Annotations for Communities: Nicaraguans

This program is called Latino USA, but would a program by any other name, Hispanic, for instance, sound as sweet?

I consider myself a Hispanic. I don't like the term Latino.

When you say Latino, you get, I think, a warmer sense of who our people are; just a greater sense, a more comprehensive sense of culture.

What I call myself, I'm Chicano, seventh generation in this country.

I'm Puerto Rican. That's it, period.

I'm Cuban-Argentine, I'm Caribbean, and I'm South American.

And now we have this new thing, non-white Hispanics, non -- I mean, it's crazy.

I speak Spanish, but I'm not Spanish. I speak English. I'm not English, I'm Latina, I'm Hispanic, I'm Puerto Rican. I'm all of those things, just don't call me Spic.

I hate the categorizations. I really don't like them because I think that they pigeonhole us into a certain niche and we can't escape it.

It's not the most important issue facing Latinos or Hispanics or Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans or Mexican Americans. But the questions, what do we call ourselves, and why this label rather than the other, surfaces so regularly that it's almost an inside joke among Latinos or Hispanics or whatever. It's also one of the questions studied by a group of political scientists who conducted a study of political behavior called the Latino Political Survey.

The evidence that I see from the Latino National Political Survey and every other survey that I've seen that asks people to self-identify, demonstrates, I think conclusively that most people who we might choose to identify as Latino do not choose that as their first term of identification, who identify as Puerto Rican, as Mexican, as Mexican-American, as Cuban, as Cuban-American, and many other ways.

The term Latino is just a useful term in terms of describing the fact that there are all these different groups. The question is what does it mean politically? That's the significance of the term. Now, I guess the point is, if you put it all together, is that this is a very fluid kind of situation and it's something that changes over time in the sense that it depends on what kind of movement and context you have and what the leadership's saying, and it depends also on whether you have any kind of real social movement in place that does something with these kinds of symbols.

And right now, what we were falling into is mostly Hispanic being used by kind of a middle class of professionals by default because the term was either being used by the media or, I know in the Puerto Rican case, there were many Puerto Ricans that were using a term like Hispanic professionals because being Puerto Rican identified you as someone on welfare, that kind of thing. So it was a more acceptable kind of term, and those are kind of different political reasons that many of us would advance for using these types of terms.

Well, when I think of the term Latino, it brings to mind the diversity that exists within the Latino communities. It also brings to mind the fact that individual Latinos are not unidimensional, but they're multidimensional. I consider myself a Chicano, a Mexicano, a Mexican American, a Latino, a Hispanic, all depending on where I find myself, who I find myself with.

One of the other things I think about is there is a lot of out-group marriage that is occurring within the Latino community, and not necessarily to Anglos or African-Americans, but to other Latinos. I have two cousins who are Mexican American who married to non-Mexican American Latinos. What are their children? They're half Guatemalan, half Mexican? Are they going to go around saying, well, I'm half Guatemalan, I'm half Mexican? No, they go around saying, I'm Latino. When you're walking down the street in Los Angeles and an Anglo comes to you, he doesn't say, oh, excuse me, are you Mexican? Or Salvadorian? Or Nicaraguan? They see a brown face and they say, you are Mexican. So what's happening, while we have individual past histories as a Cuban, as a Puerto Rican, as a Central American, as a Mexican, our destinies are tied together as Latinos.

Over 60% of this country's Latinos, Hispanics, or... or whatever, are of Mexican descent. And as we hear in this audio essay, in their case, the issue of labels and identity takes on a whole other dimension.

[Chicano--Rumel Fuentes and Los Pinguinos del Norte]

When I was younger, we had to be Chicana/Chicano movement.

Hispanic is such a new term that it started off as nobody knew what it meant and now they know what it means and they like it.

Well, I really don't know why they call it Hispanic because we weren't Hispanics until recently.

Mexican American is fine. Chicana is fine.

The word Hispanic, I don't like. I'd rather use the word Indo-Hispanic.

I believe Hispanic is for the people from Spain.

Something for sure. We'd rather be called Hispanics than Chicana.

And the older generation thought that this was a derogatory term.

Actually Chicana, it's a slang word. It used to be a slang word for Mexicana.

I don't know why the Mexican American keeps changing names.

[Chicano--Rumel Fuentes and Los Pinguinos del Norte]

I am not Hispano. I'm not Latin American. I am not American or Spanish surname. I am not Mexican American. I am not any of those terms, those vulgar terms that come from Washington and the bureaucrats and the functionaries, and when they try to make sense of us and they make no sense of us. I do not label myself. I'm a Chicano.

Chicano has a lot of negative definitions. Chicano, I've been told it came from Mexico when they put the Chinese in Mexico in one certain area in Durango. So they called them Chinganos. They tell me Chicano means peon, the lowest class Mexican that there is. They tell me Chicano is a militant activist from the 60s that was a true radical on the extremist side. Also, I don't like people keeping themselves at one level when anybody can advance and should not be put into a class and kept there.

So when you have to fill out a form, what do you call yourself?

I call myself Caucasian. [Laughter]

You see, I'm not into that sort of thing really because I decided that I'm no longer a Latino. No, I'm a Hispanic, I'm a Hispanic dammit, and there is a difference. You see, when I was a Latino, my name was Ricardo Salinas, but now that I'm Hispanic, it's Brigardu Salinas.

I don't see that we have an identity crisis anymore. I think that we've overcome and passed that a long time ago. We know who we are and we're proud of it.

The more time that we spend on trying to identify ourselves, I think the more time it takes away from trying to do something about bettering our lives.

And hopefully then in the future we won't have to be concerned about what we want to call ourselves.

[unintelligible] Don’t you panic, it’s the decade of the Hispanic! [unintelligible] Don’t you panic, it’s the decade of the Hispanic!

Syndicated columnist, Roger Hernandez of New Jersey has his own views on the issue of labels. Today, Hernandez tells us why he thinks we should call ourselves Hispanic rather than Latino, and why sometimes we should reject both labels.

Over the course of history, every Spanish-speaking country developed its own idiosyncrasies, its own cultural sense of self. Argentina, for instance, is largely made up of European immigrants. Neighboring Paraguay is so influenced by pre-Colombian cultures that the official languages are Spanish and Guarani, and the Dominican Republic has roots buried deeply in the soil of Africa. We're all different, so it's more precise to say Merengue is specifically Dominican music and that Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday, not Hispanic, not Latino, too generic. The point is that the all-inclusive word, whether Hispanic or Latino, is often misused. Used, in other words, to cover over ignorance about who we are and how we differ from each other. But there is something else just as important. Our diversity does not erase the reality that we all do have something in common, no matter our nationality or the color of our skin or our social class.

And to talk about what we have in common, there is only one starting point; that which is Spanish, as in Spain. Language tops the list. Spanish is a common bond. Then there is culture. Why does an old church in the Peruvian Altiplano look so much like a mission church in California? You can find the answer in Andalusia. And why does a child in Santiago de Cuba know the same nursery rhymes as a child in Santiago, Chile? Listen to a child sing in Santa De Compostela, Spain and you'll hear Mambrú se fue a la guerra and arroz con leche.

Yet the word Spanish does not describe us. It is too closely tied to Spain alone. Latin and Latino lack precision. After all, the Italians and the French are Latin too. Hispanic derives from Spanish, but it's not quite the same. It suggests what we have in common without over-emphasizing it, so it leaves room for our diversity. And no, the word was not invented by the US census. The word Hispano has long existed in the Spanish language, and its English translation is Hispanic. What we all share and what no one else in the world has is being Hispanic. For Latino USA, I'm Roger Hernandez.

Commentator Roger Hernandez writes a syndicated column for the King Features Syndicate. It appears in 34 newspapers nationwide.

So people always ask, "Yo, when is Hispanic Heritage Month anyway?" And then you have to tell them that it's not really just one month but a four-week period of time that starts in the middle of September when El Salvador, Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico, and several other Latin American countries celebrate their independence from Spain. The month then runs through mid-October through Columbus Day or el día de la raza, as it's known in Latin America. For many Latinos, this is a time to look back at history and to look forward to see where we as a group fit into this country's future. Commentator Barbara Renaud Gonzalez says that in particular, the 16th of September, the equivalent of the 4th of July for Mexicans makes her realize she really is part of a community.

I'm not afraid to look in their eyes, me, the zippy Latina with the import car and the University of Michigan sticker. They, my Mexican hermanos breathless in the Texas sunrise, clinging to the back of a Ford Ranger, almost ashamed that they are the only ones riding like this on the open road of the LBJ carretera. Or maybe it's too obvious that they're on their way to make another garden out of Plano Prairie for a minimum wage. I smile. I am almost ashamed to not go with them. I love my Mexican people. On September 16th, my construction heroes, Plano gardeners, North Dallas maids, my café con leche waiters and I will come together to celebrate the 16th of September, el dies y seis de septiembre, which is the anniversary of Mexico's independence from almost 300 years of Spanish conquest. On the morning of September 16th in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo Y Costilla delivered his grito de dolores, his cry for independence in the city of Dolores, Mexico, the city of pain, to claim independence from Spanish rule.

Our celebrated Mexican independence is not like American democracy. The Puritans were free the day they left England on the Mayflower. The Spaniards, however, transformed the America they discovered with every touch and every torment. They came to evangelize their Catholic tradition and so redeemed the Spanish crown with pure Indian gold. While the Puritans established independent colonies from the beginning, the Spaniard established dependent missions.

So, when Mexican independence rang in 1810 and Father Hidalgo exhorted his campesinos to rebellion with “Mexicanos, ¡Viva México!” He must have cried for Mestizo courage and independence from Spain and for all the battles yet to come. As Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Pochos, and the descendants of Tejanos like me, every battle, every cry makes us braver in our marches, the people we are and will become. While Mexico's battles may be more anguished than those of the United States, this quest for the Mexican soul is still in transition and hardly defeated. Thus, every September 16th, every dies y seis de septiembre, we celebrate this realization of the Mexican self. I love my Mexican people. Original beauty on Spanish bones. Look at the hands in the ecstasy of expression, rainbows of skin on the Indian profile. We are a jeweled people. I know that the Indian gods and goddesses live among us transformed into the Mexicans I see every day, especially on September 16th, el dies y seis de septiembre. I know. I look in their eyes.

Commentator Barbara Renaud Gonzalez writes and teaches in Dallas, Texas.

[festive mariachi music]

In Mexico and Mexican American communities from Los Angeles to Chicago, the night of September 15th is the night of el grito, (singing) literally the yell or the scream, which commemorates the occasion in 1810 when a parish priest named Father Miguel Hidalgo called his countrymen to rise up against the tyranny of Spain with the cry Mexicans que viva méxico.

Viva los [unintelligible] que nos dieron patria y metal .

¡Viva!

Viva Hidalgo.

¡Viva!.

Viva Morelos.

¡Viva!

Viva Guerrero.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

In Austin, Texas, this event was celebrated with a nighttime block party outside the Mexican consulate.

[mariachi music]

I think it shows that we still care about our culture, that it hasn't died, and I hope it never does because that means part of us dies.

It's a really very nice...Event.

And we hope that the American people can come little bit more towards our costumes and our music and our hearts also.

We came here with intention to work and lent our force, labor force, I should say. And we want to be able to also participate in the intellectual development of the Mexico and the United States. So I believe that anybody that wants to disregard our ability to group together and do things like this is kind of not paying attention what the reality of our country formed with immigrants anyway is happening.