Latinx Heritage Month

Last week, Cadence held a Mercado Fiesta on the campus to celebrate Latinx Heritage Month. Latinx Heritage Month runs from September 15 through October 15, so it's now over. But I'm going to write about it today anyway.

The celebration was sponsored by Cadence's System Verification Group (SVG) and was attended by many more people than expected (I heard over 300). There was great Mexican food (except with over 300 people there, the pico de gallo and lettuce ran out long before I got to the front of the line, but I snagged the last beef taco). There were also hand-made margaritas, agua frescas, and more.

Since we are still all largely working from home, one of the best things is that when there is an event like this, lots of us show up on the same day, so we get to meet people we have only seen on screens for months.

Cadence also has a Global Women Mentorship Program (I think it is now open to men, too, now) and for the fourth year in a row, I was picked as one of the mentors. My mentee this year is Hispanic, but not from one of the most obvious countries. I asked her about Hispanic versus Latinx, and she pointed out that Brazil is part of Latin America, so Brazilians are Latinx, but they are not Hispanic because they speak Portuguese. Brazil is a big country, bigger than the lower 48 states (see my post Off-topic: Geography if you want to see a map) and so there are actually over 20 times as many Portuguese speakers in Brazil than there are in Portugal. Also, since Spanish people (as in people living in Spain) are not from Latin America, they are Hispanic without being Latinx.

Learning Languages

I thought I'd get some more background, and as it happens Jeannette Zelaya Guinn is the Demand Gen Marketing Group Director in Corporate Marketing, but for the purpose of this blog post, she is the Lead of our US Latinx Inclusion Group, Cadencia. Her office is close to mine, but of course, neither of us is in our office much, so we had a Zoom call.

She told me that her father came to the U.S. in his early 20s from El Salvador. He met Jeanette's mother here, she was Portuguese. So Jeanette should speak Spanish and Portuguese right? Well, that was the era when immigrants did everything they could to fit in as American, and so didn't speak to their children except in English. So Jeanette has had to try and learn Spanish later in life when it doesn't work so well. Kids are like sponges for language. You learned your primary language without trying, and perhaps even two languages. When I lived in France, we just put my daughter in the local school aged 4 or 5, and within a few months, she was fluent. It was much harder for me. So teach your kids languages early.

Language lesson video (1 minute):

Meet the 2021 Latinx Students in Technology Scholarship Winners

Here's an April 2022 video on Cadence's Latinx Scholarship Winners (4 minutes).

Spotlight on Latinx Employees

And here is another post for Latinx Heritage Month: Latinx Heritage Month Spotlight.

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