The culture we were raised in has a significant impact on the way we live our lives. You can take someone out of the culture they grew up in, but you can’t take the culture out of them. It shapes what they idealize, what they expect of others, the goals they set for themselves, what motivates them to keep going. It’s ingrained and impacts places that we wouldn’t expect. At the same time, taking someone out of the culture can cause changes that are present in the next generation. Their original culture becomes hidden as they try to assimilate to the new culture around them. Certain aspects go missing and may never return.

I don’t know when I made this realization, but one day it just hit me that my dad speaks English. It wasn’t the fact that he could speak English, it’s the fact that he could speak it extremely well. He had a fluency that surprised me. If there was an accent you could hear, it was very slight. The difference between my Dad speaking English and my Mom trying to speak was night and day. I don’t mean to be rude but you can tell my Mom is an immigrant when she talks in English. It is very broken but the good thing is that she has gotten a lot better at it over the years. What’s cool to me though is the reason that my dad can speak English well while my Mom can’t, can be tracked down to the culture my parents grew up in. 

There are different expectations on what you are supposed to do in life depending on your gender. The gender roles of Mexico are a lot more apparent than in America. The man is expected to provide while the woman is expected to create. I always liked this comparison, it’s not an original idea, but someone out there said that the man provides the house and the woman makes it a home. It’s cheesy but I think it’s true. In America, both people in a relationship are expected to share the responsibilities while in Mexico, the responsibilities are split depending on if you’re male or female. The dad has to work like a donkey to make sure the family has food to eat while the mom has to make that food, provide a safe environment for the kids, and to make sure they don’t go dumb by making sure they are educated. I wonder if Mexican culture allowed for people like my Mom to have goals/dreams of her own. Or did all she know was to become a mother? Was my Mom happy to leave everything she knew at 17 years old just to raise a family in a world completely foreign to her? If she was born here she had a real chance of getting a career and making a living on her own.

My dad is expected to work and do what he has to do to make sure his wife and kids have a home to sleep in and food to eat. He used to work at a job that paid less than minimum wage because he was an immigrant. To get a job that provided him with a living wage, he had to learn English. Landing a job at a restaurant where it was expected of him to know English or he would get fired was a surprisingly good motivator to become fluent in English. Knowing English is what gets you respect and provides you with opportunities previously kept from you. Learning English had no impact on his Spanish speaking. I could imagine losing touch of your native tongue could be a possibility, being away for so long while speaking a different language.

           In Mexico, family is the most important thing. Here in America, people are a lot more individualistic. It seems that living in America has affected my parents. They don’t have a desire to reach out to the cousins who live in America and those cousins don’t make the effort either. Considering the togetherness of Mexican culture, this is bizarre. 

          My family didn’t bring their culture to America. My dad never wore a sombrero and my mom never wore a traditional dress. When they came here they only brought the food and their language. The food I grew up with was a mix of Mexican and other dishes my dad saw at his work that he wanted to cook for us. The only traditions I knew were eating tamales during the holidays and the setting up of an ofrenda. The ofrenda only happened for two years of my life when it became relevant to my Mom. After that I never saw it again. I think I just made a realization that my culture and its traditions make a return whenever they feel they want to be closer with each other.

          Overall, I could see that there was a shift in culture between my generation and theirs. They grew up in a Mexican village with not much and were not involved with what would be considered traditional culture. What they brought when they came to America were their beliefs, food, and language. Over time Mexican culture was swapped out for American culture as it was necessary to their survival in this country. Despite being Mexican by blood, I won’t ever truly feel Mexican because of the changing cultures my parents experienced.