A Westminster woman is planning her daughter?s quinceanera ? a coming-of-age celebration ? amid the city?s growing Hispanic population.
“My daughter is going to dance to ?The Blue Danube,? because that?s what I did at my quinceanera,” said Josie Velazquez, mother of Clarissa Velazquez-Cruz, a Winters Mill High School freshman.
At her 15th birthday party Saturday at Westminster Fire Hall, Clarissa will wear makeup for the first time and leave behind her childhood.
More than 100 family and friends will watch as Clarissa ? wearing a black-and-pink gown and tiara ? makes her grand entrance on her mother?s arm, slips from childish flats to high heels and dances a traditional waltz with her escort and her court of a dozen friends.
Velazquez remembers her quinceanera growing up in an Irish neighborhood in Manhattan, where her grandmother immigrated from the Dominican Republic.
And, just as people taunted Velazquez with racial slurs and profiled her as a Mexican, so too have racists tormented Clarissa for her dark hair and olive skin as she grew up in predominantly white Carroll County.
As a first-grader at William Winchester Elementary School, Clarissa said, a teacher repeatedly sent her to the office and accused her of stealing.
“I was the only person of color and, at the time, I didn?t understand what was happening,” Clarissa said.
For the past 20 years, Velazquez has watched Westminster?s Hispanic population flourish.
Nearly 2 percent of Westminster?s 18,000 residents are Hispanic, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, but residents say the population is larger because some immigrants are undocumented.
Carroll?s Hispanics haven?t banded together, Velazquez said.
“There?s racism within the community,” Velazquez said. “People look at me and think I?m Caucasian because of my light skin, but when I start speaking Spanish, they still look at me differently because I don?t look like them.”
Velazquez said she has instilled in her daughter a love for Hispanic and American cultures and even supported Taneytown?s resolution this year declaring English the city?s official language.
“You can?t ever forget your culture,” she said, “but you have to remember where you live.”
