Do You Have to Speak Spanish to Be Hispanic?

My life as a “no sabo” kid.

Photo by Jo Tyson at Unsplash.

My father died tragically in a car accident on December 20, 2018, in his beloved El Salvador. Emotionally distraught, my sisters and I had to travel there to bury him.

A car service met us at the airport to take us to my father’s house. As we approached my father’s hometown, the driver asked about the address. We responded, “Comecayo.” He kept pressing for more information, but we gulped and remained silent. That was the only way we knew to describe my father’s ancestral home.

We could hear the driver on the phone tell his boss we were “gringos” and didn’t speak Spanish.

I did a double take, appalled at that notion, and straightened my shoulders. Wasn’t losing my father enough? Now, I was being labeled a “gringa.” Gringos are non-Hispanics. I was half Salvadoran.

I had spent two weeks every summer in El Salvador my whole childhood, inhaling its scent and culture. I spent my summers in New York with my tias and tios and primas and primos. I cooked Spanish turkey every Thanksgiving, marinating it in sofrito.

My sense of being Hispanic is woven into who I am and how I think.

Now, as I drove to bury my father with tear-stained cheeks, uncertain about my identity without him…