The Making of a Latino Ethnic Identity
Totti, Xavier
The Latino press and Latino leaders claim that their group may well be the political movement of the 1980s. Estimates show that by the year 2005 those classified by the census as Hispanics will...
...Following the Mexican-American War of 1846, Chicanos moved rapidly from majority to minority status, suffering progressive pauperization through the loss of land, pressed into barrios, and victimized by segregationist policies...
...Such organizing along national lines began to change significantly in the 1970s, as the "new migrants" began to accept their permanence and interest in the local political process, and as the state began to manage its minorities (and the funds destined for them) across intra-Hispanic divisions...
...Because of the small national markets, Latin American media, especially film and television, constantly present themes that will attract viewers from all republics...
...citizens by birth, Puerto Ricans do not encounter the migration and quota system that affects all other migrants...
...Once here they took control of most Dominican voluntary associations and clubs, and founded branches of the Dominican opposition parties...
...Political Life But we will better understand the unity of the Latinos when looking at their structural similarities within American society and at their relations to the state...
...Using the Afro-American experience as example, and bilingualism as a model, they question the integrative character of American society and the processes through which assimilation was presumably achieved...
...Especially important in the processes of creating a new ethnic identity are those occasions when shared "culture" leaves the remembrances of the old country and is used to adapt to and describe life in the present environment...
...The first three are the dominant groups, each having settled in a different part of the country and established for other Latinos patterns of settlement and relations with the dominant society where they predominate...
...Federal program funds and student scholarships were distributed only to Puerto Ricans...
...They began to organize politically as the American state began to tackle problems of racial and social inequality in response to the black civil rights movement...
...Data on Latino intermarriage in New York City show that while 46 percent of Puerto Rican marriages, 55 percent of Dominican marriages, and 62 percent of South American marriages are exogamous, these were not marriages with Anglos but between Latinos of different nationalities...
...the same was true (and to a greater degree) for the smaller Latino groups...
...I am not saying, as it would have been easy to say, that ethnic groups are simply interest groups seeking resources in and from the state...
...Both Siembra and Plastic° urge Latinos to unite and through education, hard work, and the inner strength of the group create their own better future...
...4 In 1980 eight out of ten Hispanics interviewed in the New York metropolitan area favored formal bilingual education...
...Their defeat over the control of a community school board, in a district where they were the absolute majority, left them searching for new solutions to the problems of ethnic politics in New York...
...most migrants from revolutionary Cuba came from the upper and middle classes (the bourgeoisie, the traditional middle class, and the "new" middle class...
...Pamela G. Hollie, "Courting the Hispanic Market," New York Times, December 26, 1983, p. DI...
...Artists and sport teams from the different countries constantly tour the region borrowing personnel and themes from each other...
...At the same time, taking advantage of the open-admissions policy of the City University of New York, many became professionals...
...Most major corporations have devised special ad campaigns to capture what they consider the fastest-growing consumer segment in the country...
...The emergence of a wider Latino identity and the birth of organizations promoting their political and social enfranchisement began with their daily interactions in the neighborhoods of New York or Chicago, or any other city where two or more Latino groups interact...
...In Chicago, Puerto Ricans and Chicanos have built similar political alliances...
...The change also coincided with the American invasion of the island and the establishment of the repressive Balaguer government...
...When they entered the wider American scene in large numbers, they were able to benefit from the New Deal and Great Society agendas...
...In that sense, in their relations with the state, Latinos differ markedly from previous ethnic groups...
...Like Blades, Tato Laviera also speaks of and about a new environment...
...He warns assimilated Latinos of the pitfalls in their quest for the American dream...
...The bold ones even envision transforming the United States into a bilingual nation...
...As expressed by both Blades and Laviera the uncertainties lie not between assimilation and the maintenance of the traditional culture, they do not present two or more static, all-ornothing cultures, but interaction and creativity within new situations...
...Pluralists, on the other hand, many of them in New York, argue on behalf of this "different" migrant group and view the traditional three-generation European pattern of assimilation as the product of a different era...
...The Spanish language serves as more than a lingua franca among the groups...
...heavily with the official status of refugees following the Cuban Revolution of 1959...
...Focusing on the fact that all of the dilapidated and overcrowded schools were in the Latino section of the neighborhood, they organized and in 1986 gained control of the community school board...
...The language is also a living force since, unlike other migrants in the United States, Latinos are followed by a powerful and complex system of Spanish-language mass media...
...The Latino presence is superficially strong in North America...
...But the black civil rights movement and the maturing of the Chicano movement served as an inspiration in the development of Puerto Rican political organization and identity...
...Most do not accept the proposed term "Neorican...
...Blades, the most popular Latino singer of the moment, sings to a unified Latino group in America, composed of those from the "south," of a different color, of a strange tongue, united by both a common origin and their present situation in the United States...
...The unresolved political status of Puerto Rico also encourages direct interest in its politics and affairs...
...To their surprise, however, there was no place for them back home: the economy was in shambles, with Gulf & Western controlling virtually all activity...
...Intermarriage, arising out of social and economic intimacy, coupled with the strong sense of a common Latino past and the pressure from the larger society, will ensure for the next generation a stronger sense of the new identity...
...They speak of poor, working-class and street Latinos who are forging a new consciousness out of their shared past and present condition...
...Encouraged also by the availability of cheap air fares due to the surplus of airplanes after World War II (Puerto Ricans are the first airborne migrants in history), the Puerto Rican population on the mainland quadrupled between 1940 and 1950, and tripled again by 1960...
...One, of course, is the perceived shared cultural background in contrast to the larger American culture, with the Spanish language at the center...
...the song Plastic° categorizes those who unequivocally assimilate into the complacent middle class as shallow, "plastic" individuals preoccupied with the latest fashions and willing to mortgage their future in the name of "social status...
...Jesus Ranguel, "Survey Finds Hispanic Groups More Unified," New York Times, September 8, 1984, p. 22...
...Puerto Ricans in the middle 1970s were experiencing a series of stunning defeats in the city's political arena...
...indeed, moving from Puerto Rico to the mainland is like any other internal move within the United States...
...The Latinos' structural similarity within American society, the changes in state policies towards the poor and the minorities, the present threat to the once-popular pluralist ideology, the dispersal of the different Latino groups from their traditional areas, the impact of Latino mass media on the identity of the group, the patterns of intermarriage among certain Latino groups, and the realization among many that their stay in the United States might be permanent, generate a new impetus to form a collective consciousness...
...The shared cultural background, even if it is a superficial construct that leaves out the heterogeneous nature of the groups, has a tremendous force in identifying Latinos across national boundaries...
...That background, nurtured in common values, is constantly reinforced in the mass media, both in the U.S...
...political cadres who had stayed were occupying the bureaucratic posts...
...But to explain the lateness of the group's political and social assertion, we must first describe the constituent parts of the whole, stressing their dissimilariFALL • 1987 • 537 CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES ties, in order to clarify the processes that foster the emergence of a Latino ethnicity...
...5 In ordinary everyday discourse, even among fully bilingual or English-dominant Latinos, Spanish continues to preserve a special notion of self...
...Latinos in general, Cuban Americans being the exception, occupy the lower rungs of American society and suffer job discrimination due to the ethnic segmentation of the work force...
...If that were the case, it would have been impossible for Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York, or Chicanos and Puerto Ricans in Chicago, to unite under a new consciousness, or for the poetry of Laviera and the songs of Blades to gain popularity, or for the high rates of Latino intermarriage to exist...
...By the middle 1960s, Chicanos were aggressively asserting their separateness in a variety of organizations (grassroots or barrio, professional and university student organizations) and demanding a place within the general society...
...Laviera's work is bilingual, parts in Spanish, parts in English...
...In his latest book, AmeRican Folklore, 6 Laviera moves out from his "Neorican" and New York ghetto reality to reach the deeper cultural roots that unite groups, as in the poem "Vaya Carnal...
...Personal Ties While political activism and cultural expressions within a shared North American context signal the birth of the Latino group, another critical factor is found at a more intimate level, in intermarriage...
...Candidates for public office there campaign in New York for the support of those who might return to Puerto Rico at election time...
...As is to be expected from refugees of "socialist" revolutions, Cubans are politically conservative (most belong to or vote for the Republican party) and also exhibit the highest conversion rates to U.S...
...The other is the structural position of most Latinos within American society, and, as its consequence, their relationship to the state apparatus and politics...
...Estimates show that by the year 2005 those classified by the census as Hispanics will outnumber blacks to become the largest minority in the United States — politically, socially, and culturally—a demographic event of great significance...
...The establishment by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico of an office in New York interfered with the development of a local cadre of leaders...
...The cultural pluralists would expand the conventional boundaries in defining who and what are Americans...
...Within the process of Latino ethnic formation, the music of composer-singer Ruben Blades and the poetry of Tato Laviera are examples of the use of expressive culture in forging a new unity based on common traditions and a present similarity within the new polity...
...Chicanos are also the oldest Latino population in the United States because the Southwest and Texas were once part of Spain, and then of Mexico...
...3 The idea of unity among the different republics (the Colombian Federation of Bolivar) is a common theme in the socialization process and in the press...
...The massive migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland began with the government's effort to industrialize the island during the late 1940s...
...Thus Puerto Ricans in New York City at the beginning of the civil rights movement separated from other Latinos, most of whom were not citizens and could not vote, establishing their own parade as a symbol of their political aspirations and their strength...
...Another push to organize came from the Great Society federal antipoverty programs, which bypassed the local political machines and encouraged local leadership...
...Of the three groups, the most numerous nationally, though the least prominent in New York, are the Mexican Americans, or Chicanos, some 8.7 million, or 60 percent of the 14.6 million officially counted Latinos in 1980...
...Their brotherhood emanates from a similar past and a common popular street culture...
...When in 1978 the social democratic party, the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD), triumphed, a massive homecoming of Dominicans ensued...
...How do they constitute a group...
...Latino (from Latin American) is a more inclusive denomination accounting for those who come from, or descend from, a specific geographical area where the Spanish and Portuguese legacy is dominant but not exclusive...
...Cuban Americans entered the U.S...
...One of the first acts of the Balaguer regime was to dismantle the local popular organizations that had flourished under the social democratic regime of Juan Bosch...
...The legal status of Puerto Ricans, which facilitated their migration to the mainland, created a shifting population constantly going back and forth for personal and other reasons...
...Some, like California's ex-senator S. I. Hayakawa, already see the specter of a linguistically divided nation in which a large percentage of its citizens, with ties to nations south of the border, will demand that Spanish be made the official second language in the states where they predominate...
...The maintenance of Spanish and the ideal of bilingualism and formal bilingual education are, as recent surveys indicate, immutable tenets of identity for most Latinos...
...The carnal, or full brother, is the street Chicano, whom the street "Neorican" has discovered as his brother...
...The second-largest Latino group, 15 percent or two million and dominant among New York Hispanics, is made up of mainland Puerto Ricans...
...542 • DISSENT...
...Two television groups, Spanish International Network (SIN) and Netspan, are able to transmit coast to coast...
...The FALL • 1987 539 CONFLICTS MD CONSTITUENCIES force of Spanish among Latinos, in intraethnic and interethnic encounters, lies in its ability to compress many contradictory symbols in the search for power, reflecting exclusivity, nostalgia, and/or respect among speakers...
...Compared to previous surveys, there was "no sign of increased commitment to mastery of English at the possible expense of Spanish...
...Their organizational and/or creative efforts would have excluded each other...
...Although there are millions of citizens who identify or are identified as Latinos, the existence of an organized Latino ethnicity can be questioned.' In many cases the assertion that a Hispanic ethnic culture exists is prompted by self-interest, fear, or, for administrative reasons, by the state...
...It is in dealing with state programs like affirmative action, the welfare system, the criminal justice system, the schools, and the electoral system that Latinos become homogenized, both from above and from below...
...like most multi-ethnic neighborhoods, it is spatially segregated...
...and their professions brought little economic remuneration...
...Their slate, a mixture of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, fell one vote short in 1984 of gaining control...
...Today it serves as home to the largest Dominican population in New York City...
...Today the Spanish-language media in the United States include sixty-five newspapers, sixty-five magazines, sixty-seven television stations, and 430 radio stations...
...The class origin of most of these refugees differed markedly from that of other Latinos...
...It is being haltingly erected by those who cross their "individual group boundaries and seek solidarity in a wider Latino unity...
...uttering a few words of Spanish signifies a separation from the dominant culture and a symbolic unity...
...Many arrived in the United States with considerable capital...
...I believe two things serve to induce the formation of the Latino ethnic identity...
...In the New York metropolitan area, Cubans are heavily concentrated in northern New Jersey towns and, to a lesser degree, in upper Manhattan and Queens...
...Within the group there are visions of a golden epoch where "now that we have the numbers" it will be easy to achieve greater political representation and national prominence: to become, in the words of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) president, Ruben Bonilla, "a truly visible political force...
...He is looking for a new medium of expression to describe the current situation...
...Also in coalition with the Puerto Ricans (and with the crucial help of Puerto Rican lawyers and citywide elected officials), Dominican voters registered for the Community Development Agency elections (CDA controls the municipal allocation of antipoverty funds into communities...
...Among migrants and their descendants, these are the creative moments of forging new interpretations and future traditions...
...2 Felix Padilla, Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985...
...covert federal aid to overthrow the Cuban government gave Cuban exile leadership, old and new, a source of patronage...
...This prospect has not escaped the attention of the media and of prominent politicians...
...Most Puerto Ricans who married outside their group married Dominicans or other Latinos...
...Puerto Rican political organization and ethnic identity in the United States was late developing...
...Group Identity Given these different and disparate migratory processes, what, then, unites Latinos...
...The community and its problems are not seen as temporary or for others to solve, but as part and parcel of their condition as Latino ethnics in their "home" environment...
...Today, while Dominicans and Puerto Ricans still have their separate social clubs, and some continue to follow the politics "back home," FALL • 1987 • 541 CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES new political organizations and alliances, springing out of their similar structural position in New York society, are forging a new unity...
...Finally, the Democratic party, a white ethnic working-class party in the Northeast, showed no interest in organizing poor Puerto Ricans...
...Latino press and in that of the separate countries of origin.' The notion is further solidified by the immediate, traditional presence of the "colossus from the North" in the life of Latin America...
...All their activities centered on Dominican politics, human rights violations, and the defeat of the Balaguer government...
...Members of this group, with a long tradition of political activism and a strong internationalist ideology centered in the Dominican Republic, now realized that their only place was in New York, where they now began to organize and seek alliances with Puerto Rican leaders at the local level...
...A nationwide survey found, irrespective of national origin and length of residence in the U.S., that bilingualism was the personal goal of most...
...We can see, however, a common Latino identity emerging in the United States...
...Even the ultra-"American" (and antiunion) Coors Brewery has declared the 1980s the "Decade of the Hispanic...
...Notes The term Hispanic excludes racial and cultural differences found within the group...
...The black civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s showed Chicanos the value of massive organizing for gaining equality...
...Cuban Americans, the third-largest group, add up to 800,000, or 5 percent of the total official Latino population...
...Although efforts to unify different Hispanic nationalities as Latinos could fail, it is important to notice that unification is still a new phenomenon, emerging from diverse political, social, and cultural contexts...
...Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers' (UFW) organizing efforts in California, and the land struggles of Reies Tijerina in New Mexico, combined standard organizing efforts and traditional cultural symbols, which attracted a wide spectrum of Mexican Americans...
...It recognizes the presence and importance of nonwhite populations and cultures (Amerindian and African) in the forging of the new group...
...Those barrio leaders who could escape migrated and eventually, looking for jobs, found their way to New York City...
...Politicians, who previously catered to the Spanish-speaking population, began to address most Latino problems in terms of the Puerto Rican population...
...With the end of the bracero program, agricultural workers were able to organize for better conditions...
...Others, like Colorado's governor Richard Lamm, believing that the national spirit is fragmenting, and fearing a problem similar to that of Canada with Quebec, want action at the highest levels of the federal bureaucracy...
...migration was seen as both a social safety valve and an economic asset...
...6 Tato Laviera, AmeRican Folklore (n.p.: Arte Pilblico, 1984...
...For Blades, those situations are generally the products of exploitation, discrimination, and poverty (both here and in Latin America...
...The main outlines of their situation are familiar to most other New Yorkers: U.S...
...It is in this sphere that they unite to organize politically...
...the commitment to Spanish is stronger if anything...
...David Vidal, "Study Shows Hispanic Residents in Favor of Bilingual Way of Life," New York Times, May 13, 1980, p. 1. 5 Ranguel, op.cit., p. 22...
...Like Guarani among bilingual Paraguayans, it's the voice of the soul...
...Reform movements within the Democratic party, basically middle class with middle-class agendas, also showed little interest...
...Organizing for collective action to demand rights and benefits from the state became one of the ways they could mobilize their shared cultural values and gain recognition as an entity...
...citizenship of all Latino migrants...
...Business and advertising recognize the importance of the Latino market...
...Development schemes included encouragement to leave...
...Laviera ends the poem calling both himself and his carnal "chicano-riquetios," hoping that this unity will create a future totalmente nuestro (totally ours...
...Uneven processes in history, nationality, and migration account for the differences in the four components of the group: Mexican Americans or Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and the new migrants from other countries in Latin America (who mostly entered after the new immigration laws of 1965...
...It is no longer the poetry of "salvation in the tropics from this alien society" (of concrete jungles...
...540 • DISSENT CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES At first, most organizing was sectarian, within "national" lines...
...In the song Siembra, he urges Latinos to use their consciencia, in this case their identity and pride, to improve their situation...
...Manhattan's Upper West Side, for example, had been a working-class Irish and middleclass Jewish neighborhood, until, in the late 1960s, large numbers of working-class Puerto Ricans and then Dominicans moved in...
...In their alliances, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans founded a series of organizations (most prominent among them the Latino Urban Political Association [LUPA] designed to wrest control from the Jewish minority of the district...
...However, unlike politically conscious Mexican Americans, who adopted the name Chicanos to announce their Mexicano identity, mainland 538 • DISSENT CONFLICTS AND CONSTITUENCIES Puerto Ricans still are in disagreement over how to view themselves—whether and how different they are from their relatives back on the island...
...Many more of their leaders migrated with them than with the other groups...
...Etymologically, Hispanic evokes Spaniards or their descendants...
...it is the most visible and immediate mark of their shared distinction from the rest of the society...
...2 But why is it that such a group has not fully emerged and made its social and political weight felt in the United States...
...Furthermore, most major Latino television markets have at least two competing Spanish-language stations...
...When New York politicians were confronted with a community problem, they consulted the representatives of the Commonwealth government instead of going to the barrios...
...Dominicans began migrating to the United States in large numbers after the 1965 change in the immigration laws...
...By the late 1960s, when efforts to overthrow the revolution had failed, Cubans more or less began to settle in for a permanent exile and, especially in South Florida, entered the political arena...
...Instead, under internal and external pressures, guided by both elites and intellectuals with new visions, these groups are rearranging their symbols to emphasize their commonality as an increasingly powerful Latino people...
Vol. 34 • September 1987 • No. 4
