Celebrating Hispanic Heritage: How Gabriela Honors her Dominican Roots Through Food
Gabriela Bello | Advisor, Engineering Project Management | Massachusetts, United States
Originally Published: September 23, 2024
My name is Gabriela Bello. I have been with Dell for eight years as a full-time employee and two years prior to that as a contractor when RSA was part of the company. I speak five languages (French, Italian, Spanish, English and Portuguese), and I am a very proud Dominican.
How do you celebrate your culture?
One of the biggest ways is food. My parents are both from the Dominican Republic, so there's a lot of cuisine that we eat frequently. Plantains are a big deal. We eat them in many ways. Same with rice. My half-sister’s mom is Puerto Rican, so there’s food from that culture I've learned to enjoy.
We have a street food dish in the Dominican Republic called chimis, so we make a bunch of that and put in the freezer so that I can have it whenever I crave it. We make special dishes during the holidays, like pasteles en hoja, coquito (which is primarily known in Puerto Rico) and one of my favorite candies, dulce de ajonjoli, a sesame seed candy.
How has your involvement in the Latino Connection Employee Resource Group (ERG) shaped your perspective on the importance of allyship and collaboration across people with different backgrounds and identities?
It's really helped me lead with diversity, inclusion and intersectionality in a lot of ways. Some of my favorite events that we've hosted as Latino Connection have been in partnership with other ERGs, acknowledging those intersections of identity.
Latinidad is not a monolith. We don't all look alike. We don't all act alike. We don't all speak the same language. Most of us speak Spanish, but we also have people who speak Haitian Creole, people who speak Portuguese. And those who do speak Spanish don't speak it the same way. There’ve been many times where I've said a word in that's very normal in Dominican Republic and that’s not normal in Puerto Rico or Argentina, and people look at me funny. It's acknowledging those nuances and bringing that to light.
What is a personal achievement or project within Latino Connection that you’re particularly proud of?
Within the ERG, every year we've been able to make our Hispanic Heritage Month celebration bigger and better. Everyone leading the program always comes in with all the passion and excitement that makes it so wonderful. We've always been able to stick to a theme and make it relevant for our people. Even more recently when we had the flooding in Brazil, people reached out and said, “Hey, these are things we want to do to get help there.” We were able to amplify the messaging of what the company was doing within three days. It was one of the fastest turnarounds I've ever seen. We were part of making sure that messaging got out so that people in Brazil are getting the assistance they need.
Additionally, I was able to attend the Young Hispanic Corporate Achievers program. I was nominated by the ERG and was accepted by the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility. That was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. I was around other people who look like me in that sense of we’re all Latino, but some were born in the states of Latino descent, some from Latin America and moved to the states as teenagers or adults. It’s important to acknowledge those differences in how we experience Latinidad and how it’s shaped us, but we're still connected to one another.
What inspired you to get involved in the Latino Connection ERG?
I am very openly, very loudly and very proudly Dominican. A lot of my friends sarcastically say, “You're Dominican? I didn't know!” because they're tired of hearing it, I'm sure.
I wanted to be able to bring that aspect of myself to work and through Latino Connection is one way I can do that. I wanted to share those nuances that highlight that we are not all the same. Even with Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, we're basically sister islands, but we have a lot of differences in how we communicate and how we do things. I wanted to experience the whole spectrum of what it is to be Latino while also being very firm and proud in what Latinidad looks like for me specifically.
Latinidad is not a monolith. We don't all look alike. We don't all act alike. We don't all speak the same language. Most of us speak Spanish, but we also have people who speak Haitian Creole, people who speak Portuguese. And those who do speak Spanish don't speak it the same way.
Gabriela B.
What is your favorite thing to do when you visit the Dominican Republic?
I go about once a year, sometimes a little more. I'm hoping to go in September. My grandmother is turning 95, so I’m excited to celebrate her.
Just landing on the island, feeling the humidity, there's a sense of homecoming I get. It’s always fun when everybody on the plane starts clapping because we made it safely. You hear people saying their prayers before we take off. Those little things that are part of our culture are always nice.
The first thing I get asked when I visit is what I want to eat. I love my grandma’s cooking. I have a gluten allergy, so I'm very lucky that a lot of Dominican cuisine is naturally gluten-free. As soon as I arrive, she makes what we call arepa dulce de maíz. There’s arepas from Columbia and Venezuela, which are circular and made with cornflower, but ours is a sweet version, like a cake. My grandmother also makes mango marmalade from the mango trees in her yard.
I also enjoy seeing my family. Having those moments of seeing both distant and close relatives and seeing how genetics have played out (Do I look like that person I haven’t seen in years? Do we have the same mannerisms even though we are living in different parts of the world?), it’s so nice to see that.
Can you share a favorite memory of yours that celebrates your Hispanic heritage?
Dancing with my dad. I joke that as a Dominican, I would not be let back into the island if I didn't know how to dance merengue, salsa and bachata. To this day, one of the people I dance most comfortably with is my father. Being able to have those moments of dance, of music, of celebration, those are some of my favorite things.
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