Practicing My Spanish in Mexican Restaurants

It's been two or three years since I started frequenting Octavio's Mexican restaurant near my house in Oakland, California. Octavio and I have never spoken English since we've met—Spanish only. I know that his English is fluent because I hear him interacting with other customers. 

Most Latin-American people I meet who are fluent in both English and Spanish appear to have some serious hangups about speaking Spanish to people who are black, white, or others who do not fit the stereotypical appearance of a Spanish speaker. There were times in other Mexican restaurants, I would ask, in Spanish, the permission to order in Spanish because I've seen some Spanish-speaking servers get really bent out of shape because I didn't address them in English. I always leave bigger tips to those who engage me in Spanish.

Now that I think about it, I too have my hangups when I'm in a Spanish-speaking country where I am quick to respond in Spanish to people who speak to me in English. I do this to send a message that I am not one of those gringos who can't speak Spanish. Another reason is that I need the practice, which is the primary reason, among others, that I travel to Spanish-speaking countries. Yet, there have been occasions when Spanish-speakers would ask my permission to converse in English, and I would comply out of empathy and understanding.

However, it's been a while since I traveled through Latin-America, and I'm no longer working at the agency where I was speaking to Spanish-speaking clients on a daily basis, or even occasionally serving as an interpreter. Thus, my Spanish has begun to falter, big time.

There was one point in Octavio's restaurant when I felt stuck in my English to Spanish translation, and tried speaking to him in English; Octavio ignored my English and continued speaking Spanish. That's when I realized that he knows that I am not as fluent in Spanish as I would like, and is only trying to help me out. Kudos to Octavio. He even speaks Spanish to me in front of his African-American customers.

Recently, I enrolled in an advanced class at Centro Latino in Berkeley, California. The classroom is fine, but the best thing next to traveling to a Spanish-speaking country and being totally immersed in the language is to have a support system of native speakers, like Octavio. However, the more in my Spanish-speaking support system, the merrier.

Black Mexican Founders of Los Angeles, California

 

 

The original inhabitants of what is now known as Los Angeles, California included Mexicans of African ancestry. This may sound astonishing to even many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, not to mention many of my fellow African Americans.

Black people have been in Mexico since the 1500s when slave ships docked in Mexico's Port of Vera Cruz, and the slave traders distributed the African slaves throughout Mexico and Central America. In fact, there was a time when Mexico City had more Africans than Spaniards. 

Although, there is still populations of Afro Mexicans in Mexico's states of Vera Cruz, Tabasco, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, the large historically black population did not simply disappear; over a period of 500 years, they intermarried with the Spanish and the indigenous. 

At a local restaurant that I frequent, there are Mexican workers from Mexico's state of Guerrero whom you can tell have some African ancestry even though I doubt that they would be willing to admit it. When I attempted to discuss with them the history of their home state where Mexico's first black president, Vicente Guerrero, was born; with a smile, they gave me a friendly, polite brush-off.

However, when I speak of Mexican history, I would be remiss to not remind you that before the USA was born, Mexico included what is know known as the State of California. The following article is about the original inhabitants of Los Angeles, California where two of them were black Mexicans.

 

Mexicans of African Descent Established
Los Angeles on This Day in 1781 (May 20)

Site of the original article 

The Los Angeles Pobladores, or “townspeople,” were a group of 44 settlers and four soldiers from Mexico who established the famed city on this day in 1781 in what is now California. The settlers came from various Spanish castes, with over half of the group being of African descent. SEE ALSO: Frederick Douglass Escaped From Slavery To Freedom On This Day in 1838 

Governor of Las Californias, a Spanish-owned region, Felipe de Neve called on 11 families to help build the new city in the region by recruiting them from Sonora and Sinaloa, Mexico. According to a census record taken at the time, there were two persons of African ancestry, eight Spanish and Black persons, and nine American Indians. There was also one Spanish and Indian person, with the rest being Spaniards.

According to the efforts of historian William M. Mason, the actual racial makeup of the pobladores was perhaps more racially balanced than not. Mason wrote that of the 44, only two were White, while 26 had some manner of African ancestry and that 16 of the group were “mestizos” or mixed Spanish and Indian people.

Black Mexicans Luis Quintero and Antonio Mesa, the only two named on the 1781 census, married mixed women and bore several children between them. The pobladores founded the city “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles sobre el Río Porciúncula” (Spanish for The Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels on the Porciuncula River) that day, after some priests found the area 10 years prior. Another historian, Dr. Antonio Rios-Bustamante, states that Los Angeles’ original settlers were even more mixed than the census stated, but was that African, Indian and European ancestry was a hallmark.

 In Los Angeles, the El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park honored the pobladores in the 1950s with a plaque, but it was mysteriously removed. In a Los Angeles Times report, it was suggested that the removal of the plaque was racially motivated. However, in 1981 during the city’s bicentennial, the plaque 

D.L. Chandler is a veteran of the Washington D.C. Metro writing scene, working as a journalist, reporter and culture critic. Getting his start in the late 1990s in print, D.L. joined the growing field of online reporting in 1998. His first big break came with the now-defunct Politically Black in 1999, the nation's first Black political news portal. D.L. has worked in the past for OkayPlayer, MTV News, Metro Connection and several other publications and magazines. D.L., a native Washingtonian, resides in the Greater Washington area.