Rick Dean
Registered
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationwor...l06jul06.column
A nation divided by language?
Debate: Without better assimilation, a Harvard professor fears, waves of Mexican immigrants could split the United States.
By Ron Grossman
Sun Journal
Originally published Jul 6, 2004
SAN ELIZARIO, Texas - Should the worst fears of a Harvard professor come true, this desert crossroads could be the sentimental capital of a separatist movement aiming to detach the Southwest from the United States.
In a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Samuel P. Huntin
ton took a worried look at the waves of Mexicans who have been crossing the Rio Grande - whose banks mark the outskirts of this dusty border town of 4,385, about 20 miles south of El Paso.
He fears t
hat the increasing numbers of Spanish speakers in a band of states running
from California through Arizona and New Mexico to Texas could bring our nation the unhappy experience of linguistically split societies, such as Canada and the former Yugoslavia.
"Continuation of this large immigration [without improved assimilation] could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures," wrote Huntington, a political scientist who heads the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.
His article has been praised and condemned by media pundits and talk show hosts, coming as it does on the heels of President Bush's proposal for temporary work permits allowing Mexicans to legally cross the border to jobs in the United States.
Here, too, Huntington'
;s ideas find both derision and support.
"I think the professor needs to come beyond his own four walls," said Clarissa Garza, a high school student. "He'd see we're provin
g him wrong."
"Playing the devil's advocate, I could agree with the professor," said Ben Sanchez, a retired accounta
nt and docent at the local museum. "The newcomers are different from us."
San Elizario is a fascinating laboratory for examining Huntington's thesis, because both sides in the debate - those sympathetic to newcomers and those suspicious of recent immigrants - are Hispanic. Nearly everyone here is of Mexican descent. The only difference is when their ancestors arrived.
Because of its origins and proximity to Mexico, San Elizario has always been a landing place for Spanish-speaking newcomers. It can also be a place of crushing poverty.
According to Antonio Araujo, who heads a local community group, Organizacion Progresiva de San Elizario,
some families get by on $10,000 a year. An annual income of $40,000 puts a family well into the local middle class.
Around the placita, or town center, a few historic buildings have
been restored, among them the lovely Chapel of San Elizario, a whitewashed adobe church. But the rest of the town looks like a bleak set for the movie The Last Picture
Show. Storefronts are empty. The few businesses are marked by hand-lettered, often faded signs.
There are solid-looking homes here, even a few substantial ones. But much of the populace lives in ramshackle neighborhoods, or colonias, that lack sewer lines or sanitary drinking water. Aged trailers stand next to half-finished homes, some little better than shacks.
San Elizario's newcomers are part of a process Huntington calls "the Hispanization of the Southwest." In the 1990s, while 2,249,000 Mexicans legally immigrated to the United States, many others simply crossed the Rio Grande, so that Hispanics now outnumber black A
mericans. Two-thirds of the Mexican newcomers live in the Southwest. Nearly half the population of Los Angeles is Hispanic.
This current wave of immigration, Huntington argues, is qualitat
ively different from earlier ones. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, European immigrants often lived in large enclaves, such as Chicago's Polonia or New York's Little Italy. But those
were city neighborhoods adjoined by other ethnic communities. The offspring of those earlier immigrants dropped their ancestral languages and assimilated into the English-speaking mainstream.
In Huntington's view, the settlement pattern and cultural loyalties of today's Mexican immigrants are more ominous. In a previous book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, he saw American values under threat from abroad. Now, he sees a kind of cultural fifth column undermining the nation from within.
"Demographically, socially and culturally, the [reconquest] of the southwestern United S
tates by Mexican immigrants is well under way," wrote Huntington. "Hispanic leaders are actively seeking to transform the United States into a bilingual society."
Huntin
gton, whose views will be expanded in a forthcoming book, declined to be interviewed for this article. His thesis has stirred up a firestorm of academic controversy.
"I was shocked by its crudity," said Princeton University so
ciologist Douglas Massey, who has studied Mexican-American immigration. "It's an affront to scholarship."
"Samuel Huntington is raising a legitimate question - it's just that he's wrong," said Cornell University professor Victor Nee, co-author of Remaking the American Mainstream, a well-received study of immigration and assimilation.
If there is a common denominator to the locals' self-identity, it is being Mexican - but they mean Mexican-American, not Mexican-Mexican. Looking across the Rio Grande, they see a foreign country - even a
s they are conscious of being different from other Americans.
Perla Lara is a high school student whose family still owns a house in Mexico. She also has visited friends in Ohio.<b
r>
"I never feel so Mexican as when I'm in Ohio," Lara said. "I never feel so American as when I'm in Mexico. We do take pride in being Mexican, but we come here hoping to be part of American society."
Indeed, a sense of pride in an adopted homeland is demonstrated in the most
basic fashion: a willingness to risk one's life for the nation's well-being.
"I speak three languages: Spanish, English and a little Thai," said Sanchez. "I served over there during the Vietnam War."
Of course, the pattern of the past is no guarantee of the future. Perhaps that intense sense of patriotism won't always be here. It is conceivable that those who live in poverty will someday despair of the American dream and listen to advocates of a Republica del Norte.
<
br>But there is no evidence so far. Instead, there is what happened last fall, on Veterans Day. Holguin reports that the annual parade went through the town streets, led by himself an
d other old soldiers. He served in Korea and Vietnam. The colonias looked a little less bleak, being lined with schoolchildren waving little American flags.
The procession wound up at the placita, where plaques honor the town's fallen heroes. People observed a moment of silence in front of the most recent marker, that of Ruben Estrella Jr.
L
ocal musicians composed a corrido, a ballad, in memory of Estrella, whose family name means "star." It tells how he was born in Mexico, came to the United States as a boy of 7, proudly joined the Army and was killed in action during the invasion of Iraq.
The tribute offered Estrella is in Spanish. The sentiments are as all-American as Valley Forge, Gettysburg and the sands of Iwo Jima:
You who surrendered your life,
For your nation and our peopl
e,
We will never forget you.
You will always be our hero.
Ruben, a star you will be.
The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.
A nation divided by language?
Debate: Without better assimilation, a Harvard professor fears, waves of Mexican immigrants could split the United States.
By Ron Grossman
Sun Journal
Originally published Jul 6, 2004
SAN ELIZARIO, Texas - Should the worst fears of a Harvard professor come true, this desert crossroads could be the sentimental capital of a separatist movement aiming to detach the Southwest from the United States.
In a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Samuel P. Huntin
ton took a worried look at the waves of Mexicans who have been crossing the Rio Grande - whose banks mark the outskirts of this dusty border town of 4,385, about 20 miles south of El Paso.
He fears t
hat the increasing numbers of Spanish speakers in a band of states running
from California through Arizona and New Mexico to Texas could bring our nation the unhappy experience of linguistically split societies, such as Canada and the former Yugoslavia.
"Continuation of this large immigration [without improved assimilation] could divide the United States into a country of two languages and two cultures," wrote Huntington, a political scientist who heads the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.
His article has been praised and condemned by media pundits and talk show hosts, coming as it does on the heels of President Bush's proposal for temporary work permits allowing Mexicans to legally cross the border to jobs in the United States.
Here, too, Huntington'
;s ideas find both derision and support.
"I think the professor needs to come beyond his own four walls," said Clarissa Garza, a high school student. "He'd see we're provin
g him wrong."
"Playing the devil's advocate, I could agree with the professor," said Ben Sanchez, a retired accounta
nt and docent at the local museum. "The newcomers are different from us."
San Elizario is a fascinating laboratory for examining Huntington's thesis, because both sides in the debate - those sympathetic to newcomers and those suspicious of recent immigrants - are Hispanic. Nearly everyone here is of Mexican descent. The only difference is when their ancestors arrived.
Because of its origins and proximity to Mexico, San Elizario has always been a landing place for Spanish-speaking newcomers. It can also be a place of crushing poverty.
According to Antonio Araujo, who heads a local community group, Organizacion Progresiva de San Elizario,
some families get by on $10,000 a year. An annual income of $40,000 puts a family well into the local middle class.
Around the placita, or town center, a few historic buildings have
been restored, among them the lovely Chapel of San Elizario, a whitewashed adobe church. But the rest of the town looks like a bleak set for the movie The Last Picture
Show. Storefronts are empty. The few businesses are marked by hand-lettered, often faded signs.
There are solid-looking homes here, even a few substantial ones. But much of the populace lives in ramshackle neighborhoods, or colonias, that lack sewer lines or sanitary drinking water. Aged trailers stand next to half-finished homes, some little better than shacks.
San Elizario's newcomers are part of a process Huntington calls "the Hispanization of the Southwest." In the 1990s, while 2,249,000 Mexicans legally immigrated to the United States, many others simply crossed the Rio Grande, so that Hispanics now outnumber black A
mericans. Two-thirds of the Mexican newcomers live in the Southwest. Nearly half the population of Los Angeles is Hispanic.
This current wave of immigration, Huntington argues, is qualitat
ively different from earlier ones. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, European immigrants often lived in large enclaves, such as Chicago's Polonia or New York's Little Italy. But those
were city neighborhoods adjoined by other ethnic communities. The offspring of those earlier immigrants dropped their ancestral languages and assimilated into the English-speaking mainstream.
In Huntington's view, the settlement pattern and cultural loyalties of today's Mexican immigrants are more ominous. In a previous book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, he saw American values under threat from abroad. Now, he sees a kind of cultural fifth column undermining the nation from within.
"Demographically, socially and culturally, the [reconquest] of the southwestern United S
tates by Mexican immigrants is well under way," wrote Huntington. "Hispanic leaders are actively seeking to transform the United States into a bilingual society."
Huntin
gton, whose views will be expanded in a forthcoming book, declined to be interviewed for this article. His thesis has stirred up a firestorm of academic controversy.
"I was shocked by its crudity," said Princeton University so
ciologist Douglas Massey, who has studied Mexican-American immigration. "It's an affront to scholarship."
"Samuel Huntington is raising a legitimate question - it's just that he's wrong," said Cornell University professor Victor Nee, co-author of Remaking the American Mainstream, a well-received study of immigration and assimilation.
If there is a common denominator to the locals' self-identity, it is being Mexican - but they mean Mexican-American, not Mexican-Mexican. Looking across the Rio Grande, they see a foreign country - even a
s they are conscious of being different from other Americans.
Perla Lara is a high school student whose family still owns a house in Mexico. She also has visited friends in Ohio.<b
r>
"I never feel so Mexican as when I'm in Ohio," Lara said. "I never feel so American as when I'm in Mexico. We do take pride in being Mexican, but we come here hoping to be part of American society."
Indeed, a sense of pride in an adopted homeland is demonstrated in the most
basic fashion: a willingness to risk one's life for the nation's well-being.
"I speak three languages: Spanish, English and a little Thai," said Sanchez. "I served over there during the Vietnam War."
Of course, the pattern of the past is no guarantee of the future. Perhaps that intense sense of patriotism won't always be here. It is conceivable that those who live in poverty will someday despair of the American dream and listen to advocates of a Republica del Norte.
<
br>But there is no evidence so far. Instead, there is what happened last fall, on Veterans Day. Holguin reports that the annual parade went through the town streets, led by himself an
d other old soldiers. He served in Korea and Vietnam. The colonias looked a little less bleak, being lined with schoolchildren waving little American flags.
The procession wound up at the placita, where plaques honor the town's fallen heroes. People observed a moment of silence in front of the most recent marker, that of Ruben Estrella Jr.
L
ocal musicians composed a corrido, a ballad, in memory of Estrella, whose family name means "star." It tells how he was born in Mexico, came to the United States as a boy of 7, proudly joined the Army and was killed in action during the invasion of Iraq.
The tribute offered Estrella is in Spanish. The sentiments are as all-American as Valley Forge, Gettysburg and the sands of Iwo Jima:
You who surrendered your life,
For your nation and our peopl
e,
We will never forget you.
You will always be our hero.
Ruben, a star you will be.
The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Publishing newspaper.