This is element of our Latina Society Month collection, “All of our Latino Heritage” where we’re profiling a good U.S. Latina of each of our Foreign-language-talking Latin american and Caribbean homelands.
Unlike of many Latinos – who live inside a shade-mindful industry that invariably introduces practical question “And you will in which could you be from?” – Robert Rexach have a tendency to becomes surprised looks as he says to somebody he or she is Puerto Rican.
“People do not know that Puerto Rico has a shockingly diverse populace,” told you Rexach, which functions in the aerospace globe. “A great amount of immigrants from European countries decided to go to Puerto Rico and assimilated, totally blended when you look at the and you may set in feel to Puerto Rico, so I am extremely reasonable-skinned.”
Robert Rexach, of Orlando, Florida., claims he usually becomes shocked appears when he tells people the guy are Puerto Rican, because of his “fair-skinned complexion.” Robert Rexach
Their skin tone did not fundamentally make some thing easier to determine, however, into the 5th amount when their loved ones moved out of Puerto Rico to help you Orlando, Florida.
As the he went to an excellent bilingual university inside Puerto Rico, his English try great so people did not faith he had been from there. “Certainly almost every other Latinos these people were such as for example: “Exactly what? You’re merely a light guy regarding Miami who knows Spanish.”
“Still, it absolutely was enjoyable, it was initially a society amaze,” Rexach recalled. “And in the first-to-middle 90’s truth be told there wasn’t far information about Puerto Ricans within the Florida thus i consider children asking me easily got an eco-friendly card and i is particularly ‘Zero, I’m good All of us resident why would You will find a green card?’”