HispanicVista Columnists

By Leonardo Ramirez

British films introduced us to a curious and amusing cultural practice found in English public schools (what we would call prep schools in the U.S.). The ritual required that those beaten for some infraction shake the hand and thank the person wielding the cane. It was argued that corporal punishment was administered for one's own good, meant to right the errant soul. Upon reflection, perhaps this odd practice and its assumptions are not unique to the British Isles. Latinos find themselves in a similar circumstance. After years of being punished for speaking Spanish in the schoolyard, directed to special education programs, relegated to inferior and culturally insensitive schools, and routed to non-college tracks, it is expected that we be grateful for what little is allowed us. It came as a great affront to those who rule when thousands of Latino students in the 1960s and1970s abandoned their classrooms and flooded the streets in major "blowouts," student strikes, demanding school reform and rejecting the assimilative push embedded in the structure and culture of inferior schooling.

Once again, those wielding the heavy hand expect us to bend over, sign on board the war machine (Bush is a stranger to the battlefield), gratefully accept our menial lot and thankfully shake the hand of oppression. Conservative moves against bilingual education, affirmative action--critical to ensuring some degree of college access for Latinos--and a steadfast refusal to adequately fund school systems that Latinos attend comprise central tenets emblazoned on the educational placards of Bush style politics. The conservative educational agenda has been accompanied by a popular flurry of racist assaults against the character of Latinos (California is only the most outstanding example), leading to attempts to restrict benefits to even newly minted citizens, a surprising policy stance for a nation of immigrants. Pandering to media images and popular hysteria--evident in bitter calls to legislate English Only--has propelled a number of conservatives to political office in various regions of the country. In a similar vein Bush's anti-affirmative action race card is an attempt to forestall eroding support, ironic for a man some claim was admitted to the ivy leagues only because of family name and money.

However, Latino demographics have produced an interesting conundrum for conservatives. How can they attract to their electoral fold those who up to now have been the target of their derision? An important aspect of their fledgling strategy is to claim that they share common values with Latino voters. These core values are said to reside in the centrality of family and religion in Latino culture, values that they claim are also key components of their political agenda. The conservative strategy is clever, designed to cause confusion and appeal to that Latino sector always eager to please. It may even attract those less circumspect who may be deceived by the generic brand of religion and family values on the conservative social menu.

But, of course, the resemblance between Latino values and those of conservatives are superficial. This disparity became obvious a few years ago on a visit to a friend who has made his home in Holland. Born in Durango, Mexico and raised for much of his life in Chicago, my friend met his Dutch wife-to-be in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Eventually they and their two daughters settled in Amsterdam but spend every summer on the family ranch back in northern Mexico. While strolling along a narrow cobblestone path next to one of the city's many canals in a charming student section of town, he spoke enthusiastically about the academic progress of his grammar-school-aged daughters and how much they enjoyed the program they attend two days after school and on Saturdays. His daughters, already fluent in Dutch, far along the road to fluency in English, and with plans to study French, were particularly excited about practicing their Spanish, performing in a play written by a renown Latino playwright. The local government sponsors various language-oriented classes as a means to encourage and maintain language and cultural connections between children and their grandparents. A small nation that has witnessed fascist ethnic cleansing, forced deportation and extermination of Jews today celebrates cultural diversity as a means to demonstrate its own independence, openness and national pride. (What a better way to spend public money as opposed to the Bush tax cut package that will hand over more money to our already fabulously wealthy.) I sat on the plane on my way back to Chicago thinking how much moreAmsterdam's policy truly upholds family values, so different from the rant back in the States.

As for the supposed mutual link to faith, the positive I have gleaned from religion, like many other Latinos, comes from the religious practice of my now-deceased abuelita, my grandmother. A more devout woman there never was. Until the day she died she recited the rosary every day without fail and spent many more hours of contemplation in front of her alter and the velita, the small votive candle, that flickered in front of the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe. Her prayers were about the welfare of others, especially her family, who lived in a strange and often hostile land. They were about wanting the best for the sick, the hungry, the lonely, and the disenfranchised. Her prayers were for the souls of those who had already passed and for all whom she believed would one day meet their maker. For all her crimson passion, she remained non-judgmental, perhaps because she lived through poverty and revolution and understood that life with all its twists and turns provides one with many difficult challenges, or maybe because she felt that judgment was her God's right and not her own. In any case, you would not have found her waving a Bible or supporting a stupid war. She certainly would not rejoice in the bombing of an abortion clinic, or dictate morality to others, no matter if it conflicted with her own way. Nor would she be about school prayer because she would not have allowed anyone else to impose their manner of worship on her, much less regulate a style or timetable of worship for others. She would not want books to be censured because she had lived under an authoritarian regime. And she would not have felt civic virtue was in serving the powerful but in the breadth of compassion for the most needy.

Latino interests in educational equity, greater access to opportunity, and a desire for a fair and just society will eventually drive a wedge between them and us. Eventually, the sting of conservative policy will keep the majority of Latinos away from attempts to corral us behind generic banners that masquerade retrograde agendas with love of family and piety, especially when we remain in the policy crosshairs of conservatives. At least the British schoolboys who reach for the hand that has thrashed them are bribed with the promise of privilege and wealth. With us, the future for the majority of Latinos under the strap will be at the back of the line where we are expected to remain silent, head bowed, palms empty, ready to die in another meaningless war. Neither my family's values nor my grandmother's faith have prepared me to shake that hand.
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Leonardo Ramirez is a Chicago-based freelance writer. This essay is adapted from an editorial originally published in the newsletter of the Illinois Latino Council on Higher Education.