Conversation with Elvira Arteaga

Title

Conversation with Elvira Arteaga

Description

Elvira hails from Mexico, is a medical interpreter, and is the president of the Asociación Cultural Mexicano Canadiense Ottawa-Gatineau (ACMCOG). She has lived in Canada for the past 10 years and currently lives in Ottawa with her husband and children. Along with her work with ACMCOG, she regularly collaborates with the Mexican Embassy and takes part in cultural events throughout the year. Maintaining cultural values is very important to Elvira and her family, and she is consistently working to embrace the Latin American community in the capital region.

Date

2025-03-25

Format

MP3, 13 min 15 s

Language

English

Interviewer

Alexandra Thompson; William Vermette

Interviewee

Elvira Arteaga

Transcription

Alexandra: All right, so thank you so much for joining us. I'm Alexandra. We have William here and Elvira. Would you like to give a short introduction to yourself?
Elvira: my name is Elvira. I'm from Mexico, living in Canada for the past 10 years and living in Ottawa for the past five years.
Alexandra: Excellent. What brought you to Ottawa?
Elvira: my husband’s job.
Alexandra: Okay. Do you have family here and do you see them often?
Elvira: I don't have any family here. It's only me, my husband, and my kids.
Alexandra: Perfect. Will, do you want to ask the next question?
William: Of course. So, do you live in a Latin community or neighborhood or at least a place where people speak a lot more Spanish or Portuguese? I would assume Spanish, considering Mexican origins?
Elvira: I live in Ottawa. To be specific, I live in Stittsville, so it's mostly English speakers.
William: Okay. Yeah. Well, to kind of carry on that, despite the lack of at least language presence or overall, I'd say maybe community presence. Just to clear that. Would you say that there's a Latin American community around where you live?
Elvira: I will say yes, but I don't know a lot of people around me in Stittsville.
William: Fair enough. Well, that kind of follows up with, is there at least a lot of any occasions that are celebrated, various occasions or holidays or these moments that are important to you, perhaps culturally, perhaps more personally?
Elvira: Yes, Actually, I'm the president of Mexican Cultural association, so I am very involved in the Mexican community. I collaborate a lot with the Mexican Embassy with cultural events throughout the year. So, yes, I get in contact with a lot of Latin American people in the city.
Alexandra: Okay, because I saw in your emails that it said president and then there was an acronym, and I was wondering what that was standing for. It's very cool.
Elvira: Yeah, the acronym stands for Association Cultural is the Mexican Canadian Cultural Association of Ottawa.
Alexandra: Is there, like, a typical day in your community, whether it be the association you work with or anything back home, like, if there's a typical day for you?
Elvira: I work, like, mostly every month celebrating, let's say, the Mexican Independence Day in September, Day of the Dead in November, Christmas in December. And in Mexico, we celebrate the King's Day in January. What else? In March, we celebrate the Women International Women's Day in April in Mexico, we celebrate the Day of the Kids, the Kids Day, Mother's Day in May, Father's Day in June. It's like a lot of activities throughout the year. So, we work together with the embassy and with the community to get together and yeah and represent our culture in Canada.
Alexandra: Do you have a lot of members that are a part of this?
Elvira: All Latin American people is invited and all Canadian and people from other countries are invited to these celebrations during the year.
Alexandra: So that kind of ties into our next question of how do you celebrate your heritage?
Elvira: Wow, that's a big question. Just a little bit of my, my family, I am from Mexico and my husband is from the Caribbean. So, we try to introduce our culture to our kids because we are a mixed couple. So, we try to introduce them with the music and folklore or dances just like that. And I try to speak my language are in our house. So, the kids are related with the with the language, with the Spanish.
Alexandra: That’s very cool. That is a lot of celebrations.
Elvira: It is.
William: That actually ties perfectly into the next follow up. Are there any values that you hold very dearly as a member of the Latin American community, but also that are maybe shared with Caribbean communities?
Elvira: When you say values, can you repeat that.
William: Yeah, of course. What are some values that you hold most dear as a member of the Latin American and well, in your case, having experience with the Caribbean communities?
Elvira: I don't know how to answer this question.
William: I'm sorry. No, that's very fair. To be very honest. I wouldn't know how to answer that if I was asked that either.
Elvira: I don't know, like. Like being kind, being kind with everyone in the community. That’s hard. I don't know.
Alexandra Yeah, I think it was like values as in like stories or anything for heritage that you kind of hold closely to you here from back home?
Elvira: No, I don't think that applies at the moment.
Alexandra: No worries. What would you like to share about yourself or your community that you think is most important for people to know?
Elvira: Like something that is important for me?
Alexandra: Or just your community. Things that you think people from Canada or other cultures should know about Latin American communities.
Elvira: we are like mostly all Latin American people are very friendly. I don't know, we like to party a lot and we, I think we welcome everyone. Like we welcome people from all over the world. So, yep, we like to make them part of our traditions and dances and music. Yep.
William: In that it's a lot more like a, an inclusive community. One that wants to exchange stories basically, or at least exchange ideas and get people just working together.
William: Onto something else. Oh, personally, I find this topic always fun, but are there any foods that you make that remind you of home or any like traditional meals or places where you procure like groceries or specific ingredients?
Elvira: most of the ingredients I got them from an online store. But talking about dishes and food, I cook mostly Mexican in my house. So, it's like a lot of tacos and soups. What else? Tamales for the bread. Yeah, Tortillas. Like it's tortillas. Tortillas mostly every day.
Alexandra: So, second, last question. How likely would you and your family be to use the website we were creating for uploading your stories and how would you use it? And it just says here we would like to better serve the community. So, any suggestions from you about access as well about what should be posted would be greatly appreciated. But yeah, how likely would you be to use it for kind of getting in touch with other stories? If not, it's totally okay.
Elvira: when the website is not up, I would love to share it with my family, with friends and with the community, with the Latin American community and other friends from other countries so they can learn a little bit about the Latin American culture.
Alexandra: People from all backgrounds on here. It's very interesting.
William: But also, if there's any like suggestions that you might have about the site like whether it be more or made more accessible to people who speak perhaps not as much English or that I don't know how to frame that necessarily.
Elvira: like my actual job is I'm a medical interpreter so I know how the bridge with the language is. So, for sure if you can post, if you can put the website in different languages that will help a lot. Like if your target is getting in touch with Latin American people, it's going to be good to have a Spanish, Spanish site or something like that or, or other, other languages like English, French, Portuguese, Italian. Like it all depends on what's your target.
Alexandra: I believe now I'm not totally sure, but I do believe that there's going to be like a drop-down menu that will have the other languages in it. I think we're just hoping that it covers all if not most of the Latin American languages in the Caribbean as well.
Elvira: That's good. Yeah.
Alexandra: Do you have any other comments or concerns?
Elvira: No, I don't have anything that I can think about right now.
Alexandra: Perfect. That’s all of our questions. So, thank you so much for joining us.
Elvira: You're welcome.
Alexandra: Thank you. I'll stop the recording.

Original Format

On Zoom