Regardless of political affiliation, I would find it very hard to believe that any Latino out there didn’t think San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro‘s keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention was inspiring. Castro spoke so passionately and lovingly about his abuelita, his upbringing and all the hurdles his family has overcome that I’m sure many Latinos identified with him immediately.
Hearing him sprinkle his speech with Spanish here and there was music to my ears. But I, like many other Latinos out there, erroneously assumed he was bilingual. I don’t know if it was because during his speech he said his grandmother, who didn’t finish elementary school, taught herself to read and write in Spanish. Or because his mother, Rosie Castro, was a staunch supporter of the Chicano movement back in the 70s, belonging to a particular organization called La Raza Unida which believed maintaining the mother tongue was of extreme importance. Then again, maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part.
Read Related: Julián Castro Inspired Latina Mom Voter Survey
That’s why it was a letdown to discover that the current Latino star within the Democratic party “doesn’t really speak Spanish,” as Castro himself admitted in a New York Times profile back in 2010. Armed with this information, some in the media wasted no time launching into the tired, old-age debate about whether speaking Spanish makes you more or less of a real Latino. Really? Who cares? Saying that someone is not Latino enough if he doesn’t speak Spanish is as absurd as saying that someone is not American enough if he is bilingual.
In any event, while everyone debates that topic to death, I, on the other hand, am more intrigued by this: why is it exactly that Latinos like Julián Castro and many others like him don’t speak Spanish? While heartbreaking, the answer is very simple, as Castro’s own mother, Rosie, explained in an interview, this is what her teachers would do back when she was in school: “They would charge us a quarter if you were caught speaking Spanish, and incidentally that’s how much lunch cost. We were put down so often that the message was clear—Spanish was a bad language that shouldn’t be spoken.”
Read full post by Roxana Soto at SpanglishBaby.
Just to clarify—La Raza Unida was a political party whose mission was to increase Mexican-American participation in elections and to create a voting bloc that could influence their outcome. It was not a cultural organization devoted to Spanish.
As to why many Latinos only speak English after a few generations, it’s what every immigrant group does after they have been in America for a few generations. It’s nothing unusual. The only Latinos who have kept Spanish are the the Cubans in Miami and that’s because when they arrived in 1959, they thought they would only be in the United States temporarily. Speaking English and calling themselves American was tantamount to admitting that they were never going home. But even they have not been in this country that long. Who knows if the great-grandchildren of exiles will be bilingual. Cameron DIaz doesn’t speak Spanish. Her family is part Cuban, but not exiles. They immigrated to Florida over 100 years ago.
As for Rosie Castro, she’s a civil rights activist with a graduate degree who made a conscious decision to not to raise Spanish speaking children. Her sons were born in the 1970s when there was more acceptance of ethnic identity. Rosie Castro focused on English in the home because she knew that’s where the opportunity was. But it’s politically incorrect to say that in 2012. Her story has been downplayed in favor of the grandmother’s immigrant story.
As for being bilingual, it’s an individual choice. What’s important is what is said, and the sentiment behind it, not what language it’s in. Rubio is bilingual and has nothing but disdain for Latinos and is working to prevent them from having the same opportunities that family had.
The last line should be “that his family had.”
My mother told me that when her father (who was born in the U.S, first generation Mexican-American) was a child, he would get in trouble in school for speaking any sort of Spanish. When he was raising his seven children, he preferred that they speak English. He didn’t like it when they ribbed him for his heavy “accent”. Subsequently, my mother learned Spanish only because she had to take care of her abuelita everyday. Now, when my mother started having children, her Spanish-speaking skills were considerably diluted…and she didn’t think it was vital to teach it to me, one of her children. The way Spanish speakers were treated (they were considered ignorant, low class, “refusing to assimilate”) here in the U.S is a direct reflection why there are so many Latinos who cannot speak Spanish right now. It’s not because we don’t want to be bilingual. I hate when people tell me, “Oh you can learn if you really tried.” It’s sad how its affected generations of Latinos.
I think the challenges of raising a child bilingual in this day and age in this country are quite daunting. First of all, I am married to a non-Latina, but ironically, she is from south Louisiana, so her father grew up speaking French which he did not pass on to his daughters. That’s a strange parallel. However, one has to face facts that speaking in Spanish is never going to be “cool with the kids”, especially if they have monolingual friends and watch only monolingual media. My wife’s family only speaks English, and they are the only ones around. The only reason I am fluent in Spanish is because I made a conscious effort to work at it, and had some foundation in the “kitchen language” that children learn when they live in a household where the immigrant relatives don’t speak English (my grandparents). I don’t think my children will even have that benefit. At most, I will speak to them in Spanish, and they will respond in English (which I do with my mother all the time). I suppose everyone will have to do their best, however, it seems to me that the best way to raise your children bilingual is to send them back to “el rancho” every summer in Mexico or wherever as a sort of linguistic boot camp. That way, they have a foundation if they want to pursue the language further.