Few get the opportunity to star in a Marvel movie, let alone one as big as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, on their major film debut – unless you are Xochitl Gomez. The Latina teen played the multidimensional America Chaves in the latest Marvel blockbuster.
“She [Chaves] is a powerful, smart, charismatic, queer Latina,” Gomez told People En Espanol. “The fact that she is on the screen and is important to the story will make people feel seen in a way that they have never been.”
Being a relatively new star, she’s given away little about her family life. Nevertheless, we’ve done some digging and compiled a piece about Xochitl Gomez’s parents.
Xochitl Gomez was born in Canada to a Mexican dad and an L.A. native mother. She grew up in Hollywood for five years before the family moved to Echo Park.
The name Xochitl is pronounced as soh-cheel and means flower in the indigenous Mexican language of Nahuatl.
Gomez grew up surrounded by Mexican influences in California, which kept her in touch with her parents’ roots. She told People Chica:
“All the kids I played with and my babysitter were from Mexico. My parents speak Spanish at home, so I feel like I’ve lived in both worlds and that has shaped who I am as a person.”
Xochitl was excited to learn that she had Spanish lines in Multiverse of Madness: she could go through them with her father. “It was really heartwarming to see how excited he got when he realized that I was going to be speaking Spanish in the film,” Gomez told Complex.
“It was one of those bonding moments that I won’t forget because he helped me kind of choose those lines and the intonation and stuff, and ways to make it actually really funny. It’s one of those things that I look back at and I’m like, ‘That is a core memory.’”
In June 2021, Gomez wished her dad a happy Father’s Day via Instagram, writing: “Happy Father’s Day to the man who was never too busy to come to a tea party under the dining table.”
Gomez was with her mom when she received the news that she’d landed the role of America Chavez. She and her mom are really close – the pair attended an anti-Trump march in 2017 in Washington D.C., a day after the former president’s inauguration.
“It took me a couple of weeks to realize that I got cast, and my mom and dad were so excited,” she told Teen Vogue. “We got a cake to celebrate.”
Xochitl loved playing with Dora the Explorer and Selena Gomez dolls: they were the only two Latina stars she saw on screen. Starring in Multiverse of Madness would inspire a new generation of Latina girls to chase their dreams.
“[America Chaves will] make people feel seen in a way that they never have before,” she said. Gomez feels that young people will benefit from seeing themselves represented on screen. She said:
“I grew up rarely seeing girls on-screen that looked like me or shared my culture. In the past, Latinas were often portrayed with negative stereotypes… It’s great to see more diversity on-screen than what I had growing up.”