Hey, I’m Latina! Will You Pay Attention To Me Next Week?

Let’s peel back all the layers of Hispanic Heritage Month—the good, the bad, the ugly, the fun, the laughs, the side eyes and the worry—and ask: what does culture have to do with it? 

Hot (and informed) takes from a multicultural marketing expert.

Author Marcela Gómez shares her wisdom as a Latina entrepreneur and multicultural marketing expert on Hispanic Heritage Month and what this means for her as a Colombian immigrant to the U.S.

Here’s something you may have never thought about: when I lived in Colombia, I was Sylvia Marcela. When I moved to Nashville, I was Hispanic. 

This simple but powerful illustration demonstrates how I’m looked at by different people—and it’s had real-world effects on my day-to-day life since I was 29 years old and stepped foot on Tennessee soil for the first time. I never viewed myself as Hispanic because we didn’t use that term outside of the U.S. 

I was trying to figure out my new identity moving to the South and there you were expected to somehow fit inside a box, any box. 

Cue years of self-discovery, a love for getting to deeply know people, helping others understand each other across worlds of differences, starting my first company Hispanic Marketing Group and even being CEO and multicultural marketing expert of my current company Culture Shift Team—can you tell this exploration and questioning of identity shaped the trajectory of my life?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we are spiritual beings having a human experience. 

Every single individual on Earth has had a different set of life experiences, regardless if they share pieces of their identity with others, like their upbringing, culture, language, ancestors, or even going to the same college, even years apart. 

You can be proud of a part of your identity and celebrate it and still focus on it just being a part of your identity. 

It’s part of my identity that I am Colombian, it’s part of my identity that I am a woman, it’s part of my identity that I am an entrepreneur, a  film fanatic, a single mother, and on and on we go with all the pieces of me I identify with. 

I’m sure by now you’ve heard how damaging and positive Hispanic Heritage Month can be in the U.S. (yes, both!). I’ll touch on this below, but I want to give you other perspectives that play into the complex identity of being categorized as ‘Hispanic.’ 

Our identities, integration into culture, work life, value as a human being, necessary mindset shifts and how, yes, even marketing affects us are all deeply intertwined in this conversation.

Below we’ll go over the five top insights for you to read, mull over and question about celebrating, acknowledging or not even caring about the last month—especially if you’re not “Hispanic.”

“You’re Not Latina Enough”—Excuse Me?

What exactly does being “Latina” sound like? Look like? 

You’d be amazed at how many times we are told to make our accents thicker for T.V. roles or if we get a little shrug from people who say, “Well, you don’t sound like Sofia Vergara to me. She’s Latina.” 

If we don’t fit into the “role” of being Latina as some people want us to, they erase us from that category altogether—the exact opposite of celebrating who you are, exactly how you are. 

We do it to ourselves as well. 

We also say, Wow, you’re Hispanic and you don’t speak Spanish?? We put ourselves into this box and build out its exclusivity with requirements to speak Spanish or speak it in the way that we expect you to. There are heavy expectations to fit the box you’re put into by others and act in the way they want you to act “accordingly.” 

But who said speaking Spanish was a requirement of being Latina?

So we also have to get rid of our own biases and our own ideas of what this “Latinidad” needs to look like and centralize the idea that we are all humans who walk our own paths—and that, naturally, looks different for everyone. 

For example, my aunts stayed in the U.S. from Colombia in the 1960s and had kids who don’t speak Spanish. What makes me proud to be Colombian may not be what makes another person proud of being Colombian. 

All of our experiences are specific to us. 

Mixing Cultures Like It’s An Acculturation Cocktail 

As we all know now, there’s a huge celebration of the day of the dead on November 1st. I definitely knew nothing about this. 

In Colombia, if you’re Catholic, you celebrate el Día de Todos Los Santos (All Saints Day) on November 1st. But I had to learn about all these other holidays and dates from other Hispanic nations that were being celebrated in the US. 

So on top of acculturating to U.S. culture and regions—a process when someone enters a different culture and needs to figure out and learn how to adapt and thrive—I also went through the process of acculturation within the Hispanic label and box. 

So then I’m all of a sudden no longer only Colombiana, I’m now expected to know the culture, the background, the food, the celebrations and the reasons why people do and do not do certain things in the 33 separate countries of Latin America—and sometimes maybe even Spain. 

Isn’t that insane?

We are put in a position where you’re speaking on behalf of everyone in that group—something most of us do not appreciate. I can only speak for myself, what I’ve lived, my experiences and what I know. For nobody else, even if they are from my same country or background. 

What people don’t realize with the process of acculturation is that we are adapting to not only cultures and labels, but to whole new identities for ourselves. 

In presentations, I always start by telling my own story, how I’m Colombian and a woman and my path is different from everyone else, but I can give you a general idea of how we make decisions and our path because as we come into the U.S. and make this our home, we all transition to being Hispanic and now Latinx, or some version of them. 

Picking and choosing between Hispanic or Latina, well, Marcela is what I prefer. 

How Hispanic Heritage Month Can Be Both Good and Bad

In the beginning, when I first moved to Tennessee, I embraced Hispanic Heritage Month (HHM) fully. 

I viewed it as an opportunity to celebrate our culture because well, who doesn’t want to eat an empanada or listen to cumbia Colombiana or Mexican mariachi? We are doing this as Latinos and get to enjoy who we are—fantastic! 

As the years went by, I realized that I was only getting speaking engagements during HHM. Only during this one 30-day period of the year. Many of my musician friends were also hired only during HHM. They wind up exhausted. 

I appreciate the holiday and the idea of those celebrations, like also the established LGBTQ+ and Black History Month, I appreciate them in the sense that they give visibility to a community. But I don’t appreciate how it’s only during a specific time period that we are acknowledged.

When I was President of the Tennessee Latin American Chamber of Commerce, everyone asked me, “What are we doing for Hispanic Heritage Month?” 

My response? We will celebrate local and, as a chamber, we will celebrate our members and our heritage the entire year. That was how I saw my reasoning at the time, whether it aligned with others’ views or not. 

As I see time go by and read how much the Latino population continues to grow in the U.S., people are more aware of who we are. But the representation in film, advertising and corporate boards is not even close to the percentage of who we are in the country. It doesn’t add up. 

We have to continue to show who we are as a culture and, most importantly, as individuals—with our own stories, experiences and contributions. 

One of the first questions I ask prospective clients when they tell me they want to target the Hispanic markets is: which ones? That’s usually where the conversation ends on their part. 

You have to be aware of everything I just said—thirty-three countries are not a tiny piece of the world pie. It’s 33 countries with their own customs, traditions, holidays, histories, etc. 

All of these celebrations are beautiful for their intentionality, and certainly allow people from groups to come out, come together, be shown, be visible and be able to share their cause and their plights and their stories. 

But the part that worries me is this: Is that the only time of the year you will see me and acknowledge who I am?

Who Even Cares? Ignoring These Nuances Can Cost You Big Time

We can feel the authenticity and the intention behind how businesses use Hispanic Heritage Month to acknowledge other humans. 

When all I see all of a sudden on September 15th loads of celebrations for Hispanic folks, it’s still telling me that I will be acknowledged during these days and the rest of the days (to be clear, 335 days) I will not be accounted for. 

So we go back to the equity and inclusion drawing board—what do they actually mean?

I remember when I moved to Nashville and my mother would come to visit for the summers. She’d tell me she never hears the word “diversity” more than when she comes to Nashville. I told her that’s because, in Miami, you all are so diverse you don’t have to shout it, but in places where we still have to make sure we are seen, we still have to use the word “diversity.” 

In my opinion, when people ask me when are we going to be diverse, I say when we stop using that word. I mean, I don’t go around saying I’m human! We just are. 

We have to be careful how we use these designated months and ask ourselves what’s the intention behind them. 

For an easy exercise in doing this, ask yourselves these questions:

• Does your company have a segmentation marketing strategy for the US Hispanic market or is it a translation strategy? 

• Does your company have an intentional strategy to attract and retain Hispanic talent?

• Is your company trained for the cultural mindsets your Hispanic employees bring to work? Or are you Ok with celebrating HHM with a social media post or two?  

As a marketer and advertiser, the most important process and question is who is your target audience? Peeling that onion completely to see who that target audience really is is essential to a good, sustainable business marketing plan. 

This is fascinating to me because I get to dive into sociology, psychology and anthropology among other research- and discovery-heavy topics and come back to the client and present with confidence, based on who you are and what you’re offering this is your target audience.

We have to understand that just because you do something and call it Hispanic marketing doesn’t mean you’re hitting the nail on the head. You could be punching the wall and opening holes everywhere and not getting to where you want to go. 

You’d be wasting time, money and energy looking toward places that don’t even exist instead of profiting from a place of valuable data-driven authenticity. 

It’s always satisfying when I get to watch clients go through the discovery and realization of where they were misplacing their efforts to now getting it without nuanced exploration of who exactly they’re trying to attract.  

Let’s Normalize Celebrating Humans Year-Round

So the real question now becomes: what is it that people can do year-round to uplift people then?

This may be very controversial but I think it’s a step-by-step process. 

When we can stop using the word diverse, when we don’t have to acknowledge or label people and create a different identity for them, that’s when we know we truly are being inclusive year-round. 

Not everyone might agree with this, I understand that I’m a 57-year-old who’s had a difficult time readjusting my identity again to the newer Latinx label—I simply don’t want to be a part of that. But I understand that younger generations might want to be under a different umbrella. 

I also have to evolve and adapt or at least acknowledge that there’s something different. 

When we’re still using the 1st Latino to do this or 1st woman of color to do Y, that still tells us that we are not where we should be in being inclusive and equitable. We still have to say the race and ethnicity and gender of the person in order to highlight their achievements.

So, what do we have to do?

First of all, we have to pay attention to ourselves, our minds, our mindsets and what we tell ourselves. Our minds work by association. The association as we “wrap up” HHM and say Okay, done!

There’s a lot of work that has to be done in our mindset in order to get to a place where we acknowledge and celebrate who we are by our accomplishments or our characters. 

Our minds are wrapped around the fact that as humans we all have similar and different experiences on how we conduct our lives and how we all are visible but only by the fact of being on Earth. So how do we acknowledge that person without someone needing to tell me that I have to make them visible during a certain month?

What happens with us humans is that we don’t want to be put in boxes so we feel that we can move around—explore ourselves and our identities, freely—without the pressure of fitting into that box under strict “guidelines” imposed by society. 

Most of all as humans we all want to be visible, we want to be acknowledged that we exist, and we want to exist in the way we want to, knowing that our existence matters. 

Allowing people to be who they are and realizing everyone has a path, a purpose and a reason is central to then celebrating and acknowledging each other all year-round and not only during a designated time for a designated box (that’s put onto you, mostly). 

So, if you’re going to put me in a geographic placeholder for your mind, let it be Colombia. 

When you think of me, think of Marcela Gómez, that kickass CEO you’d love to get multicultural marketing wisdom from or fantastic film fanatic friend you’d love to laugh out loud with while eating a delicious dinner and watching a thought-provoking documentary with. 

There are so many ways to look at me and even judge me by. I appreciate my experiences and I am proud of my cultural background—just don’t let it swallow me whole as I’ve got so many other interests to talk about. 

At Culture Shift Team we strive to let every single person feel heard and seen so they can authentically connect with your company values, products and services. We run the research, collect the data and cook you up a customized playbook both internally and externally with multicultural marketing and diversity, equity and inclusion strategies to get your business bursting with a sustainable gameplan and revenue. 

Come chat with us to see how we can best help you the most!