Readers who have heard me speak know that it was as a teenager more than 40 years ago that I watched the impact that sudden changes in demography and in the economy can unleash.  The winding down of the bracero program and the nearly simultaneous closing of the local air force base devastated the town in West Texas where my family once lived.  From that experience it was only a matter of time before I realized what was coming to the country as a whole.  As a young reporter in Corpus Christi in the late 1970’s, I saw the makeup of its schools’ HispanicLatino population prefigure the slow unfolding of the drama we are witnessing today.  It was then that I first learned the power of 2.1.

The figure 2.1 should be at the core of how HispanicLatinos understand their importance to America and the need to accelerate their economic, political and social position.  HispanicLatinos first have to be aware of the calamity that Anglos are bringing upon themselves and America.  While inexact, the term “Anglo” refers to the non-HispanicLatino, non-black, non-Asian Pacific population of the country.

It is not clear when it happened exactly – experts disagree – but the impending disaster began unfolding sometime in 1972.  On some unknown date that historians nevertheless might look back on as a precise watershed moment in American history and perhaps of the world, the Anglo population stopped having enough children to replace itself.

For a nation – any nation – to continue through history, its female members during their lifetimes must bear at least 2.1 children on average.  Whenever four decades ago the Anglo population failed to reach its replacement rate, it set off in slow motion the unintended equivalent of self-imposed ethnic cleansing.  Gradually and quietly, owing to a number of reasons, Anglos began removing themselves from the answers to America’s future and contributing to its demise.  That they would be accused of such a travesty no doubt would pain many of them, but of all the facts surrounding the changing nature of America, the Anglo replacement rate is pivotal and decisive.

The laws of demography, after all, are clear:  A nation of people who stops having children dies.  It is that simple.  No nation can except itself from the arithmetically-ordered dictates of demography.  The Anglo population of the United States as recently as five years ago was giving birth to about 1.8 children – a violation of the hard and fast demographic rules that have held throughout history.  After the Great Recession of 2007, the birth rate declined more so, exact figures will be soon forthcoming.

Into this unhappy situation stepped HispanicLatinos, whose replacement rate was at about a healthy 2.7, though it, too, in the last three years has experienced a sharp decline.  Indeed, the core of the nation’s HispanicLatino population growth curve has been fed mostly by Mexican and Mexican-American birth rates, and their rates of growth have slowed significantly.  Still, continuing its modern cycle of growth, HispanicLatinos are fulfilling a dramatic role that few observers would have foreseen: HispanicLatinos literally are saving the country.

HispanicLatinos will not always be the nation’s principal demographic lifeline.  For the moment and into the immediate future, however, were it not principally for HispanicLatinos, the country would be in serious demographic decline.  What happens next to HispanicLatino population growth will be as telling as anything else.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.