EL PASO, Texas - Samuel
Huntington's current vision of hell is something like
being stranded on the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border
crossing, forced to pay the 40-cent pedestrian toll to
the other side of the Bridge of the Americas, with no
possibility of a return ticket, and condemned to an
everlasting diet of tacos and fajitas.
Huntington, a professor of government at
Harvard, has built a half-a-century career out of
pitting the "good" (us) against "evil" (them) to the
benefit of his American-ruling elite employers. In the
1960s, he was convinced that napalm and Agent Orange
bombing of the Vietnamese countryside was depriving the
Vietcong of its rural base of support, so the US would
win the war over time. In 1975, on granting equal rights
to black Americans, he said, "There are ... potentially
desirable limits to the indefinite extension of
political democracy." During Ronald Reagan's presidency
in the 1980s, Huntington was in favor of Star Wars,
Reagan's missile-defense program to reduce the threat of
nuclear attack by destroying missiles from space.
Totalitarian states tend to coalesce first by
stigmatizing a foreign enemy, then an enemy within,
capable of corrupting the integrity of a "pure and
united" nation. Huntington - who stole the concept of
the "clash of civilizations" from conservative academic
Bernard Lewis - first stigmatized Arab civilization in
1993 as "The Great Menace". Now, in 2004, he finally
switches to the enemy within: Hispanics. Latinos, in his
view, are guilty of being excessively attached to their
culture, and their galloping demography prevents their
assimilation to the "Anglo-Saxon Protestant node".
Huntington, in his book Who Are We? The Challenges to
America's National Identity, calls for the
preservation of the messianic project of the original
American settlers.
It's all color-coded, of
course: after the red menace (communism), the yellow
peril (Asia) and the green peril (Islam), now the terror
alert (elevated) has been switched to the brown peril
(Latinos).
The brown peril Mexico
starts in sprawling El Paso before one even crosses the
US border. The carnival atmosphere along the Rio Grande
(known as the Rio Bravo in Mexico) is similar to the
Brazilian-Paraguayan border - which, for Washington
neo-conservatives, is teeming with al-Qaeda, with the
US-Mexico border being taken over by Zapatistas and
assorted evil Latin American drug lords. The best
analogy would rather be with the Hong Kong-Shenzhen
border, with its legions of Mexican/Cantonese working in
maquiladoras in Mexico/Guandong province. Most
people crossing the Bridge of the Americas live in
Mexico and work in Texas, or live and work in Texas and
have left their families back in Mexico.
This is
the thrust of Huntington's thesis: "The persistent
inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the
United States into two peoples, two cultures and two
languages. Unlike past immigrant groups, Mexicans and
other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream US
culture, forming instead their own political and
linguistic enclaves - from Los Angeles to Miami - and
rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that built the
American dream. The United States ignores this challenge
at its peril."
Huntington claims that
Mexicans are essentially invading, exploiting and
creating poverty in the US. World-famous Mexican
novelist Carlos Fuentes, a former diplomat, responds:
"Hispanics are not the 'balkanizers' of the US, as
Huntington wants it. They cherish their traditional
values, as Americans of Italian, Irish or Chinese
extraction do. But they are not preparing a
reconquista of the territories lost in 1848."
Huntington claims as evidence of subversion the
widespread use of Spanish. Fuentes argues: "He should
know that most European populations speak many
languages, and that it is isolation that forces cultures
to perish. Hispanics enrich American culture, and to
reduce their presence would also hurt America's
economy."
Huntington is against
multiculturalism, and most of all immigration. He is
convinced that America is not a nation of immigrants
but, at least initially, a nation of settlers who
reached the New World not to found a new nation but
rather to relocate from Britain. Call it a case of
extending its own backyard. Later, regardless of
religion or nationality, says Huntington, every
immigrant engaged in an Anglo-Protestant makeover of
some sort, were they Germans, Irish, Italian or Chinese.
But Mexicans specifically - not Latinos, not
Hispanics - are the exception, according to Huntington.
They are now invading the US: "Mexican immigration is
leading toward the demographic reconquista of
areas Americans took from Mexico by force in the 1830s
and 1840s." Californians and New Yorkers always joke
that it would be a good idea to give back Texas -
although they doubt Mexicans would want it. Anyway,
according to Huntington, the new immigrants are
"blurring the border between Mexico and America,
introducing a very different culture, while also
promoting the emergence, in some areas, of a blended
society and culture, half-American and half-Mexican".
After September 11, 2001, the "clash of
civilizations" mumbo jumbo became a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The same might apply to the brown peril
warning if the American economy does not pick up. And
needless to say, the "solutions" will all come from the
military mould: more border repression, fewer social
services for immigrants already in the US, a heavily
militarized Fortress America all over the southwest.
Huntington is essentially saying that America
must never abandon its original set of 16th century
Anglo-Protestant values: and this "back to the roots"
mode implies no immigration, protecting the English
language and no secularism. No wonder the neo-cons love
it.
It's easy to dismiss the latest Huntington
ramblings as pure racism or puritanical intolerance.
Someone instead should offer Huntington a tour of Ellis
Island in New York harbor. During its peak, from 1892 to
1924, Ellis Island was the gateway for more than 12
million immigrants to America: their descendants now
make up more than 40% of the US population. Ellis Island
symbolizes the dominant self-image of most Americans:
the land of eternal promise, the beacon of light on the
world stage. The US still remains the promised land for
many of the world's poor. The immigrant workforce
represents 14% of the active US population. Without
them, entire sectors of the US economy, such as
distribution, agriculture or the restaurant business,
would come to a complete halt - something that every
Californian knows well.
Let's go to jail
The attraction of the promised land can be
contemplated in all its might from the top of a hill
overlooking the Rio Grande River in the El Paso suburbs.
Increasing numbers of Mexicans attempt to cross the
river, day or night, as they have no papers to cross the
Bridge of the Americas. One reason is glaringly obvious:
the abyss between the US median per capita income -
US$32,000 - and Mexico's, $3,700. But after 20 years of
repression at the border, the difference is that now
almost everyone is getting arrested. In the past six
months, arrests along the 2,000-mile US southern border
rose 25% over the same period in 2003. This is happening
for at least three reasons.
The Mexican economy is in dire straits, afflicted by
drought and non-stop layoffs, while there is a
perception that the US economy may be finally starting
to pick up.
George W Bush's January proposal to give legal
status to somewhere around 7 million undocumented
migrants already working in the US has increased hopes
of amnesty in the future. His program would allow
illegals to work in the US for three years. The text
will be examined by Congress in 2005. Last April,
Democrats introduced their own plan calling for legal
residence for illegal immigrants.
There's a huge crackdown going on along the border,
with more agents and more high-tech equipment in all
border states. This means more arrests, but it does not
necessarily reflect a new wave of illegal immigration.
As expected, there is tremendous controversy
involving major actors in this drama, Mexican and
American government officials, human rights advocates
and people in favor of immigration repression.
Officials at the US Customs and Border
Protection say there are more arrests because of more
agents and more high-tech equipment. Almost 10,000 of
the total 11,000 Border Patrol agents are now deployed
along the US southwest border. The Arizona border, for
instance, is getting an extra 110 agents, dozens of
motion detectors, four new helicopters and the
first-ever unmanned aircraft to patrol the Arizona
desert. Agents in El Paso speak of improved cooperation
among federal, state and local agencies. The numbers are
staggering. According to the Border Patrol, there were
535,000 arrests along the entire Southwest border in the
past six months.
What do the prospective
immigrants say? They say they don't want to be citizens.
They just want a temporary work permit - because there
are no jobs in the Guatemalan countryside or in
Tegucicalpa, Honduras' capital, not to mention all over
Mexico. News of jobs spreads like wildfire: a teacher
says he read in a newspaper in Honduras that Austin,
Texas, needed 5,000 teachers.
Robert Donner, the
US Customs and Border Protection commissioner, does not
believe that border crossing has increased because of
the possibility of a guest-worker program. But it's hard
to imagine how he knows that - considering that agents
never ask immigrants why they are coming to the US.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the
Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a bland
name that disguises an organization that is against
immigration, says that the real impact of Bush's
proposed guest-worker program will be on the illegal
immigrants who are already working in the US, because
they all hope to qualify. A border patrol in El Paso
shares this sentiment: "What they are really getting off
on is the guest-worker program."
Reverend Robin
Hoover, head of the immigrant-relief group Humane
Borders, is more straight to the point: the problem is
the slump in Mexico's economy. "I don't agree that
immigrants are rushing over here to get amnesty.
Whenever I ask them about it, they don't even know what
I'm talking about."
But it is Michael Wyatt, a
legal aid attorney who has spent years defending
immigrant farm workers, who sums it all up: "If anyone
in Washington wants to address immigration ... they
should focus on assisting Mexico in rebuilding its
economy. It doesn't matter if we have a 10-foot-high
electrified fence topped with coiled barbed wire
surrounding our entire country, people are still going
to come here if that's what it takes to feed their
family."
There's only one consensus: immigration
will continue to rise. And sooner or later these
immigrants will be wanting to vote.
Hasta la
vista, elector As many as 1 million Latinos are
going to vote for the first time in 2004 - and the
absolute majority will do so in crucial swing states
like Arizona, New Mexico and Florida. According to the
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed
Officials, a non-partisan group representing about 6,000
Hispanic officials, a record 7 million Hispanics are
expected to vote in November. This means 6.1% of the
total American electorate - more than enough to decide
the final outcome.
There's a perception that
Latinos overwhelmingly vote Democrat - apart from the
Bay-of-Pigs-generation Cuban-Americans in Florida. In
1996, Latinos voted for Bill Clinton (72%) against Bob
Dole. And in 2000, they voted Al Gore 62% against Bush
35%.
Florida's non-Cuban Latinos are another
matter. In 2000, they voted Gore 75% against Bush 25%.
But in the 2002 Florida election for governor, 55% of
their vote went to Jeb Bush over his Democrat rival. And
these numbers exclude Florida's Cuban-Americans, who
vote Republican in their majority. Arnold Schwarzenegger
got similar numbers in California.
This is the
reason why Republican Machiavelli Karl Rove has devised
a no-holds-barred assault strategy to capture the swing
Latino vote in Florida, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.
Bush got 35% of the Hispanic vote in the 2000 election.
Rove wants much more in 2004. Jeb Bush himself kicked
off the Bush-Cheney 2004 Spanish-speaking campaign in
Florida last April, when Bush began airing Spanish
television and radio spots in Florida, Arizona, Nevada
and New Mexico. But this was before the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal.
The Democrat's counter-strategy
is the Democratas Unidos project, which is also
financing ads on Spanish-language television in key
swing states. There are only two Spanish-language
stations of note in the US: Univision and Telemundo. And
the ads, conceived in Spanish, really have a lot of,
well, swing.
What's more, they work. According
to some results, Latinos in Las Vegas were 58% for Kerry
and 32% for Bush last December. In April, Kerry was up
to 64% and Bush down to 24%. In New Mexico, Kerry was
52% against Bush's 37% last December. In April, Kerry
was up to 60% and Bush down to 30%.
Antonio
Villaraigosa, national co-chairman of the Kerry
campaign, has been promising that "we're going to speak
to the hearts and minds of Latino voters". Kerry is
learning Spanish via language tapes. But as El Pasoans
are now fond of saying, he still has to hang out in New
Mexico and Texas and eat some tacos with the locals.
Most Hispanic immigrants to the US don't
physically cross the border: they arrive legally by
plane, in Los Angeles, Miami or New York, where they are
duly photographed and fingerprinted. California itself
is living proof that Huntington's alarm is bogus. In
1990, California was 57% Caucasian and 25% Latino. In
2040 it will be 48% Latino and 31% Caucasian. A third of
American Latinos live in California. Last year, most
babies born in California were Latino. There are now as
many Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles as whites.
Ethnicity in California is already a non-issue. It's a
case of total assimilation. California is awash with
impeccably bourgeois, middle and upper-middle class
Latino families. No one has made an attempt to go for
political separatism, or to set up Spanish-language
schools, as Chinese immigrants always do. By the third
generation, two-thirds of Mexican immigrants speak only
English.
Rove and his Machiavellians are sure
that they can win in November if they keep Bush's
support with Latinos at 35% at least. Democrats want at
least 75%. An alarmed Samuel Huntington might want them
all deported south of the Rio Grande River. But the fact
is, in the real world, the brown vote is a vital key for
victory in November.
The brown
vote
