por José de la Isla
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ever since Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Hispanic Heritage Week in 1978, I’ve had mixed feelings about such a happening.
Don’t get me wrong. Annual celebrations and commemorations are important. Subtly, they can provide the paste that binds us as a nation. In her book “A Brief History of Anxiety,” Patricia Pearson suggests they give us social therapy.
Ultimately, as any good anthropologist would acknowledge, they are modern-day recognitions of rites of passage.
Yet, good intentions sometimes come with flawed packaging. For example, one year a radio station invited me to narrate a tribute to Cinco de Mayo and its special significance in U.S. history during our Civil War years. Afterwards, friends insisted my message was wrong. The reason it is observed more fervently in this country than in Mexico, they said, is because a beer company, promoted it as a rite of spring and used the occasion for an advertising blitz. I disagreed – that is, until I met a beer company exec who was in on the planning.
Yes, it was originally a beer promotion to boost slumping sales. It just goes to show you that even from someone’s commercial hustle, some good can come.
In this, only the 30th federal observance of our country’s Hispanic heritage, (now a month-long celebration), its meaning and form are still evolving. The idea behind it is more than bunting and dressing children in folkloric costumes. It allows us a moment’s pause from raggaetón and hip-hop and classic rock to hear the sounds of our grandparents.
If we listen attentively to the beat, maybe we will hear what moved them.
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall says pop music appreciation is not a recent phenomenon. All cultures carry a kind of idiosyncratic thump that begins in the womb.
It gets played out loud and the group responds.
Sound ridiculous? Composer Aaron Copland struck that chord when he took folk music and orchestrated it into “The Tender Land” and “Rodeo” and “Fanfare for the Common Man.”
He had been unsuccessful before that time. But in Mexico City, as the guest of conductor Carlos Chávez, he did a night of clubbing, ending up at a honky-tonk and eventually wrote a variation of the music he heard that night. The name of his composition was “El Salón México.” Copland’s first popular piece, it was accepted all over Latin America and Europe before U.S. audiences caught on.
Before he became one of the nation’s foremost composers, Copland couldn’t even get a gig writing for the movies. His hoity-toity colleagues said his music made no sense – that is until he drew inspiration from Mexican pop tunes. His friend Carlos Chávez also wrote some of the world’s most memorable conversions from folk to the concert hall, Sinfonía India.
Those of my friends who are mostly oriented to politics, policy and current events see this month’s celebration in a broader context. They point to trashy national attitudes that discriminate against immigrants, stemming from a worldview about whose culture is better and whose isn’t – with Hispanics ranked at the short end. Social commentator Angelo Falcón reminds, “Hispanic Heritage is one month, Latino survival is every day.”
While the better part of this nation’s people are getting laser surgery on those cataracts that haze our national perspective, screwballs, scare-mongers and nativists who make it their business to propagate division remain among us.
The antidote is vents such as those in Washington, D.C., this month bring thousands together for planning and advocacy. They ultimately promote social harmony. Theirs is not strictly a political agenda, but a civic endeavor.
In towns and cities throughout the nation, the Hispanic heritage we commemorate one-twelfth of the year is transnational in nature. It is not, as some might insist, a one-way street going north. It is much more about culture than it is about cargo. It is about ideals and not ideology. It is a national recognition of the advantage of having our hemispheric neighbors, even though our politics don’t exactly reflect it. It is about how we are transforming as a people, a society and a nation.
Welcome to Hispanic Heritage Month. Welcome to the 21st century. Welcome to the United States of America. Can you feel the beat?
(José de la Isla, author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (Archer, 2003), writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. He may be contacted by e-mail at: joseisla3@yahoo.com). 2008
