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Yeah, I Speak Spanish…

Living in the working-class Latino Boyle Heights neighborhood, I often laugh at any outsider who tries to come into my hood and speak Spanish with the locals. 

“Que te doy?,” asks the taquero, flinging his spatula up in the air as the enticing smells of carne asada and el pastor fill the air around him. 

“Huh?” responds the unassuming white boy.

“WHA DOOO YOU WAAAAHHH?”

“Oh, uh, two carne asada tacos, por favorrrr” he responds as his girlfriend records the entire exchange to post on Instagram later, where all their friends can comment about how worldly they are. 

In my barrio, you can’t go anywhere without speaking Spanish. You walk up to the McDonalds cashier, and she’ll address you in Spanish. Walking out of the grocery store, older women still address me as mijo even though I’m 33. My gym instructor leads workout classes in Spanish, ensuring at least 70% of the gym-goers are Zumba-loving Mexican moms. We wear our Spanish and our identity as a badge of pride. I take pride in being able to navigate the linguistic gymnastics of thriving in my barrio–and potentially accessing the secret menu in the process. “Poor non-Spanish speakers” I think to myself, closed off from the world of opportunities unavailable to them. 

I was feeling awfully privileged up in my Spanish ivory tower. And then, I went to Puerto Rico. 

It was a very special occasion–a close friend’s bachelor party in San Juan, a weekend filled with beaches, kayaking, hiking and delicious meals. At least I assumed they would be delicious? I don’t think I’d ever actually tried Puerto Rican food before. And they spoke Spanish there! Just like my family trips to Mexico, I won’t have any problem fitting in as if I were one of the locals–especially with all bilingual Chicano homies. No locals calling us Gringo tourists and exploiting us, no way!

I’ll never forget our first interaction upon landing and engaging with the hotel staff in San Juan:

“English or Espanol?”

Time to let this beautiful territory know that we belong. 

“Espanol, claro.”

“O.K.,” said the lovely lady behind the hotel registration desk. What happened next will forever be a mystery, as she flexed her vocal cords and mouth around to form a string of sounds that I could not comprehend. She repeated herself, this time a little slower, though it still sounded like I was listening to a podcast at 3x speed. 

She made a face–one that I knew but that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Oh, yes! Of course, that was the face I made whenever I…..judged someone for not being able to speak Spanish. She was speaking Spanish, alright, just not the same Spanish that I knew. It was Puerto Rican Spanish, and it might as well have been Japanese. 

Humbled, I was, to say the least. I guess I wasn’t gonna get to live my dream of being mistaken for a local while on the island for these few days. Luckily, I could bank on everyone else in the territory speaking that other language I understood so well: English. 

Our next big adventure was kayaking on the bioluminescent bay, which began simple enough with a basic tutorial on how to not get lost out in the open water. 

“English o Espanol?” asked the kayaking instructor. 

Luckily this time I was prepared, as I had told my comrades to get over the pride and ask for English instructions. So imagine my frustration when they all confidently yelled, “Espanol!”

“O.K.” responded the instructor, who then gave about three minutes worth of instructions that sounded like a television signal coming in and out while you’re trying to steal an illegal channel. Although I knew exactly as much about kayaking the bay after the lesson as I did beforehand, we fortunately all survived and enjoyed the experience. 

But I had enough. We could not keep letting our pride and desire to fit in to get in the way of our safety and understanding for what was going on around us on this beautiful island. 

“Guys,” I told my homies. “Everywhere we go, they ask us if they’d like to address us in English or Spanish. It’s clear we don’t understand the kind of Spanish we speak here. We need to STOP saying Spanish and start asking for things in English, as hard as it is.”

They all nodded and agreed quietly, and I thought the problem had been addressed going into our final dinner of the trip. We found ourselves at a fancy restaurant where no printed menus existed–you had to listen to the verbal menu provided by the waitress. 

“English o Espanol?”

My mouth opened as if to start answering, but before I could, the rest of the party yelled their response with gusto:

“Espanol!”

My forehead met my palm as the waitress went on to list off a number of menu items that sounded more like Flo Rida lyrics than food. I ordered the last thing I heard, knowing that I was able to piece together something about chicharrones–Mexican pork rinds–which I knew I loved. 

When the plate met my table setting, I realized they were chicharrones alright–chicharrones de conejo–rabbit. So there I was, enjoying fried rabbit, second-guessing my choices and imagining myself narrating the “you’re probably wondering how I ended up here” in the story of my life, all because we let our pride get in the way. 

As tiny an island as Puerto Rico may be, the earth is also a tiny planet, and we’re all just trying our best to understand each other here. Maybe next time someone attempts and fails miserably to order some tacos around my block, I can be a little slower to judge and a little quicker to lend a helping hand–or translation. 

“Ey Chad, don’t worry I got you……dos tacos de asada para mi amigo.”