By Araceli Arroyo –

¡Nena, ven aquí!” my father said in his best Puerto Rican jíbaro accent calling me into the kitchen.

He had not ordered me to clean but tested my cooking skills. When my mother and I are in the kitchen, chopping onions usually turns into a shouting match. My father however has the utmost patience to instruct his eldest clumsy-novice-only-good-at-making-Ramen-soup-daughter (that’s me) in the kitchen.

“ Okay, so you’re gonna make the arroz con gandules,” said my father. “ I’ll let you know when you mess up,“ he added as I reached for the vegetable oil.

I measured the rice, got out the sazón, Adobo, tomato sauce, gandules, chicharrones and sofrito. As I began to construct this staple of Puerto Rican cuisine I couldn’t help but think about another conversation I had in another kitchen not so long ago with my grandmother.

“Cuidado,” my grandmother warned me. “He’s all nice now but his claws will come out.”

She lifted her glistening manicured fingernails over the kitchen table and proceeded to hiss like a cat. This was my first warning of any kind about men from my grandmother. I was taken aback not because she actually had hissed like a cat but she was warning about one specific group of men- Mexican men.

Of course I had heard the same kind of warning about Puerto Rican men from my Chicana aunts. And don’t get me started on Guatemalan, Cuban, Peruvian, Dominican, Colombian or any other denomination of Latino men because what I’ve heard is just as bad or even worse. All my life it seems I’ve been warned against Latino men.

I wondered if my mother had received similar words of “advice.” I would not exist if she had listened. It’s not only chisme in kitchens across the country discounting Latino men, it’s happening in our living rooms as well.

Even the media discounts Latino men as honorable romantic partners. The slick papi chulo chasing anything with a skirt undeterred by the wedding ring on his finger is synonymous with any telenovela. Hollywood portrays Latinos as gun toting cholos selling drugs and violent against women. It’s ingrained in our minds that a Latino man has some kind of loaded gun in his pants or in his pockets.

I did not heed my grandmother’s or aunts’ warnings. The Latino men in my life dispel these stereotypes everyday. They are good fathers, hard-working, and dare I say despite popular belief attempting a degree in higher education. I do not think I could have grown as a strong Latina woman without having my strong Latino father in my life.

My dad is the father of three daughters and no sons. He is a firefighter-paramedic of whom I am very proud. He can cook a mean lechón to feed the whole family: aunts, uncles, and cousins included. He taught me how to dribble and shoot a basketball, use words like mother-flower and heck instead of the real thing. He’s tough but he’s one of the funniest people I know. He has instilled in me from childhood I can only try my best.

After I cooked the rice with some instruction from my father I thought about why there are not enough images of good Latino fathers like him on television or the subject of bochinche. A girl and her faith in the reliability of a good man can only come from her relationship with her own father. Whether a man is white, black, or brown, a good man is hard to find, unless of course he’s my dad.