THE GUIDING STARS THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY

by Jonathan Valenzuela Mejia

I arrived in Paris late at night from a long layover in Ireland, anxious and excited for the next months coming. It was the first time that I would be away from home and everything I had known my entire life. For the first few days, the novelty and excitement of being in a different country with a different culture and language carried me, but once I began to adjust and settle into a routine, I began to miss home, my friends, my family and my culture.

While Paris is a very multicultural city with people from all over the world in its boundaries, there aren’t a lot of Latines there, especially not Central Americans such as myself. There are a couple of Latine communities here and there such as Argentines or Chileans, but us Latines are not a monolith, and I could only relate to those communities that were present so much. Granted, I was only in Paris for four months and didn’t have the time to find the smaller communities of Latines that I’m sure existed. However, it was still a relatively difficult time of being limited in my own cultural identity.

Most of us don’t think about it in the United States, but we’re privileged as Latinos in the sense that in places such as California, there’s an abundance of products that remind us of our roots and home. The sprawling businesses of mercados, restaurants, panaderias and many more which constantly tie us to our homelands are everywhere. You could also quite literally survive with just Spanish if you wanted to in California, especially in Los Angeles. That was very much absent in Paris and that absence of latinidad was disheartening.

Fortunately, I found solace in two main things; my friends and food. Many of the friends I made were also Latin American, and speaking to them in Spanish whenever I could really helped me acclimate and make a community for myself far away. Spanish was a way of keeping my culture alive within myself and my other friends. Most of them were exchange students as well, many from the United States with a similar struggle to mine: How to preserve our cultures in a country where we don’t have nearly as much space as we do in the United States or in our own home countries. Some of my closest friends were Salvadoran, Panamanian, Columbian, Brazilian and more. Being with those who relate to me and understood my struggles of cultural isolation really carried me during my time.

The second pillar of my time in Paris and to keep my cultural identity was food. I was never the best at cooking and only recently got into it, but it absolutely made me feel more at ease and at home. For the first time in my life, I made Guatemalan foods I grew up with and ate them while also sharing them with my community of friends both latin american and not. I was also fortunate that there were some Latino Markets (that was how they were called) which were small stores, unlike the sprawling supermercados in the United States that basically teleport you back to the homeland. However, these stores had products from everywhere in Latin America, including Guatemala. I found frijoles Durcal, which as any good Guatemalan knows, are a staple at home. I also found Maseca flour, which I used to make tortillas with and even queso fresco, which was the cherry on top for recreating a quintessential Guatemalan meal, the traditional desayuno. Another staple food of ours, the plantain or el platano in Spanish, wasn’t as hard to find thanks to its relevance in a larger community present in France, the African communities. I went to an open air market one day before class in one of the arrondissements known to have African markets, where I found them at one shack of the many present. With those, I was also able to make rellenitos, one of our signature desserts in Guatemala. The day I made those, I sent a picture to my dad back in the U.S. and he commented on how I was making France a bit more Guatemalan.

While I found comfort in bringing part of my culture to France, I also entered a position of deep reflection. For the first time in my life, I became an immigrant, just like how my parents did when they migrated to the United States. I began to understand my family’s struggles in a different way I never did before, and I don’t think I would have ever gotten it if I didn’t experience it myself. Struggling to communicate with locals in an unfamiliar language to me and getting used to a culture far removed from my own made me realize just how daunting it can be.

Like the stars and moon in a dark night, my culture guided me during a time where I was in the unknown. I was able to come back home with a new perspective of the world, and not only began to appreciate my culture a lot more, but also understand my family more, who, like many other children of immigrants, are the sun in their lives. Because they give us life and warmth, they are our sun and keep us going. We all have different stars in our lives and they always shine most when we need them.