by José de la Isla
A group of anti-immigrant activists protest against undocumented immigration. (photo by Intellingence Report)
A new book of essays edited by Clintonera HUD secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros,calls attention to the close tie between the nation’s future growth and that of the Latino community.
“Latinos and the Nation’s Future,” published by Arte Público Press, was released Jan. 26 in Washington, D.C. at the American Progress Center, a think-tank closely associated with the Obama administration.
Its 16 chapters are written by 17 renowned authorities in their respective fields. Four sections, comprising 248 pages (including extensive statistical tables in one appendix), cover perspectives of the past and present, the larger society, statistical interpretations, and interpretations by MacArthur fellow Ernesto Cortés and Nicolás Kanellos about what it all means.
“The answer (to Latino progress) lies in the extent and rapidity of investment in education and in the Latino progression to the middle class,” says Cisneros in his overview essay.
The tenuousness about the progression is best illustrated by Janet Murguía’s generalizations in the forward. She recognizes immigrants are assimilating well but that Latinos as a group are below par on educational achievement, they work for low wages often in dead-end jobs, but are demographically growing exponentially and “put our entire country’s future at risk” when progress does not come fast enough. Yet she acknowledges Latinos “have the raw materials of our immigrant ancestors.”
Immigration issues and concerns, it’s true, have stolen the show for the past two decades, old complaints in the present color a lot of the thinking in many of the essays, and discussion is thin on mid-course corrections to form the idealized future that’s envisioned.
Raúl Yzaguirre, the former executive director of the National Council of La Raza, writes an exceptional essay on civil rights (a story all citizens should know) and Tamar Jacoby should probably serve as the last word on immigrants and newcomers and the emerging new nation. With award winning scholar and publisher Nicolás Kanellos, the background chapters are among the strongest in the volume. Although having many insights and strong qualities, the overall impression is that of shock and awe.
Essay contributors seem to assume that a national Latino presence comes as a shock to readers, that a quarter of the U.S. population will be Latino at mid-century (or hybrid progeny from intermarriage), that political representation will increase (Lionel Sosa), that education is a key focus (Sarita Brown)— as it has been for three centuries — and that the immigration demonstrations of 2006 were the largest since the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s (Joe García).
The awe is that Latinos now count in every step of the way toward forging what the nation becomes next (Roberto Suro and Leobardo Estrada).
The quaint twentieth century terms and concepts of “assimilation” and “integration” are applied liberally to refer to the process of a new consensus.
The resulting vision, posited by Kanellos, is that of a future United States that is more fully integrated into the economies and workings of this continent—more so than other global extensions.
Hispanics become more “mainstream,” corporate interests extend to Hispanic and hemispheric markets, and Latinos are in leadership positions in all aspects of national life.
A transnational identity arises and the future, according to this perspective, is like the present only more Latino. Hispanic Link.
