Laura Cabral, Salud Leader in Chicago

Laura Cabral returns for her third year with SALUD.

Some of my clearest memories from SALUD consist of sitting in the room outside of Ms. Unzueta’s office. It was quickly established as our team’s headquarters. The initial phases of script writing required a lot of sitting and using up scratch paper in headquarters. My team members were all older than me, but I appreciated their maturity about being quiet to listen to the ideas of others. They were also particularly charismatic. During lunchtime we would bring food to share, we would tell many stories, and we would debate. With hindsight I realize that debating was essential for the development of our scripts. Despite the fact that we were all Latino students it was the fact that we had writers, musicians, human right defenders, and artists that allowed us to create fine stories with multifaceted and realistic characters that any radio listener could learn from.

I value that I had to write in Spanish all throughout the summer. It was particularly valuable that most of team members were fluent or semi fluent Spanish speakers, but we also had several grammarians who were always editing our script drafts. The decision of writing the scripts entirely in Spanish [this summer] because I think reflects the goal of making our information as accessible to the Latino community which is not always the priority of other media sources. I understood the difference it makes when you are constantly reading and writing in a language. This has helped me to become a more efficient translator for classes such as in European history where I have been updating my classmates about the rise of Spain in the EU. Most of my research in has come from Spanish sources.

SALUD was significant for my improvement in translating and speaking Spanish. Now I find translating fascinating.

“It is wrong for a man to wear a skirt,” was the statement being discussed and some of our parents seemed to be running into walls. They were at the premiere event for the radio novelas we had written in Spanish, acted, and edited through a local bilingual radio station. Most of our parents were Latino immigrants whose cultures often defined strict gender roles. We played an excerpt from our radio novela during which ‘Jaime’ a female transgender explained why she didn’t think her choice of wearing men’s clothing should offend anyone else. A discussion quickly started and became about much more than just clothes. The prejudiced and derogatory stereotypes about homosexuals were acknowledged and the lack of resistance against such comments. Others shared their experiences about finding out that their children were gay providing another important perspective. The ‘taboo’ surrounding sexuality began to dissipate with dialogue and questions.

Tags: LGBTQ community
Topics: Arts, Building Community, Community Media, Cultural Competence, Family, Immigrants, Language, New Routes Leaders, Social networking, Storytelling, Youth