Southern Illinois Group Las Damas Latinas Brings Together Women of Hispanic Heritage:

They are, after all, Hispanic women and share a common language and a common bond.

"It's kind of like having people from all over the United States," club president Gloria Cravens said. "The accent may be a little different, but you share a common language, a common history."

The group's name, translated literally, means "The Latina (or Hispanic) Ladies" and has been around since 1996 when a group of Hispanic women decided to invite all their other Hispanic women friends to get together and share their common culture. At the time, the group had about 25 women show up. Now, membership is closer to 60 and growing.

"At first it was just about getting together so we could all speak our native Spanish," Gloria said, but over the years it developed into something more. The ladies, who hail from everywhere from France to Colombia to the United States, wanted to do a little more.

So, they have regular meetings to discuss the countries they came from, charities they support, informational programs and twice a year, programs to involve their spouses and families.

"We have a couple doctors in the group, so we exploit them regularly to give us presentations on health issues," Gloria said. "Actually, being women, we are interested in everything from health and medicine to gardening to cooking to home decorating to well, everything," she said.

The core group of women puts together a yearly agenda of meeting dates, topics and special events and then reaches out to their membership, and sometimes beyond, to make things happen.

"We have a few ladies who do many of the presentations, but then there are times when we reach out and find someone else to do it. Usually for those meetings we have to adjust the schedule a bit," she said.

The group is primarily social in nature, designed to give the ladies a taste of home, literally and figuratively. "We always have food, though it's not always Hispanic," Gloria said.

The key is that many cultures worldwide influenced the development of Central and South America and so many cultures are reflected in their meetings. "Of course many of the settlers came from Spain and France and Europe, but there were also a great many from the Mediterranean and other places around the world," she said. At almost every meeting, one of the ladies will present something about that shared heritage to the rest of the group.

And, like travelers trying to deal with local dialects, they sometimes find themselves playing translator for one another because of the regional differences in the language. In the simplest terms, it's like a northerner's first visit to the South and the difference between "Hello" and "Howdy."

"Almost anyone who speaks the language fluently can figure out what the slight differences are, but sometimes it takes a minute," Gloria said. For example, while many Spanish-speaking cultures use the word "frijoles" for beans, ladies from Puerto Rico are more likely to use the word for green beans, she said.

And, then there are the regional differences in food. "I grew up in Colombia and had never seen a flour tortilla until I moved to the United States," Gloria said.

That's because in Colombia, a tortilla is a scrambled egg dish served for breakfast. In Ecuador, it is plantain soup. A plantain is a fruit similar to a banana. In Spain, a tortilla is a potato dish and in Mexico, a tortilla is flat bread made of flour or corn meal, what most Americans recognize as a tortilla.

"Generally, we all the same things, they are just prepared a bit differently," she said.

The minor differences sometimes make for slight confusion when the ladies are gabbing away in their native tongues, but nothing drastic. "I always compare it to my taetas' (potatoes) story," Gloria said.

"I learned English in school before I came to the United States, but all my teachers were taught British English and that's what I learned. So when I first got here, I thought I was doing very well, but people laughed a lot at my formal speech patterns," she said.

"I was living in Chicago, actually South Elgin at the time, and came to visit the Land Between the Lakes. We went out to breakfast and the waitress asked me how I wanted my 'taetas done. I had no idea what she was saying and after asking her to repeat herself a couple times, I leaned over and asked my friend, 'What is she saying'?"

The waitress was asking how she wanted her potatoes cooked, Gloria said. "I just kept thinking, 'Why didn't she say that'?"

Gloria even went back to school briefly after coming to the United States so she could adapt to the slang and local idioms. "When I first moved to Southern Illinois, I was baffled by 'Howdy'."

Keeping her own experience in mind, Gloria is easily able to figure out what the women are trying to say to one another and helps translate the little idiosyncrasies that come up. "We have women from all over with a Hispanic heritage. One woman was born in France but raised in South America, a few were born in the United States and the rest come from all over," she said.

With the rising membership, most of Central and South America is represented within the group, she said. And, during their annual event that includes spouses, the group becomes even more culturally diverse.

"We are all Hispanic women, but we are married to the men of the world. Several are married to men from the United States, one is married to a man from India, and we have others married to people from the Middle East," she said.

The group tries to have at least one event annually that includes spouses and another that is designed for the entire family. "Most Hispanic cultures are very family-based, so we try to make sure to include ours," Gloria said.

Though not all the women can attend every meeting, the group tries to stay in touch and maintain a loose knit organization with all the love and support of a family. A lot of the women do not have their extended families close by and the group gives them a sense of home, she said.

In addition to functioning as a support group and social club for Hispanic women around the area, Las Damas Latinas also has a social conscious. Last month, to celebrate Christmas the group collected toys, socks, coats, hats and other items for the Migrant Head Start Program at Cobden. Last year, the group also offered a college scholarship for a student from Franklin, Jackson or Williamson counties.

"I've always been very interested in social projects, so we decided to make a list of the ones we were interested in and see what we could do to raise the money for them," Gloria said.

This is Gloria's second go-round as president. She served as president for three years beginning in 2000 and is now back in the leadership position.

"Our biggest difficulty is reaching the ladies that we hope to attract. That's where the newspaper helps us out so much," she said.

Any women with Hispanic origins are invited to come and attend the meetings and have fun with it. "We like to plan a lot of fun things to do," Gloria said. Currently in the works is a birthday dinner, tentatively planned for March, for all the ladies to celebrate their birthdays at a local winery with dinner and a tour.

"We have had 'hats meetings' where everyone must model a hat and then tell a story about it, either its historic significance or a story they made up, or something," Gloria said.

The most important thing about Las Damas Latinas is the desire to get together with like-minded people and enjoy themselves. "We try to make sure we have a good time," she said.