“It Was Good”

The story of the Judeo-Christian salvation as consigned in the Bible opens in the book of Genesis, of the Old Testament, with a wonderful statement: “God made every one of them. Then he looked at what he had done, and it was good.” (Gn 1.25) Nevertheless, the obvious tragedy of evil, the overwhelming evidence of suffering, pain, violence, injustice, inequity and death . . . in the world, and experienced in thousand of conflicts: individual, social, international and of the family forces man to ask (from the beginning) for the cause of the messes, the attempts against the original harmony with which God created everything, and created us.

Biblical and Christian interpretation treats this experience, and the cause of evil as “sins” (in plural, in the Old Testament) and as “sin” hamartía (singular in the New Testament). This last interpretation, the one that interests us most, as Christians, as men and women of the New Testament, consists of a structural posture, a fundamental option of the life of man against his compassionate and merciful Creator and Father; against his will, and finally ­against love for the brother (especially for the smallest among us) whom, according to what was revealed by Jesus of Nazareth, we should love in the same manner and proportion to which God loves us. So, if the life in God is life in love, sin and life in sin is life without God, that is, without love; and the terrible manifestations of evil are explained as lack of the love of God, lived by men and women: His creatures, His children. But, on the contrary, all definite change of the experience of evil in the world –from the Christian point of view--comes out of God’s love among men.

In this historical point, passing from modern to post-modern times, the man of today is left blind, without an absolute truth to orient or regulate life. The life of today’s man lapses in the moral relativism of the half truths, of the hidden truths, of the life styles “a-la-carte” according to which nothing is worth anything or everything is worth the same following the practical usefulness things may have for enjoying the here and now. We live every day without the transcendent vision of history, and with the sad perspective of “no future”. Today and the immediate enjoyment is all that counts; and all that is valid and justified with that goal.

In today’s world, the moral relativism, subjectivism and sentiment (against all reason) as a theological interpretation of evil, universal and objective, lost its place because all is allowed to today’s man –especially if it is forbidden-- as long as it provides pleasure. On the other hand are the standings and behaviors of men and women closer to the modernism; these tend to judge everything as evil and a sin, in a very rigorous and scrupulous manner, and in the words of Jesus himself “You strain a fly out of your drink, but swallow a camel!” Lent reminds us that not just anything is sin; but sin does exist: it is the negation to God’s will which asks that we love one another as bothers and sisters, for the construction of a society and world better than the existing one, where we now live and for which we are all responsible.

“The LORD saw how bad the people on earth were . . . He was sorry that he had made them.. .”(Gn 6.5,6) Lent, a strong liturgical time which calls to conversion, is above all, a good time to return to the interpretation of the world and human history under the light of Him from whom hangs and depends our life. For Christ, with Him and in Him, humanity has a new opportunity; and Lent must be a perfect time to go back and look at our lives from the perspective of God, who shows us his love, but at the same time shows us our rejection of His love and the love of our brothers and sisters. Lent is a time in which our sin becomes clear: our falsehood, our lack of meaning, our treasons and fears. Finally, it reveals our lack of faith which is lack of trust in God who has loved us and calls us eternally to his home, to life in Him.

The conversion to which the Word of God and the liturgy of the Catholic Church call us to in the time of Lent, consists of taking into conscience the love of God, manifested in our lives, manifested in all we are and possess and –with it­ the consciousness of our sin as a fundamental standing against the love of God. Lent is a time for sincere repentance; for adjusting our lives to the life which Jesus proposes in his Gospel, and to have absolute confidence in the forgiving love of the Father.

All of this, against a society apparently satisfied, proud, pre-potent, conceited; with science and technical conquests, which instead of bringing us closer to “love one another” has placed walls between us full of sophisticated armaments to kill each other, and very far from the life in the original paradise for which we were created.

Lent is a calling to construct an ethical and moral society. The “amorality” (life without moral norms) and “immorality” (life against all moral principles) of so many travels, these days, through all the paths of life; and opens grooves of violence, blood, death, crisis, war, divisions, hunger, injustice, inequity, misery, etc.

The Christian theological system allows the believer in Christ to always start again, to try anew, to trust the loving Father once more, and to permit him to embrace him/her with His eternal love. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the experience that the original harmony is always possible; that the broken relationship with God, with our brothers and with nature can be cured forever; and that the kindness of all things loved by God, in the first days of creation, is possible today as well.

I invite you to live this Lent 2010 intensely, as a precious period in which the Catholic Liturgy allows for us to try again, and among ourselves, find the lost paradise which God made “looked. . .and saw that it was good.”

Happy New Year...but

We now prepare for the coming of a new year, which will be the 2010th of the Christian Era. This advent fills us with positive goals; fills us with happiness and the hope that we will reach the projects that were not possible before, or remained incomplete during the year which comes to an end.

Hispanics and Catholics in the United States, especially hope for 2010 to be the year of the Immigration Reform. That it will be the year when a law: humane, generous and as just as possible allows the total and full social and legal integration of millions of immigrants, who in this nation (the same as in Europe) do not enjoy the constitutional guaranties, nor the full access to social benefits because of their lack of documentation, to accredit them as welcomed citizens, documented and legal in the Unites States or Europe. Nevertheless, these same people who are ostracized and rejected become the people who, with their sacrifice and hard work --even though never valued enough-- now sustain the difficult economic panorama, in this nation and in the world.

During the last few years we have witnessed a social phenomenon that moves completely in the opposite direction from this social and legal aspiration. The communication media and social phenomenon now present the private and public aggressions which are evident in the growing racism, dangerous and expanding discrimination, exploitation, and social marginalization of undocumented immigrants, wrongly labeled “illegals”.

These inhumane and unjust attitudes, these discriminatory speeches --racist and anti-immigrant-- hide dark and sinister interests: the wish to perpetuate the ostracism of a great mass of people which, because of their lack of documentation, are being exploited. This population --because it is marginalized and not recognized-- continues to be mistreated, stepped over, used and abused socially and in their labor. It is a speech which hides this great truth: the immigrants, as much in the United States as in Europe are not loved, desired, accepted nor recognized in their rights; but are indeed recognized for what they do; which makes them cheap labor, a population which drives and grows the economy of the conglomerates, the same who wish to maintain the social marginalization and deceit of its “undocumented workers”.

In our religious Judeo-Christian tradition the dignity, the well being and the service to human beings should always be above governments, interests and laws. The year 2010 needs to be, among us and with the help and participation of all, the year in which the highest and best values are restored: people-in-society. We are not to continue with the double standard in which, in one hand human and Christian values are exalted, and in the other –and simultaneously– we step on, affront, disdain human dignity and the right of millions of immigrants to live in just and humane conditions. These rights have been earned by the value of their labor and their economic and social contribution. It is dishonest, hypocritical, and unworthy of our society ---North American and European-- which proclaim to be the founders and defenders of the highest standards in humanity and democracy .

May globalization reach not only the geostrategic, economic and political goals of this Nation, in the year 2010; but that it be present in an ecumenical spirit, where men and women may feel, wherever they live, citizens of the world, with a fitting place on this earth, which belongs to all. May the globalization be felt in a fraternal and universal spirit, which reaches all; so that --finally-- the full and total insertion of immigrants to this Nation, which gives us so much but also receives a lot from all of us, who have reached its shores looking for a better life through huge effort, work, renunciation and sacrifice be a reality.

Traditionally, at the beginning of each year we wish each other “a Happy and Prosperous New Year!” The year 2010 will be a happy and prosperous year for all, in the measure which, above the selfishness and hypocrisy of a few is placed the social interest which shouts for an immigration law for the benefit of many. To this goal we should all commit ourselves, because it benefits us all. HAPPY AND BLESSED 2010!!

Christmas and God’s Logic

In the Catholic liturgy, Christmas is a time when each year, we commemorate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, who we confess to be our Lord and Savior. Christmas, the memory of that first nativity is, therefore, a past which becomes real in our present and commits us to the construction of a “Christian” future.

Two Gospels (Matthew and Luke), in the New Testament give a glimpse of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; both have as the theological intention of the authors, the confession of Jesus as Messiah. This was experienced in the living, the teaching, the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus; and later verbally confessed and put into writing.

The historical data concerning the birth of Jesus, distant in time for the authors of these two Gospels and with less theological importance --when we consider the public ministry, the passion, the death and resurrection of Christ-- should be read, as all the Good News and especially the four Gospels, under the light of the “Birth celebration”. It should be told, based on the life transforming experience which the first disciples lived right after the death of Jesus. This experience caused that group of men and women to confess that “Christ is alive”, “is resurrected from the dead”, and “is the Messiah”; the one waited for, and in whom were fulfilled --in a new context-- all the messianic promises of the Old Testament.

But, what about real historical data in the so called “infancy accounts”? The oral tradition goes all the way up to the time when Luke writes these accounts (gospel writer of this new liturgical cycle, which just began with the first Sunday of Advent), and who assures that Jesus was born a boy, in conditions of poverty; the only son of Joseph and Mary; born during the time of the census ordered by Cesar Augustus, while Cyrenius was the governor of Syria.

This historical data, —as happens with all human stories and with all the historical data which appears in the Gospels about Jesus— is wrapped in the theological intention of the authors, and is in the confessions of faith of the primitive Christian community: of David’s lineage (which is in the hereditary line from which the Messiah was suppose to come; and because of this, the ancestry of Joseph and the mention of Bethlehem); the participation of the angel (whose intervention tells of a happening /birth where the main character is God himself, as it should have been according to the prophesies of the Old Testament in reference to the Messiah).

In this manner the shepherds, Simeon, Hanna, the Temple erudites, the neighbors in Nazareth, the first Christians and Christians of all times, recognize “the child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger” as the Lord and Savior of all times: beginning of, central to, and culmination of our happiness and eternal life.

This confession, as later taught and written by Paul of Tarsus, shatters Greek and Jewish logic and breaks all the wisdom molds in the world. It breaks the power schemes in the Roman Empire and establishes a new logic, new wisdom –the wisdom of God-- according to which “anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted”, “he has filled the hungry with good things” . . ., and the “rich he has sent away empty”. By this logic God “chooses what is not, to confuse what is”.

That is why Christmas is a commemoration, but it is also protest. During Christmas, from the manger (as much as from the foolishness and craziness of the cross) Christians protest against the logic by which the world and relations among humans are constructed. During Christmas, from the humble manger, Christians protest against the ostentation which leaves so many hungry; against the consumerism which leaves so many in inhumane situations; and against the luxury, the waste and the squandering which insults so many who have nothing.

Christmas is, because of this, an event and confession of solidarity from God to those who need him and place in him all their trust, confidence and hope. Also because of it, in Baby Jesus and in his manger is reborn the hope of the majority: which are the rejected and marginalized by the present social systems.

It is this hope, which gives meaning to the joy manifested throughout the world during Christmas time. But it is God’s act and his wisdom which makes, in the present, that Christians construct a world according the will of God and the logic of the manger (and the cross), and not according the logic of the world. Because we, the disciples “are in the world, but do not belong to the world.”

Friends, I rejoice together with you during this 2009 Christmas; and ask the God Child to bless us all, to illumine us and to give us the strength to construct our lives, our families, our work and labors, and all our personal and social projects, following the logic which had its beginnings during Jesus’ birth in the manger in Bethlehem. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A “River of Light” in New York

To the right of the Main Altar in St. Patrick’s Cathedral –that is, in a privileged place— during the last 18 years and for the veneration of believers, is placed a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

How did the image make it there? Who was the main person responsible for this incredible act? What happened so that the image of Our Lady of Tepeyac would reach a place of veneration today in New York City is a story that should be told and written. I intend, through these lines, to make known the incredible story that established this landmark.

The painting was done by an unknown artist in the XVIII Century. It is believed that it was the work of a successful painter, student of the great Mexican painter Miguel Cabrera. It is a present from the Archdiocese of Mexico to Catholics of the metropolitan Cathedral in New York. It was acquired in the Art Gallery of Enrique Romero in Mexico City and brought to New York, personally, by the then Archbishop of Mexico His Eminence Ernesto Cardinal Corripio Ahumada.

On the 8th of December of 1991, in the solemn Mass of the Immaculate Conception, Cardinal Corripio presented to his brother, the then Cardinal of New York, Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor, during the solemn liturgical celebration, the painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
During that liturgical act were present the Consul General of Mexico, Mr. Manuel Alonzo and Mrs. Rosa María Quijano, protagonist and principal donor so that this historical event would take place.

The miraculous impression of Our Lady of Guadalupe, among roses, on the poncho of the Indian San Juan Diego, in the apparition of December 12, 1531, is permanently on display in the new Basilica, built in her honor and for her veneration in Mexico City.

The word “Guadalupe” means “river of light.” Today we can say that there is a constant “river of believers” who go daily to honor Our Mother and Mother of God, under the invocation of the Mexican, Latin-American, American, and Amerindian “Virgen Morena,” in the beautiful painting now in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. For the visit of his Holiness Pope John Paul II to New York, the painting of the Guadalupana was moved to the main altar to preside over the visit of His Holiness to the Cathedral, and for the prayer of the Holy Rosary directed by the Universal Pastor before the venerated image.

It is worth stating that the prominent placement that the painting has today, within the context of the Cathedral, in the place where the Tabernacle of the Cathedral was, to the right of the main altar, has its own history. All of it is intertwined with signs and miracles, which point to the fact that after a series of difficulties encountered in the placement of the painting --due to the construction and style of the Cathedral--, the Virgin has found a prominent place where to be revered and where she can accompany the life of its children.

Mrs. Margarita Perusquia has a primary placement in this story. As a founder of the organization “Mensajeros de María de Guadalupe” (Messengers of Maria Guadalupe), she has dedicated herself and the Institution to spread in New York and throughout the world the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe. This Marian devotion embodies the Latin-American spirit and puts together, in the best symbiosis, the most valuable of our origins, our history, our faith and our culture.

The request of Margarita Perusquia to the then Archbishop of New York: Terence Cardinal Cook was to allow her to build an altar in the Cathedral for the veneration of the “Guadalupana.” This act began this story which today inspires and brings so many devotees, not only from New York, but from the whole continent and across the seas.

The same request, with the best show of Christian patience and perseverance, was made by Margarita several times to Cardinal Cook and Cardinal O’Connor. Each, in their moment, referred her to the Cathedral’s rector, who –in turn—denied the request, usually for the reasons mentioned previously: the lack of consonance between the style of the painting, the construction and architectural style, and the art within the Cathedral.

As it was stated on the 8th of December, 1991, the Cardinal of Mexico: Ernesto Cardinal Corripio Ahumada, while celebrating the Eucharist in the Cathedral gave the painting of the Virgin to John Cardinal O’Connor, who –full of emotion— asks the multitudes where they would want the painting: his house, his office or in the Cathedral. To that the crowd of believers answered, at one voice: “Here, in the Cathedral.”

For one-and-a-half years the painting of the Guadalupe was stored in inadequate corners of the Cathedral. But soon, the daily crowd of pilgrims, the offerings, the candles, and flowers pressured the authorities in the Cathedral to find a better and more adequate place for the veneration of the image of the “Virgen Morena.” May these lines become written evidence of that story; and may they help to honor and give thanks to those who made this religious gesture possible. I would like to congratulate all my Mexican and Latin-American brothers and sisters on this day, in which Catholics happily celebrate the solemnity of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of Mexico and Mother of the Americas.

Advent: The Hoping for Hope

With the Advent Season begins another year in the liturgical life of Catholics. Adviento is a latin word which means “to wait for what is coming, expectation of something that is waited for, something expected which will come and shape the present.”

What would human life be without hope? We would sink in a sea of uncertainty, of suffering, of pain and of evil without something to encourage us to continue trusting, trying, working, projecting, loving, believing and hoping . . .

We, Christians, are essentially and fundamentally men and women of hope. In other words, men and women who live in a permanent advent: waiting that the birth of God comes at Christmas; waiting for the daily encounter with God through his creation, through our brothers and sisters (especially the poorest in society), through liturgy, through the sacraments; through the many signs and circumstances by which God comes near to us and meets us each day. Christians live waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled; that God’s Kingdom overcomes the kingdoms of the world; that God’s mercy overcomes the lack of love; and that God’s power triumphs over the mean power of man.

But the fulfillment of this hope –as the Advent Psalm says-- for “justice to flourish and peace to be abundant” it requires that we Christians construct, with our acts and our words, with our announcements and denunciations, and with our behaviors, attitudes, and works, a time and space in which Christian hope is possible; in other words a time and space in which God’s Kingdom becomes evident through us.

In this way, the hope we are waiting for takes us out of a passive attitude of resignation, and brings us to construct the hoping attitude we are wishing for --the new heaven and the new earth we wish for! Even more so, Christians know that the daily wish for happiness becomes true only in the real hope: which is Christ and his life in us. Christian hope is not a hope that can be reduced to ephemeral and temporary satisfactions; but one that pushes all our present lives towards a full and total future in God.

Advent, this liturgical time, just before the anticipation of Christmas is –more than just a liturgical time-- a life attitude and a personal and communitarian commitment of the believers and those from the Church who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Also the belief in a world in which the divine starts, shows, and stays in the most humane and every day aspects of our present history.

Liturgy, in this time of Advent, speaks to us of a hope which does not die in the day to day; a hope that lightens up each moment of our lives; a hope that is infinite and without conditions; a hope which has no limits and is eternal; a hope that opens up for us the beyond of our limited intra-history; and a hope which overcomes all forms of evil, pain and death.

Circumstances today, more than ever, urge us to live in the spirit of Advent. All around us there are manifestations of crisis: crisis of the human spirit; crisis of goals which humanity dreamed of; crisis of trust and confidence in men and institutions; crisis of trust in governments, regimes, political and economic models; lack of trust between peoples and nations; lack of trust and belief in spiritual leaders. There is disillusion and mistrust because there is a hunger and a thousand forms of inequity, injustice, violence and death. There is a collective feeling that our present has no future. There is uncertainty, a loss of the sense of life and much anguish. We live in difficult times for all spheres of life. Nevertheless, Catholic liturgy, in this time of Advent, once more invites us to the wait for Hope, the commitment and construction of better times . . .

I wish for all of us that this Advent 2009 fills us with hope; fills us with an always renewed strength to make possible our hope: which is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be among us. That the Gospel be lived and announced by us for the construction of a better world; a world which is more just, more humane and more according to God’s wish.

The Heart’s Memory

Each year, as Thanksgiving Day arrives, I remember the Gospel story in which only one out of ten cured lepers --a foreigner-- returned to Jesus to express his gratitude and to give glory to God for being cured.

This nation’s historical tradition invites us to give thanks during one day each year. Without doubt, it is the date which gets the most people together. It is the most familiar and nationally recognized of all celebrations in the United States. The tradition of this celebration goes way back to a historical gesture of which not all know the story but the majority celebrates. It is all due to the fact that the attitude and action of being grateful and giving thanks is a profoundly human tendency, and because of it, profoundly divine.

In the Eucharist, we Christians have the fountain, the base, and the beginning and end of the Christian life. The Greek word “eucaristía” means precisely, “to give thanks”. That is to say that the most authentic and genuine Christian posture is to live giving thanks to God who gives us all we are and all we have.

In the present “consumer driven society”, the importance we give to money, the importance we give to having instead of to being, impedes us from remembering that always and in all circumstances we are not self-sufficient; that we do not auto-provide ourselves. We do not remember the fact that others work to give us things and services which we enjoy; that to live, we all need each other; that we are, beyond rational animals, beings which are solidary in good and evil; social beings that, as human beings and believers are part of the creative work of God, and that the main dynamic is to serve.

When we become conscious of our social nature and our importance in a creation in which everything created serves to help us live each day in the spirit of service and gratitude.
What allows our hearts to be thankful is the capacity for opening our senses and being conscious of everything we have and everything we are. The consequences of this thankful understanding come without delay: the grateful human being is a joyful man or woman, confident, humble and hopeful . . . and waiting on that loving presence which surrounds us, and which Christians call Holy Trinity.

When Jesus teaches us to see all good things as gifts from God, he at the same time teaches us to give all things as gifts. In other words, every good gift received from God commits us to place all at the service of our brothers and sisters, following a lifestyle that does not hoard life selfishly but favors all, especially the needy. Therefore, gratitude and gratefulness are attitudes which require of each of us a time and space in which all human beings can have the capacity, the possibility and the joy of being grateful.

Gratitude is an attitude, but because it is an attitude it is also an obligation. Therefore on Thanksgiving Day we are grateful but also give away . . . May it be that, more than things we give our time, our presence, our lives –and not only one day a year—but each day of our lives.

May you all have a Happy Thanksgiving Day! May we all be able to always be grateful and to aid others in having a reason to always be grateful!!

Buliding a Hispanic Heritage

Between September and October of each year and coinciding with the holiday of Mexican Independence and ending with the celebration of the “Encounter of Two Worlds”, in the United States, we celebrate “NATIONAL HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH” a nationally recognized observance which has been enacted into law.

Today, to speak of the significant Hispanic presence in this country is to speak of something obvious. The National Census Bureau indicated that there are close to forty seven million Hispanics residing in this Nation in addition to the three million people residing on the Island of Puerto Rico.

Hispanic presence in the life of this Nation is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, Hispanics have been here even before the arrival of the pilgrims. Since 1550, men like Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, together with other explorers, travelled and explored the width and length of the territories which today constitutes the American Union. Hispanics had established themselves in what today is called “Florida”, many years before the British founded Jamestown. Without a doubt, Hispanics have made a mark in the history of this Nation. We have participated in many of the heroic deeds during its formation and have greatly contributed to the overall development of the United States.

Because of our substantial and growing numbers, subjects such as immigration or the legalization of undocumented immigrants are today on the front pages of the media; and rank amongst the principal preoccupations of the institutions which have in their hands the destiny of this Nation.

It is important to note that there is one U.S. Senator and thirty two House representatives of Hispanic origin in Congress. This speaks loudly to the undeniable Hispanic contribution in today’s North American society.

Our presence here is a reality, but the mere simple existence of a large population does not give authority. Authority comes from authorship of our own destiny; we must be protagonists and not simply spectators of our own historical and social destiny within this Nation. Only then would we have gained respect and recognition from others.

It is not enough that we are many, big numbers give not true rights; what is needed and urgent is for us to shape the quality of our contributions.

We must define our existence as Hispanics in this Nation in a meaningful way by integrating the Hispanic Community into the greater American Life and to have social, religious, political, economic, cultural and academic influence in the life of this Nation.

During the celebration of HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH, we allow ourselves the opportunity to reflect and truly understand our present situation and its challenges; and to be on the alert about the best way we can develop a future as a Hispanic Community and be of influence and contribute to the everyday life of the American Union.

Some of the questions we must ask of ourselves are as follows:

• Why can’t we have a well lead, organized, reasonable and respectful debate on immigration?


• What relationship (and recognition) is there between our enormous purchasing power (nine hundred billion dollars a year) and our competent and competitive presence in the economy and the commercial life of the United States?


• Knowing that the future is formed in the years of childhood, what can be done about the high percentage of drop-outs amongst the children and youth of Hispanic origin? At the same time, what can be done to address the many Hispanic youth also plunge into the world of gangs, the use of drugs and alcohol, and other forms of vices and violence in very large numbers?


• While academic preparedness amongst Hispanics born and raised in our country is on the increase, great numbers of us still have very low standards of living and live in poverty. How can this be addressed?


• How do we integrate into the working world of this Nation the massive influx of illiterate youth who are in the possession of little formal education in Spanish, let alone English? These youths have arrived from extreme poverty in their home countries and become easy prey to the culture of consumerism and materialism and can easily cast aside their altruistic or transcendent values resulting in truncated ideals. How do we keep our youth from becoming perfect targets for those who traffic in human misery?


• It is important today to raise the question of where are the Christian values that have inherited. Such as humanism, integral development, solidarity, spirituality.

The work that is in front of us is difficult and requires conscious, responsible and generous participation of all Hispanics. Hispanics need to develop internally the required leadership to thrust ourselves as a voice in the building of the present and future of this Nation.

This effort implies a focus on encouraging our youth to obtain a higher degree of education; to develop skills in organization and respect for one another and the ability to develop a higher degree of communication with the dominant culture, so that together we can make this society more viable and humane.

In a Nation which proclaims freedom, there are still many situations of slavery and licentiousness. In a Nation which claims to be the empire of rights and law, there are many situations of injustice and abuse to the most elemental rights of man. We can still verify many inhumane situations, all within a society which preaches respect for the human being.

We Hispanics must take the lead in the rebirth of a new American society, truly tolerant and fraternal. We should be proactive protagonists in the emergence of a new society which will finally discover the integrated and harmonious values of the whole American Continent.
Such a society that discovers the true value of American Union --that is “Pan-Americanisn” will become a Society that is richer as a result of the diversity of nations, with its diverse ethnicities, histories, languages and cultures but also become united in one territory. We become a society with the same aim to be happy, with the common goal to be prosperous people, more humane and humanized, with fewer borders and divisions and more solidarity.

For the Hispanic community to be able to reach adulthood in this society, it needs to engage in a deep reflection of its history. The celebration of HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH should not pass as a simple “fiesta”; but should be a call for a serious commitment from all Hispanics with the aim of constructing a true, great and noble “hispanicity” in the life and development of this Nation. If we do this, we will no longer be drifting at the mercy of those who do not accept us, who exploit us, or in the worse case scenario, want us to be without identity or completely assimilated to the culture of this great Nation that still needs to discover the beauty of Hispanics.

How great it is that HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH exists! For while there is much we have accomplished there is still much more left to be done!!