Hispanic Fanatic

First off, thanks to Eddy for commenting on my post “Witnesses Described Him as Brown…” He supplied one of the best, bravest, and most poignant comments that I’ve received.

Thanks also to all who have commented on “From the Motherland,” the post about my mom. Most of the comments have been via email or verbal, but it’s still good to know that certain pieces resonate.

Along those lines, I will continue with the theme of family by introducing you to the cousins.

Let me be clear that I’ve never related to the the whole concept of extended family. I don’t have distant relatives I’m forced to visit or creepy old uncles who make everyone uncomfortable or anonymous children who just show up at Thanksgiving.

Rather, I have the cousins. There are eight of us, and we were basically raised as siblings. Growing up, I thought it was normal to see your cousins at least once a week (usually more) and go to stay at their houses for days at a time and share inside jokes and get into fights about what TV show you were going to watch.

It wasn’t until I was an adult, and talked to other people about their childhoods, that I realized most Americans think of “cousin” as that weird kid they saw at funerals or the exotic older relative who bought them beer.

It wasn’t like that for us.

Perhaps this is because in Hispanic culture, valuing family is not just lip service. It is a hardcore component of life. There are good and bad aspects of this principle, which I’ll address in a future post. But regardless of its consequences, I can verify its existence and strength with Latinos.

Among the cousins, I’m the oldest, and my brother (about nine years my junior) is the youngest. That means all eight of us are within a decade of each other.

We remember being children together, piling into our parents’ cars and jostling for space. We recall being teenagers and going through goth or grunge or rave phases. And now as adults, we go out to dinner together or visit each other’s houses or do other respectable grown-up things that would have amused us to even contemplate back when we pulled each other’s hair or stole one another’s CDs.

We are not as close as we used to be, which is inevitable in even the tightest of families. But we see each other, in various combinations, when we can. And our spouses have become de facto cousins, and the children are our collective nieces and nephews (again, we don’t keep track of all the “second cousin, twice removed” jargon).

This is not to say that everything has gone smoothly for all eight of us, or that feuds haven’t erupted along the way, or that some relationships are at this point, more tangential. But for the most part, we pretty much like each other, which took me a long time to realize is a rarity in American life.

I’ll profile each of the cousins in future posts. Suffice to say, I’m grateful that in one respect, at least, we were raised old-school Hispanic style – you know, like a family.

Chris Rock once said that whenever he hears about a horrible crime on the news, he braces himself for the revelation of the criminal’s race. To paraphrase him (because I can’t find the exact quote), Rock said, “I say to myself, ‘Don’t be black, don’t be black,’ and if the guy turns out to be black, I’m like, ‘Damn it!’”

It works the same way with me. Whenever I hear about a murder, rape, or anything more severe than a hubcap getting swiped, I listen to see if the guy is called Gonzalez or Sanchez or Espinoza. If he is, I’m like, “Damn it!”

There is palpable relief on my part (and probably with other Hispanics) if the guy is black or, even better, white. At least then we don’t have one more dark-skinned guy confirming negative stereotypes.

It’s important to point out, of course, that with the notable exception of the Virginia Tech shooter, the bad guy never seems to be Asian. At least this is true in America, because plenty of Asians in the governments of China and Mynamar and North Korea are absolute motherfuckers. But that’s another story.

In any case, I doubt that white people ever steel themselves for the description of a criminal’s race. It simply doesn’t enter their minds to do so, and for this, I envy them. As the dominant culture, they don’t have to worry about one sick bastard stigmatizing them. This is just one of the miniscule ways in which people of different races perceive the world in different ways. 

The association between race and crime, of course, goes back to our cultural foundations, and it is hard-wired even within minorities. It leads to a million miscommunications, faulty assumptions, and outright attacks.

It can even lead to issues where people are not consciously aware of the dangerous conclusions that they are drawing. In a future post, I will go more in-depth with this concept by looking at racial microaggression (and won’t that be fun!).

In any case, wish me luck. After posting this missive, I’m going to gamble by reading the newspaper. You’ll find me there, flipping through the pages, holding my breath, hoping that Jose or Pedro or Julio hasn’t messed it up today for the rest of us.

The ideal location for a date varies, of course, depending upon the couple’s taste and motives. Maybe your perfect date setting is an upscale restaurant or a tropical beach or the backseat of a 1998 Dodge Neon. It’s up to you.

Coming up with an event for a double-date is naturally more complex. And where it really gets cumbersome is the rare, even mythical, triple-date. But if you and your loved one find yourselves hanging out with two other couples, I have a suggestion: the Hollywood Bowl.

A few years ago, my wife and I went on a triple-date to see the Buena Vista Social Club in concert at that California landmark. We were grooving to the Afro-Cuban jazz beats when I noticed that all three couples consisted of a Latino male and an Anglo female.

Now in Los Angeles, the Hispanic-white combination is not exactly the most exotic. Still, it struck me that all three of us were officially interracial. My observation was seconded later in the evening when one of the women (not my wife) said, “It’s the white girls with their hot Hispanic studs!” She perhaps had a sipped a little too much wine by that point.

But it’s not like she was lying.

In the 21^st century, a trio of Latinos can meet up with cute white ladies and jam to tunes from the motherland, and only an obsessive-compulsive blogger will even notice (at least until the alcohol kicks in). Now that’s progress on the road to racial harmony.

As it turned out, two of those couples (including of course, my wife and me) wound up married. The third couple broke up a few months after the concert and then had guilt-ridden sex semi-regularly until they finally got sick of each other.

She’s now married to a white guy, and he’s single.

When I was 24, about a decade ago, I finally changed my name.

For those of you who have done this, you know that it is not a decision to made lightly. Issues of identity, psychological comfort, aesthetics, politics, and a hundred other variables are wrapped up in how we refer to ourselves. Plus, it’s a logistical nightmare and financial burden to make the change.

It’s little wonder, then, that even people with positively wretched monikers will cling to them and endure a lifetime of snickers and befuddled looks. I knew a guy named Peter Creamer who never considered changing his name, even though one could not have come up with a better gay-porn alias.

So why did I do it?

It wasn’t because of any issue with my first or middle names. Indeed, those remain unaltered from my birth certificate.

No, it was my last name, which for the first two dozen years of my life was a monosyllabic horror so bland that I am convinced it actually made me duller.

But my innate dislike of the name wasn’t enough. As I mentioned in a previous post, my mother raised me, and I never felt connected to my father’s name (but let’s not get too Freudian or whiny here). I adopted her maiden name as my legal signifier as a sign of respect to her. 

That remains the primary reason. But there is, of course, a supporting factor. My birth name is Anglo, a brief English-Irish term that simply does not line up with my obviously, shall we say, ethnic appearance.

In truth, I didn’t like the name because it was too white. It didn’t fit me. Perhaps I was being overly political or confrontational or sensitive or aggressive. But I have to admit that I always wanted something that indicated my heritage, or that at least didn’t stand out from everyone else in my family (I’ll post more about the crazy cousins in the future). And I was tired of people finding out my name and saying, “That doesn’t seem right.”

They were correct. It wasn’t right.

So when I moved to New York City, I found a quick and easy way to change my name (everything in NYC involves a middleman who will handle things for a fee).

At my job, when I announced that my name had gone from something Anglo to a moniker with more of a Latino flair, a co-worker asked, “Doesn’t it usually work the other way around?” In other words, it’s more common for a Guillermo to become a William or a Morales to become a Madison and so on. He was right, of course.

But I had already possessed an Anglo name. It was time for something new.

Certain cultural differences in behavior frustrate our attempts to explain them, especially if the behavior is, shall we say, less then desirable.

Why are most serial killers white? Why do black teenagers get pregnant more often than other adolescents? And why do gay men have such horrific taste in music (I can’t prove that with stats, but you know I’m right).

Still, a new study purports to show that when it comes to negative behavior, Latino teens are in a reckless class by themselves. According to the researchers, Hispanic students are more likely to attempt suicide than their black or white peers are. They are also more likely to ride with a driver who has been drinking alcohol and more likely to drink booze on school property. As far as drug use, they were more likely to use cocaine, heroin or ecstasy, and they were more likely to be offered or to sell narcotics. Finally, they were more likely to skip school because they feared for their safety.

This is a catalog of cataclysm. Apparently, the only reprehensible behaviors that Latino teens are less likely to indulge in, when compared to blacks and whites, are smoking cigarettes or watching excessive amounts of television. Well, I’m sure they also shop at Abercrombie & Fitch less and attend fewer Tyler Perry movies, but the researchers didn’t ask that.

When asked to explain why Hispanic students are so messed up, the researchers gave a concise and very scientific answer of “Fuck if we know.”

I must admit that I too can’t explain why Hispanic teens are more likely to be depressed, high, or rolling around unbuckled with drunken drivers. Even my personal experiences don’t help clarify matters. At one point, of course, I was a Latino teenager. And like all teenage guys, I had the occasional run-in with alcohol, fast driving, and cute girls. But I don’t recall ever selling cocaine or dropping E during class or being terrified to go to school.

There seems to be a cultural disconnect, fueled perhaps by America’s de facto segregation. Or maybe it is the desperate need that afflicts too many minority kids, which is to be street and keep it real (even if that so-called real behavior is simple idiocy). Regardless of the reasons for this societal freefall, Hispanic parents might want to take a moment to talk to their kids, rather than just assume that they’re experiencing things that all other teens have to endure. Clearly, they’re not. 

Neither my wife nor I watch a lot of television. However, one of her TV vices is the show “Top Chef.” The other night, she was tuning in to see which of her favorites will make the final cook-off or bake sale or knife fight or whatever, when I overheard an especially astute comment.

Apparently, this episode was set in Puerto Rico, and the chefs’ challenge was to create an island feast. They were required to use pork in their entrees, inspiring one of the judges to say, “It’s just not a party in Puerto Rico without a pig.”

Well, I could have told you that.

The appeal of pork to Hispanics, and to Puerto Ricans in particular, is well-established. It’s like the Irish with beer, and the Filipinos with rice, and the fundamentalist nutjobs with child brides. Some things are just ingrained.

For proof, let me tell you about one of the first times I brought my girlfriend (now my wife) home for Christmas. The feast was held in the house of my cousins who are half-Puerto Rican, where they lived with their hardcore Puerto Rican father. My wife, a borderline vegetarian, was amused, then perplexed, then disconcerted as it was proudly pointed out that we had three different kinds of pig to choose from (roasted pork, glazed ham, and some fried-porcine dish that intimidated me). Her request for a veggie option, or at least a different kind of meat, was met with baffled stares. How could she not want to devour pig? And we had three different types tonight! As I recall, she ate a lot of salad that evening. What can I say, I liked the ham.

Going back even further, when I was a kid, the term “pork chop” was a derogatory term for Puerto Ricans. This short-lived and ineffective taunt subsided as more colorful words emerged – and also as pissed-off Puerto Ricans kicked the shit out of anyone who called them that. I do not recommend bringing back the insult.

In any case, I compliment the producers of “Top Chef” for recognizing the cultural allure of cooked pig to Latinos.

Of course, I’m sure there are Hispanics out there who hate pork, and probably a Latina vegan or two. Nevertheless, I have to think that if Puerto Rican producers ever get the rights to the “Babe” franchise, (so far consisting of “Babe” and “Babe 2: Pig in the City”), they will develop a sequel where Babe gets roasted, served up with plantains, and chased down with mojitos – all under the title “Babe 3: Pig in My Stomach.”

These are perplexing times for Hispanics, especially for those who are Catholic. Actually, that statement is ridiculous, because these are confusing times for everybody, unless there’s some really enlightened individual out there who has achieved inner harmony while the rest of the world roils uncontrollably.

But getting back to those Hispanic Catholics, let’s address a question: In an election year, do they tap into their faith to lead them to the conclusion that we should be concerned with the poor and the plight of immigrants (liberal ideas) or do they lose their collective mind over gays and abortion (conservative ideas)?

Now that the nominees are set, will Hispanics back Obama – the Democrat and (as you may have noticed) a fellow ethnic minority? Or will they turn against him because he surged past Hillary Clinton, that perennial Latino favorite?

Will they go for John McCain, whose efforts to appeal to Hispanics have thus far consisted of learning how to pronounce the word “fajita” correctly? Or will they lump him in with the build-a-fence, deport-everybody Republican crowd?

At this point, it seems like the decades-long lock that Democrats have on this constituency is intact, but weakening. People like my pro-life, anti-war aunt don’t exactly feel a kinship to either political party. Her opinions are not contradictory to herself, but they cause pollsters fits. 

Of course, being Hispanic is no longer synonymous with being Catholic. When I was growing up, encountering a Latino who did not know the rosary backward and forward was as rare as discovering an Asian person who was really into polka. That’s not necessarily true anymore, and I’ll address the de-Catholicization of Latino culture in a future post.

But in any case, it will be intriguing to see if religion and race mix in unpredictable ways this November. 

I’ve mentioned before that Hispanics are now the number-one minority in America. On a related note, I’m sure you’ve heard that salsa is more popular than ketchup (it’s true, more or less).

But this numerical advantage in population hasn’t amounted to much for Latinos, except perhaps to convince many U.S. citizens that hordes of immigrants are flooding the country, stealing their jobs, and oogling their wives.

Because of the complex history involved, more obvious racial differences, or just plain coolness, black people will always have the advantage of being in the forefront of the national consciousness. This will remain true even if the percentage of blacks in America continues to decline under the onslaught of an out-of-control Catholic birthrate (most Hispanics are still Catholic, which I’ll discuss in a future post).

We simply do not have the cache that black people have. Witness the fact that plenty of white people consider themselves culturally black. Many more actively want to be black, which can make for a disturbing and/or hilarious spectacle.

Witness also that a white-black interracial hook-up results in the oft-repeated catchphrase “Once you go black, you never go back.” What is the equivalent for a white-Latino relationship? “Once you go brown, you never… I don’t know… frown?” You see the discrepancy.

Now, there are advantages to being off-stage. For example, if someone tosses a slur in our direction, we are positive that he really means to be insulting and isn’t making some idiotic attempt to be down with us. Black people put up with that shit all the time.

In any case, it’s all just whining, I suppose. It won’t even matter in a few generations, because in the future, everybody will be at least part Hispanic. Don’t believe me? Sorry, but the numbers are on our side.

For years, the diversity at my job consisted of an Asian woman and me in a sea of 40 white people. A few months ago, everyone got excited because it seemed that we had hired our first gay employee. But as it turned out, he was merely effeminate and not so exotic after all.

So we were all disappointed.

Still, we recently added a woman who is half-Mexican, so the Hispanic population has doubled. Or to look at it another way, because we are both half-Hispanic, between us we add one Latino to the staff. This is progress.

The lack of Hispanic representation in the so-called respectable professions (often defined as those that pay a decent wage to fuck around in a cubicle) is stunning. Aside the time I spent toiling in fast food as a teenager, I’ve usually been the only Hispanic at a given job. I’m used to it, and it’s never been an issue, at least not in the sense of overt hostility. Confusion, however, is much more common.

On occasion, I’ve worked with people for years who are surprised to find out that I’m a Latino. Perhaps we’re making small talk and I’ll mention that my grandmother speaks only Spanish or that my last name has its roots in El Salvador or that I know what “puta” means (hey, it comes up). Then I’ll get this strange look as if I’ve been hiding a secret life or pulling an especially egregious fast one on them.

“Are you Hispanic?” they’ll ask in perplexity. And when I confirm it, they’ll frown or shrug or cluck their tongues with the peevishness of the mildly deceived. They appear to want to follow up with “And when were you going to tell me this?”

It’s not that they’re closet racists. It’s that their worldview has been altered abruptly. What have they believed to that point? I can’t say for sure, but the thinking seems to be, “He’s sort of white, but not really. He’s clearly not black. If he’s not one of those, but still does white-collar work, he must be Asian. Probably Japanese.”

I had one co-worker who wanted to know if I had any female relatives I could fix him up with because, as he stated, “I’m into Asian girls.” He was heartbroken to find out I could not help with his cause, so I refrained from pointing out how painfully common his fetish is among white men.

In a future post, I’ll have more on people’s frequent insistence that I’m really Asian (it’s ranged from comical to combative). But for now, let me return to my original point, which is that very few Latinos read “Dilbert.”

In fact, the only other Hispanics I usually see in an office building are the guys mopping the floor, and they often give me quick, embarrassed smiles as if to say, “Sorry I don’t make you prouder” or “Aren’t you afraid they’ll catch you impersonating a white guy?” Otherwise, we avoid eye-contact, because the Latino janitor is probably thinking that I look down upon him, while I’m super-conscious of the fact that I don’t want to appear like I’m looking down upon him. Perhaps we should engage in a moment of solidarity, or I can emphasize the importance of education so his children can go farther than he has, or we can snicker and say, “How about those Anglos, huh?” But we do none of this, because the class difference between us is vaster than the racial similarities that bond us. I feel that I should say something to the guy, but no words of wisdom, in either English or Spanish, arrive. So I keep walking, and I hit my cube, and he keeps scrubbing, and I’m sure that no one thinks for a moment that he is Asian. 

I know what you’re thinking. Exactly what is the U.S. government’s definition of a person who is “Hispanic”? Come on, we’ve all wondered about it. Well, look no farther for edification.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget first defined a Hispanic to be “a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.”

The U.S. Census Bureau included the term on its 1960 form, but this, the government’s initial attempt at a definition, wasn’t published until 1978.  Apparently, nobody was Hispanic before then.

Now, it’s far too easy to take shots at a nameless bureaucracy that pathetically attempts to corral the messy realities of the world. But I’m going to do it anyway.

The first thing we notice in this definition is the phrase “regardless of race.” This is problematic, because I thought we were talking about race. How can it be irrelevant when it’s the whole point?

Well, if you’ve ever worked for the U.S. Census Bureau (I did, as a teenager for one horrific summer, but that’s another post), you know that Hispanics are not considered a race. We are an ethnicity.

What does that mean? I really don’t know, because the only answer I’ve ever heard is “It’s political.” Perhaps a sociologist, cultural anthropologist, or government worker out there can clue us in (please post if you know the official answer, seriously).

Clearly, any attempt at defining a large group of people who come from vastly different cultures is doomed to be incomplete, sketchy, vague, and possibly insulting. But we need to cut the government some slack here. They have to define Hispanics. Otherwise, we would have no way to measure how badly we’re doing on the economic scale, and we would have no idea who’s being acknowledged during Hispanic Heritage Month (it’s in September, by the way).

Ultimately, perhaps you’re just Hispanic if you say you are. It’s not like there are any ceremonies to induct you into the lodge or anything (although that would be cool if there were).

As I mentioned in one of my first posts, many people would not consider me (I’m half-Anglo) to be Hispanic. So I should feel validated because I fit the government’s definition. After all, my family is originally from Central America.

But slipping easily into a government-built box means nothing, of course. Independent of some red-tape organism, all of us develop our own definitions and self-images and myths and creation stories – everything we need to say, “This is me.”