Focus — Americano y Latino Bridging the Culture Gap

by Debbie Bartsch

In the 2022 February issue of The Landscape Contractor magazine, I wrote about my life-long story of navigating culture by embracing it One Person’s Mission to Foster Cultural Understanding. Highlights of my journey brought to light my passion for Latinos, the Latin culture, and why the landscape industry has become my home. Being a member of the ILCA Latino Relations Committee, I also mentioned that I am proud of what our committee has done to improve cultural relations and educational opportunities for Latinos in the industry, but we can do more. Well, we are doing more. The ILCA Latino and Americano Subcommittee is a spinoff of the Latino Relations Committee, which started during March of 2021.

As members of the Latino and Americano Subcommittee, we are diverse in ethnicity, backgrounds, and we are from different companies. Jose Garcia is the owner of Natural Creations Landscaping as well as a past President of ILCA. Bernie Carranza is with Moore Landscapes. Pete McNamara is with Dependable Lawn Care. Catalino Mendoza is with Midwest Groundcovers, Terry Holum is with Sebert Landscape. Hernan Cortez is with Kaknes Landscape Supply. Zully Arroyo is with ConservFS. I am with Chalet Landscape, Nursery, and Garden Center.

To begin, Scott Grams, Executive Director of ILCA, introduced us to a book he read by Louis E.V. Nevaer, Managing Hispanic and Latino Employees-A Guide to Hiring, Training , Motivating, Supervising, and Supporting the Fastest Growing Workforce Group. Scott presented us with lists of bullet points from the book, highlighting the differences between the two cultures. Our Latino and Americano Subcommittee then chose 4 categories and we began working on presentations for our upcoming first educational series. These presentations were designed to be given in Spanish, English, or both. All four slide-show presentations began in common with the purpose of these presentations, definitions, statistics of Latinos in the workforce, followed by acculturation and assimilation. iLandscape February 2022 was the debut of the Latino and Americano Subcommittee. We presented our 4-part series. Part 1 was Who We Are. The focus was values and fitting into a changing culture, personal freedom, and the value of education and training. Part 2 was How We Think, with topics of communication, tone, voice, body language, time management and ambition. Part 3 was How We Work, consisting of company and workplace culture and onboarding. Part 4 was How (continued on page 14)

For the purpose of these presentations, we needed to establish a base line. Latinos/English as a second language need to better understand the demands of American workplaces so they have greater job satisfaction and opportunity. Latinos are primarily Spanish speakers with descendants from Latin America including Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Americanos/Spanish as a second language need to better understand the Latino workforce so they work with, not against the differences in culture. Due to the lack of an English term for primarily English speakers who grew up in America’s culture, we adopted the word “Americano”. Americano denotes geographic and cultural origin in the United States.

Regarding acculturation and assimilation from our presentations. Acculturation is understanding and adapting to a different culture while still maintaining traditions. Assimilation is fully adopting and being absorbed into the mainstream culture. Latinos are the first group that does not to need to acculturate due to their massive numbers influencing consumer society. Acculturation occurs before assimilation. Without acculturation and assimilation, the future of America and the workplace will be bicultural, bilingual, with little hope for common ground. This is what we need to overcome.