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Amanda and Jasmine Pacheco ride in a limousine with relatives, including (on the left) brothers Vicente, 2, and Emilio, 9. The sisters recently celebrated their 15th birthdays, or 'quinceañeras,' with both a religious ceremony and a big party./Dana Romanoff, The Free Lance-Star
A group of men crowd into the Mexico Lindo Restaurant in the Greenbrier Shopping Center off State Route 3 in Fredericksburg to hear a popular band visiting from Mexico. Each man paid a $25 cover charge for the Saturday night show; there was no charge for women. There are almost 50 restaurants and more than four grocery stores in the Fredericksburg area offering some sort of Latin fare.
Jose Leguia of Peru sets off fireworks at a relative's house in Spotsylvania County during Fourth of July celebrations. Leguia came to America three years ago to work
and to reunite with the rest of his family, already living in the United States./Dana Romanoff, The Free Lance-Star
Paulina Sanchez watches a couple dance during a party at her house in Stafford County after the baptism of her son, Joshua. Paulina is from Mexico, and her husband, Alvin Gaitan, is from El Salvador. The family celebrated the April event with a mix of customs, food and tradition from their two home lands./Dana Romanoff, The Free Lance-Star
After he works in the fields all day, Juan Basilio does his daily exercise routine
of jumping rope. Basilio and his brothers, who are from Mexico, spend six months
of each year on a Westmoreland County farm as guest workers./Dana Romanoff, The Free Lance-Star
In April, 1-year-old Joshua Gaitan Sanchez was baptized during a Spanish Mass at St. Mary Catholic Church in Fredericksburg. Joshua's mother, Paulina, is
on the right, and his godparents, Wilbur and Ruth Gaitan, are behind him. His mother is from Mexico, and his father and godparents are from El Salvador./Dana Romanoff, The Free Lance-Star
Berta Lopez and Olimpia Hernandez reunited in March after a 62-year separation. Lopez's daughter, Maria Gordillo of Fredericksburg, says, 'Now, they want to live more than 100 years so they can keep seeing each other.'/Dana Romanoff, The Free Lance-Star |
Each could have a small party in honor of her 15th birthday and eventually get a car, or the two could pool their resources and have one big bash.
Amanda and Jasmine, who were born 10 months apart, chose to celebrate together with a “quinceañera.”
Pronounced “keen-sey-ah-NER-a,” the event marks a Latin American girl’s 15th birthday—and her transition into womanhood.
It’s both a religious event and a fiesta. The girls renew their baptismal vows, then share food and dance with family and friends.
Amanda, the older of the two, already showed a degree of wisdom when she picked the party.
“The way I looked at it, you can always have a car, but you can’t always have a party,” she said. “I’d rather have a memorable moment, even if it is only one day.”
The quinceañera is memorable because it combines elements that are vitally important to Hispanics: family, faith and fun.
“All through Latin America, faith is central to the lives of most people,” said Juan Carlos Alb, a volunteer coordinator at St. William of York Catholic Church in North Stafford, where the Pacheco girls held their religious ceremony.
Families are holding onto their cultural traditions as they settle in America, Alb added.
The Stafford church has performed 10 quinceañeras in the past year, he said.
Each week, the church’s Saturday-night Mass—celebrated in Spanish—attracts between 250 and 600 people, said Father Andrew Heintz.
The parishioners are among more than 22,000 Hispanics in the Fredericksburg region, according to the U.S. census. Many of the Spanish-speakers, from El Salvador and Spain, Colombia or Chile, have brought their culture—including their love of get-togethers—with them.
“We always look for any excuse to have a party, to go out and have a good time,” said Maria McClellan, a Stafford resident who is from Spain. “And always, there’s music and dancing.”
‘Your little girl turns 15’
There was plenty of both—and much more—on Aug. 19. The quinceañera for the Pacheco girls had all the makings of a wedding, except grooms.
Amanda wore a white bridal gown with a lacy off-the-shoulder neckline, and Jasmine accented her full-length pink gown with sparkling earrings and necklace.
Both wore shoes that looked like glass slippers.
Their father, Eladio Pacheco, sported a tuxedo, as did their brothers, ages 2, 9 and 18. Their youngest sister, 1-year-old Antonia, wore a flowered headband and pink dress the family bought on a recent visit to Mexico.
Their mother, Maria, spent most of her time snapping cufflinks, pinning tiaras or changing diapers. When she finally had the chance to get dressed, she stepped into a floor-length gown and put baby’s breath in her hair.
The family and several other relatives rode in a 14-passenger white limousine. When the girls arrived at St. William of York, they walked down the aisle under an arch of pink roses, then sat in chairs at the foot of the altar.
More than 250 people attended the Mass. All but a few sentences of the 90-minute service were in Spanish, including songs accompanied by guitars and tambourines.
Friends and relatives lined up to congratulate the Pachecos and Tina Castillo, who also celebrated her quinceañera.
To traditional Mexicans, the ceremony is the most significant in a young woman’s life, said Tina’s grandmother Elba Contrars of California.
“In the heart, it is more important than a wedding,” she said, through an interpreter.
Tina was accompanied by a traditional court, which includes seven couples her age. She celebrated for hours with about 130 family and friends in the nearby church hall. Guests enjoyed Mexican dishes, as well as a multitiered cake with fruit filling that could have been the centerpiece at a wedding reception.
The Pachecos had a mariachi band, Latin DJ and sit-down dinner for about 100 people at Riverside Center Dinner Theater.
The family owns seven Pancho Villa Mexican Restaurants in the region. Many relatives had to wait until they finished their shifts at the restaurants to come celebrate with Amanda and Jasmine.
The girls were the first in their family to have a quinceañera. Their father had participated in several, years ago in Mexico.
Even though he knew what the ritual represented, Eladio Pacheco couldn’t bring himself to call his daughters women.
“Your little girl turns 15, and that’s when they leave their childhood and become a mature ... person,” he said, pausing between words.
‘What word do you use for this?’
Like the three families whose daughters celebrated their quinceañeras, most local Hispanics are Mexican, according to those who work with Latinos.
There’s also a strong local contingent from El Salvador and Honduras.
But residents from countries throughout Central and South America, as well as Spain, make their homes in the Fredericksburg area.
And they’re quick to say that people shouldn’t assume that every person who speaks Spanish is from Mexico.
Gerson Correa spent three years at Massaponax High School as part of the Visiting International Faculty Program. There were times during his first year as a Spanish teacher in Spotsylvania County that he sounded like a broken record.
“I had to explain several times, ‘No, I’m not from Mexico. We don’t have enchiladas and burritos for lunch,’” he said.
As a matter of fact, “burritos” are small donkeys, not food items, in his homeland of Colombia.
Sue Smith has come across the same kinds of differences in vocabulary. She’s executive director of LUCHA Ministries, which serves local Hispanics.
At Christmas, she worked with the Salvation Army, which gave presents to Hispanic children. When Smith took parents to the charity, she told them they could also get coats.
First, she said “chaqueta,” the Americanized word for “jacket.” Some in the group clearly didn’t understand her, so she said “chamarra,” a Mexican word for a sheepskin coat.
A woman from Peru told Smith that people in her country call it an “abrigo.” That word also can mean “shelter.”
“I’ve learned to ask, ‘What word do you use for this?’” Smith said.
Accents also differ.
Ray Lora teaches Spanish and cultural diversity at the Rappahannock Regional Criminal Justice Academy, and he uses an interesting analogy.
The regional differences among those who speak Spanish are the same as for those who speak “the queen’s English.”
English sounds a lot different in the boroughs of New York City than the bayous of Baton Rouge, he said. Spanish is no different.
Cultures are just as varied, said Alvin Gaitan, a Salvadoran who owns his home in Falmouth.
He married a Mexican woman, Paulina Sanchez. She was raised in America and was used to different customs, but her parents were not thrilled with the union.
“The parents of my wife don’t fully accept me,” said Gaitan, a painter. “If I had been Mexican, they would have accepted me.”
At their wedding, the couple hired two DJs—one from Mexico and one from El Salvador—to represent their different musical tastes.
At the baptism of their son, Joshua, in April, they observed customs from both their homelands. The godparents passed the baby around during the reception at home, just as people would do in Mexico.
The music and food were Salvadoran.
Gaitan likes the blending of customs.
“To discover new cultures is beautiful,” he said.
Because people from so many backgrounds live in the United States, Americans get to learn about lots of different cultures, he added.
“You learn to have an open mind because there’s all types of cultures here, from Honduras to China,” Gaitan said, “and you learn to live along with them.”
‘You are the same as your neighbor’
Not only do Spanish-speakers have different traditions in their individual countries, but some also have different names for themselves.
The terms “Hispanic” and “Latino” have been used interchangeably for years, according to the Latino–Hispanic Historical Society in Los Angeles.
But the pure definition of the words falls along color lines. “Hispanic” refers to people from the mostly white Iberian Peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal, according to the historical society.
“Latino” refers to the brown indigenous people of Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Central American and South America. People in most of these nations speak Spanish because the countries were once colonies of Spain.
McClellan, the Stafford woman who says her people enjoy celebrations, has noticed different attitudes through the years. She grew up in Madrid, Spain, and married an American serviceman.
She taught Spanish at various Air Force bases overseas and in the United States and now does interpreting work for Stafford County schools. She’s also active at St. William of York, where she’s probably the only Spaniard in the congregation.
Over the years, she’s adjusted her vocabulary to include words common in Central American countries, but not Spain.
For instance, when people in Spain want to use the verb “to drive,” they say “conducir.” Those in Central America say, “manejar” instead.
Other teachers from her homeland would never use—or even acknowledge—the Central American word because it’s not part of their pure language, she said.
Sometimes her countrymen, as well as other Hispanics, have the same stereotypes toward newcomers that some Americans may, she said.
“A lot of Spanish people, they don’t want to have anything to do with the Latin American people because they think they’re all illegal,” she said.
She’d like to tell them the same thing she taught her children when they were young. Her family lived in New Mexico for a while, and her son and daughter didn’t want to speak Spanish in public because they didn’t want others to think they were Mexican, she said.
She’d ask them, “Is there one god or two gods?” And they’d answer, “One god.”
“It’s the same with people,” McClellan told her children, who are now adults with bilingual jobs. “You are the same as your neighbor.”
To reach CATHY DYSON:
540/374-5425
cdyson@freelancestar.com
Marta Fuentes is never surprised when someone asks her if she has a green card.
Even after she tells them she was born in Puerto Rico, people still wonder whether she’s in the country legally.
“There is a lack of knowledge, big time, even among Americans, of our status,” she said. “Even people from Mexico, South America, they don’t understand.”
People born in Puerto Rico have been American citizens since 1917, when Congress passed the Jones–Shafroth Act, according to the Library of Congress.
But Fuentes and other local residents who work with Hispanics realize a lot of Americans don’t see it that way.
“Most people are not going to say, ‘Oh, you’re Puerto Rican, that’s just like being born in Arkansas,’” said Sue Smith, executive director of LUCHA Ministries, which serves local Latinos. “The idea most people have is, ‘They’re Hispanic, they’re probably illegal.’”
Fuentes works for Healthy Families, a program offered by the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board.
Studying English was mandatory in the Puerto Rican school she attended. She tells young Hispanic mothers to start learning English when their children are babies.
“You come to this country, and you can’t expect everything to be in Spanish,” she tells them.
Fuentes is among an estimated 2 million Puerto Ricans who have moved to the United States. Because of this massive migration, it’s said there are more Puerto Ricans in New York City than in San Juan, the capital of the country, according to the Web site Welcome.toPuertoRico.org.
There’s even a term that refers to New Yorkers born in Puerto Rico or of Puerto Rican descent. It’s “Newyorican.”
Of interest
At birth, Hispanics are given three to four names, in this order: first name, middle name, father’s last name and mother’s last name. When a woman gets married, she drops her mother’s last name. But she keeps her father’s surname and takes on her husband’s last name. ‘Spanish women remain forever linked to the men in their lives. It’s the ultimate in machismo,’ says ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Spanish.’
Cousins reunite
The two relatives hadn’t seen each other since 1944, but when they reunited recently, their connection was as strong as it had been 62 years earlier.
“I have family again,” Olimpia Hernandez said, hugging her cousin. “We are the children of a brother and sister, and we love each other very much.”
Hernandez, 82, and Berta Lopez, 84, reunited in March at their children’s homes in Fredericksburg. The two grew up together in different villages in Guatemala, but lost contact after marriage.
Each would think of the other from time to time, but neither knew where the other was. As decades went by, each assumed the other had passed away, as so many from their generation had.
All three of Hernandez’s brothers are dead. Lopez has one surviving sister of 12 siblings.
The two found each other again by way of their children.
Lopez’s daughter, Maria Gordillo, lives in the Bragg Hill area. During one of her regular visits with her nephew, who lives a few streets away, she met Raul Castellanos, who recently moved from Los Angeles.
As the two talked, they realized their mothers are sisters.
Soon thereafter, Gordillo’s mother was visiting Fredericksburg, and Castellanos’ mother was in New York, seeing another son.
Castellanos went to New York to get his mother and bring her to see her long-lost cousin.
The two started spending every minute together, talking about the old days. After a few weeks, Hernandez headed back to Connecticut to stay with another child, and Lopez went to Arizona for the same reason.
Between them, the two cousins have 14 children, 65 grandchildren and 52 great-grandchildren.
Their children in Fredericksburg were glad to connect with relatives as well.
“When you are alone, you are nobody,” said Castellanos’ wife, Soila. “We are not alone now. We have family.”
Spotsylvania County resident Gladys Brackett, who was present as an interpreter, said the scene reminded her of her childhood.
She, too, grew up in Guatemala, where she spent as much time with her cousins as with her siblings.
The bond between Hispanic cousins is strong, she said.
“For us,” Brackett said, “this is really almost two sisters being reunited.”
