Monday, May 30, 2005
So, aqui se habla Espanol ... y Que?
Ever since the announcement that NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg's been taking Spanish lessons to court the Latino vote, I've seen a number of articles comparing other mayoral candidates on their ability (or lack thereof) with the language. The NYC mayoral campaign has also drawn comparisons to the recent Los Angeles mayoral race where the first Latino candidate in over 100 years was elected. All this talk about "the Latino vote" has me wondering: Why, if we are really all that powerful, are the majority of us still living in poverty and why do we still lack adequate representation at almost every level in society? Does it really matter whether a candidate speaks Spanish? Does that actually "translate" into genuine concern for our well-being? What the heck do verb tenses have to do with housing, crime and unemployment?
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6 comments:
The whole gringos talking in Spanish to court us on election time is a testament to how little they think of us. But why should they think any better?
It sounds as if you're idea of "we," as Latinos, is in the same communal and cooperative context as the Chinese, the Jews or a trade union. Our "numbers" are certainly there, but we do not have anywhere near the kind of body+capita interconnect like those groups, which I selected to indicate the "nationalist" parameter (Chinese), the cultural and diaspora parameter (Jews), and the real "strength-in-numbers" example (trade unions – well, at least that was the case for some time before the scandals and the mega transnational corporations began to shift the labor paradigm).
With Mexicans as the possible exception, and then to some degree, "Latinos" in the United States do not have a strong and far-reaching cooperative network of anything. The Cuban community in the United States may be a unique exception, but we have to closely scrutinize and consider the political atmosphere, history and government ties, which present distinctive immigrant circumstances in the general Latino experience in the United States. Cubans are the only Latino immigrants that come from a country that is still in a political conflict with the United States.
As for the rest of us, there are a lot of people jumping up and down and saying, "Follow me, I want to be the leader to your salvation," but few are sacrificing and risking enough and leading by example. Rhetoric and public relations is something we're great at. But where are the doers? Where are the Antonia Pantojas, the Cesar Chaveses, and the Richie Perezes? For each one of those leaders (and there have been more like them, thank God!), there should have been 20 or 30 "understudies" ready to take a piece of the baton – and I say that because we also need to move away from the whole icon thing as well. Infrastructure and networks need to be our icons in the 21st Century.
The sad case, as how I see it, is that Latinos are more consumers than citizens, minus the occasional protest blip when we finally do gather in numbers for something, which is typically a reaction to something that has pushed us.
There are cultural and artistic networks here and there, but we don't exploit them to their full extent, and they typically wind up being little more than salaries, with the boards and staff doing just the minimum to continue to qualify for continuous grant monies. Institutions like NALIP and others are the exception to the rule, but we have not experienced union-like structures on massive, transnational scales – and that's what's going to change things.
And, of course, at the start of the day, we need "to be bold again." We have simply become afraid of being proactive, and grabbing our rights and our destiny by the horns.
So yea, if Darth Vader, Pete Puma, and Mickey Mouse promise me the sun, the moon and the stars, in Spanish, around election time, why shouldn't I vote for them?
Just like Carlos Santana said, "Just because the Taco Bell Chihuahua dog can speak Spanish...this doesn't mean we're going to vote for him!"
The thing you must consider or take into account any time there is talk of statistics is this: Yes, "latinos" are the majority minority...but the majority of those latinos are Mexicans and the majority of the Mexicans who are crossing the border are fleeing economic oppression and poverty. Many of them have very little formal education and it is not uncommon that they do not read and or write Spanish very well if at all. I work in the "trenches" so to speak as a social worker in a state where most counties have seen anywhere from a 150-300+% increase in "latinos" within the past decade. The majority of my clients are Mexican, undocumented, and largely illiterate. So, for a Puerto Rican living in the mid-west...I really have very little to relate to with them, they speak differently, their food is way too damn hot, their music no tiene sabor y ademas son del rancho ...yet they are what society has come to define as "latino" I have nothing against them, pero realmente, no tenemos nada en comun. So all this talk about being latino or hispanic is crazy, just because we all speak Spanish doesn't mean we're all alike! For me...there's nothing like being boricua baby!
Amen boricuanok! I am tired of us being lumped with other Spanish speaking ethnicities for the sake of a damn Census. We Puerto Ricans better get it clear. When its all said and done the Mexicans who have a larger population will look out for themselves first and probably only. Their interests will reign supreme. That is why we must be careful lumping ourselves into the "latino" pool. I am a Puerto Rican-American..not Latino or Hispanic.We must force the U.S. to acknowledge other ethnicities other than Black, White, Hispanic, Asian and Mixed(other) on the damn Census form. Either listed everything or nothing.
Wow...those are some comments. Well, I am a New York born Puerto Rican and proud of it.
I frankly don't care about the gringos that are learning Spanish because I already know enough and better than to vote for one just because they can speak the language. It isn't because they care about us, but because they just want our vote. Like you said, "What the heck do verbs tenses have to do with...." I'm with you.
As for Latinos and Hispanics - it don't matter how they group me...I know who and what I am....and...as Latinos, Hispanics or Puerto-Rican American...we will never, ever unite because each pueblo pulls for our own. We have one common language...but we are so very different in so many other ways. Yeah...I wish "we could all just get along."
Before we can move forward as Puerto Ricans, we need to become providers, not consumers,
and we need to understand that there is a difference between politics and government, and when we do go to the polls, we need to vote with our head; otherwise,
we are using the vote as a powerful weapon against ourselves.
With so many Puerto Ricans in elected office in NYC, there is nothing to show for it... Elected office for our Puerto Rican politicians has become a personal industry where they pass the seat on to immediate family members... Like a great Puerto Rican Poet once said: "The massess are assess..."
We need to work together and get out the box we keep putting ourselves in, especially our Puerto Rican youth who are immediately being harm by our lack of vision....
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