Conversation with Ana Paneque Leivas

Title

Conversation with Ana Paneque Leivas

Description

Born in Cuba, Ana has experienced a life shaped by movement, adaptation, and a deep connection to her roots. At age ten, she relocated to Sherbrooke, Quebec, before living in Calgary and Florida. Eventually, Ana immigrated to Canada for family reasons and ended up settling in Ottawa to pursue her studies. Despite being immersed in Western culture and having lived in multiple cities and countries, she remains strongly connected to her Cuban identity.

Date

2025-03-07

Format

MP3, 8 min 54 s

Language

English

Interviewer

Malayka Dubois-Mandar; Matthew Minardi; Maxine Tremblay

Interviewee

Ana Paneque Leivas

Transcription

Maxine: Ana, very nice to meet you. Before we start this interview, we just wanted to present ourselves. So my name is Maxine. It's really nice to meet you. I'm also issued from the Latin American community and also Caribbean. So my mom is half from Martinique and half from Haiti as well. So I may be relating to some of the stuff that you're saying today. Thank you so much for coming in.
Matthew: Hi, Ana. So my name is Matthew. I'm not Latin American or Caribbean by ethnicity. I do very much appreciate the Latin American and the Spanish culture, and I'm very happy that you decided to be our interview subject for today.
Malayka: Hi, Ana. My name is Malayka, and my father is Dominican. I am part of the Latin American community, and I'm really happy to be interviewing you today. It was lovely to be with you today. Thank you.
Maxine: Good morning, Ana. How are you doing today?
Ana: I'm doing good. How are you?
Maxine: I'm doing very good. So just for your information, today we're doing an ethnographic interview. So we're going to be asking questions about the Latin American and Caribbean community. So, Ana, what is your country of origin?
Ana: So I'm originally from Cuba, but I've lived in Canada, both sides of the country, as well as Florida for a while.
Maxine: Oh, very nice. And how was your experience in those parts of the region?
Ana: It was quite different. I immigrated from Cuba to Sherbrooke when I was 10 years old in 2013, and I lived there for about a year and a half. Then we did six months in Calgary, and then two years in Florida. And then I've been in Montreal since 2017, and I moved here to Ottawa in about 2022 for my studies.
Maxine: Very nice. So you kind of answered the question, but what brought you here to Ottawa?
Ana: So to Ottawa was my studies, to Montreal and Canada in general was just family decisions for job opportunities for my parents.
Maxine: Nice. And do you have family here, and do you see them frequently? Can you explain it to me?
Ana: I do have family here. Mostly it's just my parents and my sister. I have some uncles and cousins over there in Toronto. I don't see them quite as often as I probably should. And the rest of my family, they're mostly pretty much divided all over the world. My dad has a very big family. We're around like 50 cousins on his side. So we're pretty spread throughout everywhere.
Maxine: Perfect. And the last question I have for you, do you live in a Latin community or neighborhood where people speak Spanish and or Portuguese and celebrate various occasions?
Ana: Yeah. So actually, I got very lucky because two of my roommates, they're Puerto Rican and Mexican. So between us, we speak Spanish quite often. And since birth, we've always spoken Spanish at home. So with my family members, even if it's just like on a FaceTime call, we still communicate in Spanish. Very nice.
Maxine: Thank you, Ana.
Matthew: So Ana, what celebrations are most important to you?
Ana: So in terms of celebration, it kind of varies. From me growing up, mostly what was celebrated was Noche Buena, which is usually December 24th. And for my family, for my family was mostly just about getting together and spending time in family. And it was about the tradition. Back in Cuba, we used to roast an entire pork like with the entire neighborhood. So it was not just my family, it was the kids that were growing up near me with my cousin and everything. So that was pretty, really nice. And same thing, we've gone down to Florida a couple of years just to do it with like the family that lives there, everything. I haven't been back to Cuba since I left in 2013. But I have seen my family members are still are in the island, like either through FaceTime or they've come visit us here in Canada. Yeah, besides that, I'd say birthday parties are like a big hit. And yeah, those are mostly like the key celebrations throughout the year. Yeah, because we most of my family, most of us are born either in January or September. So that's a weird ass mix. But you know, it is what it is. But yeah, so great.
Matthew: Thank you. Can you describe a typical day in your community, Ana?
Ana: A typical day in my community is you know, you wake up, you have your breakfast, you say good morning, and you either head to work or to school. And you just do your best you can every day.
Matthew: Great. Thank you. How do you celebrate your Cuban heritage?
Ana: That is a great question. So the one way I celebrate it is just staying true to myself, you know, just being just showing up every day doing my best and just working towards representing my elders and my heritage the best way that I can.
Matthew: Beautiful. And what are some values that you hold most dear as a member of the Latin and Caribbean community?
Ana: One of them is community actually is one of the key values that I hold is all for one and one for all kind of aspect. So I try to be helpful. But also just you know, being honest and kind. It's kind of just paying it forward.
Matthew: Nice. Well, thank you so much.
Malayka: Okay, Ana, what would you like to share about yourself or your community that you think is important for people to know?
Ana: We're a very passionate group of people for our causes, for our interests, for our whatever job or duty we feel we have. We're very passionate about it. And we kind of a very stubborn way we go full on force for it. Sometimes to the detriment of other well being or anything. I have experienced some burnout before with school because of that. But we're very passionate, very not servient, but very helpful to each other. So whenever we see a friend or a family member that needs a hand, we're like, okay, what do you need me to do? How can I best help you in this? So we can make it through, you know?
Malayka: So yeah, thank you. That's lovely. What foods do you make that reminds you of home? And where do you purchase your groceries to prepare your traditional meals?
Ana: Oh my god. Okay, so there's a actually most of my grocery because my parents, they're very helpful to me. They buy my own groceries, and then they come visit me and they bring them for me, which is very privileged thing to say. But most of the time they we buy rice and beans. We eat a lot of pork and meat. And there's this one of my favorite dish of all time. It's called a ropa vieja. It's essentially shredded meat. Most of the time is done with beef, but it's like kind of preserved similar to how you would for what's called, you know, like those snack meats, like the dried ones. Jerky.
Malayka: Thank you.
Ana: Jerky. So kind of you would preserve it how you would jerky, but instead of individual stripes is like the piece, the entire piece of meat you preserve in salt and everything for a while. Once it dries, you boil that for like three hours to get rid of the salt and everything, and soften the meat. And then you boil it for like, depends how much you want. And some people do four hours and people do eight in this tomato based sauce. Essentially, I have heard people compare it to beer, but I'm not sure how similar it is. But I can see like the similarities in terms of essentially like the style of making it, or at least the cooking techniques used. But it's not as spicy or tends to be more sweet and sour than spicy. As Cubans, we don't use a lot of like hot spice as other Latin.
Malayka: That's really nice. It's very similar to the Filipino dishes or Dominican dishes. So thank you. Okay. How likely would you and your family be to use the website we are creating for uploading your stories? And how would you use it?
Ana: So I think for the sake of meeting other people within our community and just staying in contact, that's like the best way we have of not one, preserving our heritage, but also just enjoying the sense of community that is sometimes hard to have when two countries you've immigrated, even if you've lived there for a long time. So that would be just the easiest way to be able to communicate with members of our community, keep our heritage and just, you know, essentially show up as our best selves because we have to acknowledge that part of our history and our identity as well as just, you know, just it's also a great way to help each other because we have, you know, the sense of community, meaning we'll be able to just help each other through any issues or troubles that might arise.
Malayka: That's wonderful. Thank you. Do you have any other comments or concerns?
Ana: No, I'd like to thank you all for doing this interview. I think you guys are doing a great project. Yeah.
Malayka: Thank you so much for being here, Ana. It was a pleasure. Yeah, it was a pleasure.

Original Format

In person