someone who consistently is fed into the life of someone else’s thoughts and native rules. As per the words of my mother it is wrong if I react because “those are my elders” and “respect is to be earned not just handed down.” As I let these words marinate in my brain repeatedly hoping to find some sliver of hope in myself to understand my native Hispanic rules, I lose it all. I remember the day I lost my respect. The key to my native culture locked and stored away for me personally only having the keys to regain it.  

The day began extremely foggy but had sunrays beaming through the cracks of the clouds to make it one of the weirdest weather conditions. The ground was extremely moist from pouring rain the day before. This weather condition is the worst because it brought only gloomy feelings to me that ended up upsetting me. One thing that about me is that I would let the rain drain me of all my emotions, so a day starting like this one only made me feel agitated. My worst class Spanish 2 was my first class of the day, and I was already extremely overwhelmed with my feelings I did not think much of it because up to this point we have not starting anything to large being that it was only my third day of Spanish 2.

As I walk into my Spanish 2 classroom 5 minutes late, I placed my phone into my designated cubby pocket and went to go take my seat. As I was walking to my seat, I could only sense the tension of my actions (being late) across the room. My mind was so focused on everyone giving me a dull faced look, that I had blocked out the fact that my teacher was asking me how my morning went in Spanish. She then asks me in English what is wrong with me and then waited until I responded, “I’m drained, and the weather sucks, my apologies for not hearing you the first time” in a very calm manner to show her my sincerity even though I truly did not have any. I tried to show her a half smile to ease up the moment. She nods her head side to side and accepts my apology. She obviously was not in the best mood either because, about 30 seconds after accepting my apology in front of the whole class she began questioning me in front of the whole class by asking me where my family was from in Spanish, and as I respond to her in English “Puerto Rico and Ecuador,” her face lights up with a large smile as she states that she is in fact also Ecuadorian. She then begins asking me random pop quiz questions about various places in Ecuador and Puerto Rico asking me to explain everything to her using only Spanish. And as she is giving me this huge list of things to respond to in Spanish it is obvious that she assumes I knew Spanish fluently. As all eyes are layered onto me, I open my mouth and tell her in English “I don’t know how to speak much Spanish.” But she immediately throws that lemon-lime disgusted look igniting a whole bunch of students in the class to start commenting on how they feel about me not being a native Spanish speaker. And as I am getting clowned and torn down by everyone around me, I hear this one girl in my class say, “so he is basically half Hispanic.” This comment made me lose my shit. I stood up, grabbed my bag and phone out of the cubby, and jolted out of her classroom. As she tries to catch up to me to talk about the class confrontation that SHE started, I turned around and told her “Your issue is that you assumed things about me and since you ASSUMED things about me you just embarrassed me in front of the whole class and made me lose all respect for you as a teacher.” she just stared blankly at me. And as I am waiting for words to pour out of her mouth, her saddened lips rain into a downwards smile. She takes another step towards me and says, “You Gabriel are Absolutely right; it was not okay for me to assume which level of Spanish you perform up to based off how you look. It is just that most Ecuadorian families have their children learn Spanish before they even learn English.” As she states now with a fake comforting look on her face, but I could see through her. Who would have thought she did it again without even realizing, compared me to the rest of who and what I am “supposed” to be in average ignorant Hispanics eyes. As I grow more agitated with her, I only start to feel more saddened with myself, like I failed, failed all on my culture’s name. I was overwhelmingly ashamed because I was sick of being that one pure Hispanic guy who everyone does not take seriously, because of my limited knowledge or abilities with Spanish. I stormed off and left from in front of her and headed straight out the school and went home. I texted my mom about the whole situation and of course she just knew the right thing to say. 

Being frowned upon by another Hispanic family member or someone with the same culture was the worst feeling because not only were they dissing my parents teaching abilities they would also degrade me. It ignited me because all they do is use insulting backhanded comments like my teacher did. As I continue my life with these same experiences, I have just grown numb to hate, and have just gotten used to being treated unfairly. But if there is one thing, I can take away from it: Do not judge a situation before you produce any actions against it.