1810-2010:  Identity of Blended People

More blended people in the Southern Hemisphere of America began the tedious task of being named, boxed, and “other-ed” by newer settlers five centuries ago. Mexican, as a nationality, came about exactly two centuries ago when “La Nueva España” gained independence in 1810 and it named itself Mexico after its indigenous roots.

There wasn’t neither a country named Mexico nor “Mexicans” before then. The process for Mexicans to develop their own cultural identity began with the Mexican Revolution and culminated with La Epoca de Oro [The Golden Era] of cinema in the 1950’s and the amazing proliferation of world-class visual art by icons such as Khalo, Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco who exposed a dignifying Mexican working class and their popular culture.

Mexicans, as any other labeled people, do not represent a particular classification but “una amalgama” between the already ethnically diverse Spaniard conquistadores, their accompanying men including slaves from Africa, others whose background could have been Arabic, Jew, Celt, or  any other from that well-mixed Southern region, and local indigenous peoples.

“Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds”

Latin Americans, as did Latin Europeans, continue to mix and blend. According to scholar and historian Gregory Rodriguez’ (2007) research reported on his book “Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America,” the majority of second and third generation Latinos marry outside their own ethnicity.

Latinos, people with origins in Latin America, have already gone through what this country is about to. This census year, the task of boxing people who from the beginning of history have blended despite legal, religious, and social limitations, will be incommensurable. Hopefully, this will mark the beginning of a common social understanding of humans as a single specie, or race, and the giving up of a need to classify people based on their physical appearance as plants or animals can be.

You can access it with six more articles as a PDF or, if you wish to purchase it, there is also an order form at http://www.lessius.eu/jial/order.aspx



As a Mexican household name who has made it into the English-language media, George Lopez is mainstreaming Latinos for which he is considered by many a hero. He uses the most recognizable and marketable Latino symbol —Spanish language— just enough to remind you that he is one from the hood. He is not political correct. He can dispose of cursing republicans publicly and yet, he has a large following across blacks, whites, Asians, and Latinos alike.

So, What Is His Formula?

His Lopez Tonight Show is multicultural. He brings in and interviews white- and black-American celebrities. His diverse band plays diverse music and more importantly, he gets into issues that are close to Latinos and working-class Americans openly.

He brings in the urban flair popular among younger generations which has given way to fashionable music including regaetton, rap, and hip pop. He invites regular people to his show and make them feel at home, showing them respect and consideration.

He dresses elegantly. His shows around the country are sold-out, “even in a down economy” as he put it. His state-of-the-art studio is filled up with young people of all shades who will certainly come out with additional Spanish-language words that they did not or would not learn from their Spanish high school teacher.

Exploiting Culture and Humor

He brings racial issues into the open and even asks his guests for their opinion on them. He can certainly poke at Latinos and for that matter, working-class blacks and whites alike, because he is one of them. He grew up with those experiences; he is an insider and cannot be guilty of prejudice. He can be forgiven by those he represents for he talks about what he lived and endured. He is one of them thus, he can laugh at them.

There is a free flow at his shows. He converses with his audience and feels equally comfortable interviewing Clint Eastwood or the black pregnant dancer in a Corona bikini. He swiftly shifts between social classes and across ethnicities and that is a real skill.

He is attempting to demystify the difference between one’s ethnic label in the U.S. and one’s DNA. And, whether or not he is accurate, it is not the issue. The issue is that he is starting up these conversations in English-language national media.

De or Re-politicizing Chicanos

He is depoliticizing the term “Chicano” by calling himself “Tall, Dark and Chicano” among his fans who are beyond Latinos. Yet, he makes you feel that the Low Rider is still cool while he angrily gets into the political debate as to why some republicans did not vote for Sotomayor.

He might no be the funniest of all or even funny at all but, he has what a great majority of the U.S., so called, minorities have been waiting for –a charming, dark-skinned guy from a poor upbringing who is still in touch with his parent’s culture and has been able to secure a spot not in ethnic but in regular mainstream media where many with more influence have not made it.

Forget about his humor, which I can only stand for a few minutes, that ranges from off-color, vulgar, and borders black comedy. Even for those who find his jokes offensive, he is still looked up to and respected for he can definitely arouse multicultural crowds.

According to the Pew Hispanic Research Center 11 percent of the nation’s 16 million Hispanic children are first generation or foreign-born; 52 percent are second generation or U.S.-born “sons or daughters of at least one foreign-born parent;” 37 percent are third generation or higher “meaning they’re U.S.-born children of U.S.-born parents. ¹

What does this mean for Spanish-language vs. English-language media and advertising?

That none of the two are reaching the largest bulk of Latinos/Hispanics -second-generation, bilingual ones.

Who is addressing this trend best?

Spanglish music-themed programming such as MTV3s and Mund2 and Hispanic/Latino oriented magazines are targeting this emerging group; not Univision or Telemundo and definitely not CNN, FOX, Target, or Amazon who have lately alienated Latinos with racially charged programming and/or products.

How?

By infusing Latin elements -words, phrases, music, colors- into to their English-language content and including content that is relevant to this socio-cultural group such as positive news about Latinos/Hispanics and against-the-common-negative-stereotype stories, companies, marketers, and even politicians, have won and will continue to win over Latinos/Hispanics in the U.S.

Let’s begin to feature Juan Martin del Potro, number-one tennis player; Lhasa de Sela, Mexican-American signer of Spanish, French and English; Alondra de la Parra, 27 year-old classical maestra; Lorena Ochoa, number-one female golfer; or the all-American rock band from Texas, Girl in a Comma whose members are Latinos/Hispanics.

Why?

With 48 million Latinos/Hispanics in the U.S. and in states like California in the threshold of becoming more than 50 percent of their total population, and when “overall, Hispanics increased purchasing ‘deals’ by 16 percent, outpacing non-Hispanics shoppers,”² news that Latino lives are about shooting, selling drugs, or school dropouts should be on the brink of getting too old.

¹ Hispanic Magazine, 2009 October/November edition.

² Hispanics and the New Economic Reality consumer report.

Mi recopilación informativa y reflexión sobre el tema se basa más en un principio empírico y en la observación directa/periodística del fenómeno al que hoy llamamos Spanglish. No obstante, coincido con el resultado de tu estudio formal en que, sí hay una particularidad en la utilización del Spanglish por parte de la primera, segunda y hasta tercera generación de hijos de inmigrantes hispanos, cuando mezclan los idiomas que nos ocupan (inglés y español) para dar origen al híbrido que aquí tratamos de explicar. Es definitivamente distinto al utilizado -por ejemplo- por los pachucos en los años 40s y 50s.

Las palabras expresadas aquí, http://www.hispanicla.com/archive/espanol-y-spanglish/ son sólo un muestrario finito aunque se entiende que el vocabulario del Spanglish no lo es tanto, en el sentido de que -de nuevo, por ejemplo- muchos anglicismos son aceptados hoy en día como incorporaciones formales a otros lenguajes, incluido el español. El caso más explícito tal vez sea el de los vocablos de la nueva tecnología, los que día a día se incrementan y gracias al internet, un amplio público y mayormente los jóvenes, los adoptan con gran facilidad.

Por otro lado, la cuestión de las lenguas indígenas con relación al español y los inmigrantes, es otra que representa un reto no sólo en EE.UU. sino también en nuestros propios países latinoamericanos. Me encanta saber que hay quienes se apasionan en el tema al grado de enfocar sus estudios académicos a disciplinas relacionadas. El tema no tiene fin y es casi adictivo pero será siempre enriquecedor recibir sus comentarios.

Este proceso de “back and forth” de una lengua a otra no necesariamente incluye palabras comunmente conocidas como Spanglish http://www.hispanicla.com/archive/espanol-y-spanglish/

En mi opinión, las palabras en español “inglesadas” o anglicismos denotan conceptos nuevos o variaciones de conceptos ya conocidos que se añaden al vocabulario en el lenguaje que fueron aprendidas manteniendo el sonido español por la popularidad de su uso y la funcionalidad que ofrecen.

Tal vez esto sea más común entre los mexicanos quienes nos aferramos a un español menos castellano y más Náhuatl y tal vez sea más común en personas para quienes no es práctico tomar el diccionario español-ingles y buscar la traducción en español de la palabra nueva en ingles. Mari D. González

Last July, I submitted a research paper for possible publication at the Journal of Internationalization and Localization (JIAL) titled “Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Latino Youth in the Digital Age.” The study covered:

“Recent interest in the Latino/Hispanic population and culture has lead to fruitful research and increased attention on U.S. Latinos/Hispanics…. Marketing that targets Latino/Hispanic youth, has become promising, specialized, and lucrative. [This study] investigates the type of cultural knowledge marketing researchers are using to target Latino/Hispanic youth…. It explores how the ever-growing access to digital media changes the way the food and beverage companies do business with Latino/Hispanic youth.”

My findings show that Latinos/Hispanics specifically youth are creating a new “hybrid” culture which marketers need to take into account. They cannot effectively be reached by Spanish-only media nor are they being attracted to mainstream mass media because they do not culturally identify with it.

Marketers are loosing the mark of this large and continuously growing population of bicultural and bilingual digital media savvy generation if they do no pay attention to what matters to them. For instance, while they listen to the whole spectrum of music in English, from rock to hip pop, they also listen to “rancheras” (Mexican country music) by Vicente Fernandez.

The following information posted by Louis Pagan makes an interesting comparison on how Latinos/Hispanics continue to use their cultural strengths such as “being personal” and “sociable” while using media to network and advertise:  http://louispagan.com/?p=453

What makes this e-novela appealing to acculturated Latinos(as)?

I watched the first five “capítulos” (chapters) of  “Vidas Cruzadas” (Crossed Lives) the first webnovela -an online limited-run soap opera featured on Univision.com. I noticed this Internet “novela” had some characteristics that set it apart from the traditional ones shown on major U.S. Spanish-language TV -Univision and Telemundo or Spanish-language TV from Latin America.

An “acculturated” e-novela

1. It is online.
2. It is bilingual. It has English subtitles.
3. It is filmed in the U.S. Yet, it feels Latina.
4. The main characters are bilingual.
5. Modern plot, not the usual Cinderella-like who is saved by the rich guy.

Vidas Cruzadas’ main female character Mariana is an U.S. second-generation professional and independent Latina whose parents emigrated from Latin America. They represent the traditional and working-class family who has achieved the American dream by giving her daughter the education they did not have. It has very good reviews by viewers as expressed on the novela’s forum. They consistently remark that it is a great production, yet that it’s too short. The webnovela it’s from 5 -8 minutes long shown three times a week with one commercial at the beginning and other embedded in the novela. For instance Mariana helps her mom dye her hair. She shows L’Oreal’s hair color package and tells her mom that she has used it before and is happy about the results. There is also a link on Univision.com on L’Oreal including information in English.

Cultural Relevance and Research

Research points out three main cultural values when targeting online U.S. Latinos/Hispanics: 1) preference for bilingual content; 2) familismo; and 3) the use of celebrities as spokespersons. I will focus on the first one and will discuss the other two later.

Bilingual Content Preferred by a Bilingual Audience

The majority of online Latinos/Hispanics prefer English content. Yet, bilingual U.S.-born or second generation, and 1.5-generation who immigrated as children, prefer English websites that include Spanish because those sites speak to their cultural identity and make them feel included (Lee Vann (2006). In fact, researchers (Singh, Baack, Kundu, & Hurtado, 2008) argue that “Language in this case… Spanish, tends to be the most visible manifestation of U.S. Hispanic identity” (p.2). According to Williamson (2006), Latinos/Hispanics appreciate “quality Spanish-language content online…. [It resonates with their] cultural pride and a feeling of community” (p. 17).

Last month, I interpreted for two young men in their early twenties for a recorded statement related to a car accident. Both were from Guatemala. The youngest seemed very shy. Although he understood most of the questions I asked in Spanish, he needed further interpretation from his cousin who was fluent in Spanish and three other indigenous languages from Guatemala.

According to scholars (Elliot, Adams, & Sockalingam, 1999) indigenous people in the Americas should not be “counted” as Latinos. From their comprehensive study on cultural groups in the U.S. in the communications field, they conclude that,

“Latino is used to refer to people with a lineage or cultural heritage related to Latin America, but should not be used to refer to the millions of Native Americans in the region. [Furthermore] members of indigenous groups in Mexico… object to being referred as ‘Mexicans’” (Multicultural Toolkit Summary, Hispanic American Communication Patterns,  3).

There is no current agreement on which of the two official terms “Latino” or “Hispanic” is more accurate. Researchers (Oboler, 1995; Davila, 2001) indicate that either label “Hispanic” and “Latino” lump together and inaccurately define a group of people that span several generations, nationalities, and socioeconomics and that “both terms are equally guilty of erasing differences while encompassing highly heterogeneous populations” (Davila, 2001). For purposes of inclusion and based on the differences in meaning of each label among the people being categorized, I have chosen to use both labels and place them in that order for easy reading but the order is not to be read as a preference.

Since its inception by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget in 1977, the term Hispanic has been both controversial and accepted by different circles to categorize people with ancestry in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries of the Western hemisphere. Some argue that choosing one label over the other is a matter of assimilation while others choose a label to state pride of having developed an agreeable ethnic identity. Several authors (Martin, 2005; Acuña, 2000; Gonzales, 1999; Rodriguez, 2007) acknowledge the political implications behind the choice of a specific label. Martin (2005) in particular proposes to analyze the term Latino in the context of “reinterpretation” of an existing name that has sprung from political movements dating back to the 1960’s (p. 397). Other researchers (Korzenny & Korzenny, 2005; Rodriguez, 2007; Davila, 2001) recognize a different and significant dynamic – the capitalizing of the consumer power through the use of the label Hispanic which is representative of a common linguistic indicator.

The term Hispanic is inaccurate because it is not perceived by the receivers as representative of their “broader culture” and because it implies that “all” Latino/Hispanic speak Spanish. The term Hispanic does however speak of the Spanish colonization from which the Spanish language was instituted. Yet, not all people who live in Latin America speak Spanish. However, the term Hispanic is seen as convenient through the use of census data to make the case for the allocation of funds that support language-based social service programs and for marketers and advertisers to sell Spanish media programs by arguing that if not all, the majority of Hispanics prefer to speak Spanish.

Individuals who are more aware of the labels’ socio-politics argue that neither the term Hispanic nor Latino applies to them because they want to distance themselves from the negative stereotypes more commonly attached to Mexican immigrants and people of Mexican descent who have dealt with a second colonization by historically being categorized as second-class group since the time their first-class citizenship rights were stripped off them in the nineteen century when the U.S. west border moved further south.

Californians in contrast to New Mexicans prefer using the term Latino(a) when given the choice between Latino(a) and Hispanic. For Californians, Latino is the new Chicano in that it evokes their indigenous roots, a shared history of struggle and the colonization of the people in Latin American countries. Latino as a term is self-appropriated; it comes from the people which might have been the legacy from the Chicano movement. It is not surprising that Latinos in California are more aware of the political connotation of the term Latino because “Chicano studies departments are at public universities in the Southwestern United States, particularly in California” (Wikipedia, Chicano studies, 1).