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Saturday, April 14, 2018

US Politics will have to learn Spanish

Por qubano22005

Not speaking Spanish in the United States of America can be a problem or at least provoke inquisitive glances and even raise accusations of lack of identity and not loving the Hispanic roots. It could also affect the political and social discourse of many activists of Latino descent who in the United States fight for the rights of Latin people. This happened recently to Emma González, the 18-year-old Cuban American who has raised her voice in protest against the massacre occurred in Parkland, Florida, and who has blamed the Trump government for this kind of incidents in the “land of dreams”.

Recently an Iowa legislator, Steve King has been one of the harassers of the Cuban-American girl and far from supporting her in a struggle that concerns the entire American people, has made her the target of his attacks. Critics for such a message did not wait. King had to erase his message from social networks with the tail between his legs. Nonetheless, this sociological and linguistic phenomenon happening in the United States is drawing the attention, where the number of children of Latinos who know the mother tongue of their ancestors is decreasing.

The first of the questions that assail the phenomenon of Hispanidad in the United States is in the terminology. It is not the same Hispanic that Spanish speaker. According to Wikipedia statistics, Hispanics make up about 53 million people. Those whose countries of origin are Spanish-speaking ones are known by that term, while Spanish speakers are those who speak the language of Cervantes.

According to Pew Research in 2011 there were a total of 37.6 million Spanish speakers in the US, a figure that rises to 42.5 million.

Curiously, Spanish is the second language with the highest number of speakers in the United States, after English. The United States is the country with the second largest Hispanic community, behind Mexico. In addition, the Spanish of the US is the second most spoken language in 43 states and in the District of Columbia.

Although a 2015 census revealed that 13.3% of the US population over the age of 5 speaks Spanish in their homes (40.5 million people); other studies suggest that despite the fact that more than 37 million Latinos in the US speak Spanish at home, this number has decreased considerably in the last decade.

But why did an Iowa lawmaker take on a Latina because she does not speak Spanish? It is the question that many will ask, especially when it is known that Republicans oppose the proliferation of the Cervantes language in their territory. This attitude corresponds precisely to the interest to denigrate the citizens belonging to these communities and ethnic groups. It is the desire to segment them and show them that they are not part of the land of Washington, that they are not "pure", an error or a racist criterion of several American citizens. The mistake lies precisely in the fact that US citizens of Hispanic origin are Americans, because despite their roots they grow under the values and precepts of Lincoln's nation.

The Pew Research Center found that the percentage was reduced from 78% to 73%. According to it, about 89% of Hispanic children and 94% of Latino "millennials" born in the US speak English fluently.

What happened? Well, the Hispanic communities are simply pressured by the racial phenomenon and although parents have Latin origins, they prevent their children from being discriminated by their roots.

In states such as Arizona, despite its Latin origin, xenophobic campaigns are often carried out, where they support the position of its radical politicians who are openly aggressive with the Cervantes language. This is not new. After the independence of Texas in 1836, the Mexican Americans began to suffer discrimination in the new American state and the authorities began to work only in English.

Most recently, Latino children who spoke Spanish in schools were physically punished if they used their native language. In Los Angeles, a state of Hispanic descent, in 1968 there were protests to put penances on speaking Spanish. From this battle emerged bilingual education. However, according to Professor Irene Vásquez, president of the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of New Mexico, they had a counterpart called "only in English." Among the vexations suffered by Latinos was to symbolically bury the words in Spanish when a student of Hispanic descent pronounced them.

Some experts suggest that, like Polish, French or Italian, Spanish will be lost after several generations. Statistics show that 82% of Hispanics maintain Spanish in the second generation, in the third one only 47% speak it. The fear is precisely due to the decrease of bilingualism. In addition, the number of Hispanics who speak English has grown by around 62%. In spite of it, among the Hispanics, the bilingual minority is greater than the minorities of Germans, French or Italians who disembarked in the New World.

The door to Spanish

Despite the reluctance of many politicians to try to cover the reality of a country where a portion of their territory was of Latin origin, in 1960, a woman had the courage to address the Latino voters in their native language. Jacqueline Kennedy is presumed to be the first person to record a propaganda message in Spanish. In it, she exhorted to vote for her husband, John F. Kennedy. That had a wide impact in the Hispanic community where pro-Kennedy clubs were formed. According to analysts, it was this small advantage that contributed to his victory over Nixon. In more recent times, former President George W. Bush during his candidacy spoke Spanish. Barack Obama, meanwhile, as one of the initiatives for the normalization of relations with Cuba, also spoke some words in Spanish.

However, there is still a lot to do, especially for American politicians who must see their Latin counterpart not as a different ethnic group but as an indissoluble part of their nation. It is estimated that the United States, by 2050, will have the largest number of Spanish speakers in the world.