Being Latino on Google Plus

The beauty of the hive

I often think of the courageous decision of my parents to leave their families, friends and country to seek out a more opportunity filled life for their children.  Undoubtedly, the benefits of the immigrant journey for our nuclear family unit have been many.  However, one aspect of being an émigrée that has been disconcerting for me has been the proximal loss of my extended family.

Having left the country of my birth as a small child, my large clan has been lost to me. Knowledge of grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles has been limited to short visits, infrequent letters and the occasional slightly awkward phone calls.  I have often wondered what my life would have been like had I had access to the shared experience of living in a large family, of raising my own children within the “village” of an extended family.

Within some feminist theory, there has been much critique about the insular nuclear family and the effects not only on the women, but also on the family unit itself.  Regardless of those criticisms, I have found a practical concern about raising children within a small familial structure instead of the large gran familia that my cousins enjoy back in the homeland. And although societal structures in Latin America are also changing, my relatives are happy to share with me that the burdens of the expense and anxiety about leaving their children in day care or in the hands of “desconocidos” are not a worry for them. Abuelita or Tia, or Prima seem always at the ready to help raise the young.

 

About Maitri Pamo

Matri was born in Guatemala City and emigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was a toddler. Her childhood years were spent in Washington D.C. She was fortunate to have been aided and encouraged to apply to a great school in Virginia by a teacher who saw a spark in her when she taught her in the DC public school system. Maitri was disadvantaged in that she then became the only Latina in her class for many years. When it came time to go to college, she left for New York City, the place of her childhood dreams, to attend Barnard College, Columbia University. She graduated with a degree in Foreign Area Studies, with a concentration in Latin America. When she finally realized what she wanted to do professionally, she enrolled in three extra years of undergraduate coursework in order to fulfill the requirements for application to veterinary medical school. She graduated from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine with a degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.

In addition to her professional life, a life she finds not only rewarding but constantly challenging, Maitri is a wife and a mother of three young children. She is an activist, interested in furthering knowledge, participating and directly involving herself in the areas of human and non human animal rights and environmentalism. She tries to engage in the world around her to influence it as much as she can to help secure a healthy, peaceful living environment for her children and all other living beings on the planet. She is a benevolent misanthrope, a polyglot, a lover of travel. She has wild plans of obtaining a law degree when her children are older. She is currently practicing emergency medicine and volunteers her services wherever they are needed.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.

Comments

  1. Great article! One can also say “it takes a barrio”…in a perfect world of course.

Speak Your Mind

*