“What Does Hispanic Heritage Month Mean to You?”
A Conversation with Dr. Paula Cuellar Cuellar

My cultural identity from the beginning has been kind of a mix. I was born in El Salvador, and when I was three years old, because of the civil war, my family and I lived in Mexico for nine years until I was 12, when we returned to El Salvador.

But in the meantime, every year I was going back to spend the summer up there with my grandparents. My life has always been basically living in at least two countries at the same time, because El Salvador was not foreign to me. It was always part of my identity, but at one point, I felt that I was more Mexican.

I always say that my belly button is in El Salvador, my heart is in Mexico, and my physical body is here. My life is here now. But I've been leaving traces all around, and I still try to honor those places. I go back and forth. I still feel like I live in at least two countries.

Since I've been living in the US, I've spent the summers either in El Salvador or Mexico, just like I did when I was a child. I'm very tied to those countries, so I think it's a mix. It’s like a melting pot, like the U.S., but in me, in my body.

As I said, I was born in El Salvador. But El Salvador, at that time, at the beginning of the 80s, was a country ravaged by wars. So the culture was not something you paid much attention to, or the arts or sciences in general. The fact that I grew up in Mexico made me different.

I was watching a Netflix series these past days about Gloria Trevi, and she said that the 80s in Mexico were a decade when there were a lot of kids on TV. It’s like she said, the kids were the stars, and it was hard not to say I want to be like them. So, since I was a child, I wanted to be an actress. I was very into the arts and cinema.

Growing up, I had two very cool grandmothers, but the one on my mother's side loved going to the movies in El Salvador. Every time I went to El Salvador, she took me to the movies at least twice a week. So at that time, I was really into films. It was 1989 when I went to the movies and watched my first Indiana Jones film, which was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I became a huge fan. And then I was like, “How can he have so many adventures?” Then I said, “How does he pay for that?” There's one scene, you can see in all the films, where he's teaching classes at a university. So then I said, “That's what I want to be when I grow up.” But I was always into history.

However, the problem was when we went back to El Salvador. We got back when the war was just over. I actually got there the day the last peace accord was signed in Mexico. At the time, there was no history, sociology, anthropology, or political science, nothing. The closest thing you could get to that, at least at the university where I studied, was Law and Philosophy.

Philosophy was a huge deal for them because they had very good philosophers; some were assassinated just three years before that. But I thought, I don't think I can do philosophy, it's very, very hard. So the closest thing was law. My grandfather was a lawyer, and my family has always been involved in law, so it was natural for me to follow in their footsteps. I did it, I hated it because it was just law. You had to memorize everything, and we [El Salvador] are a civil law country, not a common law country, so it was worse because you had to memorize what was in the different corpus of law. But the law that I liked, and as I said, my family was very into, was human rights and constitutional law, because that kind of law made you take a different approach to law.

My first serious job that I got in my career was when I was 25. I became a judicial clerk for the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice in El Salvador. Because one professor who has been my long-time mentor told me about that position. I applied, and I was hired. I worked there from 2005 to 2011. From 2009 to 2010, I went to Notre Dame to study a master's in international human rights law. At the time, the government in El Salvador let you study abroad, and they would even pay your salary while abroad. The only thing that you had to do was work for them for twice the time you were abroad.

A few months after I returned, I was appointed Director of the International Unit of the Supreme Court of Justice. I was 31 at that time, so I was very young, and I really wanted it. Then things happened, and I had to flee the country again because I had security issues because of my position. It was during this time that I truly understood the saying, “Be careful what you wish for.”

I came back to the U.S. in 2012. Honestly, I didn't know what I wanted to do. But I always wanted to pursue a PhD. So that's how I got into history, and that's how I ended up getting my dream.

Now I say that I get paid to play. Although I think it sounds like a cliché, never stop dreaming. Because sometimes, by chance, things work out.

This month, for me, meant nothing before I came to the U.S, but it was weird because now that I'm here, I think the way I found out about this month was not because of anything else, but because I'm a big fan of Tiny Desk concerts.

That's when I started seeing that there was a month in which everything was in Spanish. Then I learned it was because of Hispanic Heritage Month. So that's when I learned it existed.

For me, it represents a celebration, and a month in which you can also learn a lot. It is a month in which Hispanic culture is more visible and is more present in venues where you wouldn't see it so often, like in Tiny Desk.

It’s a month of celebration, but on another level, it's to see that you're part of something larger than yourself. It’s more like a community; there’s more beyond just you in the U.S.

I basically only listen to music in Spanish. I do like music in English. I listen to all kinds of music. I love opera. I love classical [music]. I mean, I love everything. But I’m a big fan of reggaeton, trap, all these musical expressions. I love the rhythms right now.

One of my dreams is to teach the history of Latin America through music. It's funny when I would listen to reggaeton and trap, my friends would say, “Oh no, why do you listen to that music?” But now Bad Bunny is the big thing, and I say to them, “You are not a true fan.”

I really like the different sounds and rhythms that come from Latin America, that mix of drums and beats. I listen to music every day, and I try to always keep up with the new sounds.

“Eñe”

To add context, “Eñe” is the Spanish name for the letter Ñ, a letter found only in the Spanish Alphabet. While it may seem like just a letter to some, it represents a unique and unifying element to the Spanish language and Hispanic culture as a whole.

For a long time, I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to me. It was a curse that I had to live in different countries all my life. People say, “I've always lived in the same house.” Whereas, I don't know how many houses I’ve lived in. I think 40 at least.

Just here in the U.S., I've lived in Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maine, and here [Dallas] in 13 years. So, even in the U.S., people don't understand that moving to another state is way farther than moving from, let's say, El Salvador to Guatemala, and they say, “Oh, but you're in the same country.” No, it's completely different, so even here I can feel the same.

Recently, I started to feel grateful. Because I think you have the power to decide how to see things. Now I see I have had experiences that many people don't have. I'm sure that I have envied those people who have said, “Oh, I've lived all my life here.” Whereas they would say, “Oh, my life is so boring. I envy you that you've had a lot.” Now, instead of envying somebody else, I started enjoying and embracing my life the way it is.

I think getting caught between two cultures is something we should be grateful for. Because we can be exposed to different things. We can learn different things. We can enjoy different things. We can go to many different places.

I’ve spent all my summers away from the place where I live. And every time I have to come back, I start crying at least three days in advance. Someone once told me, “You know why you like it so much and why you're crying so much? Because you never get bored with being there. And your friends never get bored with you because you leave. They miss you, and when you come back, everything is happy again. But if you were to live there permanently, they wouldn't miss you. Then it becomes something regular to you.” I think that we have to start being grateful for being caught between two or more cultures. For a long time, when hearing this phrase, I felt resentful or mournful for something, but now I say I’m something different, and that’s a good thing.

Latin America, in general, is full of colors. When I was thinking about this question, blue is my favorite color, so I immediately thought of that one. Then I thought about red because I love red and I think red clothes make me look good. But then I thought about green. Even though the environment is struggling due to deforestation and other things, Latin America is still very green.

One thing that I like when I go back to Latin America is just going on the highways and seeing how nature grows very differently. It's very messy. Here, when I come, I feel everything is very tidy and neat. So I think in that messy green, you also find a lot of colors and surprises. For me, all these colors always surprise me.

I think what all these colors show is that Latin America is a region full of surprises. Good and bad. Or just experiences. That we don't have to classify it as either good or bad. Just experiences that add up to your life.

Female unity is crucial, and sometimes we overlook the historical examples that we have, particularly the recent historical examples.

Since one of my main topics of research is countries transitioning from periods of extreme violence. From civil wars and dictatorships, into democracies or peaceful environments in Latin America. One of the things that I started to pay a lot of attention to was how women getting together have been crucial for the search for the disappeared in Latin America.

I’m working on a paper on something very overlooked and neglected, and I think that it’s something that we should praise. I call it the feminine origins of the right to truth because there's a discipline that studies these kinds of transitions, it's called transitional justice. There are three main pillars: truth, justice, and reparations. Truth basically has been studied on with the creation of truth commissions, but the ones who have always been behind the creation of truth commissions, for advocating to know the fate and the whereabouts of those who have been disappeared, are women. Either the mothers, grandmothers, wives, or daughters.

If you look, you have examples throughout Latin America. For example, in El Salvador, you have Comadres, the Committee of Mothers, from the 1970s. In Argentina, the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. In Mexico, in the 70s, you also had the Comité ¡Eureka! with Rosario Ibarra de Piedra. And then, always, if you take a closer look, they have been women.

These women, unfortunately, have not only not been recognized for their tremendous contributions to the discipline, but also the crimes they have been victims of have been neglected. Usually, these women are very selfless, because, when they are trying to find the fate and the whereabouts of the disappeared, they're the victims of so many crimes that are not only the denial of justice, but also trying to find their relatives. They also get affected in their economic, social, and cultural rights, and so many other things.

So I think female unity has been crucial in Latin America for the demands of truth of what happened specifically to the disappeared, and that we should recognize that now the right truth is codified in different corpus of law and it's recognized by the international community, but it was because of the work of women. That's why we say that the search for the disappeared has the face of a woman.

When I brought up this question, Dr. Paula Cuellar Cuellar admitted that when I first reached out to interview her, she noticed “Indigo” and assumed I wanted to talk about her film. Only after looking closer did she realize Indigo was the name of our magazine. She thought to herself, “What a coincidence,” and a happy one at that. She chose to spotlight the film Añil (Indigo), where she served as an executive producer. This award-winning documentary gives voice to the stories of women who endured sexual violence during the Salvadoran Civil War (1980–1992). By bringing these stories to light, it touches on an important time in history that has too often been overlooked. We invite our readers to take the time to watch the trailer, linked below, and engage with this powerful piece.

Link to Añil Trailer

Since we talked about surprises, one thing I firmly believe now, and I try to remind myself every day, is to be prepared to be surprised. Always. In the classroom, when you're conducting fieldwork, and in life. Latin America is full of surprises, so I hope more people get interested in Latin America, because they will have a great time. Maybe it won't be a great time all the time, but they'll definitely be surprised.