The cautionary advice dispatched by his mentors when Dr. José Vargas-Muñiz was a college student dented his confidence and, on several occasions, tripped him up.
Don’t let your hands fly the way so many Puerto Ricans like you do when they’re excited about something.
In a professional setting, tell no one that you’re queer.
Try to lose your island-inflected speech, they’d suggested.
Dr. José Vargas-Muñiz
What confirmed that his mentors — Latino college advisors, speaking from the pain of personal experience — had given him some bad advice were the happenings he witnessed in 2010 at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) conference.
“They brought performers that were honoring Hispanic music,” Vargas-Muñiz said of that gathering in California. “On the first day, they opened with a blessing by an Indigenous person from that area, from a group whose native land we were meeting on … One of the keynote speakers even welcomed everyone in Spanish.
