At this time each year and through an act of Congress, we celebrate
HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH.
Hispanic Heritage Month is dedicated to recognizing the presence of
Hispanics and "everything Hispanic" in the life of the United States
of America. It is an annual opportunity to congratulate ourselves as Hispanics
and to recall our historical and cultural origins. Above all, it is a
magnificent opportunity to reflect on the presence of the Hispanic community in
the fabric of this great nation, a great opportunity for Hispanics to remember
our past and review our present as we plan our future in the United States.
Hispanics now number
58 million in the United States, which makes us 20% of the voting population.
Politically speaking, we are a community that should wield decisive power and
influence in the course and destiny of this American society.
However, these figures do not correspond with an evaluation of our
achievements of Hispanics in the United States. Despite our numerical strength,
we still do not have laws that protect Hispanics in this nation. We have
achieved neither laws nor institutional and state frameworks that advocate for
the virtues and values proper to Hispanics, amid an increasingly materialist, consumerist,
hedonistic, utilitarian, pragmatic, and individualistic culture.
It is, then, during HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH that we ask ourselves,
dispassionately and honestly, about the cause of our shortcomings, the reasons
why our numerical presence does not correspond to our relative importance,
influence, and power in the broader framework of American society.
The causes of our low productivity, too-few accomplishments, and
negative perceptions as an Hispanic community in America are not to be sought
outside ourselves. Within our Hispanic community, we find disorganization, lack
of political formation, a pronounced absence of leadership, divisions, and
ignorance of ourselves and of the cultures of the countries from which we came
– all of us who here are called, generically and globally, Hispanics. We find a
lack of interest in the common good; a lack of identity or loss of identity;
lack of a global Hispanic agenda; lack of knowledge of our essence, identity,
or homogeneity and, in addition, a lack of knowledge of the cultural essence of
those who are distinct from us, that is, of the American society.
These shortcomings aggravate the challenges we face as Hispanics in the
United States. Add to these difficulties a new external challenge: the
rethinking of immigration in general, and for Hispanics in particular, that
comes from what we can call the "Trump Phenomenon." This rethinking
is a genuine threat to our presence in this nation. And, because we are not
properly prepared, we do not respond in solidarity, with one voice, or even
correctly; instead we skate, babble, whine, or, as we say in our lands, we
respond with “patadas de ahogado,” or
the kicks of a drowning man.
It is important that we address and resolve these challenges. It is very
important that, living in and integrating ourselves into this society - without
assimilating ourselves - we succeed in offering, here and now, the best of our
origins and our past, the best of our history and our cultures as Hispanic
nations. It is very important that - in an American society increasingly
postmodern and increasingly exhibiting the characteristics described above -
Hispanics rescue, for example, the value we place on family life and health
care.
As Hispanics, against the ‘absolutization’ of pleasure, against discrimination and intolerance,
marginalization, indifference, silence, and all forms of malaise that generate
violence, we must offer and privilege love as the first human vocation;
democratic forms of participation in societal construction; permanent efforts
to build solidarity and peaceful justice; respect for the richness of those
different from us; respect for human life over any other value and interest; the
importance and primacy of people over things, of being over having, of ethics
over technique, of the human being and his work in business and capital, of
service over power; of the transcendent over the temporary, transitory, and
transient.
Family and health are, here and now, potentially at risk of being
subdued and devoured by the postmodernist principles of the dominant culture
and against the principles of our Hispanic cultures. In the field of health, a
utilitarian and mercantilist interest is evident rather than an interest in
solidarity and human service.
This present moment in humanity and, in particular in this nation,
challenges the Hispanic community in the United States to marshal the strength
of our numbers and, above all, acknowledge the magnitude of the issues within
the Hispanic community itself.
Congratulations on this month celebrating Hispanicity. We wish you much
encouragement and thoughtful, coordinated efforts in the task of effecting
change in the United States, not only by our sheer numbers, but also in the
beneficial effectiveness of our presence in North America. Onward!
