After Diosa went VIRAL for discussing the history of language violence, we noticed many people questioning the validity of that history. In this episode, we dive into the history of language violence in the American Southwest, Mexican-only schools, and the modern-day pochos, aka No Sabo Kids.
Listeners from around the U.S., share their experience with the Spanish language. From reformed no-sabo kids to a transracial adoptee, listeners share their experiences with their cultural identity.
Thank you to Gia, Paula Zaremba, Doctora Rene Lemus, Breana Quintero (aka Bre Burrito), Jenna Palacios, Marissa Reyes, and Rebeca Ruiz for contributing to our audio archive.
Articles references in this episode:
Loca Radio is the radio phonic novela, which is just a very extra way of saying a podcast. I'm Theos FM and I am Mala miyos. Loca Tora Radio is your Freema's favorite podcast hosted by us Mala and Liosa, where two ig friends turned podcast partners, breaking down pop culture, feminism, sexual wellness, and offering fresh takes on strending topics through nuanced interviews with up and coming Latin creatives known as Las Locas, Las Mammy, submit in Bullshit, as next Door and Lasses. We've been podcasting independently since twenty sixteen, and we're bringing our radiophonic novela to the Mikokura network to continue sharing stories from the latinxt community. Welcome to Loca to Radio Season seven, Take us to your network. Ocamore is Welcome back to another of Loca Radio. I'm Theosa and I am Mala. You're tuning into one sixty. I can't believe it. We're just racking them up. Last time on look I thought our radio we interviewed Ella. She was here performing in La very fun interview. Go ahead, take a listen, leave a review and share with a friend. Yes, and don't forget. You can follow us across all socials at Locata Underscore Radio. You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook. Visit our website Loca Thought Radio dot com, and subscribe to our newsletter Bessie thos. So. Today we have a super packed episode for y'all. We're going to get into the nitty gritty of everything basically, so we want to catch Shalla. And first start by telling y'all in April fool's joke that Mala played on practically all of Latino Hollywood. It was really fun, it was really good. I can't lie. The joke hit, the joke glanded. I mean people were gagging on this gag. Yes, I couldn't be more proud. I woke up on April first, and I like sent Biosa a voicemail and I was like, I don't know, I just really want to make like a fake deadline article today. I'm like feeling called to do that. It's pilot season, so everyone's dropping their deadline articles, they're dropping their news. So I just slid ours right on in there. I like got on Canva like we do, and worked my magic and put it out and like people were very excited for us. So let me tell y'all about the deadline article and the headline that Mala wrote lass Hollywood film Greenlit at NSK, Mala Munios Andosam to star and co executive produce. Now, I also wrote like a couple of paragraphs, so I'll just read them to you in case you don't follow us on the ground, which you should be at this point to keep up with this stuff in real time. Exclusive Mala Munios and of Look at Our Productions LLC will write and co executive produce the upcoming NSK holiday film Las Bocha vas Set, a premiere during the network's nis Sabin Film Festival. Production on the project began on Wednesday. Munyo stars as Zoe, a rising podcast personality who returns home for her family's annual posada when the family matriarch falls into a coma after a tortilla chip factory fire. The success of the posada falls onto Zoe's shoulders. An unrepent bocha who speaks terrible, no, good, God, awful Spanish, she embarks on an adventure to save the family, posada and the world. With a little help from an unexpected Christmas Miracle. I don't know about you, guys, but I would watch that movie. First of all. I would one thousand percent watch it. And I think that that's also why a lot of people fell for it, because it sounded like something we would make. People are definitely expect us to work in film next, so it just all made sense. However, there were some clues to give away that this was a joke. So the first one is that you dated at March thirty second, twenty twenty three. And let me tell you a lot of very well respected journalists did not catch that. No, that was my favorite. To all the journals who follow and who listen, we love you, guys, were obsessed with you. We love your work. But I just think it's hilarious every time we pull one over on you. I really do think it's so funny. Mama feels really good when we can trick the journalist. I'm always like the journalists are falling for it, and also like, tell us about the author who wrote this. Oh so I pulled, like, you know, a screen grab from an actual Deadline article, and I replace the author photo with the photo of May West, and then I took her birth name, which is Mary Jane West, and I translated it into like a Spanish Maria hims obsessed and then NSK stands for No Sabo Kids. And so this Deadline article I wrote very pointedly because it's on the heels of a viral moment that Yosa is at the center of. We were on a podcast, Shout Out Ian Friends, shout out, shout out go check out that episode I in Besties. I should say they have two shows. We were on Ian Besties, and of course, as happens in any Latin X conversation anywhere, we start talking about Nosabo kids and speaking Spanish. Yeah, and so yeah, that was like the recent happenings of like why this joke was also like so funny because like if you followed what was going on that week, it's like you knew like the nissab and festival, No Sabo Kids productions, like the whole thing, right, so good. And so we were on this podcast, like Mala mentioned, and I don't know how it even came up, like we weren't talking about Nosabo kids, but the one of the host asked us. One of the host, Stephanie, asked us about No Sabo Kids, And so you know, I explained that there's a history of violence in the US where kids were being beaten and paddled for speaking Spanish in schools, and so to pretend that that didn't happen or to ignore it like eraces lived experience of people of that generation. And to me, I'm like, I got my effects, I got I got some nuance, I got some some like I'm defending the Nosabo kids. And of naturally, this is the clip, this is the point of the interview that they took and turned it into a clip as many podcasts do now, and it went viral, and I inadvertently became the face of the Nosabo kids. You're like the patron saint of the Nosabo kids right now, like the defender of the Nosabo kids, like Theosa took several bullets for us, y'all. And the funniest part is the speaks perfect Spanish, like thesa. Spanish is exquisite. But let's get into the nitty gritty of this moment. First of all, super viral, I mean we're still getting comments as of this morning. It was like in the two hundred thousand views, like thousands of comments at this point, and it was so funny because at some point, like I started just responding to people in Spanish. Hell yeah. So I was like, Okay, I'm going to come in the comments and We're going to talk about this in Spanish because apparently that's so important to you. Yes, the most important things, more important than watching the clip and listening to what you're saying. Oh yeah, oh yeah. People have to like respond before actually like comprehending and having their own critical thought. And so we wanted to highlight some of the comments that we were kind of sending each other over the past week. Dude, First of all, nuts, can I just say unhinged because part of reading through the comments leaves me unsure of like what do you people want? And by you people, I mean you latinas you know, the community end quote what do you want? Because it ranges from oh, you guys have to stop being victims and be responsible for your self and learn language, learn Spanish, and get rid of yourself hatreds. You can speak to your grandparents like you have to learn Spanish. You have to love yourself. You know. There was a lot of that, and then there was a lot of we're not even Spaniards, we speak indigenous languages. None of them are indigenous, none of them speak indigenous languages, none of them, you know. So it was like a very odd mix. And at the end I'm left like a question mark. Yeah, I don't know what any of you want. It was super polarizing because there were even in my in the clip, I say something like, people get mad that we don't speak our quote native languages, and so then people were mad that I said native. But it's like I said quote for a reason, because I recognize that that's not the native language originally of the people of the Americas. However, I am not going to claim to be an indigenous language speaker because I'm not. So Spanish is actually my language as well as English. It would be disingenuous of me to say I'm going to go learn Nawa when the region that my family's from they didn't speak now what either, you know, And so to say to even say that, that's so like for me. If I were to have said that, it would be so funny and so wrong and historically inaccurate, because that's not where my family's from. My grandparents didn't speak in indigenous language. For the folks that did grow up with grandparents that spoke indigenous languages. Yes, you have that experience and that story one hundred percent. I cannot claim that, So you can't project that onto me. There was and there was a lot of that happenings projection, Yes, And what we saw is like people do not listen. The clip is not even that long. It's like less than a minute. These folks in the comments were not watching the clip. They were not listening, but responding with such anger and like such like intensity, and then a lot of words, paragraphs on paragraphs. Yeah, and it's part of a much larger conversation we were having on the Ian Besties podcast, Like they seem to want all of linguistics and history in one clip. They wanted in thirty seconds because that's all our attention spans can really handle these days. And so they want you to say every single thing possible and say every single possible angle and experience, even if it's not yours, in thirty seconds or less. Yeah, which is impossible. Yeah. And so you know, we obviously saw this as an opportunity to create our own episode and have our do our own research and bring on our own guests to talk about the history of language violence and talk about mostable kids. And even though you know, we recognize that the people commenting they're never going to listen to this episode. No, they're they're never going to listen to that I Besties episode. They're never going to do their own research. We understand that, and this is episode isn't necessary for them, but more so like seeing this, look at that our radio as what it is, which is a radio, which is an audio archive, and we're contributing to the audio archive by having this be in existence, because you can't say, well, I haven't learned, I haven't found it. Well, it's right here that we're going to break it down for you right here in this episode. Yeah, and this is you know, we're going to cite all kinds of sources that are have been in existence for a very long time and accessible. What we always try and do is break this down to Okay, what's the institutional issue here? Education in America is very faulty. I can't blame our entire community for not having access to proper history and education, but it is reflected in these comments and it's very upsetting and frankly disturbing. In addition to all the negative feedback, There were also hundreds of comments and people sharing their own experience with language violence, their grandparents, experience with language violence, things that happened in the nineties, things that happened last month. Even just scrolling through the comments and seeing other people's experiences that reflected what I said, would show you, Oh wait, there isn't actually a vast experience broader than mine. And all I have to do is read these comments. I don't even have to go read a book. I can just read these comments and maybe learn something today. No, totally. And so at the crux here is we have a large number of our community has no idea that we have phased generations and generations of language violence in the United States. Yeah, and that many of us have been here for many, many generations. And what happens is that language gets lost where it gets transformed. Right. And so for those listening too, if you're not familiar with the term, no Sabo kids, I feel like it's kind of a very online term. Maybe it's like a gen Z adaptation of Boschel, Right, this is the terminology we use now, no sabo kids. Yeah, And like the no sabo comes from the word suburb And when you conjugate it, and if you were to say I don't know something, you'll say And so the reason that it's no sabo is because if you don't speak Spanish or you haven't learned the correct like conjugation, you're gonna instead of saying because if you say, for example, abla, the right conjugation for the yo is yoablo And so in your mind you're like, oh, yeah, it's no sabo because ablab right, right, But no, that's that's no se And so that is like where that also comes from, because a lot of people would speak it and would say it, you know, quote incorrectly and would say no sabo instead of no set. And that's how like it became no sabo kids. Yeah, absolutely, I think there's also like, look all over the country, you have communities where people speak creolized languages. You know, their English is mixed with French, is mixed with other things. And that's what we speak here. We speak like an amalgamated version of Spanish. It's Spanish and English, it is Spanglish, like we have like a little regional dialect thing going on here. So I think, yeah, sure, it's grammatically incorrect, but you know what I'm saying exactly, and that's the thing. It's like, you know, you still know that, like the point that I can get across. And if I were to go into the street and say that to someone trying to find directions and I'll say, you know, and I said, no, savo, you know, like you would probably understand it. You would know what I'm getting at. Right, Oh, totally. And I think too, like speaking of like transformation growing up, like Spanglish was looked down upon in my in my family, with my parents, with my dad specifically because he didn't he didn't like it. He said it you you sounded like a pocha, right. I don't think he used that word, but he didn't like the idea that like your Spanish wasn't perfect, it wasn't correct, what have you. Now, I've noticed that both of my parents, actually my dad is still like primarily Spanish, but the Spanish very like, very seldomly, but it happens. And my mom speaks a lot more Spanish now too. And so even within my parents who are of an older generation, seeing them transform and how they've used Spanish and Spanglish is okay because it's so normal now, especially in Los Angeles. Everybody speaks English. Yeah, and again like we have to let languages evolved. Yes, totally, it's wild. Let's get into some of these comments. Yeah, one of my favorite comments, and it's actually not my favorite at all, but you know what I mean. Um. One of the more outrageous comments was actually from a signol because I had to go look at his profile afterwards. And so he says, like, I don't know where the girls are getting their input and exposing as if it was a norm that moms and dads are not teaching their native language. Is nothing but bs And so I had to respond to this man in Spanish, Yes, and I did, what did you say in Spanish? Something along the lines of like I he responded in English? Of course, of course he probably this fool probably doesn't even speak Statish. Great, and they're just like some just also very simple comments of like dumbist shit I've seen all week and that's just stupid, and you know, and you know, you guys, it's look, we've been online long enough. People will use any opportunity to pile on and talk shit too. Beautiful women on the internet. They just need an excuse, They just need a reason they're like dying to do it. And I see that's all those comments where this this is just stupid, dumbest thing. I'm like, you were just enjoying the vitriol. Oh yeah, but yeah, to dive into it, you know, I do want to give a disclaimer that we're focusing mainly on the Southwest, but we know this history is broader than this region. But we're citing a lot of things that are specific to California, Texas and the American Southwest. Yeah, and there's a lot of layers to this history. I mean, of course, like we can go all the way back and we can start with this was native land, and it was and there were tons and tons of native languages being spoken here in northern Mexico. What have you. We have Spanish colonization, we have in the British, we have manifest destiny. So we have all these things circling around. And as much as it's not true for everyone that statement of weedn't cross the border, the border cross desk, that's not everybody's history, but it is a history for many millions of people, you know. So let's go back. Schools segregated, including in the American Southwest, not just in the South. You would see segregation even in businesses and signs in storefront windows like no Negroes, Mexicans or dogs allowed. You can google these signs and they'll pop up, you know. Yeah, and there were specifically like schools just for Mexicans. You know, we think of segregation, and we think of Brown versus Board of Education, which obviously was monumental in desegregating all of schools in the United States, but prior to that, there was also Westminister versus Mendes and so that was actually Westministers in Orange County. And so in nineteen forty five, along with four other family's, Amendous Family filed a class action lawsuit against four Orange County school districts, and their goal was to ensure that all children could attend California schools regardless of race, because there were Mexican only schools. And so this was in nineteen forty five. Because they successfully sued the school district, this set precedent four Brown versus Board of Education, which later went on to desgregate all of the public schools in the US. And so nineteen forty five was not that long ago. Like I have to reiterate, even though people may say, like, well, I grew up in the eighties and my parents got here in the sixties. Nineteen forty two was not that long ago. No, it really wasn't. And my family was already in California before nineteen forty two. My father's grandparents immigrated from Chihuahua to Bakersfield and then continued on three generations of farm workers in Bakersfield. The language loss has been happening since before, since way before nineteen forty two, and so my family lived through all this stuff in a lot of ways. That's why we speak our Spanglish. I mean, we know in the United States we had indigenous we had Indian boarding schools. The goal was to eradicate indigen eighty including language. There was a similar but distinct process in the American Southwest, where although as we know, not all Mexicans are indigenous, you do have a sort of like hispanicized Mexicanized ethnically indigenous population similarly being put into segregated specific schools to extract language like this was done intentionally and systematically and rather successfully. Right you had a school, for example, the Blackwell School, built in nineteen o nine, segregated until nineteen sixty five, which again not that long ago, super recent. My mother was born in nineteen fifty five, y'all, Like that was not that long ago, Like our parents lived through segregated schools in the United States, like through that period, through that history. So the Blackwall School served the Latino Mexican community of Marfa, Texas, and was declared a historic site in twenty nineteen, again very recently, to preserve a part of American history which had been signed which was signed into law in twenty twenty two. So again this is American history, and part of the history of America is like dehispanicizing, you know, Mexicans, Latin X people, Spanish speakers, and stripping our language from us. Yeah, fast forward, you now have the conundrum of the Nosabo kid, which is not a conundrum at all. We know exactly how this happened. Yeah, there's a map. So when I found the Blackwall School, you know, and saw that it was declared a historic site, it's technically falls under like a National Park site because the school is like still intact, and so it's to see like, this is what a segregation at school looked like, this is what a Mexican only school looked like. So it's quite literally to preserve like the also visuals of like this is what it looked like, like this is what a Mexican only school looked like. And it was actually at that school. Um. One of the reasons that it was part of this Historic Site declaration is because this is one of the schools where children were paddled for speaking Spanish. And so there's this La Times article, We're going to link it in our show notes. And some of the adults now that went to school there at the time shared that their teacher made them have a funeral for Spanish. So she wrote on the blackboard the word Spanish, had all the kids write it on a paper. They went and put it in a box and buried it because Spanish was no longer allowed to be spoken at this school, that they had a literal funeral for Spanish. And so one of the kids was like, and she paddled him in front of everybody, and so they all learned they couldn't speak Spanish at school. And so later these same now adults go back and they have this very beautiful ceremony where they're burying a Spanish dictionary because they all have Spanish. They've reclaimed the Spanish. Wow. And so this is a very powerful, beautiful article in the La Times that we're again we're linking in the show notes so again to show like they're not only is there this historical site, but there's also still people alive that experienced that violence in schools totally. Growing up, my dad would tell me stories all the time about when he was in elementary school, the kids that had Spanish accents and spoke English with an accent would be placed in the special ed, the special education classes as if they had like a learning disability, right, you know, So there was a direct impact on their educations and their futures, their prospects, just because of speaking with an accented English. And so what we're also talking about here is like multiple layers of language laws where those of us who did have an indigenous language being spoken in the family that was eradicated and replaced with Spanish, and then that was eradicated and replaced with English. Right. And so what we're speaking now is not only whatever remnants we have of our Spanish, but it's also whatever remnants are left of our past indigenous language that we might have spoken at some point. Right, there's a rumor in my family that our last name on my dad's side is actually a Getua last name, and that my grandfather changed it to like a Spanish surname intentionally, and so there's no record of this. This is like family myth. I don't know like if it's true, and none of my family talks about it. But when I was in Bidu, my thea was the one that told me. And she was like my grandfather's like his sister in law, so she knew like the family history and they all grew up together, and so she was the one that told me this, and she was very much like, but don't really tell people because like no one wants to talk about it, you know, because what does that mean? That means we have to talk about Oh guess what our grandfather was an indigenous man. Yeah, right, and same with my grandmother. And so to your point, like, there's various losses that have happened depending on where you're from, depending on your family history. And I think too this speaks to like the culture of silence in Latin x Latino communities. If we don't talk about it, it never happened. So these people that say like, oh, I've never heard this, Oh this isn't true, probably because your family has never talked about it or they haven't experienced it. Like, there's so many different things happening at the same time. There's a lot of different things happening at the same time, and I think sometimes when we're not getting our proper look the b ning of books, the attacks on ethnic studies Arizona, Texas, they have been the Mexican American and Chicano communities and Black communities down there have been fighting for years now to retain ethnic studies, Black studies, Chicano studies specifically, these programs have been in place, these books have been you know, like accessible to the students down there, and there's just been a constant war to eradicate that education. And when we don't have that education, like that's the only place where this history is housed. Realistically, you have to take a Chicano studies class, or an Ethnic studies class, or a Mexican American studies class to get this. And I think like at that point, you know, if you're an adult, right and you don't know this history, and a young adult, right, like if you're thinking of a linear path of you go to community college or a four year at eighteen, Right, it's kind of too late. Like, yes, the Chicano studies classes are important, the Mexican American history, Latino history in the US one thousand percent to present advocate for that, but it's also I feel like it should be a part and I know that there's movements to make it a part of K through twelve education, right, bring ethnic studies to middle schools as well. I think in Arizona it has been Yeah, and I and I think that's also why we're seeing like the critical race theory, like as if that's actually being taught in schools. What's being taught is history, American history, Chicano history, Black American history. And you know, I think that we've talked about this in the past. There's so many Latino Chicano people in like border patrol, in LAPD, in the prisons and corrections and working in positions of like oppression. I think part of there's, like we've talked about this, right, there are white Latinos, there are white aspiring Latinos, and then there's like white behaving Latinos. And if you are completely disconnected, did from all of this history and you have no idea the likelihood of like being brought into conservative ideology, conservative values, white supremacist values and thoughts is so much higher. And I think the community is so much more susceptible to buying in to white supremacist thought when we have that fluidity almost to opt in or to fight against it. And I just think like between the schools, and then also like our parents, I think a lot of times we have parents who want us to just like go with the flow, you know, blend in, don't. I think a lot of older parents don't want us to feel like we're victims, you know. So then it means we're talking about these things, is like like talk like we're complaining, right, Yes, And that was some of what was in the comments. You quick complaining this is exaggerated. You guys are exaggerating. Guys are making this up. Look at these seventy year olds, they are still recounting being beaten in schools, and tell them that they're exaggerating. You can tell me I'm exaggerating, but don't go and tell our seniors, our literal ancestors, you know, our elders, that they're exaggerating you know, like that we're not doing that, and I think like acknowledging, like there's also you know, people in position of power that advocate for only English, right from doctors to school teachers to speech pathologists. When I told my mom that we were producing this episode, she was telling me, oh, yeah, you know they're My brother, you know, is in his forties, and so in nineteen seventy nine, he was in kindergarten and the school was concerned that he wasn't pronouncing his words right, so they referred my mother to a speech pathologist, and the speech pathologist said, well, you should just pick one language. That's why he's having a problem. Now we know, right, the research shows that being bilingual has so many benefits to your brain, to your development, etc. Etc. But at the time, in nineteen seventy nine, which again was not that long ago, there was a speech pathologist advocating for to learn one language. So what in my mom pick? She picked English? And so my brother and I even have entirely different experiences with Spanish because my brother would be like more of a Boche Mexican American Spanish speaker. Because we have different fathers, we have different experiences, right, and so even in the own our own family, we have a very different like understanding and use of Spanish, and Spanish really is learned at home and in your family. That's the only way you're going to learn how to speak Spanish the way your family speaks Spanish. No class on the face of the earth is going to give you that Spanish language immersion, the vocabulary, that cadence, the tone, the inflection that you learn from repeated exposure every single day since from the day you're born. Like there's also in the comments on this reel, is this like you got to take it upon yourself, Like take it upon yourself to learn Spanish. Take it upon yourself to learn Spanish. I've been taking Spanish classes my whole effing life in school, you know what I mean. My parents have been speaking to me in English since I was a baby, right. The only person I really speak Spanish to you and my family is my grandmother. So there's that piece. If your parents are not speaking to you in Spanish at home every single day from the day you learn to acquire language, you're just not going to speak that fluent Spanish that people want you to speak. Right now, there's also people that choose to not speak Spanish because maybe they're ashamed, maybe they're embarrassed. There's internalized racism that's its own part, right, and that's a biproduct of white supremacy, like to be clear. And then there's also assimilation. And you know, we can't pretend that this country even now systemically supports or encourages cultural differences when we still have people saying, go back to your country, go back to where you came from. Yes, for people that speak other languages. So, like we're living in like an increase in like Asian violence, anti Asian violence. You know, folks that speak their languages in the Asian communities right experience violences people, Latin X folks, obviously black folks. Like there's there's just an array of things happening right now. So to pretend that, like, oh, it's safe to be your like culturally different, it's not like you can maybe live in communities where, yes, like in your living in Los Angeles, you have your pockets where yes, you can like feel culturally grounded. But to pretend that that happens everywhere is false. It's false. And you can go back and on the piece on indigenous language erasure and all of this. Something that I find so interesting is like we literally we interviewed Adelia Romero of My Cello. Go back and listen to that episode and hear from Adelia about indigenous languages, language violence and Spanish. That is like the context that I see, Like nobody in the comments is tapping into that reality and that conversation. And it's a lot of first, second, third gen Mexican Americans, right, Chicano's whatever, very committed to well, we're natives and we speak a native language. But none of those folks in the comments speak a native language, right, you know, and they're not hearing that conversation from indigenous communities or not hearing it. Yeah. And she talks about the history of language violence in Los Angeles, specifically towards indigenous people and the assumption that anyone that looks brown is Mexican or Latino and speak Spanish when that's not the case. And so she talks about her advocacy work that she clo and just to wrap up about the idea and bit that like Latinos aren't actually like not all Latinos are immigrants and not all Latinos are quote foreigners, especially when you think about the Californios, like people that have been here before this, but when this was Mexico before with the US people that have been here for generations, like your family, Like, so, can you share a little more on that sentiment? I think this again goes back to like where are we learning American history and like understanding our place in California. And I sometimes feel like folks who are more recently immigrated maybe have absolutely no idea that we've been here for that long. It kind of in the comments reflect that for me, that there seems to be this gap in knowledge as far as our timeline I am. I don't. My grandmother is my most recent immigrant story in my family. In my family, my grandmother, my mother is not an immigrant. I am not an immigrant, and on my dad's side, like immigration happens so long ago. It's not a conversation, it's not a part of our reality or our experience when my grandmother shares things here and there. Absolutely, but my grandmother also came here when she was sixteen and the tallest building with city Hall, I was doing research. My grandma was here before the Dodgers got here. She was here before the first Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was laid. I mean, I can continue, you can you know all the things that have been introduced before the Lakers got here, all the things that have happened in La since then, Like she was here before all of that. I think that it's like we're part of a continuum here. And I just the reason why people can speak Spanish at work and in school today is because we were not allowed to speak Spanish. You know, my dad speaks terrible Spanish, was not allowed to speak Spanish growing up, but he was lobbying and protesting and walking out and sitting in and getting cracked over the head with batons and all that stuff. So that you guys can speak Spanish, so you're welcome the next time you just say hey, thank you, thanks, you know what I mean? I don't know. I just there's bigger fish to fry. I feel like with Latinos, we always come down what do we call ourselves and what language do we speak? Yes, we cannot get back. We cannot get past that, just the basics. And it's so sad and like it's very much like there's no how can there be unity in this vast non monolithic community when people are still arguing that you're not Latino enough because you don't speak Spanish, because you're not a real Latino because you use Latin X or Latine or you're using the colonizer's language. You know, what have you? White people are calling you Latin X. No, yeah, people have been Latin Americans have been using Latin X and Latine for decades now, decades, so shut up. You know it's like that. So why we cannot advance as a community, as a broad community, because there we're still fighting about the same shit. Who we are? Who are we? We don't know, We don't know who we are? What are we called? What language do we speak? Those are like the basics of being a human, Like what's my name? And what language do I speak? Like we haven't figured it out? And let me just say this, all these people in the comments, you need to speak Spanish. You need to speak Spanish. You need to speak Spanish. Why do you want me to speak Spanish so bad? So you can annoy me into languages so you can bother me bilingually, you know what. I'm okay like this, Yeah, I'm cool. Yeah right? I mean and I think also too, like I feel like there's a deep insecurity there, Like I am so secure in who I am and my family's history here and even in my language. You know, you know, I get that that's the reality of being here in the US, Like you do start to lose things, and like that's the reality. But I'm also so secure in that that I don't need to be in the comments saying I do speak Spanish. No, I do you know that's not me because no, Like I don't care if you think I speak Spanish or not. The point is, like you're going to criticize even the boat shows, even the Nosabo kids that are trying to learn. Oh, the minute they get a word wrong, you're gonna you're gonna tease them, You're going to criticize them, you're gonna bully them. It's never gonna be enough for you. Never. And that's why I don't care if you don't think I speak Spanish, or if you care, then my quote opinion is wrong. Yeah, this is historically accurate. This is just true. This is just what happened. Yeah, totally. It's like real, there's a real nastiness. There's a real pettiness that comes out when you make mistakes in Spanish. Oh yeah, and people love to to just like revel in that, especially online. You guys don't want us to learn Spanish. You don't care, don't give a shit about our learning. Teach our own kids Spanish. Be concerned about if Spanish, if that's important to you, if it's being taught in your house or not. But don't go and put that on other people. Because I was also the face of this, I felt super called to also one produce this episode with Mala, and two like also get the stimonials from our listeners, testimonies from our listeners, especially the Nosabo kaids, and hear more firsthand, like how this language eratier happens. And so we're going to play a couple today. We got over a dozen, and so we're going to break this up into two episodes. So if you didn't hear yours today, you might you will hear it on the next episode. So to start, Gia from Ontario, Canada. She grew up in Canada. She says, I grew up in North America and was born in Ecuador, and she tells us about growing up with no Latinos around her. I was born in Ecuador, Wayaquil and my parents moved here when I was almost one years old, so I've basically spent my whole life in North America, and my experience being a no Sabo kid is basically there were no Hispanic people around us, so no matter what, we were forced to learn English. I am actually trying to relearn Spanish now because I have a little two year old boy who I just want to give him this gift of our culture, you know, a way to communicate with all of the relatives that he has in equaord And it's just such a gift for me to to be hearing and learning and speaking Spanish again. It just brings me peace and connection to my grandmother and other ancestors who have passed. It's just an amazing gift, and it's awful that anyone has experienced any kind of negativity with speaking their language. Born in Virginia, resides in Maryland. She is a transracial adoptee and is actively trying to reconnect with her culture. Am I a Nosabo kid la verda kisi avesis e the bende. I was born in northern Virginia and Spanish was my first language prior to Foster care and adoption, and over time I lost it. So I took Spanish classes in middle, high school, and college and have accepted it will probably be a lifelong process to reconnect with my schooldas, and that means Spanish too. It's painful and difficult to be othered by non Latin people, and then also by Latin people. In some cases. It's also hard to feel I have to explain or justify why I didn't grow up around Spanish and that I'm an adopted Latina to new people that I meet, because my story of forced family separation and cultural separation is deeply traumatic to me and a story I would rather share when I feel comfortable and safe with someone new. Doctor Renee Lemmas of last's podcast from Lakewood, California. She's an ethnic studies professor, and she tells us one of the reasons Spanish has not been passed down and why it continues to happen now. She also shares why language is not the only cultural marker. You know, Emma, professor, I've taught in Ethnic studies and Chica Next Studies, and I talk a lot about this, this idea of why oftentimes the Spanish language hasn't been passed down for generations, and absolutely the historical context that Diosa was giving is absolutely right. There were what was called Americanization programs, where it was government funded programs, often led by Protestant churches, and they would go into so we're talking about in Texas right after the Mexican American War, and they would go into Mexican communities and particularly target the women and children and encourage the mothers not to speak Spanish to their children. And they would kind of do these weird trainings where they would teach them how to they would discourage them not just from not speaking Spanish, but from also cooking their traditional foods. Is I think that a lot of people get caught up to in that, you know, the Spanish language is so much a part of our culture, and it is, and I do think on some level it is important, and yet it's not the only thing that is part of Mexican or Latin X culture. There's so many other things, you know, food and traditions and customs and you know, family values. There's just so much to it that I think when we only put the emphasis on, like you know, that language is the only way that we can preserve our culture. I think it negates that there's so many other things that are a part of our people today are still being discouraged from teaching their children Spanish. So my best friend who had her child was PREMI and she's raised in a bilingual household, and it seemed like she was having some speech delays, and they were saying, well, it might be because of the two languages that she's learning and it's going to confuse her, when in fact, all the evidence, all the research shows that that is not the case, that in fact, children up to seven years old have the brain capacity to learn multiple languages. So of course I immediately sent her all these articles and all these research in order for her to give to her doctor to show that that's not going to cause any kind of speech delays. Research does show that there might be speech delays up to like a year or two years, but that eventually bilingual or multilingual children will will catch up, and that obviously I always say that knowing multiple languages is like a superpower. So yeah, so I wanted to make the point. And I had another friend who was told immediately after birth sort of question like you're not going to teach your kids Spanish, right, and we're talking like I'm in the hospital right after birth. And because my friend is also a doctor, it was also able to bring in research and evidence to tell the doctor like, no, that's not you know, yeah, I was able to kind of push back against this doctor's racist remarks. But of course it had me think how many vulnerable people are being told by you know this by doctors and being made to feel like, well, the doctor must know best, right, So this is not something that's just a part of our history, but something that continues to happen, and that there's there's a lot of this rhetoric. Brianna Quinto aka Brie Burrito currently lives in the IE and she is a second generation No Sabo kid. It's hard for me to summarize my experience because I'm like second generation no Sabo third if we're really thinking about it, and people are always surprised to hear this because one they're like that's a thing, and two they're really surprised that both my parents are actually like Latino Latina origin. From my personal experience growing up, I definitely was bullied if not girls try to fight me just because I didn't speak Spanish. I grew up with a lot of friends that spoke Spanish. I grew with my grandmother that spoke Spanish. But again that's where the generational things come from. She's from Texas and she felt so ashamed about her own Spanish because she spoke Spanglish. If she knew someone could speak English, she was going to speak English because she felt ashamed that her Spanish wasn't quote unquote proper enough. But you know, there's gonna be a hard pill for something y'all to swallow. You are not very welcoming and if not hostile to people who you think should speak Spanish. And if an Anglo American says they want to learn, you know, open arms. The most patients in the world, you know, happy, gleeful. But when you see someone who is of Latin X origin, Latine origin, Latino origin, they don't speak it, you turn a lot of people, So don't get personal. Lab will turn into this hustle. Oh so you think you're better. She should already know. Jenna Palacios from Pomona but currently residing in Long Beach. She's a reformed no Savo kid. So I would consider myself a reformed no Savo kid. I grew up not learning Spanish. Spanish was not spoken to my home. However, my extended family speak Spanish. My grandparents speaks Spanish. My dad just didn't feel like it was useful to teach us Spanish. He didn't think that we would use it in the future. He felt that English was going to be the dominant language. So pretty wild because now that I'm fluent in Spanish, I speak Spanish literally every single day. I consume primarily Latin media, Latin American media, books, music, So I know he's really shocked about that. So my family has a pretty strong history of assimilation, and I think when we look at assimilation, you know, it's it's sad, and especially in the context of like poking fun out and Nosavo kids. You know, you're losing your cultural identity, you're losing touch with your roots, and it's violent, and you know, it's just like our history the United States with Indian boarding schools, really all of that cultural ethnic erasure that happens. And now I don't really feel that a lot of people think about that because they are just so focused on assimilating to survive. So my grandfather, his family was from Texas, South Texas, and they were there since like the sixteen hundreds when it was Mexico. He grew up being bilingual, but he supposedly attended Mexican segregated schools and the kids were punished in school for speaking Spanish. My grandmother's from Mexico, and when they raised my dad and his siblings, they spoke primarily Spanish, and they learned English in school, you know, like many kids do. And my dad probably won't admit it. And I am making assumptions here and based off things that my mom has told me that he's told her. I don't think he had great experiences in school. I think he experienced a lot of racism in his young adult life, and so I think that's why assimilation for him was so important and something he put a lot of work into. Marissareya is raised in Bakersfield. She shares her experience with US hideosa Hia. My name is Marissareas and I'm an Osabok. My mom's family is from Mexico City, and my dad's family, his dad is from somewhere near Sacatecas. We don't really know exactly. Because she was fleeing an abusive relationship and my dad's mom. Her family is from Texas from what it was still in Mexico, and so I joked that the border crossed her and and it is really prevalent my Avoila's experience in talking about my relationship with Spanish. So Mioela grew up in the Great Depression, and she talks about having gone through the American education system and how discriminatory they were, how they refused even to hire bilingual folks to help out. So Maouela actually went through kindergarten, I think she said, for three years because they just wrote them off as like just not being intelligent because they didn't speak English. Mayavola was hit by teachers like literally forced to sit in a corner with like a dunce cap kind of thing on for speaking Spanish. And when I've talked to her about my experience struggling with not knowing the language, she and you know, I grew up with around a lot of other Mexican kids and they were more first and second gen whereas Maeuela has been in this country for a long time because it used to be in Mexico, and she did not like that, even though she would love for me to know more Spanish. She was like, then, they don't know their history about what we've been through in this country. Maauella was incredibly active in the Chicano Power movement and raised her kids to be so proud to be Chicanos, and Maauella is a very proud to Hannah. Rebecca ruis Aka from merc just moved back to Texas and she shares why her mom chose not to teach Spanish to her and her siblings. My parents were not kids who got punished in school for speaking Spanish. That was the experience that my fi Cynthias might have had. But my parents, specifically, growing up in the sixties on the border, we're not punished for speaking Spanish with them. It was more that they wanted our lives to be easier so they we wouldn't have to learn English in school, and they just assumed incorrectly that we would learn Spanish later in school. Of course, here we are in our thirties and we still can't speak Spanish. So again, I do understand where my parents were coming from. So thank you locomotives for tuning in, for engaging let us know what you think of this episode. Please comment, Please subscribe, Share with a friend, Share with anyone that's maybe doubting this part of us history. Let us know what you think. Yeah, sure, this with your most ignorant cousin. Oh my god, I didn't say that. I did. You could be like said, I should send this to you because you're ignorant. You might like this. No, um, you know, send it around, Send it to all your friends and family, everyone you're dating, everyone you used to date. Like, everyone should hear this. Honestly, that's what I think. And um, visit our website look at thot radio dot com. You can send us voice memos like all the time. You can send them on our website. We have the infrastructure there. We have the speak pipe, so you can submit that way and we will catch you next time. Look at That. Our radio is a production of Look at That. Our productions in partnership with Ihearts Michael podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A radiophonic novella posted by Mala Munyas and Bosam Take us to your network