Valentines Day With a Latin Flavor

To say that Latin Americans are in love with love seems to be true. For every year on this date, February 14th, we celebrate Valentine’s Day with enthusiasm and willingness as the Day of Love. To us, it is the ideal day to find the right partner (if you don’t already have one); to reaffirm whom you share your life with and how happy you are in that relationship; and, above all, to show how romantic and willingly naïve we are.

It is the day to showcase our hidden heritage by singing passionate boleros and swearing, one and a thousand times, that we will never again love someone else as strongly as we love him or her that day. This oath is as truthful as the passion and intensity we Latin Americans put into everything we do. This is why we like Saint Valentine. This is why we so ardently insist that Saint Valentine represents the day for romantic love. And thus we celebrate, leaving a bit of room for friends and relatives, although – in our romantic passion – we are not so sure this day belongs to them as well.

We can’t help but exchange sweetheart cards, following a tradition born centuries ago when young Romans, celebrating at festivals held in honor of the occasion, wrote on slips of paper the names of the girls living in their town, names later raffled to determine who would accompany them to the next festivity. Some, seeking to increase their chances of success with the most attractive girls, would send cards inscribed with short rhymes. Nowadays, these rhymes are known as “Valentines,” and along came the inevitable. The romantic rhymes gave way to large amounts of chocolates, raggedy dolls and cards, a tradition that extended to just about all western countries, with the exception of Colombia, where the celebration takes place in September.

We aren’t so different from the rest of the world – only that we give this day a serious connotation that doesn’t allow us to make concessions from its original meaning. That’s why it’s not too difficult to understand that, while for most Americans, this is a day to celebrate love and friendship in general, in Mexico, it is a day entirely dedicated to lovers who celebrate by “letting it all out.” The same goes for the rest of Latin America, where the concept of a “Day of Love and Friendship” has taken some time to be accepted.

This is easy to explain: for us, Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romantic love – as much the one you feel today as the ones to come. In some Caribbean countries, the girlsz names are still raffled. In some Andean countries, no woman will open the front door on the morning of February 14th if the person knocking happens to be a woman, for it would mean celibacy for the rest of her life.

Just as with everything else, we believe in what we believe, and we celebrate the way we choose, almost always sitting around a table to enjoy a delicious dinner for two or for the whole family. Enjoy this Valentine’s Day with a Mexican menu, proven to be excellent and effective. Perhaps it’s not as simple as a raffle, but you do have the advantage that it’s safer, allowing you to give love to your chosen loved ones on Valentine’s Day.

Have a good meal!