Huntington's newest enemy: Mexicans
The best answer is solidarity
By Teresa Gutierrez
The Mexican people are currently a running
theme in the bourgeois media.
For example, a recent article by Samuel Huntington in
Foreign Policy, a magazine by published by the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, made certain headlines and
created a stir in some press. Huntington was a member of the
National Security Council during President Jimmy Carter's
Democratic administration.
The March/April front cover headline of Foreign Policy
reads:"José, Can You See? Samuel Huntington on how
Hispanic immigrants threaten America's identity, values and way
of life."
The Foreign Policy article is one of the most anti-immigrant
articles ever. It was racist, appealing to a narrow sector of
the white population, and a call to arms to defend "white
America."
Not just any "white America"--white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
"America."
(We should remind our readers here that "America" is not
synonymous with the United States as it is presented in the
media here. That formulation is colonialist language that
represents U.S. desires to dominate the entire hemisphere. We
should remind the imperialists that the Americas are two
continents, not just the United States.)
The Foreign Policy front cover picture is a Latino dressed
in a suit. The man is crossing his heart with his hand while
holding a small U.S. flag. One imagines he is at his U.S.
citizenship induction ceremony.
Huntington's entire premise is that the multitude of
immigrants coming to the United States--specifically Mexi can
immigrants--is threatening the very fabric of his society.
He writes: "The persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants
threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two
cultures, and two languages. Unlike past immigrant groups,
Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into mainstream
U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and
linguistic enclaves-from Los Angeles to Miami-and rejecting the
Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The
United States ignores this challenge at its peril."
Huntington may be singling out Latin@s now, but in 1996 he
also foretold a "global conflict between the West and the
Muslim world."
Huntington states in Foreign Policy that the "values,
institutions, and culture" of the "white, British and
Protestant settlers" are the foundation of this country that
shaped the United States for all following centuries.
That it is these values and institutions that attract so
many immigrants.
That even though this country is "multiethnic and
multiracial," ethnicity and race have "virtually disappeared as
a defining component of national identity."
(Tell that, Huntington, to the thousands of African American
youth who are daily stopped--or worse--by police solely for
being Black.)
Today, Huntington declares, the "United States' national
identity ... is challenged by the forces of globalization.
"The single most immediate and serious challenge to
America's traditional identity comes from the ... immigration
from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility
rates of these immigrants compared to Black and white American
natives."
(The magazine's second front-page cover cleverly shows a
picture of a Mexican woman holding a baby. We guess this is
meant to drive the fertility point home.)
Mexican migration is different for several reasons,
Huntington fears. One is that the United States and Mexico
share a border. "No other First World country has such an
extensive frontier with a Third World country," he wails.
Another is the scale of immigration. "Hispanics may
constitute up to 25 percent of the U.S. population by 2050,"
Huntington laments.
Another concern for Huntington is that "illegal" immigration
is overwhelmingly a Mexican phenomenon. That "Hispanics ...
tend to concentrate regionally," he continues, and that the
"schools of Los Angeles are becoming Mexican" ("Eeeks!" Or
better yet: "Chihuaha!").
Huntington warns, "No other immigrant group in U.S. history
has asserted or could assert a historical claim to U.S.
territory."
(After all, when they stole over half of Mexico, it never
occurred to the robber barons that Mexicans might want the land
back! What audacity.)
Huntington is really concerned that the size of "Hispanic
immigration tends to perpetuate the use of Spanish. ... Spanish
speakers in New York, Miami and Los Angeles" can live "normal
lives without knowing English." (Again, what audacity!)
He quotes a late Republican reactionary senator as asking,
"Why is it that no Filipinos, no Koreans object to making
English the official language?" (Is Huntington promoting the
racist stereotype that Asians are the "model minority"? We
think so.)
Huntington's last sentences provide words to remember:
"There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream
created by the Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will
share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in
English."
A rebuttal to Huntington
We should first point out to Huntington that the "American
dream created by the Anglo-Protestant society" he refers to is
in fact a horrible nightmare for the vast majority of humanity.
That nightmare is best represented today by the photos of
Iraqis tortured by U.S. occupiers in their own land.
We should ask Huntington: Who is cutting his lawn? Who is
delivering his food? Who is packing the meat that arrives on
his dinner plate every night? Who is it that is working in the
most dangerous industries of all?
And who is dying for it?
The gap between Huntington's views of Mexican immigrants and
the reality of their daily lives is so wide an ocean could not
fill it.
One Mexican worker a day dies at the work place in this
country, according to a recent shocking Associated Press
report.
"A Mexican worker is four times more likely to die on the
job than the average U.S. born worker" in some places in the
country, the AP reported.
"These accidental deaths are almost always preventable and
often gruesome: Workers are impaled, shredded in machinery,
buried alive. Some are 15 years old."
So much for your "American dream," Huntington.
Conditions for Mexican workers in this country are so
deplorable and so widespread that the AP report actually
described the situation as an epidemic. This should have made
national news. But the facts were buried and little talked
about.
Hundreds if not thousands of immigrants die every year
crossing the U.S.-Mexican border. And President George W. Bush
is making sure that crossing gets harder.
The Department of Homeland Security obtained $10 million for
the Arizona Border Control Initiative. This includes 200 new
border patrol agents, 350 helicopters and an unknown number of
aircraft to patrol the most remote parts of the border.
This will only lead to increased deaths, immigrant advocates
concur.
The Public Policy Institute of California reports that these
measures will force workers to go to more remote areas that are
even more dangerous. PPIC states that the number of drowned
immigrants rose from 48 in 1994 to 92 in 2000. Deaths rose from
nine to 135 in the same time period.
At least 151 immigrants died in the Arizona desert last
year.
The Bush administration and Congress have renewed their
focus on undocumented immigration. Earlier this year Bush
proposed major changes in immigration law that amounted to a
guest-worker program. That is, foreigners would be allowed to
come in and work legally, but would then have to return. There
would be no amnesty and more repression.
This apparently is not enough for Huntington.
Huntington would like to distance recent immigrants from the
immigrants of the past waves. He would like to stir up
divisions between immigrants and the African American people.
He would like white workers to rally around his New Nativism to
protect "American Christian values." He would like all
immigrants to speak English.
But Huntington's view will not prevail.
What is on the horizon for this country is a renewed level
of class struggle. Immi grants are bound to take up some of the
most righteous class struggles not seen in a long time. They
have already begun.
It will be in the fine tradition of immigrants before them,
contrary to Hunting ton's revisionist history. Just like the
Jewish, Italian and all South and Eastern European immigrants
at the turn of the last century, today's immigrants will fight
for their desperately needed rights.
Their struggle has the potential to rock the system to its
core. And that is exactly why Huntington and his likes are
promoting an anti-immigrant panic.
What is the best answer to Huntingt on's anti-immigrant
tirade?
Solidarity.
Organizing a movement of every single nationality, with
U.S.- and foreign-born workers, documented and undocumented,
young and old, women and men, gay and straight. And that
movement must be against the war at home as well as abroad in
order to prevail.
Reprinted from the May 27, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Donate to
support pro-labor, anti-war news.
Email
this article
Printable
page