Uploaded on: 06/24/2007
Latinos bring gifts of spirituality, traditions, focus on family
As natives of Mexico, the Centeno family said it is important to maintain their cultures and traditions. Shown, from left: Marielena, Giselle, Enrique, Darlene and Kevin. 
Transito and Porfirio Martinez discuss how Holy Week is celebrated in El Salvador. 
Ivett and Klever Palacios love the fact their home parish, Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Minneapolis, has an Ecuadorian flavor to it. Also shown is their 10-month-old son Christian. |
They come from Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Cuba and other Latin American countries. They’re looking for a new way of life.
They bring gifts of deep spirituality, hospitality and a focus on celebrating family and friends.
They are our Latino and Hispanic brothers and sisters who have moved to Minnesota in droves in the last several decades, especially in the past 10 years. (See related sidebar.)
And like so many immigrants who came to America before them, they also bring their cultures and traditions to our Catholic family of faith.
Three Latino families sat down with editor Mike Krokos to share their stories.
A war leads a family abroad
Porfirio and Transito Martinez knew it was time to leave El Salvador when the country’s civil war escalated in the early 1980s.
They and their children moved to Mexico, where the family lived for nine years. After a short stay in California, the family headed to Minnesota in 1991.
“We were looking for security for our kids,” said Porfirio about the move here, and also “looking for a better economy” in which to raise their family.
In Minnesota, the family first landed in the rural town of Madelia (south of Mankato), where they lived for three years. There, the Martinez children initially struggled in school because there was no program in place to help non-English speaking students.
The family later moved to St. Paul, where Porfirio worked in a hotel and at United Hospital before becoming the director of religious education for Holy Rosary parish’s Latino community in Minneapolis four years ago. (The family continues to be active members of Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul.)
The Martinezes said there have been challenges adjusting to life here.
“I try and understand a little,” said Transito, a housewife, of her attempts to learn English and become bilingual. “The most important thing is to be able to communicate” with others, she said.
For his part, Transito has tried to “adapt to living” in Minnesota, and “inculturating myself” in a new place, he said.
Family plays a huge part in how the Latino community identifies itself. Witness the visit with the Martinezes: It also includes their 25-year-old daughter, Lorena, and her two daughters, 5-year-old Gabriela and 19-month-old Carmen.
“It is a cultural thing. For me, it [my family] is not only my wife and kids, but also now my grandkids. . . . You are never alone. Even when you are old and sick, there is always someone with you,” Porfirio said.
The Martinezes brought many of El Salvador’s traditions with them. Some of the bigger faith celebrations include: La dia de los muertos, or All Souls Day, Nov. 2; La dia de la fiesta de candelaria, or the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, Feb. 2; and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the Americas, Dec. 12.
“Holy Week is also a very special time for us,” Transito said. In El Salvador, “we have processions out in the street.”
From Mexico to Minnesota
Enrique and Marielena Centeno said faith had a lot to do with leaving their native Mexico and moving to the United States.
After living in Los Angeles for a few years, the family moved to Minnesota seven years ago.
“We think God has something for us here,” said Enrique, who is a
special-education teacher in the St. Paul public schools system.
“We didn’t like California. We didn’t want our kids to grow up there” with all the social and economic challenges, added Marielena, who smiles while looking at the couple’s three children: Darlene, 12; Kevin, 8; and Giselle, 4.
Marielena is a part-time Spanish teacher at St. Francis-St. James United School, the school that is part of their parish, St. James in St. Paul.
There are challenges to living in the Twin Cities, Enrique said, but many of them are the product of an ever-evolving society.
For the Centenos, “It’s raising our kids in the Catholic faith . . . and maintaining our family, making sure we raise them as good Christians,” Enrique said. Also, being able “to maintain our own culture.”
To maintain that heritage, the children are enrolled in Spanish dance classes. St. James is also a “very multi-cultural” parish where many Latin American countries are represented, Marielena said.
Parish get-togethers also have become a wonderful opportunity for the Latino and Anglo communities at St. James to get to know one another, she added.
“They want to integrate into our cultures,” Marielena said. They ask, “When is the next party? We love your customs, your food, your celebrations.’”
Some of the customs the Centenos bring from Mexico include celebrating All Souls Day and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Another, Las Posadas — nine consecutive days of consecutive days of candlelight processions and lively parties — starts Dec. 16 and leads up to Christmas.
An Andean beat in Minneapolis
You can see Klever Palacios’ face light up when he talks about music.
But even more important, he beams when discussing his wife, Ivett, and their 10-month-old son, Christian.
A native of Ecuador, Klever came to Minnesota three years and brought his love of “Andean folk music, dancing and customs” with him
A cleaning service supervisor by day, Klever is also the music director for Spanish Masses at Ss. Cyril and Methodius in northeast Minneapolis.
At the parish, about 90 percent of the Latino community is from Ecuador, so Klever and Ivett — who teaches computer classes — feel very much at home.
“It is a characteristic to show the faith of the people” through music, Klever said.
Lively Masses with contagious rhythms are a staple at Ss. Cyril and Methodius.
Like immigrants who move to a foreign country, the Palacioses face other challenges, too. They, like the Martinez and Centeno families, say maintaining their cultural identity and passing it on to future generations is a priority.
“It is very important for our son to grow up and learn about his culture,” Klever said.
That will include celebrating Ecuador’s independence day Aug. 10, along with other Latino faith traditions such as All Souls Day, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and, in Ecuador, La Dia de la Virgen de la Nube, or the Day of the Virgin of the Remote Cloud, on Jan. 1.
The devotion dates back to 1696, after Bishop Sancho de Andrade and Figueroa had taken seriously ill. It is related that, thanks to the faith and the prayers of the faithful for the health of the bishop, their appeared in the sky between Guápulo and the Quinche the image of the Virgin Mary in a white cloud.
Pursuing a better life
The families say they like the fact their children will be bilingual.
“It gives them more opportunities by learning two languages,” Transito Martinez said.
For the younger generation born here, “It helps them not only maintain their culture but to be able to communicate with the older generation,” added her daughter Lorena.
The bottom line is that Latinos who come to Minnesota are pursuing a better life, the families said.
“We don’t come to do damage. We come with a dream and to flourish with our kids,” Lorena said.
Life lessons can be learned when people open their cultures to each other, Enrique said.
We come “to enrich ourselves,” Marielena added.