Is the United States a Latin American Country?
If you have spent time in many parts of the United States, you have probably noticed that a lot of people have a language background other than English. Inhabitants hail from all over the world, but the country has one predominant second language. In fact, it is home to the fifth-largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. Forty-two million Americans speak Spanish at home, trailing only narrowly behind Argentina and Spain herself.
To many, the title of this article will set off political alarm bells. Immigration and assimilation have always been a hot issue in the United States. To cite one example of many, the entire Lower East Side of Manhattan used to be known as Little Germany, where natives complained it was impossible to get around in English (and where my own great-grandfather managed to live illegally for years before being sent back to Hamburg).
Today, trying to navigate anywhere in Manhattan in German would be difficult. Other immigrant communities have assimilated more recently. Older television shows and movies (including an episode of Friends from 1999 I saw recently) make references to Italian grandparents who speak no English, which would not be relatable today. Multilingual New York City public service signs still usually include Polish, though its place is increasingly taken by Haitian Creole.
Spanish has a special place in American history and culture. A vast swath of the West, from Texas to Colorado to California, used to be theoretically Mexican territory. The significance of this can be overstated, however. According to the Mexican census of 1836, the total population of Alta California was just 29,000, at least 80% of whom were Indians; the vast territory’s largest city, Los Angeles, boasted a population of 3,480. So virtually all Latinos in the United States today are descended from people who immigrated after the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848.
But the proximity of the United States to Latin America has facilitated a constant flow of people that has kept Latin culture very much alive, even as other waves of immigrants have assimilated into the Anglo mainstream. However, Spanish speakers are still very much a minority group. Even in the Southwest or Florida, the vast majority speak fluent English, and do so every day.
So, what would make the United States a Latin American country? The country has no official language (though the state of Illinois did declare in 1923 that theirs was “American”). Any effort to give Spanish official status would incur a congressional conniption fit. But there are some regions of the country where you can access much of the economy, culture, and public services in Spanish.
The French-speaking population of Switzerland is 22.8%, and the Afrikaans-speaking population of South Africa is 13.5%. Canada is also 22.8% French (weirdly enough), though les Habitants have the advantage of having their own territory in Quebec, which I would argue is the world’s northernmost Latin American country. In any case, citizens of all three of those countries would readily consider these minority tongues as national languages. Native Spanish speakers number 12.6% of the U.S., and are growing rapidly.
However, linguistic minorities in America tend not to work the same as in other countries. If people stubbornly preserved the cultures of their forefathers, as they do in most of the rest of the world, English speakers would be a minority. The largest single share would speak German. French would still be the daily language of Louisiana, instead of an odd relic a state that carries on bilingual legislation and the French legal code in spite of the fact that only 3.5% of people still speak their ancestral tongue.
Some will point out that many Latinos do look different from previous waves of European immigrants. But a hundred years ago, Italians, Greeks, and even Eastern Europeans and Jews were considered “non-white.” The sentiment was enduring enough that they regularly bring it up in The Sopranos (1999–2007), but today it sounds ridiculous. The most powerful factor in cultural identity is language. If that barrier erodes, America’s ethnic and cultural identity may well not change as much as today’s demographers imagine.
The future of Spanish in America could go two very different ways. For one version of the future, look to Miami. In the sense that you can easily get around speaking only Spanish and can enjoy a culture far closer to San Juan than Jacksonville, it is pretty much a Latin American place already. English and Spanish coexist in chaotic harmony, and even cross-pollinate. Any American Latino/a, whether he or she speaks Spanish or not, is very familiar with Spanglish. More recently, linguists have observed that “Miami English” speakers will “get down from the car” and “make a party,” direct translations of the Spanish phrases bajar del carro and hacer una fiesta.
Likewise, Americans who do carry on the language of their parents increasingly do so in a new accent. Presenters on Telemundo, for example, tend to speak without an identifiable national accent, aside from hefty haul of words borrowed from English. Ironing out regional eccentricities makes them easily comprehensible to people from different dialect backgrounds, and kids often gravitate to the new neutral register. This is a common linguistic process — while BBC English conquered England in the 20th Century, Telemundo Spanish could be an all-American second language.
However, the future could also go the other way. Latin Americans might well go the way of past immigrant communities, and assimilate into the Anglo mainstream. Until recently, politicians of both parties strove to bridge the linguistic divide. George W. Bush even gave speeches in surprisingly good Spanish, albeit in a Texas cowboy accent. But when Jill Biden tried to do so this year, politicos tended to agree that it was cringey pandering that did not play well with today’s voters.
Whatever you think about Donald Trump, his robust and growing poll numbers among Latinos suggest that many children and grandchildren of immigrants identify with only one “America.” Even Puerto Rican arrivals, whose homeland is under US rule and retains its Latin American character, tend to Anglicise over a generation or two (or even between older and younger members within one, as evidenced in my own family). Growing numbers of second-generation Latinos growing up in the United States do not speak fluent Spanish. Their own children may well end up like so many Germans and Italians before them.
Latin American immigration to the United States is in some ways different than previous waves of arrivals. It has already indelibly influenced the cultural development of the country, as previous arrivals have. Today, there are a few places north of the border that could be mistaken for Latin America. Spanish may continue to grow, and even take on a status similar to that of French in Canada; or it could go the way of German, Italian, and so many others. Only time will tell — vamos a ver.
