Tag Archives: HispanicLatinos

Religion: Critical but Dangerous to HispanicLatinos (Just Ask the Nuns)

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Followers of this blog know it focuses on the need to build a new intellectual framework for the development of a new HispanicLatino identity that is critical to the country’s future.  A HispanicLatino community – fortified with a new sense of self – might be able to accelerate its current economic, social and political standing to help the country remain fiscally and demographically viable.  How a new HispanicLatino identity forms that incorporates their new nation-saving mission depends on HispanicLatinos themselves.  But in undertaking a reformulation of their personal selves that can lead to new self-development and self-determination, HispanicLatinos must be on guard to not fall prey to religions – especially hierarchical ones – that threaten the creative potential of the individual.  Dogma wrecks self-expression and stunts personal growth.  Corroding the status of the individual is but a small step from jeopardizing the democratic concepts of self-government.

The Vatican made the danger of institutionalized religion come alive startlingly last week when it landed on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents the vast majority of Catholic nuns, who in the modern age have evolved – unlike the current set of bishops and so many priests.

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No Cease in the Cause, No Pause in the HispanicLatino Struggle

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It was as most funerals are: The grieving widow and family, the coffin holding the body of a public servant ready for burial and old friends re-connecting.  As so many memorial services do, they bring together individuals who have not seen each other for years if not decades.  Once reconnected, they speak as if it were only yesterday that their lives crossed paths:  Old enemies forgetting what angered them over the years; old rivalries unremembered; stories retold of battles past; minds struggling with faces that they cannot attach to names.

And so it was earlier this week when his family and friends came to bid farewell to Carlos Truan, a long-serving member of the Texas Senate, after his heart failed.  His funeral turned out to be more than a reconstruction of the past and more than about a life well-led that earned the respect of friend and some foes alike.

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If Only a Label Were the Answer

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After all the huffing and puffing, the ongoing discussion about the Hispanic and/or Latino labels sort of misses the point. Yes, Hispanic is a confected term, and, yes, Latino, is not far behind but Latino is personally more acceptable to many of us who are Americans but cannot go around town calling ourselves Paraguayans, Colombians, Dominicans, Cubans or Mexicans first but who yet feel differently about our selves, meaning our identity.  Thus the discussion – wholesome, necessary and inevitable – is not about a label but about identity, a term that is as much about who we are as it is about purpose in life.

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Santorum as the New Buchanan

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Watching the race for the Republican presidential nomination come to an end when former senator Rick Santorum effectively pulled out of the race, I had two thoughts.  The first: I would have loved to see how Catholics would have voted in fairly Catholic states like New York, Pennsylvania and California for, in effect, the GOP primary contest had turned out to be a referendum on the Catholic bishops and their attempts to inject themselves more in the affairs of state and, as important, the affairs of women.

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America, Still in the Act of Becoming, as are HispanicLatinos

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After more than two centuries of existence, America continues to be a nation always in the act of becoming, and the new moment the country has entered allows HispanicLatinos to reintroduce themselves in a new light to the country – and to themselves.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s, young Americans, feeling freed of conventions that were assumed to be breeding a national identity, went off in search of a self that somehow was unfulfilled. 

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Let HispanicLatinos be HispanicLatinos: Nation-Builders

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That HispanicLatinos are unlike any other group in the history of the country is hard to dispute.  No other group lives so close – and in many cases within – its original culture. Whether HispanicLatinos understand the potential power of their presence is not clear even though the old reality – that their root culture never disappears – is poised to gain traction in ways never envisioned by the nation’s founders.

In their Constitution, the founders asserted the right of individuals to freedom of personal expression and self-determination in the pursuit of their personal happiness.  The success of HispanicLatinos developing a new, productive way forward – in a way thought of as possibly “un-American” by some – would be testament to the ingenious creators of the country.  They understood that the personal freedoms enshrined and protected in their extraordinary document would allow its citizens always to work on America’s behalf and vouchsafe her future.

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Alone at the Top: HispanicLatinos with the Responsibility to Lead

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In the immediate years ahead, HispanicLatinos who are the most accomplished will have the most to lose if the rest of their community does not accelerate its progress and if America falters.  These HispanicLatinos bear the looming responsibility of managing the interplay of three powerful forces already changing their personal lives and the larger trajectory of the country:  A new demography, mass communications and a seemingly willful geography.  It is a difficult but worthwhile task.

Geography often is taken as fixed.  In fact, it moves history.  Geography projects, maintains and grows culture, however unevenly.  At times, an army can use the lay of the land to scurry a foe into defeat.  But geography is far more powerful over the long term, shaping and influencing events permanently in positive and negative ways not apparent until much later.

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On HispanicLatino and not ‘Hispanic’ nor ‘Latino’

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Standing in a conference room atop a bank building in Miami last week, I had been looking out at the spectacular vista.  From the city’s mammoth airport to the west, my gaze spanned eastward, marveling at the jewel-islands linked by the necklace of causeways that connects all to the island of Miami Beach, itself ensconced by the emerald beauty of the Atlantic.  I forced myself to return my head to business and stepped into the hallway to snatch a cup of coffee.  Upon my return, a man who had spoken earlier to the meeting I was attending introduced himself.

The usual banter ensued, and soon enough the inevitable question that has plagued humanity since it invented small talk came my way from the Anglo marketing consultant: What do you do for a living?

I write a blog on HispanicLatinos at HispanicLatino.com.

Oh. He paused.  You are combining the terms.  He paused again, then: Thank you!  Before I could smile in return, he continued in spurts of sentences.  We never know what to say…at my company…which term to use…we go back and forth…in reports and stuff…we do not want to offend anybody….

My response was a bit more organized:

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Forced to Lead: The Most Acculturated and Assimilated HispanicLatinos

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HispanicLatinos can remake America through the remaking of their identity, and, ironically, it will fall on the more assimilated or acculturated HispanicLatinos to communicate how important their community’s development will be to the country’s survival.  Above all, more integrated HispanicLatinos must understand clearly the core characteristic of the population they will be forced to lead:  It is still a people in the making.

America itself is a country always in the making and reinventing itself.  Constant change grew it into a world power. If the country is always being remade, so, too, must the HispanicLatino community experience ongoing change.

At the core of any human being succeeding in life and maximizing his or her potential is a sense of confidence that emanates from a complete self usually derived from a secure home, environment and family.  Knowing who one is, growing to understand one’s purpose in life and feeling comfortable within one’s own skin is critical to individual achievement.

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From a New Understanding, a New Purpose and a New Identity

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Whether the rest of the nation understands the unique nature of the present circumstances and importance of its HispanicLatino population to the future of the country is not as important as HispanicLatinos themselves understanding it – and understanding themselves in the process.

Within a growing number of HispanicLatinos, the perception of the fact that they will be decisive to America’s future has taken root.  If HispanicLatinos think they are going to get the kind of leadership they and the country need from somewhere else, they are fooling themselves.  In many cities and states, then, many HispanicLatinos are having conversations – publicly, privately and individually – about what happens next.

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