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Introduction: Hispanics: America's Fastest Growing Minority
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15052 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1988 |
728 Words |
| Author
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Luis E. Aguilar
Luis E. Aguilar is professor of history at Georgetown
University. |
Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. By the year 2000, they will compose 15 percent (around 30 million) of the total population. The numbers, combined with the high profile of individual Hispanics, have inspired a flow of rhetoric about their increasing influence on politics, language, arts, business, and practically all aspects of American life. The old Hollywood image of Latinos taking siestas and waiting for manana is fading in a burst of Hispanic energy.
Yet why isn't Hispanic political power more evident in an electoral year? Why hasn't their economic potential broken into the American business mainstream? Do internal and geographic divisions (Mexicans in California, Cubans in Florida, Puerto Ricans in New York) weaken them? Is their cultural background not geared toward political participation or profit making? How great an obstacle in racism?
This special issue of THE WORLD & I addresses these questions within a much larger one: Who are the Hispanics? The question itself is confusing. Does the term "Hispanic" refer to race? To culture? To language?
The staggering diversity of those so labeled exposes the word as a convenience for the U.S. Census Bureau. It is one thing to identify the three main Hispanic groups as Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican. It is quite another for a Mexican- or Cuban-American to renounce his identity in favor of a vague, statistically useful term.
Before they come to this country, most Hispanics have never heard the word Hispanic. They may understand different names, such as "Latinoamerican" or "Hispanoamerican," but not one that negates their American community and tosses them into a generic pool.
Race is certainly not the common denominator. Hispanics are so racially diverse. Mexican philosopher Jose Vasconcelos once wrote (with exaggerated optimism) about a "cosmic race" emerging in Latin America. There are white, Indian, black, and "oriental" Hispanics. The word is no more racially descriptive than is American.
Culture is also a flawed guide. "Hispanic culture" means different things to different groups. Many Indian Hispanics, for instance, are hardly eager to exalt Spain's historical or cultural glory. The motherland of some of their countrymen is to them the enemy that brought death and destruction to their ancestors. Conversely, the exaltation of an Aztec or Inca
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