One of the people behind the search for better terminology was Grace Flores-Hughes, a Mexican-American from Texas who worked in the Office for Spanish Surnamed Americans, part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Flores-Hughes grew up in Taft, Texas, in a Mexican-American family, before moving to Washington, D.C., to work in a variety of civil service positions.50 In 1973, Flores-Hughes recalled in her memoir, a meeting of government officials and community leaders was convened to discuss the educational status of Hispanic people and Native Americans, but it soon fell apart because “all the attendees could talk about was the terms used in the report to refer to their respective populations.” One of the many complaints was that not all the Hispanics present wanted to be called chicano or Mexicans. The meeting was stopped, and a committee was set up to determine what racial and ethnic terms should be employed by the federal government.51
Heated debate followed within the committee over terms such as “Spanish-speaking” and “Hispanic.” At one point they settled on recommending “Latino” but, according to Flores-Hughes, some people felt it “was masculine in nature and would include peoples of Italy and other Europeans with Latin roots.”52 In the end, Flores-Hughes backed “Hispanic” because it was the term “that best identified those persons with Spanish surnames that claimed their origin was Spanish.” She brought others around to her way of thinking, and in 1975 Hispanic was implemented into federal language.53
Its adoption and usage, however, spread well beyond HEW, and it was criticized by people who preferred Latino, or others who thought they needed no label at all.54 In 1977, the Office of Management and Budget issued its Statistical Policy Directive No 15, which forced federal agencies to collect data based on four racial categories: black, white, American Indian/Alaskan, and Asian/Pacific Islander. It placed Hispanic/Latino as an “ethnic” category, rather than a racial one, meaning a person could be Hispanic and of any race.55 After this, in 1980 “Hispanic” appeared on the census, where it has remained.56 In 2010, a specific question on the census asked if a person is “of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin.” For those answering in the affirmative, the form gave four “yes” options: Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano; Puerto Rican; Cuban; or “another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin” with instructions to write in a box below, for example, “Argentinian, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on.” After that came a question for all individuals, asking for their race, allowing them to choose from white, black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, or some other race. Out of the 47.4 million people who identified themselves as Hispanic, around one-third (15.8 million) chose “some other race” and wrote in either Mexican, Mexican-American, Hispanic, Hispano/a, Latin American, or Latino/a, eschewing traditional census racial categories like black or white.57 That the census form decoupled a “Hispanic” identity from race seems to reinforce the idea that Hispanic people can be categorized as black, white, or Native American, while the responses of the people who wrote in their race indicate that there remains no consensus over the meaning of Hispanic.58 In March 2018, the Census Bureau announced that the 2020 census would ask respondents whether they are U.S. citizens, a question that has not been included since 1950. One outcome of this may well be that undocumented people steer clear of the census forms, but the ramifications of such a move—census statistics are used to help formulate federal funding—could be serious for many parts of the United States, not least areas with large Hispanic communities.59
The sociologist G. Cristina Mora has argued in her work Making Hispanics that the rise of this “panethnic” idea of the Hispanic “did not have to happen”; the term gained wide usage because “government officials, activists, and media executives never precisely defined who Hispanics actually were.”60 Two factors made this identity stick: the large Spanish-speaking community not only within the United States but also throughout the hemisphere; and the fast-rising consumer society, in which eager marketing executives saw the lucrative potential in a broadly defined Hispanic group. Today, the Hispanic community has been estimated to have an annual purchasing power of around $1 trillion.61
Although previous generations of immigrants had forced their children to “become American” by learning English and assimilating, by the 1980s Univision—a Spanish-language TV channel—and magazines, advertisements, and products started targeting this community in Spanish. Such mass media could at once cater to their desires as consumers, while also redefining the boundaries between Hispanics and “Americans.” Paradoxically, however, their separation as consumers served to reinforce ideas that Hispanic people were, indeed, a different culture with their own traditions and speaking their own language.
Miami-based Univision developed strategies to foster a Hispanic community in order to facilitate selling national advertising, so that businesses could aim their products at Cubans in Miami and Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles. Univision portrayed an “ideal Hispanic,” putting people on the air who had dark eyes and light but olive skin. This effort also extended to the type of Spanish that was spoken, stripping out regional and national expressions and instead making sure everyone spoke a more universal version.62
Some marketing firms learned to exploit the differences that exist between Spanish-speaking people, as exemplified by the various campaigns for Café Bustelo coffee. Marketers discovered that Mexicans and Central Americans preferred instant coffee instead of espresso, so they tailored ads for people in those markets. The company also monitored how people’s tastes changed when they moved—for instance, Mexicans in Miami who started to prefer espresso coffee.63
“Hispanicness” is also sold to the Anglo community, in particular with food. In much of the United States there is no “Hispanic” food, only Mexican. Its style is drawn from northern Mexico or the borderlands. Now “Tex-Mex” means Mexican, much as Sicilian cuisine came to represent “Italian” cooking, and many Mexican cookbooks published in the United States with recipes purporting to be “authentic” are written by Anglos, a tradition stretching back to nineteenth-century California.64 As part of a fund-raiser for the mission churches, the Landmarks Club published a cookbook in 1903 with an introductory essay on “Spanish-American Cookery” by the California booster Charles Lummis.65
Although the U.S. versions may differ from what is served south of the border, tacos and burritos and other Mexican foods have become staples of American cuisine. Small towns across the country have at least one Mexican restaurant, and there is the ubiquitous—though dubious in its authenticity—Taco Bell, which in recent years has seen increased competition from other chains such as Chipotle. Foods like corn chips and salsa are popular snacks, and grocery store aisles are stocked with plenty of refried beans, jalapeño peppers, and hot sauces, all of which can be washed down with imported Mexican beers and, of course, tequila. So associated is Mexican food with “Hispanicness” in the United States, that there have no doubt been tourists in Puerto Rico and Cuba puzzled by the lack of tacos on the islands. Indeed, the food of the Hispanic Caribbean has fared less well, though its rums remain popular. Outside places with large Puerto Rican, Dominican, or Cuban populations, there is little culinary reach, except perhaps for the “Cuban” sandwich, popularized, of course, in Florida, but it is far more difficult to find good tostones (fried plantains) than tacos.
One of the most obvious points where food commercialization and culture overlap is in the annual Cinco de Mayo celebrations. The commemoration of one victorious battle in 1862 against France in a war that Mexico lost is not, perhaps, the most obvious occasion for a cheerful fiesta, but it has become just that, despite the fact that it is not much celebrated in Mexico. The holiday took root among Mexicans in the United States in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War and the French occupation of Mexico, as an expression of solidarity founded on both nations having overcome their respective struggles. Its celebration continued among Mexican communities in places like California throu
gh the nineteenth century and was refreshed by immigrants in the 1900s. In the first part of the twentieth century, the date continued to be used to reaffirm good U.S.-Mexican relations. For instance, in 1942 in Los Angeles, the mayor held a Cinco de Mayo celebration that some five thousand people, including the Mexican consul, attended. In the 1970s, it became more politicized, when students at the University of California, Irvine used the commemoration as a basis for holding a five-day conference on the state of chicanos in California. Cinco de Mayo’s more recent incarnation took shape in the 1980s, with alcohol and food companies sponsoring fiestas and encouraging people to celebrate Mexico’s battle by having a margarita and some nachos.66
FROM THE RISE of rumba fever and the beginning of the Mexican vogue in the 1930s, there has always been a degree of Hispanic influence in wider U.S. popular culture, though it remains uneven and to some degree depends on not alienating non-Spanish-speakers. An early model of this was the popular TV show I Love Lucy. This 1950s classic comedy about Lucy and Ricky Ricardo was in many ways ahead of its time, depicting on television a marriage of a Cuban and an Anglo, something that could have been controversial but instead proved an enormous success, due in no small part to Lucille Ball’s expert comic timing but also to the likability of Desi Arnaz, who was already well known as a musician.
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was from a privileged Cuban family who fled during the Batista dictatorship, and his fame on the show came before the rise of the Cuban Revolution. Despite his accented English, Arnaz was light-skinned enough for the marriage to be acceptable to the social mores of 1950s television. The Spanish inflection of his English could be played for laughs, as in one episode where Lucy teased him, saying she could understand him now because “I’ve learned to listen with an accent.”
Later shows developed during the 1970s also had crossover appeal, for example Chico and the Man, which ran on NBC from 1974 to 1978. Set in a Mexican neighborhood in Los Angeles, it reflected the changing attitudes about Hispanics and often used barbed comedy to address racism and discrimination. The show focused on the relationship between Chico and Ed, an Anglo garage-owner and Chico’s boss. Chico, however, was played not by a Mexican-American but by Freddie Prinze, whose father was German and mother was Puerto Rican and who grew up in New York.
The 2000s saw the arrival of the show Ugly Betty, starring America Ferrera as the title character, a plain young woman who managed to land a job on a fashion magazine. The show, which ran from 2006 to 2010, was an adaptation of a Colombian telenovela, Yo soy Betty, la fea. Hispanic characters also have appeared in other shows; an example is Gabrielle Solis, one of the residents of Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives (2004–12), played by Eva Longoria.
Overall, however, Hispanic people remain underrepresented in mainstream U.S. media. One recent study, The Latino Disconnect: Latinos in the Age of Media Mergers, commissioned by the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, Columbia University, and the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts found in a review of TV and films that even “when Latinos are visible, they tend to be portrayed through decades-old stereotypes as criminals, law enforcers, cheap labor, and hypersexualized beings.”67 The report noted that, overall, large media mergers are leaving Hispanic consumers worse off and with less diverse offerings; even though Hispanic audiences are “watchful of their image” and quick to speak up against discriminatory content, “Latino participation in mainstream English-language media is stunningly low.” Another study by the University of Southern California found that out of 3,932 speaking characters in top-grossing films between 2007 and 2013, only 4.9 percent were Latino—this despite the fact that the community is thought to buy 25 percent of all film tickets.68
The crossover factor has also had an influence in music. The Cuban sound carried on into the 1980s, with Gloria Estefan dominating the music coming out of Miami in that decade, scoring a number of hits with songs like “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You” and “Get on Your Feet.” Meanwhile, in Texas, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez brought Tejano music out of the Mexican-American neighborhoods of south Texas and into the mainstream in the 1990s, winning numerous Latin Grammys and enjoying success in the English-language market as her albums went gold. She, like many Mexican-Americans, grew up speaking English and listening to U.S. pop music as well, but her musician father taught her to sing in Spanish to broaden her appeal. Tragically, her career was cut short when the president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldívar, shot her in 1995. Twenty years on, a museum dedicated to Quintanilla-Perez’s life and work in Corpus Christi, Texas, continues to attract devoted fans. A biopic about her, starring Jennifer Lopez in her breakout role, was made in 1997. Lopez, an actress and singer from New York born to Puerto Rican parents, has gone on to become a superstar in both English and Spanish. The 1990s and 2000s saw the rise of many other pop singers willing to record in both languages, and winning legions of fans in both worlds, including superstars like the Colombian Shakira, and the Puerto Rican Ricky Martin, and Marc Anthony, born in New York City to Puerto Rican parents.
In a shared Anglo-Hispanic popular culture, who or what is “Hispanic” remains unresolved. A commoditized Hispanic culture can only give a veneer of cohesion: pop stars and actors still have to perform in English to reach a national audience. Food culture, meanwhile, has become so ingrained in the national culinary fabric that the memory of how it got here—and how it connects to contemporary issues—has faded. Commercialization can spread culture but can also weaken it, rendering it disposable. A love of tacos and JLo songs does not go very far in resolving the ongoing debate about Hispanics, Mexicans, undocumented migrants, and who is allowed to be an American.
Chapter 16
Tucson, Arizona, ca. 1994–2018
“WHEN MEXICO SENDS its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with [sic] us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”1 With this speech, the property tycoon Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States in June 2015. As his campaign gathered pace, one of his most popular pledges was a plan to build a “beautiful” wall along the border. This promise, alongside further assurances that he would deport illegal immigrants, was coupled with the campaign slogan “Make America great again”—countered by a few quick wits who produced hats with the slogan “Make America Mexico again.”
Throughout the campaign Trump put forward policies that would adversely affect Hispanic people living in the United States and made negative references to them, using the phrase “bad hombres” in the third presidential debate, something no other candidate has ever done. At other times he would deliberately embrace his idea of Hispanic culture, posting on Twitter a picture of himself eating from a taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo with the line “I love Hispanics!” At one point, Trump even traveled to Mexico to meet with the president, Enrique Peña Nieto, and the two held an awkward press conference that skirted the issues, not least Trump’s demands that Mexico pay for his proposed wall. For the Mexican president, already struggling with low approval ratings, the move did not play well to a nation worried about the implications of a Trump presidency for their families and friends across the border. A few hours later, Trump was back in the United States, at a rally in Phoenix, where he said: “We will build a great wall along the southern border and Mexico will pay for the wall. One hundred percent.”2
Although the Hispanic vote has long been seen as important to the Democratic Party, its presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, did not choose a Hispanic running mate; she did, however, find one who speaks Spanish. Tim Kaine, a senator from and former governor of Virginia, had spent time working with missionaries in Honduras, where he learned the language. In addition, Kaine is a Catholic, no small matter for some Hispanic voters. On the eve of the election, many observers thought the Republican candidate’s rhetoric would spur a record number of Hispanic
voters and secure Clinton’s victory, but such hopes were misplaced.
The overall number of eligible Hispanic voters in 2016 was twenty-seven million, up from twenty-three million in 2012, and the total Hispanic share of the vote grew from 10 percent in 2012 to 11 percent in 2016. Clinton took about 66 percent of the Hispanic vote, and Trump 29 percent, while in the previous election Hispanics gave Barack Obama 71 percent of their vote and gave 27 percent to Mitt Romney. Both figures represented significant Republican declines since George W. Bush polled 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 and 35 percent in 2000.3
Overall, Hispanics’ participation in U.S. politics is rising, owing to their growing numbers and to changes in the law. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was extended ten years later to protect what were referred to as “language minorities”—groups that had struggled to cast a vote despite having the legal right to, facing discrimination or threats that blocked them from the polls. The legislative alteration also helped open the way for more active Hispanic involvement at all levels of politics. The Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, for instance, claims that it has helped register 2.5 million voters since it was founded in 1974.4 Now there are fears that some voting rights could be rolled back after the Supreme Court struck down part of the original 1965 voting rights legislation in 2013, opening the way for states to impose their own restrictions, including controversial demands for photo IDs such as driving licenses. Not everyone who is eligible to vote has a photo ID and, as with the literacy tests of the past, critics of such measures claim they could disproportionally affect Hispanic voters.
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