While the concern has faded somewhat from the foreground, a few months ago the Republican Party was in a blind panic concerning the “Latino vote”. So, who are these Latinos?
Every now and then a letter to the editor will start out with “The Hispanics are (doing some nefarious deed)...”, but the words “Hispanic”, “Latino” and now even “Mexican” as customarily used are so broadly applied that they are essentially meaningless. Those terms don't denote race, culture, nationality, legal status, language, religion, or political persuasion. People from Latin America self identify by national > regional > local origins, while American descendants of Latin Americans would never be considered to be “Mexican”, “Bolivian”, or anything else except “American” (or some insulting slur) in their ancestors' countries. Words like “Hispanic”, “Latino” and “Mexican” are highly flexible descriptive words and are primarily used to blur the distinction between citizen and non citizen.
For example, a “University Mexican” - a race obsessed, college educated, MEChA propagandized, multi-generational American with Mexican ancestry, who plays the “I'm more authentic Latino than you” game - might incongruously consider a white man from Argentina who is elected to the European religious office of Pope by a group of European white men to be “Latino”. But, a white Mexican from Chiapas, Mexico with an Indian wife from Guatemala would not be “Latino”. However some, such as ethnics studies professor David Hayes-Bautista – the wildly creative, blatherer in chief promoter of Cinco de Mayo, do things like make the Civil War, Union Admiral David Farragut, born in the eastern United States of white Iberian peninsular Spanish and white Scots-Irish parents, into a “Latino” in order to propagandize for their identity politics agenda that “Latinos” fought against the injustice of slavery. They then purposefully neglect to mention the Civil War contributions of the Benavides Regiment, a Texas Confederate Cavalry unit composed of “Latino” Tejanos. There is no shame as to how far a half truth or full lie can be stretched.
Some years ago, the National Council of La Raza, an American originated, ethnic driven, victimization peddling organization (which has been funded in part by the Ford Foundation) began including Puerto Ricans, Cubans and their American descendants (people who, as groups, don't much like each other and have a large percentage of blacks and whites in their midst) as “Latino”. That outraged many of the Southwestern, multi-generational American, Mexican-centric race groups, who thought it was a sell out. Many southwestern “Latino activists” have also strongly objected to people from the Dominican Republic, who are almost universally black, Spanish speaking and culturally Spanish derived, being classified as “Hispanic” or “Latino”. Racism and prejudice isn't just a white man's disease.
Those still with us who are children and grandchildren of Mexicans that fled the senseless carnage of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and its long aftermath are now elderly. Whatever “Spanish” they may speak is composed of mixed Mexican Spanish and English and abundantly littered with antiquated, invented in America “Hispanic” slang, and many have trouble communicating with Mexicans in Spanish. While they have fond memories of Ranchera music such as that by Jose Alfredo Jimenez and Luis Aguilera, and of old Mexican films such as those starring Lola Beltran and Javier Solis, many were also right in with big band, swing, blues, jazz, all forms of rock and roll, soul, and funk, with Tejano music being a fusion of white Texas music and Mexican Nortena (Borrachera / Margarita as performed by Little Joe y la Familia is a prime example). Neither they, their children, grandchildren, nor great grandchildren are the same as Latin Americans who come here now.
There can be some real hostility between the groups. Illegal “Latinos” from other countries displace American “Latinos” in the work place, and some American “Latinos” find many illegal Mexican nationals to be rude, backwards, back stabbing gate crashers who are jealous of the American born. On the other hand, in a conversation with me concerning the difference between Mexican born and American born, one Mexican woman, in spite of being married to a white American with two American children by the man, angrily spat out “Those born here might eat beans with tortillas, but they aren't Mexican”. Mexicans generally frown on the inevitable Americanization of their children in America, El Salvadorans fret about their children being Mexicanized in Southern California, and Guatemala is to Mexico what Mexico is to the United States – as Bolivia is to Argentina.
The sometimes silly, outdated 1972 film “El Pocho,” directed by and starring Mexican entertainer / film star Lalo Gonzalez, has some real truth in it. One poignant scene begins with a Mexican party in which the people all have the early 1960's Beatles or Rolling Stones copy cat look and are period dancing to early 1960's style music. Then, everything turns Mexican, with Mexican actress / entertainer Lucha Villa singing in front of a Mariachi band. After the music, Gonzalez tries to start a conversation with Villa. With a fence symbolically between them, Villa rejects Gonzalez as “Pocho” (meaning something like “wanna be white guy”). A dream tormented Gonzalez that night, in which his white American girlfriend admiringly calls him “My Latin lover” in English while brown Mexican Lucha Villa disdainfully dismisses him in Spanish as “Pocho”. At the end of the film, with his Mexican friend pushing him to Mexico and his American girlfriend pulling him back to America, he lies down on the border and says “This is where I was born”, essentially accepting who and what he was.
Some brown Americans pretend to be a lot of things they are not – furthering the “Latino” stereotype, others are merely who they are, whatever degree they are with that broad sliding scale within that little space between the words “Mexican” (or any other nationality) and “American”.
The Republican leadership is clueless about people stereotyped as “Hispanic”. For much of the last century, they wanted a cheap, non-voting work force. It bit them in the ass with 14th amendment citizens, and now they think that immigration is the top issue among their stereotyped organizing target and that pandering is the solution.
For most “Latino” voters the issue is the economy, those who want to work want a decent paying job. Those who are stuck on welfare or have close relatives who are illegal aren't going to vote Republican, no matter what the party does. There are quite a few who are conservative, but, many having the notion that “the white man is out to get you” drummed into their heads over the last 50 years will be suspicious. Most people yelling about amnesty and citizenship are either squeaky wheel American brown racists or white progressives working their own agendas while using each other to their own ends. There may be many more white progressives than there are brown racists working the open borders / amnesty gig.
Just treat '”Latinos” like people and create a business climate where anyone who cares and wants a decent paying job can have one. Pandering won't solve anything.
Those who were brought here as children don't belong to their parent's home countries and yet there will be various problems with regard to relatives who were adults when they illegally arrived. Perhaps a form of permanent, irrevocable residency short of voting rights and a universal end to chain migration might be applicable in their cases. The open door needs to be shut.
The white Democratic leadership is just about as clueless as the Republican leadership is with fifty years of divide and conquer, of using the “Latino vote" like a sociopathic man might use a woman for sex. When the time is right for the move, the white Democrat leadership is going to have a chunk taken out of their asses too and there's a good chance the party will be largely taken away from them. They won't see what they have created coming, and they will be dazed and confused whenever it does happen.
“Et tu, Brute?”.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
Editor's Note: First, if the GOP wants to get the Hispanic/Latino vote the way to do it is not to pander to Hispanics as a group, but to appeal to them as Americans. Conservatism is a winning recipe because it calls for liberty for all Americans, regardless of any label the liberal left wants to slap on them.
Second, the Fourteenth Amendment Citizens that Mr. McNew refers to in his article are not citizens from a constitutional point of view, though we are taught to believe that they are. Learn more here:
and here:
or read about it in my book: 25 Myths of the United States Constitution.
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