6.1: Latino Presence in the United States

The 1990 census surprised many with the fact that nearly ten percent of the U.S. population was of Hispanic origin. In 2010, there were more than 50 million, 16.3% of the population (in addition to the 3.7 million Hispanics living in Puerto Rico). [1] To illustrate the economic impact of this presence, the Inter-American Development Bank calculated that in 2006, Latin Americans sent nearly $62.3 billion to their countries, a figure higher than the foreign investment in the region that year (Lopez-Cordova and Olmedo 1). For countries like El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, this income is nearly as significant as their export earnings. The political and cultural impact is equally transformative, as it alters the electoral game, affects the national definition of all American countries and promotes a continental awareness based on daily coexistence. Americans and Latin Americans today experience the continuity between their problems and destinies more clearly than ever.

¹ Since, according to the census office, approximately 75% of them spoke Spanish at home (Ramírez 10), that is, more than 38 million, the United States would have been in 2010 the third or fourth country in the world with the highest number of Spanish speakers after Mexico (107 million), Spain (46 million), Colombia (45 million) and, possibly, Argentina (40 million).

 

From Mexico to the United States

Hispanic population in the southwestern United States is the largest in the country. This presence is the result, not only of immigration, but above all of the fact that this region was part of Spain and then of Mexico until 1848. Spanish conquistadores began to explore and colonize what is now the southwest as early as 1530 (long before English colonists founded Jamestown in 1607). All of these territories became part of Mexico at the beginning of the 19th century, although the central government did not pay much attention to them. The first Americans started arriving around 1800. In 1830, the Mexican government, responding to fear of the growing foreign presence in the area, banned immigration from the United States.

At this time, there were also strong tensions with Anglo-Saxon immigrants from Texas, who did not approve of Mexico having abolished slavery in 1829 and opposed the dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna. The territory of Texas rebelled in 1836, achieved independence and eight years later became part of the American Union. Due to conflicts over borders and a desire to expand its markets, the United States declared war against Mexico in 1846. The war ended in 1848, with the United States gaining control of territories that included New Mexico, Arizona, parts of California, Utah, Nevada, and Colorado, through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The neighboring country was compensated with fifteen million dollars, and Mexicans living in that area had to choose between leaving the territory or becoming citizens of the United States. The majority chose the second option. These were the first Mexican-Americans, who became so not because of deliberate immigration but because of the war between the countries.

Many Mexican ranchers welcomed their annexation to the United States, whose government was more stable and whose army offered better control over the region's indigenous people. But, although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo recognized the original rights to property, in practice, economic power passed into the hands of the Anglo-Saxons, among whom there was considerable racism against Hispanics. Between 1865 and 1920, there were more lynchings of Mexicans than of African-Americans in the Southwest. The gold rush and railroad construction in the second half of the 19th century attracted a growing number of English speakers, and by 1900, the inhabitants of Mexican origin were in the minority. Many, without land or specialized training, became cheap labor for mine owners, landlords, corporations and railroad workers. Working in the fields isolated them from the rest of society, and the fact that the workers moved from one place to another in search of crops made it almost impossible for their children to receive an education. To this day, new immigrants, many of whom are illegal immigrants, are constantly arriving from Mexico, who are willing to work for any salary in temporary jobs. [1]

The mechanization of agriculture during the first half of the 20th century led many agricultural workers to migrate to urban areas, where employment opportunities were more abundant in the commercial and industrial sectors, and access to education, healthcare, and housing was generally improved, especially after the Second World War (1939-1945). Nearly half a million of them also served in the war and became aware of their rights as “Americans”. However, despite their improved standard of living, they remained socially subordinate. The prevailing mentality until the 1950s segregated Mexicans as an inferior population. In many schools and workplaces, it was recommended that Spanish not be spoken or that family and religious traditions not be maintained, as these were considered obstacles to material progress. Many families, in order to gain entry into the middle or upper classes, presented themselves as “Spanish,” not Mexican.

Since the late 1950s, Mexican-Americans have joined the minority struggle for full civil rights. The activists defined themselves as “Chicanos”, an abbreviation for “Mexican” that had been used in the past as a derogatory term, and which they now used as a combat name. The movement was organized to demand social reforms, to obtain better working conditions, and to promote the ethnic pride of “la Raza”, a people who now perceived themselves united by a common history, a shared cultural heritage, and a political purpose. The activist César Chávez succeeded in the fields organizing a union with migrant workers; numerous writers and artists disseminated his own aesthetic that has left its mark on both Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon literary traditions; in universities, especially those in California, Chicano studies programs were established; in 1970 the United Race Party was formed to support Chicano political candidates; in the neighborhoods of East Los Angeles and Pilsen, Chicago, this activism is expressed through large street murals that elaborate on the Chicana experience. A large part of the literary production by authors of Chicano origin also aligns with this project of inclusion without assimilation, aiming to build hybrid identities and presences: Mexican and American, indigenous and Hispanic, and Spanish and English speakers.

Today, however, although most Chicanos live better than their parents or grandparents, their average income is still much lower than that of the Anglos. Worse still, the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century saw a political and social resurgence of hostility towards those who do not speak English well or are not legal immigrants. Paradoxically, some sectors of the American population are reacting in a similar way to the one that, in 1836, prompted the Mexican government to prohibit the immigration of English-speakers to Texas, resulting in the loss of half of its national territory in 1848.

 

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Puerto Rican Colonization

Puerto Rico became a United States territory in 1898, after a brief war with Spain. The island, which its inhabitants (the “Puerto Ricans”) often refer to by the affectionate indigenous name of Borinquen, was attractive due to its strategic value and its coffee, sugar, and tobacco crops. For the next twenty years, its inhabitants were in a state of legal limbo, being neither North American citizens nor an independent country. In 1917, the Jones Decree (Jones-Shafroth Act) gave them American citizenship, but kept them as a colony: Washington retained control over laws, the monetary system, immigration, the postal service, defense, and international relations. The education system was structured according to American standards, and English was designated as the language of instruction.

Many Puerto Ricans continued to fight for independence or greater autonomy, and in the late 1940s, the island became a Commonwealth, giving them greater administrative control. But their responsibilities and privileges continued to differ from those of other U.S. citizens. Although they don't pay federal taxes, they don't benefit from all national education and health programs. They vote in the presidential primary elections, but cannot participate in the general elections. They can serve in the military (and were previously required to do so), but their representatives to Congress have no voting rights.

During the first three decades of the 20th century, the mortality rate in Puerto Rico fell by 50 percent, and living conditions generally improved for many. However, North American commercial interests encouraged the growth of sugar plantations, concentrating land ownership in a few hands (of some Puerto Rican ranchers and American companies), and the number of small farms was reduced. With the economic recession of the 1930s, thousands of unemployed jibaros began to migrate to North American cities, especially in the Northeast, where they were employed in the tobacco and textile industries, as well as in ports, restaurants, homes, and hotels.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the first governor of the Commonwealth, Luis Muñoz Marín, initiated an economic development program called Operation Bootstrap, which stimulated industrial growth. Family income increased by 600 percent, reaching the highest in Latin America (although only half the US average); 85 percent of young Puerto Ricans attended schools, where Spanish was once again the official language; Puerto Rico became the fourth country in the world in terms of the number of young people attending universities or technical institutes (19 percent); and the rate of mortality among young people in the world in terms of the number of young people attending universities or technical institutes (19 percent); and the rate of child mortality in legogonism to be the lowest in all of Latin America. But rapid industrialization did not eliminate unemployment (twice as high as in the United States), and more than a third of the population continued to live below international levels of poverty, many in the misery of slums and depressed rural areas. These were the root causes of migration to New York since the 1950s.

In 1940, it is estimated that there were about eighty thousand Puerto Ricans in the continental United States; in 2010, on the other hand, 4.6 million were registered, almost a million more than on the island. The largest group was established in New York City, particularly in East Harlem (“The Spanish Harlem” or the neighborhood), Lower East Side (loisaida), and parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx. Most of the migrants arrived without education, without economic resources and without proficiency in English.

Their living conditions were deplorable: 50% lived below poverty levels, 87% of young people dropped out of school, and unemployment was 9.9% (in contrast to 4.3% for whites and 6.9% for African Americans). They also faced economic exploitation in an environment with a racist mentality. Two New York journalists described Puerto Ricans as follows in 1947: “mostly crude farmers, subject to congenital diseases... they turn to guile and wile and the steel blade, the traditional weapon of the sugar cane cutter, mark of their blood and heritage” (Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, N.Y. Confidential, Chicago: Ziff Davis, 1944. 126-132). The stigma of criminality and violence was yet another obstacle to face.

Some fair-skinned people escaped to the middle class by denying their origin or presenting themselves as generic “Latin Americans”, just as some Mexicans presented themselves as “Spanish” (many of them still appear in the census under the category of “other Hispanics”). Other Puerto Ricans considered their situation temporary. Borinquen is nearby and there is no need for a visa, so many are circular migrants, who arrive to look for work when the island's economy is struggling and return when they have been able to save some money. For this reason, although they recognize the importance of learning English, they are not willing to give up their Spanish, and they maintain a sense of closeness to their homeland.

As in the Chicana community, the civil rights struggles of the 1960s motivated political awareness, cultural pride and determination to improve their situation among the Puerto Rican community. Today, they have considerable political representation in local administrations in the Northeast. The arts, especially music, poetry and painting, are very visible in Chicago, New Jersey and New York, where several cultural centers stimulate their production, such as in the famous Neighborhood Museum in East Harlem. The “Nuyorican” aesthetic is a rich product of the Puerto Rican experience in New York with prominent poets such as Miguel Algarín and Pedro Pietri (who described himself as “a native New Yorker born in Ponce, PR”). Similar to the term “Chicano”, for activists of Mexican descent in the Southwest, the word “Latino” became during the era of the struggle for civil rights (the sixties and seventies) a new denomination to represent that sense of unity, cultural resistance and continuity with Latin America, not only of Puerto Ricans, but of Caribbean immigrants and later of the population of Latin American origin throughout the United States. The development of “salsa” in New York, which would later become one of the most famous musical rhythms in the world, was during the seventies a symbol of this presence and a platform for spreading this social dynamism.

 

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Cuban Waves

Like Puerto Rico, Cuba passed into North American hands in 1898 as a result of the war with Spain, but in 1902, it became an independent republic, although it was heavily dominated by U.S. interests. During the first half of the 20th century, similar to Puerto Ricans, many Cubans, although without the advantages of North American citizenship, came to work in the tobacco industry in Florida and the Northeast. By 1959, there were an estimated 79,000 Cubans in the United States.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 had a direct impact on the interests of the commercial and professional elite. Nearly 273,000 left the island in the 1960s and were welcomed by Washington as political asylum seekers. A second group arrived in April 1980, when nearly 10,000 Cubans sought refuge in the Peruvian embassy and were eventually granted admission to the United States. And a third wave, of almost 120,000, was authorized by the Castro government to travel by boat from the port of Mariel to La Florida for the next six months (known as “Los Marielitos”, some were mentally ill, homosexuals or criminals that the Cuban government used to take out of the country). To these large groups, we must add the hundreds of refugees who escape from Cuba every year and who cover a wide socioeconomic sphere.

The sudden appearance of Cubans in the United States was unusual in the history of Hispanic immigration. The initial group of the sixties was primarily upper class, and many had capital or received support from the North American government to found businesses, especially in Florida (although smaller groups were also present in New York, New Jersey, California, and Illinois). In Miami, they were able to form a well-established community, known as “Little Havana,” and obtained the right to bilingual education, quickly achieving political representation in Washington. His interest in overthrowing the revolutionary government in Havana coincided well with the United States' anti-Soviet policy.

Another aspect that makes this immigration unique is that, for the most part, it has been systematically counted and observed. It is known, for example, that the wave of the sixties was 94% white, was on average 34 years old, and had received a good education (14 years of schooling). The second group in April 1980 consisted of 80% white individuals, who were younger and poorer. Among the Marielitos, even those who were younger and poorer, 60% were white. The latter arrived in an atmosphere of resentment because the sensationalism of the press emphasized the number of criminals and because they were perceived as a burden on the budget of Miami and of the Cuban community in particular. In November 1980, the “English Only” movement gained new strength in Florida and to this day, there are strong tensions in that State between Hispanic communities (which also include a large number of Colombians and Central Americans), Afro-American and Caucasian communities from different social classes.

 

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“Latino” Diversity

The “surprise” of the 1990 census on the percentage of the Hispanic population in the United States made it clear that this minority had become a social and political force, with a population growth rate (24.3%) much higher than the national average (6.1%). But it is an economically disadvantaged group: the 2000 census revealed that Hispanic families had an average income of about thirty-four thousand dollars, in contrast to the national average of fifty thousand dollars, and the percentage of poverty was 22.6% (27.5% among Dominicans versus 14.6% among Cubans), compared to 12.4% nationally (Ramírez 14). It should also be noted that the number of people who identified themselves as “Hispanic or Latino” in the 2010 census may have been affected by the format of the questions, which were clearer and more inclusive than in the 2000 survey (Ennis et al 2). It is also possible that many people of Hispanic origin who previously did not identify themselves as “Hispanic” for political or social reasons decided to do so in 2010, as the perception of “the Latino” has been more positive in recent years. The Hispanic or Latino population was younger in 2009, with an average age of 27 years compared to the national average of 36 years. Additionally, nearly 63% of this population was born in the United States.

The inability to see them as a group was related to the prevailing bipolar racial consciousness in the United States (or black or white), in which the Latin American rainbow had no place. Segregationist practices against Mexicans in the Southwest, for example, were little studied because they were not black. Until the 1960s, census forms did not include the “Hispanic/Spanish” category in their questions (they simply asked to identify: “Race or Color”). In addition, society and government considered each nationality separately. Puerto Rican or Dominican urban workers were thought to have nothing to do with Mexican or Guatemalan rural workers, Cuban businessmen, middle-class Chilean and Argentinian exiles, or refugees from Nicaragua or El Salvador.

The differences between nationalities are important, and yet everyone identifies first with their nation and then with the more general category. In fact, Latin American immigrants become North American citizens at a lower rate than those from other backgrounds. But more than 60% of Latinos or Hispanics in the United States were born here, and the trend of recent decades has been towards self-identification as a plural unit. Politically, journalistically, and academically, they are more often regarded as a joint presence that shares common interests and characteristics, and remains closely connected to Latin America.

It is in this sense that the term “Latino” has come to refer to them (and to make them fashionable) as a single group whose cultural influence is evident today in its kaleidoscope of contradictions. Knowing, exposing and relying on their “Latino consciousness” (always in flux) has become their way of integrating —without being assimilated—into the American imaginary. This is how the Chicano Francisco Alarcon expresses it in one of his bilingual poems (quoted in Stavans 42):

I always carry my roots with me rolled up and they serve as a pillow

Mis raíces las cargo siempre conmigo enrolladas me sirven de almohada

In this way, Latinas and Latinos envision a future that is based on their past and tradition but that is not doomed to perpetuate the subordination that unites them. They build an identity that doesn't unify them, and they make their home in a society that is changed by them but is still not sure who they are or if it wouldn't be better to send them back home.

 

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Fuentes

• Bretz, Mary Lee et al, “Hispanics in the United States.” Passages: Culture. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 179-199.
• Ennis, Sharon R. et al. The Hispanic Population: 2010. 2010 Census Briefs, May 2011. www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-04.pdf
• Lopez-Cordova, J. Ernesto and Alexandra Olmedo. “International Migration, Remittances and Development: An Overview”. Integration & Trade 27 (2007): 1-20.
• Moore, Joan and Harry Pachón. Hispanics in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pentice-Hall, 1985.
• Pew Hispanic Center Home Page, http://pewhispanic.org/
• Ramirez, Roberto. We the People: Hispanics in the United States. Census 2000 Special Reports, 2004.
• Stavans, Ilan. The Hispanic Condition. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
• U.S. Census Bureau Home Page. http://www.census.gov/