Three leaders within their respective industries gave toasts at TIME’s Latino Leaders dinner on Tuesday night in Miami, where they each honored their cultures and the people who raised them. Nelson German, a chef, restaurateur, and author; Julián Castro, the CEO of Latino Community Foundation, the largest Latino-serving organization in the U.S.; and actor, singer, and advocate Sofia Carson, all spoke at the event. German, who was raised in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, reflected on the experience of growing up in a Dominican immigrant family and shying away from his language and culture as a child.
We are embracing our cultures, our heritage, our motherlands.” The act of honoring one’s culture, he said, is about looking both forward and back. The parents and grandparents who work two, three jobs … They gave us a chance to really stand in these kinds of rooms together, so never forget about that.” For German, who is the executive chef at acclaimed restaurants in Oakland and San Francisco, passing down Dominican culture is done through his work: food. He would read through the credits of movies, looking for names like “Garcia,” “Hernandez,” and “Rodriguez,” or scan the library for books by Latino authors.
He paid tribute to his grandmother Victoria, who came to the U.S. in 1922 from northern Mexico after her parents passed away and raised Castro’s mother as a single parent. He also honored his mother, who also raised Castro and his brother alone. Carson said that she has spent her entire life admiring her mother, who taught her poems by Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, and read her novels by Chilean-American author Isabel Allende, and sang her songs by Cuban-American singer Celia Cruz.
It flows from our bloodstream into everything we touch. It is the beating of our hearts. It is the language of our soul.”
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