Not Just an Immigrant Group

  By Dr. Carlos E. Cortés / Univision Insights

My last blog, “Obama, Rivera, and Anthony,” generated a number of responses that challenged me to put some meat on the bones of my concluding sentence: that we – both as Americans and as Latinos – need to challenge misperceptions about who we are.  Challenge accepted.

Let’s start with an oft-repeated misperception, one I sometimes hear even from other Latinos: that Hispanics are just “another immigrant group.” History tells a different story. Certainly most of us have some immigrant heritage, a rich heritage at that. For me, this includes my three immigrant grandparents, including one from Guadalajara, Mexico. However, many Hispanics have a heritage that does not involve immigration because their ancestors did not come to the United States – the United States came to them.

Five nineteenth-century events stand out in this process of the United States coming to Latinos and incorporating them into its country:

• In 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the United States as part of the Adams-Onís Treaty.
• In 1845, a decade after Texas had won its independence from Mexico, the United States annexed the Lone Star Republic, including thousands of Mexicans with century-long roots in that land.
• In 1848, following the U.S.-Mexican War, the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, through which the United States annexed tens of thousands of Mexicans and much of northern Mexico, what is today part of the U.S. west and southwest.
• In 1854, through the Mesilla Valley Treaty, the United States bought another small piece of Mexico, what today is known as the Gadsden Purchase.
• In 1898, following the Spanish-American War, the United States annexed Puerto Rico through the Treaty of Paris.  (In 1917 Congress passed the Jones Act, which granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans.)

As a result, those Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Spaniards – ancestors of many of today’s Latinos – never immigrated to the United States. Their descendants can trace U.S. lineage that stretches back more than a century, many to a time long before the late nineteenth-century wave of European immigration.

Latinos should be proud of their immigrant ancestry.  But we also need to resist being lumped conveniently into the “immigrant group” category. Our unique combination of having American origins that involve both annexation and immigration gives Latinos a special historical trajectory, a special complex identity, a special sense of American roots, and a special cultural resiliency.

So the next time somebody asks, “Do you think Latinos will follow the path of other immigrant groups?,” just answer, “To start with, we have a unique history that make us different from other immigrant groups.” I doubt that such a factual answer will change the attitudes of those who choose hate speech like the attack that unfolded against Marc Anthony for singing “God Bless America” at this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game.  But maybe you can make a contribution by helping to lay the foundation of truth.

If Latinos, 52 million strong, begin speaking out and making the case for who we are – who we really are – maybe we can accelerate the long and challenging process of correcting public misperceptions.

Dr. Carlos E. Cortés is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside. He can be reached at ca***********@uc*.edu.