Where did you learn Spanish?
That simple question has always been so hard to answer.
Was it in kindergarten, when I learned how to say numbers and colors? In high school, as I racked my brain looking up definitions in my textbooks? Or in college, when I decided to study Spanish as my major?
The correct answer is none of those places. I truly began to learn Spanish in the same place I fell in love with the language. Not in the pages of a dictionary, but from conversations with my coworkers who spoke it at an Italian sandwich shop in my hometown of Arlington, Virginia. There, three women originally from Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia taught me words and phrases from their home countries, while earning 13 bucks an hour, the same as me, a 14-year-old kid.
As my Spanish continued to improve, I learned that they had received degrees to become lawyers or business administrators from Latin American universities, that their daughters played the piano, that they had siblings and parents living in four different countries. I learned all of this as the customers passed them by, simply because they couldn’t understand them.
When I got to college, I involved myself in the Latino communities at my university and within the surrounding city in Charlottesville, Virginia. I began to volunteer as a tutor with a local nonprofit that offered English classes for Spanish-speaking adults. I worked closely with professors and other faculty to establish new programs across the campus, such as the Languages Across the Curriculum pilot program and a cultural exchange program for international university employees and students.
Again, I heard fascinating stories from such genuine, interesting people. Stories from artists, entrepreneurs and dreamers. A multitude of incredible voices, struggling to be heard. A language barrier so large that the two communities were almost oblivious to the existence of the other.
That’s when I discovered journalism.
Two of my Spanish professors, one from Spain and the other from Mexico, recognized the importance of creating a news source that published Spanish-language content, and decided to form a trilingual magazine for the University of Virginia’s (UVA) Spanish, Italian and Portuguese Department. They called the magazine ‘La UVA,’ a play on the Spanish word for grape and the university’s commonly known acronym.
I worked hard with them during my final year at UVA to put together the first edition of the magazine, which celebrated the role speakers of these languages played in the local and university communities. With original, Spanish-language content, which was also translated into English, I felt I had helped make a significant crack in the wall that separated the two communities.
As the new editor of Sol del Valle, I’m thrilled by the opportunity to continue to ensure that the only Spanish-language newspaper in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys continues to be a platform for Latino voices, stories, artists and businesses in this region.
My goals as editor are to expand coverage in the Colorado River Valley, publish more original, Spanish-language content written by Latinos and to see Sol del Valle grow alongside the community.
Above all, I want to meet all of you, share your stories, listen to your feedback and continue to learn and grow as the editor of Sol del Valle and as a recent inductee of this beautiful community.