The Skin-Colored Pencil

The 3-year-old Anieth Gonçalves Da Cruz entered her new school the first day thinking she didn’t like her name. “Anieth” – it’s a made-up name, a mixture between her father’s and her mother’s names. People thought it was a weird one. “Why is it weird, why can’t it be beautiful?” she kept asking herself. So, when the teacher asked her what she’s called she presented herself using her middle name – Elena. With her classmates, she became known as Elena, a name as common in Spain as María or Lucía. “A child’s mind, you know,” she chuckles

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in March and the now 18-year-old Anieth is grinning at the camera, her friendly face brightly lit. She’s in her Madrid apartment and an enormous mandala tapestry is hanging on the wall behind her. We’re on a video call. Her gorgeous afro hair is taking up most of the frame.

“When you’re little, the kids don’t judge so it doesn’t really matter. But then when you grow up you start to understand things…” Anieth recalls the first time she felt like she was different from the other kids. “It was the typical – draw yourself and your friends. One of my classmates asked the teacher where she could find the skin-colored pencil and the teacher asked, “What color is the skin? Because you have skin, and she as well.” And she pointed at me. The girl said, “no, but she is not skin color. She is brown.” This made me think.”

When people ask her where she’s from, she says she’s from Cabo Verde, even though she was born in Spain. Her parents emigrated at a very young age to Madrid in search of opportunities and when bringing up their only daughter, they wanted to pass down their culture to her. They taught her both the Cape Verdean Creole (Crioulo) and Castilian Spanish. They taught her to dance the traditional dances and to prepare the national dish cachupa – a stew made of corn, sweet potatoes, and various legumes. She enjoys all of that – but she also enjoys her churros con chocolate in the morning.

“In high school, they asked me a lot of these questions. I say that my parents are from Cape Verde and: ‘Are there cars? Are there buildings? Are you part of a tribe?’ People have this view of Africa that is like… no, no, no.” Actually, in the World Press Freedom Index in 2021 Cape Verde ranked 27^th, which is higher than Spain, the UK, and the USA. Life expectancy is the same as in the USA and the literacy rate among young people is comparable to that of most European countries. “And besides, Cape Verde is just below the Canary Islands. The father of my mother for example is white with green eyes. Not everyone is black and with curly hair,” says Anieth.

Cape Verde is an island country situated just off the west coast of Africa. The official language is Portuguese although the recognized national language is the Cape Verdean Creole. “Since a lot of people passed through there, Crioulo is a weird mixture of Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. So, a person from Cape Verde can understand Spanish but the Spanish don’t understand Crioulo,” Anieth explains. The BBC recently wrote a country profile on Cape Verde where they characterize Crioulo as “a mixture of archaic Portuguese and African words.”

It is no surprise that the population of the island country is so mixed. It has a long history of being a center for slave trade and gun manufacturing (dating as far back as the 15^th century) and it only got its independence from Portugal in 1975. And its ties with Portugal are still strong as it relies heavily on imports from there. “Most Cape Verdean products are from Portugal and there are people who have their own business, going there to get these products and then selling them to Cape Verdeans in Spain,” says Anieth.

Cape Verde also has a diaspora with a big geographical reach, with the most significant groups residing in the US and Portugal. According to the 2021 census, in Cape Verde live 491 233 people. According to the Spanish National Statistical Institute, in Spain, there are 4 639 Cape Verdeans as of January 2021.  

“My friends have always been foreigners. I remember as a little girl my best friend was Argentinian. After that I had a group of friends, one was from Nigeria and the other from Mali. And then, when I started growing up, the gypsies. Here in Spain, they have something very bad going on with them and I don’t like it at all. But anyway – it was my group. Then in high school, there were some Latinos and a Bulgarian boy and by the end of our secondary education, he and I were the only foreigners. But yeah, I always hung out with foreigners. I don’t have any problem with Spanish natives, though.”

She doesn’t mind that they keep asking her where she’s from. The only frustrating thing is when she says she’s from Cape Verde and they respond with, ‘Oh, but you speak Spanish so well!’ She recalls this instance of a Spanish lady with a “racist attitude” that interrogated her about her ancestry. It was the only time Anieth said she was from Spain. The lady asked her if she was adopted.

Anieth grew up between two cultures. She would sometimes go back to Cape Verde, where she felt welcome. “The warmth that they give you there is completely different. You go to someone’s house and say you’re the grandchild of so-and-so and you already have a plate of food and there’s no need for them to even know your family.” Still, people could note that she wasn’t raised in Cape Verde.

The first Cape Verdean wedding she went to was that of her mother. Her favorite part of the wedding was that for three days after the wedding, the newlyweds cooked for the whole neighborhood and shared their food with the underprivileged members of their community. She says it’s her favorite Cape Verdean tradition.

This year Anieth started studying Medicine. It is something she was always interested in, yet she doesn’t know which branch of medicine she’ll choose for her specialization. When she talks about it, her whole face brightens up.

She doesn’t see herself returning to Cape Verde. She may go there on vacation. She says sadly there aren’t many opportunities there and although she feels she’s from there, she’s not used to the lifestyle. “It’s a totally different way of life,” she says laconically.

On the other hand, if she has kids someday, she wants to pass on her culture to them. She wants to take them to see the family, the people, the land. “It’s another culture and that’s a treasure.”

This article is part of the Second-Generation Spaniards: A Collection of Stories project.

It was created as a Journalism and Mass Communication Capstone Project at the American University in Bulgaria. The academic supervisor is Professor Laura Kelly.