by Jorge Ramos
That’s why I dream with them.
Latinos: The Struggle to Define Ourselves
It is getting ever more difficult to define ourselves.
We are so many different things.
Latinos are staging a true demographic revolution in the United States, but at the same time, another revolution is taking place within the Hispanic community. Something very interesting began happening around the turn of the century.
After two decades during which most of the growth in the Latino population depended on immigrants coming from Latin America, things began to change. With a birth rate slightly higher than the U.S. average, more than half of Hispanic population growth was being generated from inside America’s borders. According to the Pew Research Center, from 2000 to 2010, 9.6 million Latinos were born in the United States, compared with 6.5 million who arrived here as immigrants.
This will have enormous consequences.
First, this shows that many Latin Americans no longer believe the United States is as attractive as it may have been before. The dangers of traveling north, increased security at the border, and the stress of living under constant persecution has caused millions of Latin Americans to stay in their countries of origin. They might not earn what they could here, but little by little, economic conditions are improving, and they are able to live their lives without constantly looking over their shoulders for ICE agents.
Here in the United States, these new citizens do not have to hide in the shadows, as many of their parents did, and will eventually reach voting age. They will never forget the fear and anxiety their parents endured, and their political convictions will doubtless be defined by these experiences. No one should be surprised if, in a decade or two, there is a very active Hispanic electorate with a very long and detailed memory. When someone mistreats your mother or father, it’s something that you’ll never forget.
Even for those with Spanish-speaking Latin American parents, being born in the United States has a decisive influence. First and foremost, English becomes the essential language.
Spanish is spoken in most Hispanic families to varying degrees. It is the language of our emotions, and it maintains our connection to the generations that preceded us: the grandson with the grandfather, the te quiero before leaving the house, the words that accompany the embraces during every time of joy or pain. The United States is the only country I know where people seem to believe that speaking one language is better than speaking two or three. But even those who are fully bilingual are aware of the fact that, here, English is the language of power and communication.
By 2012, only 35 percent of U.S. Hispanics were born in another country. This means that at least two-thirds grew up with English as their primary language.
And then it was my turn to witness this change firsthand.
As I mentioned, I have been working at Univision since 1984. For decades, the company philosophy was to focus on Spanish. Some of the stricter executives did not want us to use any English words during our broadcasts. And the strategy worked to perfection. Univision has been the leading Spanish-language media corporation since it was first established in 1962 as Spanish International Network, or SIN, in San Antonio, Texas.
But early in the twenty-first century—right around the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks—we began to notice a demographic change among Latinos in general and within our own homes in particular. Our children were no longer watching Spanish-language programming. Sometimes, of course, they would join us for a soccer game or some other important event, but when the parents turned on a telenovela or the news, the kids would go into another room and seek shelter on their computers or smartphones.
Univision and Spanish-language television have a guaranteed future. According to the Pew Research Center, three out of four Latinos still speak Spanish. The market continues to grow thanks to a well-earned reputation for standing up for the community and providing very different programming from what you might find on the English-language channels. We cover all of Latin America as if it were local news, and we don’t just report the facts, we also understand journalism as a public service. Our audience expects us to be a guide when it comes to issues such as immigration, health, and how, in general, to operate in American society. We give a voice to those who have none, and we defend our audience’s rights. The civic and social orientation of our role is not often found on similar English programs.
We also have an advantage over them. Millions of Spanish-speaking immigrants will continue to arrive in the United States over the next few decades and will quickly become part of our audience. But at the same time, we have to recognize that younger Latinos are choosing to inform themselves and communicate more in English. I see it in my own home.
That’s why the Fusion channel was created in 2013. It was Univision’s first foray into the English-language market, and it soon spread out into a number of digital sites. The original idea was to create a channel for younger, English-speaking Hispanics. But we soon realized that would have been a strategic mistake. Viewer studies indicated that they didn’t want something geared strictly for Latinos, who felt wholly a part of the greater United States. With that in mind, Fusion was created for all millennials, not just Latinos.
The experiment is ongoing and the results continue to be the same: 69 percent of second-generation and 83 percent of third-generation Latinos watch the majority of their television in English, according to the Pew Research Center. Why? Because 63 percent and 80 percent of them, respectively, think in English.
A similar trend is taking place in the news media. More and more Latinos are choosing to get their news solely in English: 32 percent in 2012, up from 22 percent in 2006. And adult Hispanics who say they watch at least some news programs in English rose from 78 to 82 percent during that same period of time.
All of this is the natural result of a community that grows more from children being born in the United States than from adults arriving from south of the border. Thus, over the course of a couple of generations, English is becoming the dominant language. Even Latinos who prefer to speak primarily in Spanish are of the belief that English is necessary to be successful in this country.
Most interesting of all is that this rapid process of English becoming the dominant language does not necessarily mean that Latinos consider themselves “typical Americans.”
In 2012, the Pew Research Center conducted a fascinating study titled When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity, which concluded that nearly half of all Hispanics—47 percent—don’t consider themselves “typical Americans.” And it should come as no surprise that people who speak primarily Spanish, who were born somewhere else, or who have lower levels of education or income might feel less American than others.
I don’t feel like a “typical American” myself. Many of us don’t. How could you if your parents are deported, if the police are profiling you, if you’re the victim of racism, or if the president himself insults your family? How could you if you lack the same opportunities as others simply because of your last name, your accent, or your skin color?
There is nothing typical about that.
Which is why, when asked what we are, very few of us say “American.” Just over half—51 percent—prefer to identify with the country of their family’s origin: Mexican, Venezuelan, Cuban, Colombian, and so on. One in four (24 percent) choose “Latino” or “Hispanic,” while only one in five (21 percent) describe themselves as “American.”
This is not to insult the United States or to imply some lack of loyalty. It simply reflects the dynamic complexity of our intermixed and intermingled families. We come from various countries, we have different types of immigration statuses, we incorporate a multitude of races and religions, and we share a very unequal command of languages.
But at the same time, there are some who do feel like “typical Americans” and who do not make any particular distinction between themselves and the rest of the U.S. population. The New York
Times has referred to them as the “post-Hispanic Hispanics.” They do not speak Spanish as their primary language, and they identify more with the ideas of their political party or social group than with their ethnicity.
Despite all that, integration into a group can never truly be complete. As Professor Roberto Suro wrote in Strangers Among Us, “Latinos are not on a straight track to becoming whites, but they are not indelibly marked as nonwhite outsiders, either.” Suro describes perfectly how difficult it is to assign a permanent identity to Latinos, owing to their tremendous social, geographic, and linguistic mobility. Latinos can visit for a few months or stay for the rest of their lives; they can speak English, Spanish, or Spanglish at home; they can feel like foreigners living in a foreign country; or they can feel completely at home and identify themselves as fully American.
Latinos run the gamut from the fully integrated post-Hispanic Hispanics to those who are marginalized in the extreme, like many newly arrived undocumented immigrants.
The clearest official effort to unite us began with the 1980 census, which used the word “Hispanic” for the first time. In the 2000 census, the word “Latino” was added. But in fact, we can be many things at once: we can identify ourselves as black, white, or indigenous; we can associate ourselves with the country of our father, our mother, or neither; we can emphasize the city of our birth or the nation whose passport we carry; we can say we speak with or without an accent; we can belong to the largest or the smallest of groups; or we can reinvent ourselves based on a tiny characteristic hidden inside every family.
There is a lot of biology and geography in our sense of identity, but also a lot of will. We are what we were born as, but also what we want to be.
In very general terms, we are part of a group with origins in Latin America and Spain and that now resides in the United States. That’s it: that’s the most basic generalization we can make. But the combinations are almost endless.
I am a Mexican who lives in the United States and an American who was born and raised in Mexico. I have two passports; I vote in two countries; I am an immigrant with two American children. I am bilingual; I speak Spanish with a Mexico City accent, and I speak English with a newcomer’s accent. And I insist on being all things at once. No one can force me to choose.
The author Isabel Allende feels the same way. She once told me about the frustration she experiences when journalists ask her to choose between Chile and the United States. Even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she understood that she did not have to choose. That day she felt very American, very supportive of her neighbors in San Francisco, very close to her compatriots in New York.
It’s the same for me. For clarity and simplicity, I would like to be able to say that I am Mexican or American or whatever else and have that be it. But I would be lying. I’m from right here and I’m from out there. And I’m not at war with myself about it. I’ve learned to manage the diversity within myself and to leap over boundaries at will, both physically and emotionally.
It wasn’t always like this. It took me twenty-five years to become a U.S. citizen. I could have done it much earlier, but I waited. My rationale was that once I had spent the same number of years in the United States as I had in Mexico, I would finally become a citizen. And so it was.
But there was something else to it. I had been covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I was well aware of how a president could make decisions regarding the lives of the thousands of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants serving in the armed forces. And I wanted to make sure that whoever was occupying the White House was someone who could be trusted with such a personal decision. But the only way to do that was to vote, and for that I needed to become a citizen.
In 2003, I was deeply disappointed with President George W. Bush’s decision to invent weapons of mass destruction in order to justify a brutal war in Iraq. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but he had no such weapons, and he had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
I promised myself that I would vote in the 2008 elections. I would turn fifty that year, having spent twenty-five of those years in Mexico and twenty-five in the United States.
Mexico is a wondrous and beautiful country, filled with supportive and caring people. It’s a place where you will never feel alone. And the United States is an extremely generous nation that gave me freedoms and opportunities I could never have found anywhere else in the world.
At one point I thought it was going to be difficult for me to participate in the swearing-in ceremony. After all, this was a process twenty-five years in the making. But as soon as I understood that I wouldn’t have to give up my past, my origins, or my traditions, I was able to accept everything with serenity and a sense of inner peace.
I wasn’t subtracting anything. I was adding.
Something truly beautiful occurs when you embrace a new nation and that nation embraces you back. It has to be reciprocal in order for it to work. The country adopts you, but you also have to adopt it.
Part of my job is to take a critical and independent look at what isn’t working or what’s harming any given nation on earth. It can be difficult to understand, but often it’s a true labor of love when you do what you can to improve the place where you live. You critique the things that really matter to you, the things that you love about it. It’s not a betrayal or a lack of solidarity.
It’s my job, and it’s my country.
Being an Immigrant in the Trump Era
My accent betrays me.
I say just a few words in English, and people already know that I wasn’t born in the United States. That I’m from somewhere else. I’ve been learning English for over three decades, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to speak it perfectly. I can communicate easily enough with most Americans, but my accent is ever present.
Many recognize it as a Mexican accent, but few know that there’s more to it than just that. It’s a chilango accent, from the northern part of Mexico City, where there’s a bit of a lilt to the words. That will always be there.
Many people don’t like it when I speak English with an accent. Especially when I do so on television, which is evidenced by the comments I get on social media. And this reminds me of a great interview that radio journalist Terry Gross did with the South African comedian Trevor Noah when his book, Born a Crime, was published. Noah, who replaced Jon Stewart after he stepped down from The Daily Show, speaks six languages and is an expert at identifying and copying accents.
“When you hear somebody speaking in an accent, it’s almost like they’re invading your language,” Noah said during the interview on Fresh Air. “It feels like an invasion of something that belongs to you. And, immediately, we change.”
It’s an acute observation. The fact of the matter is that a language such as English does not belong to anyone and we can speak it as we please to the best of our ability. But inevitably, someone will feel uncomfortable or even threatened by your accent, and that can make you feel very out of place.
Being an immigrant is inherently tied to this feeling. Occasionally for an entire lifetime. This much is clear in Edward Said’s book Out of Place.
Said was a scholar born in Palestine during the time of British rule. He studied in the United Kingdom and had taught at several universities in the United States. In his book, he explains what it’s like to come from many different worlds and feel many different streams coursing inside of you: “I occasionally experience myself as a cluster of flowing currents. I prefer this to the idea of a solid self, the identity to which so many attach so much significance. These currents, like the themes of one’s life, flow along during the waking hours, and at their best, they require no reconciling, no harmonizing….A form of freedom, I’d like to think, even if I am far from being totally convinced that it is….With so many dissonances in my life I have learned actually to prefer being not quite right and out of place.”
I find it interesting that Said describes this sense of being out o
f place as “a form of freedom.” In a way, it is. Many immigrants experience a moment of clarity during which they feel powerful and free. The reasoning goes more or less like this: If I can manage to leave my country of origin and succeed in a new one, there’s nothing on earth that can stop me. We are literally from many places.
The immigrant—the stranger—can choose to have many lives and can even choose to return, or try to return, to the one left behind. All of these different possibilities (or currents, as Said would say) of life exist within us simultaneously. Occasionally, one will impose itself on another, but none of them ever truly disappear.
This fluid sense of identity is precisely what bothers many people. They would rather Latinos be easily defined and have their loyalties lie solely with the country in which they live. But their historical reality—let alone their daily lives—is quite different from that of most Americans. We live (and some are even born) with two mother tongues, not just one. There are days where I begin in Spanish, read The New York Times in English, talk to my mother in Mexico, write my column in Spanish, check its translation into English, speak with my children in Spanglish, give an interview with CNN or Fox News, host Noticiero Univision in Spanish, drive home listening to MSNBC or a Beatles station on the radio, log on to Facebook and Twitter in both languages, and finally go to sleep, where I have fully bilingual dreams. Such a life—such a journey, really, with a history shared between north and south and between two languages—could never be a “typically American” one. I’m sorry, but it’s just not possible.
There are days where I speak almost entirely in English, eat salads and hamburgers, and feel completely attached to the United States. There are other days, such as when the Mexican national soccer team is playing, that I can’t help shouting out in Spanish and bask in the sense of belonging with other Mexicans.