María Elena Cepeda
from the Macalester Public Knowledge Base
Template:Latin@ Faculty/Staff at Macalester
Maria Elena Cepeda was a professor at the Hispanic Studies and Latina American Studies Departments in 2004-2005 and left Macalester given issues of underrepresentation to U.S. Latin@ Studies.
[edit] Interview
Daniela Ramírez Camacho: Where are you from?
María Elena Cepeda: Oh! That is a good question. I grew up in the United States. I was born in Philadelphia and my parents came here from Barranquilla, Colombia and the idea was to go back after a year or two. I was born, my brother was born, and they were still talking about going back. [We] never went back, but we go back, y volvemos con frecuencia. Tengo una familia ahi.
D: How did you arrive at Macalester?
M: I went to graduate school here and I was looking for a job. This was the place I was attracted to it here and it was one of the only places where they were going to let me do what I really wanted to do in terms of my research and teaching because what I do is kind of unusual. It is very unusual for a Spanish program. I don’t really do literature, I am not a literature professor as everybody else here, I am a popular culture professor, so my specialty is music and media, I work in U.S. latinos so all the materials I work with are not necessarily in Spanish. Eso no es normal, digamos, para un departamento de Español.
D: Have you ever thought of working in Latinoamérica? And what are the main differences that you find on the academic/professional world here and Latinoamerica?
M: There have been a lot of differences for my family. My parents were not and still are not very familiar with the academic system here so I have to do everything by myself. Most of the students here, their parents help them to fill out forms, understand this, y saber, you know when do you have to take this test to get in school. We did not have that. In my house, the kids figure it out by ourselves. As far as the system being very different. I know that in Colombia you pick your career very early and you decide to go to school. You start choosing a career when you are 16-18 years old, you know what you want to do and you just go and do that, and you get it done.
Here people go to school and they try one thing, try another, they take a little bit of every kind of class. That was never the sense that I had at school in Latinoamerica. And my parents, particularly my father never understood my education in that sense at all. I wanted to go to school in Colombia and I was going to go, and then, for safety reasons I did not go. I went to the university, I met the people, I went to look but I decided to go back but not for school.
Daniela Ramírez Camacho: Do you go back very often?
María Elena Cepeda: I have contact with people from there and that is where a lot of my work comes from. I work on Colombian communities in the United States and on Colombianos in Colombia tambien, y Latinos en Estados Unidos, in general. My work is very back and forth.
D: Has the Macalester community hinder or help you foster your identity here?
M: Both. It is weird. I came here after living in Miami, I did not always live in Miami, but I lived there long enough to get used to having Latinos around me, everywhere, all the time. The weird people were the people who did not speak Spanish, those were the unusual, and now, I am reminded again how life used to be for me when I was living in Michigan, or Ohio, and up north where my family was like the weird one. I forget sometimes that not everybody speak Spanish, not everybody has the cultural references that I do, so sometimes it gets a little bit frustrating, but I understand that people have good intentions. That reminds me not to take certain things for granted. In that way, Macalester community has helped me, reminding me not to take things for granted, not everybody is like my family, not everybody thinks like I do and that is a good thing. It forces me to be more conscious. It reminds me about my identity, it forces me to think about certain things. Most of the time when you are surrounded by people who are like you all the time, you kind of get comfortable and you don’t force yourself to think sharp.
I just got here so I trying to figure out what is going on. This is my first semester. I have only been here for a couple of months.
Some students think that todos los profesores de Español acabamos de llegar aquí.
Tienen ciertas ideas acerca de como somos nosotros, como debemos ser y no I am both, I am in the middle. That idea is wierd for a lot of people, I have realized, you think that poeple live like that, you think that you have to be one way or the other.
E-mail: cepeda@macalester.edu
Maria Elena was interviewed by Daniela Ramírez Camacho in October 2003.
