Latinos Assimilate on Their Own Terms

The Senate’s phone system crashed last month during immigration reform debates, when thousands of people and anti-immigrant activists called their senators to protest the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants.

The massive, unprecedented telephone campaign was sparked by a range of complex motives based on social and economic issues. Among them was a theme that promises to reappear if the issue is revisited: the perception that Latinos are too different to assimilate, do not learn English, and are unraveling the fabric of the identity of a nation that was, ironically, created by immigrants.

“It is one of the ideas that anti-immigrant forces take advantage of: the notion that immigrants today do not assimilate and that other generations did. But it is not true,” says Cecilia Muñoz of the National Council of La Raza.

Latinos are assimilating, but in their own way, keeping much of their identity. Tamales at Christmas. Turkey and menudo at Thanksgiving. English at work and Spanish at home. Dual loyalties to the San Diego Chargers and Guadalajara Chivas. The Fourth of July. Cinco de Mayo.

“Latinos are ending the concept of the proverbial racial salad,” wrote renowned journalist and writer Jorge Ramos in his book, “The Latino Wave: How Hispanics Are Transforming Politics in America.”

The big difference between European and Latino immigrants, according to Ramos and some sociologists, is that Hispanics live next to their countries of origin, allowing them to maintain ties with their family, culture and language.

“Culturally, Latinos are never going to totally assimilate. Latinos are creating their own space in this country. And the characteristics of Hispanic culture are changing forever the face of the nation,” Ramos wrote.

This phenomenon plays out each day in the home of Cristóbal Castro, a naturalized U.S. citizen and son of a “bracero” who migrated to the United States in the middle of the last century to work.

“It is going to be very difficult to assimilate, at least for the first generation. What there is is a negotiation,” he said. “There will be things that we accept, like the manner of dress or the education here, and things that we don’t, like kicking your children out of the house when they turn 18, like ‘gringos’ do.”

Latinos’ tendency to cling onto their culture has led them to gradually redefine the American identity.

Assimilation, according to Tomás Jiménez, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, “no longer means you have to disown your culture and adopt a new lifestyle identified with Anglo-Protestant culture.”

In an essay published in the Los Angeles Times, Jiménez said that due to Latinos, “multiculturalism and the appreciation of diversity are much more accepted than before.”

Can you speak Spanish and be assimilated? Do you have to like hamburgers more than grilled steak tacos? When can you say you have achieved assimilation?

“It is not easy to define,” confessed Ira Mehlman of the anti-immigrant organization FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). Many Americans resent the fact that Hispanics insist on speaking Spanish and maintaining ties with their countries of origin, he said.

“But I would say that (assimilation) is when someone feels American,” he said. “And to me, people that march, yelling, ‘Nosotros somos América’ (We are America), waving the flags of other countries, are not assimilated.”

Richard Rodríguez, a writer who has published various books about the adaptation of Latinos to U.S. culture, said that assimilating is absorbing the individuality of the United States, and that this is precisely what Hispanics are doing.

“The reality is that the country is becoming more Mexican, and that everything is changing, our food, customs, music and religion,” Rodríguez said. “As Latinos continue incorporating themselves into society, Americans feel they have to learn fragments of Spanish. And there will be weddings, hatred, friendship, solidarity, curiosity and competition.”

What’s certain is that many Latinos live with one foot in each culture, and that they flow like water from one side to the other, something you can see each time the Mexican national soccer team faces the United States in the fiercest sporting rivalry in North America.

Ricardo Castro, brother of Cristóbal and also a naturalized U.S. citizen, said he considers himself 100 percent Mexican. But he could sit and watch the soccer game calmly, he said, because he had no fear of losing.

“I knew that my country was going to win,” he said. “And effectively it won, because for me it was either of the two.”

neither are they

Umm...yes they are.

When a foreign and hostile populace forces their way into your country against your laws, announces rather loudly that they plan to take over, force you to speak their language, make laws for you which have the express intent of depriving you of at least your property, if not your life and your liberty (they're working on those, first things first), stage mass demonstrations under the flag of a country we fought over land (and which relatives of mine died in), and agitate relentlessly for more power, more destruction of the rights of the citizens ( who aren't them ) in the form of speech proscription, extra-constitutional preferences, relaxation of pretty much all laws when applied to them, and generally a willful, sneering contempt for everything that was hard fought and won, then...I'd say that's a functional definition of "Enemy".

I have no idea where you live and what you've been exposed to. I have lived near the Mexican border most of my life - and it gets farther North every year - and every opinion I have come by is the result of exposure to the reality. I don't live in some abstract world that perhaps academics and people from unaffected areas occupy. What I have seen and heard and had done to me and my family over the last 40 years is enough. Enough! Civilized people should not have to be exposed to this.

You simply have no idea how incredibly violent, relentless, and crude the Mexican leadership is that is staging this silent war against us. To soft pedal what is happening and to retreat into Catholic fuzziness is insane. We are talking about the United States, here - not Brazil, not Paraguay, not Panama, or any other silly region that can only be vaguely termed a "country" in the modern sense.

The United States, Ma'am. The Light of the Planet. The Owners of the Nuclear Arsenal. The people who Saved the Earth in 1945.

Letting something like that be undermined, intimidated and terrorized by a bunch of primitives from a vicious, Fourteenth Century Feudal Hellhole is INSANE. It SHOULDN'T HAPPEN. EVER. That it IS happening is the most heinous case of malfeasance and negligence in Human history!!

And you want me to lighten up?

Yes, I want you to lighten up. Son, life is short, but eternity is forever.

I am not into “Catholic fuzziness”, however you define that. You don’t know me, and I keep repeating to you that I’m not opposed to efforts being made to protect our country from terrorism, and I’m for closing the border.

But I cannot and will not hate any group of people. As my Christian brother, you know as well as I that we are called to love our enemies, if that’s what in your mind you think they are, well then? That doesn’t mean by any stretch that we should lay down and let them walk on us, and we have a right to defend ourselves. I’m just telling you to replace the hate in your heart with love, no matter how hard that is. I agree, it’s hard! I catch myself descending into the same when I hear about some asswipe muslims baking little boys over in Iraq and other crap like that, it’s so damn hard to take. I know how hard, really hard it is to be expected to love people like that, to pray for them, just like I can hardly bring myself to pray for our notorious local abortionist, Tiller the Killer. But we have to do that, no matter what the dark part in your heart that tells you that you would really like to tear their heads off and shit down their neck.

You can be engaged with this issue with passion and work for justice, but please, don’t hate these people, it’s not allowed. Those are commands from our Lord and Saviour, not me.

Polybius is a fine patriot. He defends the concepts of limited government, sovereignty, and home-rule defined by the Constitution of the United States of America. I am proud to consider him a friend on FR. His posts are informative and well-thought out.

Cuban born Americans are among the finest Americans I know. My mechanic in FL was an 80 year old Cuban man. He had a huge American flag behind the desk in his office. The old man started his business with little help from others and a lot of sweat equity. He is teaching his son and grandson the business now.
Another friend came over on the Mariel boatlift and worked hard to provide for his family. His sons did very well in grade school and earned scholarships to prestigious art and medical schools.

My pedigree is mountain folk and Florida dirt farmer. In the days of Polybius' gr-gr-grandfather, it's likely his folks traded for beef with my folks in Florida. The Florida cowmen would run beef (Spanish scrub cattle) from North Florida to the pens at Punta Gorda. From the deep water ports, the cattle would ship down to Cuba. Great men such as Jake Summerlin and Hardee got wealthy from the cattle business.

Cubans and Spanish settlers have been part of Florida and Southern culture as long as I can remember. I study this part of our history with great interest. The illegal immigration problem before us today is a multi-front issue: of security, entitlement, constitutionality, employment, and law.

You're a crack up, PB. Dude like you is exactly who we're talking about when we make fun of the pompous, self impressed "Hispanic" ( always capitalized, right El Caudillo? 'Cuz y'all are such Important People, right? Legends in yer own minds... ).

Why am I "self impressed"?

Because I called you out for posting this trash on Free Republic?

"Ask the women in the hispanic family (pictured at a Catholic Church at a family First Communion) if the father has a few putas on the side. .......38 posted on 07/28/2007 12:20:53 PM PDT by Regulator"

"Well, PB, you're running true to form. When ya gonna tell the rubes youza Eeeespannic? ..... 61 posted on 07/28/2007 6:25:13 PM PDT by Regulator "

You think that the fact that your family has lived in the mountains of the South for 10 generations makes you somehow better than any American citizen of, in your phrase, "Eeeespannic" descent and you think that makes whomever calls you on it "self important"?

And of course, the first thing you do is go off with yer "All ju damn Jankees eees Klansman!" rant.

No, Regulator, not "All ju damn Jankees eees Klansman!" .

I am a proud American citizen myself even if I am of, in your prase, "Eeeespannic" descent. (You seem to really enjoy mocking Mexican accents but I am of Cuban and not Mexican descent and my accent is East Coast generic. Out here on the West Coast, most people guess "New England".)

As I said before, I served for 20 years as a U.S. Naval Officer. My uncle, five years after landing on U.S. soil and four years after hitting the beach at the Bay of Pigs was severely wounded fighting for America at Landing Zone X-Ray at the Battle of Ia Drang and is referenced in the index of "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young" on seven different pages. My brother served in the 10th Mountain Division. However, for people like you, those of us of "Eeeespannic" descent do not count as Americans no matter how long we serve in the U.S. Armed Forces and no matter how much blood we shed on America's battlefiekds.

You, Regulator, are not Klansman material because you are a "Jankee".

You, Regulator, are Klansmen material because you post filth like this about your fellow American citizens of, in your vernacular,"Eeeespannic", descent that happen to be of a different ethnicity as yourself on Free Republic.

"Well, PB, you're running true to form. When ya gonna tell the rubes youza Eeeespannic? ..... 61 posted on 07/28/2007 6:25:13 PM PDT by Regulator "

But, we can have a pissing contest amongst ourselves until hell freezes over on a thread that nobody but you and I are still reading to no purpose.

Better to let other Freepers decide.

There is a thread currently on Free Republic regarding Free Republic being called a "hate site" on the O'Reilley Factor.

I do not believe that Free Republic is a hate site. I would not post here if it were.

It is, however, self evident that some people such as yourself use Free Republic as a hate site and your posted comments about asking a lady of Mexican descent if her husband "has putas on the side" and your asking a fellow American citizen and Freeper "When ya gonna tell the rubes youza Eeeespannic?" are a perfect illustrative example to use for that thread to illusatrate that some bad apples do unfortunately disgrace Free Republic once in a while.

It is comments such as yours that get Free Republic unjustly labelled as a "hate site" in the national news media.

Do recall, Dear PB, that on a number of other threads over the ages, you make a point of bringing up your origins.

If that's not true, then how did I know it without you saying so? Hmmm? Are all of us "Klansmen" telepathic as well?

My but we do have all these amazing capacities.

But back to the main topic.

You posted a picture of an apparently "hispanic" (whatever that is) family contrasted with apparently non-hispanic whites, engaing in shall we say, regressive behaviors.

And I'm the guy engaging in negative stereotypes?

You have the gall to use demeaning visual images of non-hispanics and then get petulant with me when I toss it back at you?

Gosh, Poly, thought that manhood was supposed to be a big deal with y'all. Guess you're a bit touchy, huh?

Maybe...just maybe...it's all a facade.

But hey, that's a stereotype, right? And I'm a Bad Man for saying such a thing and making a tuff Navy Officer like yourself upset.

Please accept my heartfelt and gushing apology for upsetting your strong, virile and proud self image.

Like I said...Pobrecito.

Know what Poly? The part about the putas that really upsetcha?

It comes from a true story. I won't bore you with the gory details, but El Caudillo had quite a few on the side.

It's a family story. One of my first exposures to what I later came to find was a social norm in those societies. It's really too bad it had to happen to my aunt. She was naive, and really didn't understand what she was up against....men who have no real honor, only a cartoon version of it.

And are you going to stand there and deny that? Are you going to downplay Latin social regressiveness and pretend it never existed, or worse, say that it's better than astringent Anglo-Protestant norms?

If so, why do you believe that you can hold up your culture as being better, but lose your temper when you get ridiculed for that?

Gosh, there I go again...another stereotype. The Hot Latin.

So the point is, PB, that I think you're this: a shill for the ugly, exploitative, dehumanizing, crude, atavistic culture of Mexico and Latin America in general.

You post such images, and then later you make your Cuban ethnicity part of the thread. Always seems to run like that.

If that isn't true, how did I know it before you went down that road?

Just so we're clear here, PB. I think Latin America is an ugly disaster area. Unfortunately, I've been to many parts of it....the slums in Santo Domingo are truly appalling. See? Not just Mexico.

But as a nice girl from Merced once said to me....she went to that place Once, and had no intention of ever going back. Good idea. Stay out of dangerous places if you can.

I have every right and even a duty to criticize you, Latin America in general, the actions of Spain and its colonies in the Americas.

You want to use the Leftist tactic of calling that "hate" and trying to silence me that way, you go right ahead. But I don't know anyone on the real Right who buys that idea. It's just flat race baiting and Bolshevik political correctness. Can't take the heat? You know the answer.

Want my unvarnished opinion? Obviously not, but here it is anyway:

Latin American "conservatism" may superficially resemble American social conservatism, but it's meaningless to say that. Most societies beyond the remnant primitive cultures on the planet have the same features: long term monogamy, established religions, cultural and class segmentation.

The "Conservatism" of Latin America is regressive, as it merely recycles feudalism and uncritical patriarchy, leading to gross class divisions. And it does so along racial lines, to make things even worse.

This has Nothing to do with Anglo-American classical liberalism. In fact, it stands in stark contravention to it. Any rational observer would compare the two - Spaniard / Mestizo culture and Anglo-American culture - and not only reject the first, but be appalled at its outcomes.

I need not catalog all the places one can go to verify this. It would be list that takes up volumes.

I think that the "Right wing" in Latin America may be against Communism, but to me, that doesn't equate it with the Right in the United States. At least in Spain they called themselves what they were: Fascista.

I think that would be your political roots. The party of Franco, authoritarian, anti-majoritarian, revanchist, stubborn and unchanging, economically inefficient and inert, unequal and oppressive: fascist.

As I said a number of posts back, this culture has roots millennia old. But that doesn't legitimize it, or its methods like the Encomienda.

And as I look to my own history, and the history of my country, I find nothing that connects your culture and history to ours except conflict between the two.

And yet you tell me it's "hate" to criticise you, to lampoon you, lest you be humiliated unjustly.

Poor, pitiful you. So proud. So vain. So...obsessed with yourselves.

So obsessed with your own dysfunctionality that you pour into this country as your own countries collapse into doctrinaire totalitarianism as a reaction to your atavism, and then demand that we ignore the failings that led to such diasporas and adopt them as equal to our own cultural norms.

Such a thing could only be described as insanity. Would you visit an asylum and act like the inmates?

So I don't intend to go along with your cheap attempts at coercion, I will continue to criticise Latin cultural norms, and even ridicule the water carriers for such dysfunctional social ideas. Like you.

As mthom put it, what's your message? If we just import all of Mexico, we'd all be more hard working and moral?

If so, Poly....why does Mexico...and Colombia...and Venezuela....and Bolivia....and Argentina...and Nicaragua...and Panama....and El Salvador...and Guatemala...and Costa Rica....and Brazil....and the Dominican Republic....and even Cuba....look the way they do?

When you can honestly answer that, maybe I'll stop using vernacular and generally disrespecting your tripe. Before that....forget it, Caudillo Man.

Do recall, Dear PB, that on a number of other threads over the ages, you make a point of bringing up your origins. If that's not true, then how did I know it without you saying so? Hmmm? Are all of us "Klansmen" telepathic as well?

Dear, Regulator.

Yes, I have brought up my ethnic origin on a number of threads. Are we “Eeeespannics” (your phrase) never supposed to do that? Are we Americans of “Eeeeepannic” descent supposed to never say we are Hispanic because we are less American than you simply because we are of “Eeeespannic” descent?

Are we Cubans that were born in Cuba, came to the U.S., served and bled in the U.S. Armed Forces in the very first generation and became quite successful in the U.S. not just as much a part of American History just as the first generation Irish that fought for America in the Irish Brigade?

Are we “Eeeespannics” supposed to just take it when you post on Free Republic that a Hispanic woman (with obvious Mexican mestizo racial features) pictured at a First Communion at a Catholic Church should be asked if “her husband has putas on the side” simply because she is Hispanic?

Should we ask black American women at a Baptist Church "if their husbands have hoes on the side" simply because they are black?

I often mention other ethnic groups that contributed to what is now America. I have posted about the Buffalo Soldiers, the Irish Brigade, the Navajo Code Talkers, the Cajuns, the Jewish immigrants, the Japanese Americans units in World War Two, Southerners and even the Scots and the Scots-Irish of your own ethnic heritage.

The difference is that I celebrate their contributions to American History and do not spew out hate against those groups simply because of their ethnicity.

On one Civil War thread, I posted Robert E. Lee’s comment that the Scots-Irish were among the best soldiers he had.

Americans of Scots-Irish descent, Southern descent, Cuban descent, Irish descent, Cajun descent, Polish descent and Jewish descent are all as American as Motherhood, Apple Pie and Joe DiMaggio ...... and Pizza and Scottish bagpipers in kilts at a Fourth of July Parade.

A “Klansman” hates O.J. Simpson not only because he is a murderer but also because he is black. A “Klansman” hates mobster Meyer Lanky not only because he was a criminal but also because he is Jewish. A “Klansman” hates an illegal alien not only because he is a criminal but also because he is, in your phrase, “Eeeespannic”.

In this thread, with weapons-grade sarcasm icons, I turned your slurs against “Eeeespannics” around and mocked reverse bigotry against “Anglos” to try to make you see how foolish such generalizations were but even that had no effect on you.

Only when your conduct was illustrated on a current thread about how Free Republic is now being accused in the national media about being a “hate site” do now begin to mellow a little bit.

Here are some responses in that thread so far:

*************

To: Polybius

Wow. I’m not familiar with your argument, but you just did a very good job defending your case.

361 posted on 07/30/2007 10:22:04 PM PDT

***************

To: Polybius; Jim Robinson

Holy Smokes! I missed that one but you are clearly correct. Thank you for your service to our country! Especially thanks for su Tio attempting to free his Cuban homeland from the Socialist plague and then his valiant sacrifice to his adopted country!

368 posted on 07/30/2007 11:04:24 PM PDT

*****************

To: Polybius

Oh yea....that one needs a zoting for sure.

370 posted on 07/30/2007 11:24:51 PM PDT

*****************

To: Polybius

Hear! Hear! Thank you! 374 posted on 07/31/2007 12:49:56 AM PDT

Well, okay, it's not a perfect melting pot. Maybe a better way of expressing it would be a stew pot. As for the salad bowl, I think it leaves too much separation and not enough in common between the ingredients, who share only the fact that they're sitting in the same bowl.

Any revisionist nonsense about the left-wing myth (now adopted by the neoconservative right) about a "melting pot" ignores the true history of race and culture in America.

There has simply been too much assimilation for this to be nonsense. I look at myself, a mixture of German, Czech, English, and Finnish bloodlines, and the fact that I have virtually zero cultural connection with any of them. To me I'm just an American. Yet there was a time when my English ancestors would've been absolutely distinct from my Finnish ones. In fact, their Englishness or their Finnishness would have been of monumental importance to their identity. But the melting pot has worked, and here I am, a mutt. Any traces of Czechishness in me are utterly gone.

My original point still stands: America changes the "ethnics", and the "ethnics" change America.

The point you're making now is more limited. Now you're leaving room for my point, which is that although there is an exchange between America and ethnics, it's not symmetrical -- that ethnics undergo most of the changing. As a result I agree with your point.

Hey, Jefe, the wife nailed you in one shot: She said, "so he shows hispanics at their best and Americans at their worst, and that's supposed to make them better than us?"

Smart girl, huh? So herewith the Regulator's wife rebuttal to the PolyPropagandist gig:

American Family at it's best:

And of course

Hispanic offspring at their worst:

In fact, the label on this pic was "Racist Mexican Gangs "Ethnic Cleansing" Blacks In L.A." and the article includes a lot of the wonderful pictures you see posted here on FR from time to time...which of course are no where near as flattering as the ones you like to post.

And we know who's distorting the picture to benefit his own ethnicity, PB. That would be you. The numbers tell the tale.

And no one moves to Latin America to get away from crime.

So keep pushing with the fake wounded pride, pobrecito. Like I said before, it's comical to see all the Grande Caudillo's pretending to be victims. Gosh, where did all the bravado go? I need the laughs.

And you have the gall to say I'm painting your ethnicity with a broad brush? When you go for lowball crude generalizations about Anglos?

And you say you aren't a propagandist?

By the way...regarding all those other folks who came to America over the centuries, I really can't think of any of them who asserted that the United States was illegitimate and that the land was really theirs. Unlike your co-ethnics:

And

Yea, right. Show me the Potato Famine Irish claiming Virginia for Ireland (well, maybe New York...the Bowery...)

Only your buds, PB. The only gang to ever show up and say, "You gonna speak OUR language. We ain't NEVER gonna speak yours!" (ahem. another true story for me, in Austin, 1993, on 6th st. And on the airwaves and streets of America before and after that).

And then you say I'm judging you by your ethnicity in a negative way? Well, er, um, you say judge you by your ethnicity in a positive way because of the Moral Rectitude of your cultura.

So which one is it? How come you want to have it both ways?

Either you admit that I have the right to judge hispanic society in toto or you say no, only on an individual basis. And then you stop talking about them as a group.

BTW, speaking of group "rights", ever ignored the "hispanic ethnicity" block on an application? If you did, do you think that practice is widespread? Got any good reason why you think White Men from Spain should have preferences under American law for anything?

You have no right to say I can only look at the good parts and ignore the bad. And that I cannot weigh the two, and see which prevails.

And once again....you're claiming that The Saintly Hispanics aren't bigoted and racist against not just Anglos, but Blacks as well??!

My but you do keep the halos well disguised.

Give it up, Poly. I'm on to you and your Companeros.

"We will rule the Gringos and take their land" - That's the reality behind mass invasion from Mexico and Latin America.

Face it, man. It's part of your reality. Who the Latins are. Is it genetic? Cultural? Don't know. But it's definitely there, or the pictures I posted wouldn't exist.

And Spanish wouldn't be the dominant language in Mee-ami, sport.

And I'm not "mellowing", as you allege, simply because at 3:00 AM in the morning I was less than awake. On the contrary. I apologise for NOTHING I've said. The Latins came into this country and have gone out of their way to undermine it and hurt it in ways never imagined. If the illegals - and even a lot of 'legals' - acted this way on a visit to somebody's house, they'd throw them out.

And that's exactly what we Americans should do to every illegal here and start to look real hard at a lot of the legals as well - did we really want them to live with us, since they think and act this way? Remember the Palmer Raids. I happen to agree with those and clearly Palmer didn't go nearly far enough - the far left would be a lot smaller in this country even now if he had.

So chew on that. 'Cuz that's how it is.

OMT, Cortez.

Since you "celebrate" ( now there's a Cindy Sheehanism if I ever heard one ) the contributions of all the immigrants who ever came to America ( and of course, we're only talking about those who came legally, right? You wouldn't eeeever include massive numbers of illegals, right? Right? ), then you clearly are in favor of large scale immigration into other countries, right?

So let me know about your efforts to get Mexico or Cuba to accept, oh, you know, 100 or 200 million Chinese into those countries. I mean, those are round off errors in the Chinese population. Surely, the Latins would welcome being made into minorities in Latin America OVERNIGHT by massive waves of Asian, Indian and African "immigrants" -- Right?

Because you're so much in favor of it everywhere, no?

I mean, there can't be any hypocrisy in Latin America, could there be?

100, 200, even 300 million...the world's poor deserve a chance, right Jefe? It's too crowded in Bangladesh. Why not 50 million Bangladeshi's in Hispaniola? They're used to the climate. A match made in heaven!

And you, being the Tolerant Multi-Culturalist you claim to be, you'll be waiting at the docks with open arms and free cigars, right?

Right.

Caughtcha again, propagandist.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.