Hispanic Fanatic

A few years ago, I ran into the sister of my childhood friend (a guy who I briefly thought was my cousin, but I was confused) shortly after his wedding, where I was a groomsman, but he doesn’t have children yet, and…

Let me start over.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Hispanics are more likely than many Americans to back up the phrase “family values” with something approximating an actual valuation of family. This is in contrast to the way the term is usually employed, which is as political code for “I don’t like gays.” As I also mentioned in that post, there are positive and negative aspects to the Hispanic prioritization of family.

For starters, Latinos tend to have more kids, although the rate has started to decline and line up with other ethnic groups in America. Still, Hispanics are well-known, even stereotyped, for having bigger families than most Americans. This tendency to be awash in newborns has been brought up in debates about illegal immigration, studies covering teen pregnancy, and news reports regarding America’s changing demographics.

But are Latinos actually more obsessed with children than other subsets of our culture? Or is the higher birthrate just a fluke of statistics? I can only speak from personal experience. As such, I offer the following anecdotal, completely unscientific evidence.

Some time ago, I was at an ATM when a woman tapped me on the shoulder. Let’s call her Monica. When I was a kid, I was friends with her brother, a guy I’ll call Nelson. They were related, through their father’s marriage, to some of my cousins (see my post on “Cousin #1”). Using child logic, I figured that made us family. They were Puerto Rican, so we certainly looked related.

The last time I had seen either of them was at Nelson’s wedding, about a year previously. To my surprise, Nelson had asked me to stand up at the ceremony, which was odd in that we had barely seen each other since adolescence. He was clearly feeling nostalgic and/or needed another guy to even out the bridesmaid count.

In any case, after the reception, I immediately lost contact with him again. So I was surprised when Monica approached me.

I asked her how Nelson was doing in his new marriage, and a dark frown crossed Monica’s face. I expected her to say that they had separated or the wedding had bankrupted them or they had both gotten into heavy drugs. At the very least, I thought she would say they had gone on a cross-country bank-robbing spree (as young lovers are prone to do).

But Monica just shook her head and said, “Well, no children yet.”

I waited for her to go on, but this was the extent of her update. The status of their marriage could be summarized in this one statement, and this single sentence was also the reason that Monica looked so dour.

There were no children yet.

The guy had been married a year. But so far, he had not knocked up his wife, and this caused his family extreme agitation.

I could not relate to this, so I just nodded in sympathy as if Monica had said, “They were lost at sea.” Our conversation ended, and I walked away, wondering if I would ever see them again or if Nelson was – even at that moment – impregnating his wife in accordance with all good and proper Hispanic social mores. I still don’t know if he ever punched it through.

There are myriad reasons why the Latino drive to reproduce seems to outpace that of the general population. Perhaps I will address the cultural, religious, and sociological reasons for this in a future post.

But for now, I’ll just mention that I don’t have any kids.

First off, let me admit that I have used the word “redneck.” For whatever reason, this term (an obvious racial prejorative) seems to have enough cultural connotations to remove it from outright slur. The fact that many Southern whites wield it like a badge of honor also helps lessen its impact.

But I’ve never called anyone a cracker. The difference, of course, is completely arbitrary, and I don’t expect plaques from humanitarian organizations to award my great, great sensitivity.

But it seems to me that if I’m going to ask white people to refrain from verbal hooliganism, it’s only fair that I don’t turn around and refer to an Anglo person as white trash because I’m, you know, dark-skinned and stuff.

Notice that I’m not afraid to use these terms, like my head will explode if I say, “gringo.” Let’s not get hypersensitive. But it would indeed be sad if I thought I was being edgy by calling someone a honky. That’s not daring or insightful. It’s just lazy and dismissive.

By the way, before accusations of political correctness are hurled about, let me head them off by pleading for the long-overdo retirement of that term. Those two words haven’t meant anything since the late 1990s, and even then they were empty sloganeering that could be (and were) applied to everything from liberal orthodoxy to angry stand-up routines to the New York Jets offensive line. Nothing is politically correct or incorrect anymore.

In any case, I offer a deal. I will try to avoid terms that could be interpreted as a slam on white people in general (eg, the aforementioned cracker, honky, etc) if Anglos refrain from attempts to prove their hipness or street cred by throwing around the S and W words like confetti.

It’s perhaps unclear what we’re talking about. So let me clarify.

The S word is spic.

The W word is wetback.

Neither of these terms is as vivid, as ugly and jarring, as the dreaded N word, which is powerful enough to provoke discomfort even in its euphemistic form (when it comes to dehumanizing insults, blacks have the advantage, or disadvantage, over Hispanics).

But I’m proposing this because I’ve noticed that some white people seem to think these terms are harmless, or even endearing. I’m sorry to tell you that they are not. In fact, calling a Latino a spic is a damn good way to get your ass kicked all over the place, even as you shout, “But I’m down with brown! I’m down with brown!” in appeasement.

In essence, I’m providing a community service by pointing out that these words are not ok. Trust me, it might help you avoid a tense, culturally awkward moment. And we all have enough of those anyway.

So do we have a deal?

I’m continuing with profiles of my family (Hispanics, one and all) by moving on to my mother’s brother, henceforth known as Uncle #1.

It’s important to note that I never met Uncle #1. He died almost thirty years ago, while he was still a young man.

He was a teacher in my family’s homeland of El Salvador. Uncle #1 was married with three kids (Cousins #2, #4, #6 – whom I will write about in future posts), and he existed comfortably in a war-torn land – an anomaly of course.

He established such a stellar reputation as a passionate, intelligent educator that he was named Teacher of the Year for the entire country. The black-and-white photo of him shaking the Salvadoran president’s hand maintains a place of honor in my mother’s home to this day.

Despite his prestige and status, he was vocal about his discontent with the Salvadoran government. Most people in his situation would have kept their mouths shut and refrained from dark asides about social injustice or rants about economic exploitation.

But Uncle #1 had the crazy notion that people should know what was going on. His insistence on educating poor people attracted the attention of El Salvador’s death squads.

These militia groups had figured out that the biggest danger to their campaign was the leftist virus of literacy. They realized that if campesinos learned how to read, they would get their hands on degenerate books that claimed they had rights or that the landowners exploited them or some other outlandish idea.

So they encouraged Uncle #1 to stop educating the poor. This encouragement took the form of a savage beating.

However, he didn’t back down in the face of threats, and as opposed to almost everyone who ever lived, he risked his life for what he believed was right –- the kind of person who gets holidays named after him or whose name is etched in rocks and said in reverent whispers. At this point, he encroached on hero status. He was the tenacious man who could not be bullied or bossed.

Still, the line between martyred idol and anonymous victim is thin in places like El Salvador. And his fierce ideals and refusal to bow down meant little to the men who abducted him in the middle of the night and shot him multiple times. The death squad then mutilated his body as a graphic warning to others.

Some members of my family wonder if he died in vain. My viewpoint is that it is impossible for people to die in vain if they have lived their principles, and if those principles improved the lives of others. Both of these are true of Uncle #1.

After Uncle #1’s murder, my cousins moved to America. His oldest son, Cousin #2, says that he still feels his father’s presence at times.

Cousin #2 was a small child when his father died, and he has said that his final memory of the man is riding on his shoulders as they cut through a field. I was not there, obviously, but I can picture Uncle #1, striding forward with his laughing child on his back and the sun shining.

He is unafraid, and he believes in the future.

This year is my twentieth high school reunion (let’s hear it for the class of ‘88!). Or I should say it would be my twentieth reunion, if my class were actually marking the occasion.

A couple of my good friends are ostensibly in charge of organizing the event, but their enthusiasm for a celebration has ranged from apathy to outright hostility (one of my friends said that he “could give a piss less about a reunion” – ouch). Considering these responses, and the fact that it’s already late summer, I doubt I’m dressing up and sucking in my stomach to hobnob with people I haven’t thought about in two decades — alas.

I’m not exactly sad there will be no reunion. But the fact that it’s not happening provoked me to leaf through my old yearbook for the first time this century. I was struck by something that I had never noticed before.

Most of the people I went to school with had names that fell into one of two categories.

There were the Meyers, Millers, and Schultzes – good hardy Germanic stock, usually tall and/or big.

There were the Zelewskis, Swiecichowskis, and Kocorowskis – Eighth-generation Polish kids.

The exceptions, in turn, usually fell into two subcatagories:

There were the Radovancevics, Stojsavljevics, and Videkoviches – basically, the Serbs (my hometown has the biggest population of Serbs outside Serbia).

There were the Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Carters – obviously, the black kids.

As odd as it seems, I had never noticed the lack of Hispanics in my school. We had one Martinez in my class of three hundred or so. Even I didn’t stand out back then, because I had a different last name (see my earlier post on this).

I don’t know if my awareness of this fact is because I’ve embraced my Hispanic identity more over the last twenty years, or if I simply was more focused at the time on teenage obsessions like girls, music, and girls.

Or maybe I was a unknowing pioneer in my city, a stray Latino who was a harbinger of a more diverse, multicultural future. I’d like to think that this last option is the truth, and that the class of ’08 has so many Hispanics that the place is up to five categories of names.

But to verify this theory, I would have to wander the halls of my old high school, and I don’t believe anyone wants to see an unaccompanied Gen X guy skulking around, asking random teenagers racially loaded questions. No, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.

Regardless, perhaps it’s for the best that I’m not having a reunion. I’d probably just spend the time talking to the friends I’ve stayed in touch with (defeating the purpose of a “reunion”) and scouring the event for that Martinez kid so that I could share my insight. And I just know that, eventually, a group of aging jocks would get hammered and start singing “Welcome to the Jungle.”

So yes, perhaps it’s all for the best.

My friend Nichole has again captured haunting imagery that depicts… well… something about how Hispanic culture continues to thrive in America.

This gargantuan fellow was spotted outside a Mexican restaurant in a mall. He was busy promoting the “Corona lifestyle” – which sociologists have theorized is identical to the “Budweiser lifestyle,” but with little slices of lemon thrown in.

The restaurant promised “authentic Mexican food.” I have to agree that there is no better way to promote one’s authenticity than by dragging out a huge dead-eyed mariachi with a symbolically tiny trumpet, strapping him into a walker that implies he can shuffle around the mall at will, and placing him in front of the establishment to surprise, delight, and/or terrify first-time customers.

Actually, that all sounds more like the Dos Equis lifestyle.

In any case, I encourage you to bring any other oddball pictures or images that say something about Latino life to my attention. It doesn’t matter if they’re offensive, deluded, self-righteous, insane, creepy, or bizarre. I just want to hear about them. So comment on this post, or send images to hispanicf@gmail.com with the heading “Fanatic image.”

Otherwise, I will depend upon Nichole to come though with more shots. She obviously has an eye for such things.

Even here in America, much has been made of the fact that Muhammad ranks second only to Jack as the most popular name for British newborn boys. According to many commentators on both sides of the Atlantic, Muslim immigrants are taking over England and will soon replace the Union Jack with a crescent symbol.

The U.S. version of this paranoid fantasy is that two of our largest states, California and Texas, have a high percentage of infants with Hispanic first names. The thinking is that these states are becoming excessively Latinoized – meaning that Hispanics are (say it with me…) taking over the place.

What do the actual numbers say about this apparent cultural sea change? Well, in California, the most recent stats (for 2007) show that among the top ten names for newborn boys, three are definitely Hispanic in origin. These are Angel (number three), Jose (number nine), and Diego (number ten).

Texas also has three Latino names cracking the top ten, including the number-one name (Jose). The other popular monikers are Angel (number five) and Juan (number nine).

In any case, none of these Hispanic names ranks in the top twenty for the United States as a whole, indicating that California and Texas are indeed a bit loaded with babies saddled with vowel-heavy first names.

“Ah-ha!” says the jingoist. “I told you these states were being overrun!”

Let’s assume that the data backs up this contention. We’ll even go farther and say that California and Texas will eventually be so loaded with Hispanics that mariachi bands spontaneously flower on every street corner.

The question then becomes… so what?

Some will say that the fear of Hispanics becoming a majority is an understandable reaction to illegal immigration. The problem with this argument is that if little Jose is born in California, he is a U.S. citizen. One presumes he will grow up to be a proud American. That is, unless one assumes a proud American cannot also be a Latino (now there’s an interesting topic for discussion…). These newborns are Americans – not illegals, even if their parents are – so that issue becomes irrelevant.

Is it because as California and Texas become more Hispanic, the residents will clamor to become part of Mexico or independent countries? I have already pointed out the reasons this is just not going to happen, so this far-fetched scenario can be dismissed at once.

So this isn’t concern about the influx of immigrants straining our social services, which is at least a debatable point, or anger that San Diego will become the capital of North Mexico.

Rather, this is the sweaty-palmed, lip-biting, eyebrow-furrowed fear of many whites that they may not be dominant cultural force anymore. And you know what? That may be true within just a few decades.

If that bothers people, they may need to examine why it’s so hair-raising. I’d be interested in hearing a rational reason.

Ultimately, we may need to reconsider exactly what an “American name” is. Most of our traditional names are originally Jewish. Apparently, biblical names are acceptable American monikers. So Jews can rest easy. They can be counted as real Americans. I’ll look forward to the day when Hispanics get the same luxury.

This was supposed to be it.

This was going to be the presidential election in which Latinos said, “See ya” (or if you prefer, “Vaya con Dios”) to the Democratic Party and ran into the warm embrace of the Republicans. And then everybody would dance to meringue while discussing the role of limited government. How happy they would all be together.

But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. The latest Gallup poll (for June) shows that Barack Obama has more than a two-to-one advantage over John McCain among Hispanic voters. Obama’s popularity cuts across gender, age, region, education level, and every other way a pollster can slice and dice a demographic into its subatomic parts.

The results are so disturbing for conservatives that many of them are too depressed to plaster “English only” signs on their property.

Republicans seem shocked that Latinos, after being demonized for the economic woes afflicting the country, aren’t clamoring to turn their respective states red. So conservatives have put aside their blueprints for that wall along the Mexican border long enough to ask, “Hey Hispanics, why don’t you love us?”

It’s a fair question. After all, we heard how President Bush won about forty percent of the Hispanic vote in the last election. And we also heard how the Republican platform appeals to all those hyper-religious, family-obsessed Latinos. Finally, we discovered that Obama was so despised among Hispanics that, on Election Day, they would bash him in like a piñata at a ten-year-old’s birthday party… ok, that’s an overused metaphor, but the point is that Latinos, according to most storylines, are supposed to have big issues with the guy.

In truth, Hispanics have far less of a problem with Obama than white female Baby Boomers do. And the Democratic platform of emphasizing education and health-care reform resonates more than do Republican affirmations that their party really, really likes God.

There is also the tiny matter that many Latinos – not just naturalized citizens but born-and-bred, flat-accented Midwestern types – resent the stench of racial superiority that much of conservatism gives off.

Bear in mind that I’m not saying Republicans are racist. I’m saying it’s a perception issue that they would be wise to address. You would think that an organization that can successfully market an unnecessary war could fix their image problems.

And by the way, having Alberto Gonzalez as the most prominent Latino in their party doesn’t exactly help.

Of course, trying to pinpoint the exact reasons why a huge segment of the population votes a certain way is doomed to failure. This is especially true of the fabled Hispanic swing voter, who can be anybody from a conservative Cuban immigrant to a liberal second-generation El Salvadoran to a moderate Chicano to a left-handed naturalized Bolivian native with a thing for horticulture (I’m sure he’s out there). There is more cultural variety among Hispanics than there is among most demographics, which in truth, are arbitrary and convenient constructs anyway.

But if we must look at Hispanics as a whole, it’s clear that they remain solidly Democratic. And short of Obama setting the Puerto Rican flag on fire during a rally, that’s not changing this year.

I was nine, maybe ten years old. Our class fieldtrip was to see some play downtown.

The performance was, in retrospect, a heavy-handed piece about the importance of respecting your elders. The plot centered on a teenage Latina who has to adjust to her grandmother coming to live with them. The grandmother was very old-world, and spoke only Spanish. This led to numerous scenes of the grandmother struggling to communicate, which often ended with the girl storming off the stage in frustration.

The play was aimed, perhaps even conceived, for the audience that watched it: first-generation Hispanic children who had forgotten their Spanish and squirmed when their relatives spoke English in thick, embarrassing accents.

We watched as the grandmother and the teenager slowly bonded, and we laughed at their trip to the zoo, and we cried (well, I didn’t, but the girls in my class did) when the grandmother inevitably suffered an offstage fatal heart attack. The play ended with the teenage girl giving the eulogy for her beloved, Spanish-speaking abuela.

At the curtain call, the performers received the polite applause of children who knew they had seen something entertaining, but remained mystified over why they saw it or what it had meant. Regardless, the minor characters got a steady clapping, the parental figures garnered a bit more enthusiasm, and the teenage girl got a hoot or two of approval.

And then the grandmother stepped out for a bow.

The result was immediate. It was thunderous. It was bedlam.

The applause erupted so that everything that came before seemed like a whispered sigh at midnight. The decibel level ratcheted up to sheer din levels. Shouts and shrieks of approval washed over the stage. Many children leapt to their feet, although no adults had asked them to do so. Indeed, the teachers looked around, stunned, as their bratty charges slapped their hands together and whistled and stood on their chairs, aiming their affection at the grandmother.

I was unfamiliar with the concept of a standing ovation, and most likely so were the other kids. Neither had we been instructed to clap harder for the lead actress or informed what constituted a stellar performance or told to cheer. In fact, even we seemed shocked at our level of appreciation for the old woman.

It was like Charlie Chaplin at the Oscars.

For her part, the grandmother was amazed. She stepped back in surprise, looking more embarrassed than touched or flattered. She nodded quickly and tried to leave the stage, but the teenage girl grabbed her hand. The grandmother held hands with the other actors and took a bow, then she rushed off the stage as our applause continued, unabated.

To this day, I have no idea what provoked our outpouring. Maybe she reminded us of our own grandmothers. But more likely, she was the kind, wise, exuberant abuela we all wanted but didn’t have.

Most of our grandmothers were cranky old women who were bitter about leaving their homelands. They complained about the cold weather and immoral American culture and the lack of good flour tortillas available in el norte. They dragged us to church and threatened us with eternal damnation if we didn’t pray to Jesus every day, and they bellowed that their grandsons were perezoso brutos and their granddaughters dressed like whores.

But here was this friendly, patient grandmother who put up with a teenager’s outbursts. She passed along cultural traditions without ramming them down our throats, and she didn’t complain when we played new wave (it was circa 1980, after all) at top volume. I mean, how cool was she?

I don’t know the name of the actress who played the grandmother. She was old decades ago, so the odds are pretty good that she is no longer with us. But I’d like to think that when she looked back at her acting career or hobby or however she viewed performing, she remembered an auditorium full of children, all cheering her on.

First off, let me thank Latino Evolution for the comment on my post “I Should Have Went Samurai…”

Second, as I may have mentioned – here on this blog, all over cyberspace, and in the street to passing strangers – the Fanatic is now on the Huffington Post.

Because I want to get my writing in order (ie, what ran on the site, what ran on Huffington, what can run on both of them, etc), I will be cutting back, very slightly, on new posts while I try to get everything in sync. This means that I’ll probably update this site twice a week instead of the three-plus posts I have been sending out. Otherwise, there are no major upheavals on the horizon.

I know this will provoke crying, wailing, and a great gnashing of teeth with those who demand thrice weekly posts. But despite your anguished pleas and vows that you can’t go on, I have hope that you will persevere.

Thanks again for all your support.

After graduating college, my girlfriend (who is now my wife) and I moved to New York City, where we lived on my cousin’s floor in a small apartment in Queens. It was very struggling Gen Xer, and glamourous or exciting only if you’ve never done it.

We stayed on that floor for three months, until we landed jobs and saved up enough money for a miniscule studio hovel in Manhattan. But for those dozen or so weeks that we lived in Queens, my wife had an experience unique to her life: She was the minority.

The situation put her liberal philosophy to the test. Would she be down with brown? Or would she reflexively clutch her purse whenever a Latino teenage boy walked by? Bear in mind that she grew up on a farm, where the nearest town was a rural enclave of eight hundred white Midwesterners. Now she was living in a city of eight million (that’s a population increase of 100,000% for you mathematicians out there), which was full of freaks and weirdos representing every race, creed, and whacked-out belief system in America.

I’m pleased to say that she came though the experience even more compassionate and understanding than she was before, and that was a high standard to begin with.

For the first time in her life, she knew what it was like to walk down the street and encounter nobody who looks like you. She mingled with people who spoke different languages, and she had to think about how others perceived her. These are perceptions that ethnic minorities have every day in America, but which are alien to most white people.

Perhaps everyone should have this experience at some time in his or her life. It certainly couldn’t hurt to understand where others are coming from, especially as this country gets more diverse (like it or not). It may even cut down on the tendency of some members of the majority to swagger about, and to refrain from wielding their strength in numbers like a cultural hammer or divine right.

To be fair, however, my wife’s sink-or-swim dunking into multiculturalism was not completely smooth. She never did understand why all the Latina women between the ages of fourteen and fifty-nine had to wear skin-tight pants that defined the concept of camel-toe.

Actually, I don’t understand it either. Maybe it’s a Queens thing.