The Hispanic Contribution

As Americans, we speak English, Spanish, French, German, Lenape, Swahili and any number of other tongues. We are free to speak these languages and express our diverse cultures because America’s founders, too, were immigrants, and understood the terms of oppression that caused them to flee their own native countries. But recent literature by Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard’s Weatherhead University Professor, has caught much of the Harvard community off-guard by disregarding this fundamental truth. Huntington’s critique of Latin American (particularly Mexican) immigration to the United States comes after a long history of anti-immigrant rhetoric on his part. However, his recent writings are most disturbing due to their lack of substantial evidence and thinly-veiled racism against non-Anglo-Protestants in America.

All those at Harvard, and especially Latinos, are very much disturbed by the ignorant stereotypes that are being perpetuated through Huntington’s “academic” writings. Latino leaders at Harvard as well as organizations such as Concilio Latino, RAZA, Fuerza, Latinas Unidas, the Cuban American Undergraduate Student Assocation and Native Americans at Harvard College have expressed their discontent with Huntington’s writings and have begun collaborating to organize in order to educate the community. According to Huntington, rising immigration rates from Mexico would mean “the end of American society as it has been.” In a recent article, Huntington said Hispanic immigrants are characterized by a “lack of initiative, self-reliance, and ambition” and have made “little use of education.” The preconceived stereotype of the lazy, uneducated Latino immigrant is as obviously false as it is old, but Huntington presents these clichés in order to privilege his own white American culture. By making over-generalized, incorrect claims about the Latino condition in the United States, Huntington makes it hard to escape the conclusion that his supposedly academic work is powered by a deeply-rooted prejudice.

Harvard academics, professors and students have cited many faults in Huntington’s claims. From his assertion that the Mexico-America border is easily crossed to his claims that the Spanish language and bilingualism inhibit integration, Huntington elaborates on archaic and racist notions of immigration. A simple look at the border between the United States and Mexico will show that the border has been highly militarized. Hundreds of people have died trying to cross into the United States, killed by border patrol officers and the extremely dangerous terrain and weather characteristic of the borderlands. Huntington has written that immigrants “come across a 2,000-mile border historically marked simply by a line in the ground and a shallow river”; such absurd statements prove only that Huntington has probably never even seen the border, much less the bodies of the immigrants who have died in attempts to reach the U.S. On the subject of language, Huntington is not foolish enough to deny the importance of being able to converse in something other than English—but his belief that bilingualism will somehow split up American society is easily disprovable. Any competent businessperson in this global age, for instance, can speak to the value of multilingualism as a skill that allows flexibility in communication. As more and more people speak both Spanish and English, increased communication will strengthen the bonds of American society, not weaken them.

For the record, this land that Huntington calls America was inhabited before the Anglo-Protestants even landed on the East Coast. Huntington does not give enough thought to the fact that there are Hispanics who live in the Southwest, particularly Texas, whose ancestors never crossed any border—in fact, the artificial modern border crossed them. They speak Spanish and embrace their full Hispanic culture, but they are not immigrants because their families have lived in the same cities in Texas for the past 500 years. Very few Anglo-Protestant can say that much or claim residence in the United States for that long. Huntington’s literature has some valid claims; as a professor, he has indeed contributed to the scholarship on immigration. But his recent writings are not only offensive—they’re inaccurate.

We do not live in George Orwell’s 1984, where “Newspeak” was the only language societal regulators allowed to be spoken. This is 2004, and we live in a world where immigration is constantly in flux, where we are educated enough to comprehend that differences cultivate prosperous societies and cultures. America, this great country, is the world’s superpower; throughout its history, it has been composed by a wider and wider range of cultures and peoples. Huntington and those who agree with him would do well to think about whether that’s a coincidence.

Martha I. Casillas ’05, a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House, Edward L. Rocha ’06, a government concentrator in Adams House, and Maribel Hernandez ’04, a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House, are executive co-chairs of Concilio Latino.