For those who know me – and for those who don’t – I didn’t always embrace my culture.
Now, as a young twenty-something with nothing to lose and all the pride in her heart, I adore being Latina. I’ve learned where I’ve come from time and time again, and I’ve celebrated it with my father’s side – the Latino side – pretty consistently. I’ve embraced the best Latino movies, as well as the best Latino TV shows, and will always tell everyone about who I am and where I come from.
But as a young woman, barely starting to make her way in the world and just really getting into college, the idea of embracing who I was didn’t appeal to me – mainly because when I was younger, the features that my Latino side gifted me were often the things I was bullied for.
However, Pixar decided to release a little film called Coco. While I may not be of Mexican culture, the movie altered something in my brain that made me want to indeed start embracing my Latino culture – and these are my reasons why.
Obviously The Family Brought Me Closer With My Own
One of the biggest aspects of Latino culture—and really just any Spanish-speaking country—is that we value family heavily. When this film came out back in 2017, I considered myself relatively close with my family. I would call my mom, text my dad, and share funny memes with my brother, and I really thought that was good enough.
But Coco really started to make me think differently about the actual value of family and how important it is. From the first beats of this movie – which I consider one of Pixar’s best films – we see just how important family is to the Rivera family, so much so that they have basically ostracized Hector for “leaving” his family decades before in pursuit of fame.
There was something about this family aspect that made me want to get closer to my family and embrace who they are. My family was never wrong. There was honestly never a reason for me to be distant. I grew up in a really loving household with two parents who did everything in their hearts to give my brother and me the world – truthfully; it was just a distance between school and life.
But Coco altered that perception in my mind, making me realize that I wasn’t trying hard enough. So, after that, I went out of my way to help them out, to make calls, and to update them sometimes on the most mundane parts of my life—and you know why? That family aspect is really all we have sometimes, and I wanted to embrace it.
The Food Looked So Good I Had To Try To Make It Myself
Look, I’m a sucker for a good meal.
If you know me, you know I love cooking shows. Whether it’s one that actually aims to teach you or it’s another cooking competition from Gordon Ramsay, I love watching people cook. Now, in my twenties, my internal cookbook has only grown with age.
But Coco also made me want to start cooking more – specifically the Latino and Spanish food I had been missing out on my whole life because I was a picky eater. I began to learn how to make my abuela’s empanadas, her arroz con pollo, her pernil, for so many reasons. But the biggest was that making this food brought me closer to her, even if she wasn’t here with me anymore.
And the best part? Seeing my father’s reactions. My dad always does this little “shoulder dance” when he eats good food, and he does that all the time with my cooking (not to toot my own horn). But what’s even better than that is when he tells not only his wife but also his daughter that it’s exactly how his mother used to make it. That’s a compliment you can’t buy.
Every Song Made Me Want To Get Up And Dance – Or Moved Me To Tears
I mean, I’ve always been a big fan of Disney music, and since Disney owns Pixar, it’s pretty much a guarantee that there’s going to be some song in any Pixar film. I’m a person who loves to listen to some of the most uplifting Disney songs out there.
However, the music in Coco unlocked a part of my brain I didn’t know existed. I listened to this soundtrack for hours, even if there weren’t that many songs to sing along with it, because I really connected with a lot of the lyrics in it. “Un Poco Loco” is one I still sing heavily even today.
God, and don’t even get me started on “Remember Me.” I saw this film in a theater with my dad, and the two of us were bawling like babies. The soft guitar mixed with the vocals ended me.
The Historical Aspect Of Honoring The Dead Was Something I Never Understood Until Now
I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t grow up in a Mexican household, so I never celebrated El Dia de Los Muertos. I had certainly always heard about it—mainly as a little kid during my Scooby-Doo movie marathon, when I would watch Scooby-Doo! and the Monster of Mexico—but I never really understood the custom until now.
What makes Coco such a great film is that it teaches you so much about Mexican culture and the reasoning behind it without causing information overload. I feel like I learned more about the holiday than I have in my numerous years of living, and it made me understand why we honor the dead.
And while I don’t personally celebrate the holiday, I did do a lot more research into why Latinos, in general, care so highly for the ones that came before us. And now, I have a greater respect for something like this that I never knew before.
Seeing So Many Characters Unapologetically Love Their Culture Was Something I Desperately Needed To See
The biggest reason Coco helped me embrace my Latina culture is that everyone in the film loved being who they were.
Again, I was bullied mercilessly as a young girl for a lot of the traits I was given, from my thick curly hair to my freckled cheeks to my curvy figure, which wasn’t as appealing as a kid—all of it I attribute to the Latina side of me.
But watching Coco’s characters healed my inner child. Seeing people so unapologetically love who they are, where they come from, and so much more was something I needed to see. It made me realize that I really shouldn’t give a damn about what anyone thinks about me because I love who I am and where I come from, and no one should get to dictate that from me.
Truthfully, this movie inspired me to watch a lot more shows and movies about people of Latino origin. Heck, Miles Morales became my favorite Spider-Man, and now my father and I share a love of the Spider-Verse movies together because of it—and I started watching it because I heard Morales was Puerto-Rican.
But I never would have gotten into the film if it hadn’t been for Coco, the first film that made me really realize as a teenager that being Latina wasn’t just a bloodline – it was a gift, a privilege, and I learned to love it as much as I always should have.
If you haven’t seen Coco in a long time, I would suggest checking it out and rewatching it – and be sure not to watch it on an empty stomach because you will want a tamale afterward.