April 22, 2004
Memo From Mexico, By
Allan Wall
For Mexico's Elite, It's Open Season On
Samuel Huntington
"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."
That is only the first paragraph of
"The Hispanic Challenge," an
excellent article by Harvard professor
Samuel P. Huntington, an excerpt from his
much-awaited
book. Please, if you haven't already, click the link
and read it now
"The Hispanic Challenge" is a
summary of what we at VDARE.com have been affirming as
well—that today's mass Hispanic immigration, without
assimilation, is a threat to the
unity and
identity of the United States of America.
While immigration enthusiasts equate today's
Mexican immigration with that of the
Ellis Island era, it's simply not the same
phenomenon, as Huntington explains in detail. Roots
matter. What we call American values, that made our
nation great, are a legacy of our foundation by English
Protestants in the
1600s and
1700s.
As Huntington succinctly puts it
"Would the United States
be the country that it has been and that it largely
remains today if it had been settled in the 17th
and 18th centuries not by British Protestants
but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The
answer is clearly no. It would not be the United States;
it would be
Quebec,
Mexico, or
Brazil."
Needless to say, "The Hispanic Challenge"
has not gone unnoticed among the Mexican
chattering classes. In general,
Mexican intellectuals and media analysts are much
more knowledgeable about American society than their
American counterparts are about Mexican society. The
Mexican elite, mostly white,
strongly encourages mass immigration and the
Hispanization of American society, and is distinctly
hostile to any Americans who speak out against it.
In the Mexican media, open season has been declared
on poor Professor Huntington.
Enrique Krause, Mexican historian and commentator
"Sees racism in Huntington's thesis." ["Ve
Krauze racismo en tesis de Huntington,"
Mural.com, Daniel de la Fuente, April 14th,
2004]
Siempre! online (April 7th, 2004)
simply entitled its piece on Huntington
"El Racista Huntington" [Huntington
the Racist]. Not much for subtlety, is it?
Carlos Monsivais, a big-time Mexican
writer/journalist/sociologist, visiting New York to
give a speech, felt compelled to bash the thesis of
Huntington's article publicly: "It's an idiotic,
racist argument, and I'm stumped as to why he would even
make it." [“Monsivais
speaks out on Latinos,” El Universal,
April 9th, 2004]
Monsivais can ridicule the argument all he likes. But
in 1999 he himself called California
"a state of Mexico."
Of course,
Jorge Ramos, anchorman for
Univision Television, the biggest Spanish-network in
the U.S.A., couldn't stay out of the fray.
Blue-eyed Ramos, though a Mexican citizen, has no
qualms about speaking for U.S. Hispanic citizens and
meddling in U.S: politics.
Ramos' column
"Enemigos Mexicanos" [Mexican Enemies—March
8th, 2004] is his contribution to the war on
Huntington.
Here's an excerpt:
"Huntington assures us
that 'Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated to
the culture of the United States’, that they are
"rejecting the values that constructed the American
dream." and that this country runs the risk of having
‘two languages and two cultures.’ In other words that
Latinos, particularly Mexicans, are a menace to American
values and cultural integrity. Huntington
doesn't understand that Latinos are not only a
fundamental element of the United States, but that by
the year 2125 we will be the majority in this country."[Huntington
asegura que "los mexicanos y otros latinos no se han
asimilado a la cultura de Estados Unidos", que están "rechazando
los valores que construyeron el sueño americano" y que
este país corre el peligro de tener "dos lenguajes y dos
culturas". En otras palabras que los latinos,
particularmente los mexicanos, somos una amenaza para la
integridad cultural y los valores estadounidenses.
Huntington no entiende que los latinos no solo somos
parte fundamental de Estados Unidos sino que para el año
2125 seremos la mayoría de este país.]
Thus not only does Ramos fail to refute Huntington,
he inadvertatntly reveals that Huntington’s article may
be an understatement.
Josè Murat, governor of the Mexican state of Oaxaca,
wrote an editorial for Universal (March 27th,
2004) assaulting Professor Huntington. The editorial's
title was
"Huntington, nueva ola fascista" [“Huntington,
New Wave Fascist.”]
Bear in mind that Mexican governors are
big immigration boosters. Simply put, Governor Murat
would like to get as many
Oaxacans out of Oaxaca as possible, so they won't be
hanging around demanding jobs or social services. Murat
would prefer Uncle Sam provide those
benefits north of the border.
I would have been surprised if Carlos Fuentes,
Mexico's premier living man of letters, did not join the
hunt for Huntington, and he certainly did. Novelist,
political commentator and a member of the international
jet set who has
hobnobbed with Bill Clinton, Fuentes is a
longtime promoter of mass emigration to the U.S.
So it's not surprising he came out with a long and
bitter anti-Huntington screed, entitled
"El Racista Enmascarada" (The Masked
Racist). The Fuentes piece was a combination of ad
hominem attacks on Huntington, tired clichés about
immigration, and a bitter resentment directed toward
WASP culture.
In other words, it pretty much confirms what
Huntington says in the article.
[Published in English in
the
Miami Herald, March
21, 2004, as
"Looking
for Enemies in the Wrong Places"]
Fuentes assures us Mexicans aren't invading the U.S.,
but obeying the laws of the market, doing jobs that
white Anglo-Saxons
don't want to do blah blah. He even trots out the
familiar and totally
debunked argument that immigrants contribute more
than they receive. His proof: If California didn't
educate the children of immigrants, it would lose
federal education dollars! Talk about a circular
argument!
Fuentes says Mexican migrants pay more in taxes than
they receive in services. But National Academy of
Sciences research indicates the average adult Mexican
immigrant's
lifetime fiscal impact at $55,200.
Fuentes attacks Huntington for accusing Hispanic
immigration of
Balkanizing the country, and seeking a
reconquista of the Southwest. But rather than refute
such charges, Fuentes launches into an attack on the
global reach of the English language. Besides, he
assures us, Hispanic immigrants
learn English rapidly while
preserving Spanish and "enriching the accepted
multi-ethnic and multicultural character of the U.S."
This is followed by another ad hominem, accusing
Huntington of using tactics of "fascism."
Fuentes also takes a trip down memory lane,
bellyaching about the "anti-Mexican racism" he
encountered while studying in Washington, D.C. as a child,
and pulls out a chestnut about an obscure 1928
encyclopedia (published when Huntington was
one year old) saying something rude about Mexicans.
Fuentes boasts that "for us, Mexicans, Spaniards
and Hispano-Americans, the language is a cause of pride
and of unity, it is true...But it is not a cause of fear
or menace."
But in 2001, Carlos Fuentes himself, in Spain for an
International Congress of the Spanish Language,
boasted of "the silent reconquista of the
United States..."
In his attack on Huntington, Fuentes claims Hispanic
culture as more inclusive than Anglo-Saxon culture:
"Maybe what keeps us
together is what Huntington thinks disunites us: the
multiculturalism of the Spanish language.
"Hispano-Americans are,
at the same time, Spanish speakers, Indo-Europeans and
Afro-Americans. And we descend from one nation, Spain,
incomprehensible without its racial and linguistic
multiplicity....With all this, we win, we don't lose.
The one who loses is Huntington, isolated in his
imaginary plot of racist
English-speaking,
white Protestant purity."
Of course, Hispanic culture does include a diversity
of races and ethnicities. But what Fuentes doesn't
mention, amidst all the Huntington-bashing, is that the
ruling elite throughout the Hispanic countries is
mostly white.
Carlos Fuentes himself is part of that
White Elite—look at his
photograph.
In Mexico, whites tend to be at the top of the
racial spectrum,
mestizos in the middle and
Indians at the bottom.
Notice too, that white Mexican elitists love
emigration. After all, emigration removes a large
percentage of poor and non-white Mexicans out of Mexico
and into the United States, removing pressure on the
elite.
Mexican white elitists wouldn't be
promoting their own racial interests, now, would
they?
American citizen Allan Wall lives and works legally in
Mexico, where he holds an FM-2 residency and work
permit, but serves six weeks a year with the Texas Army
National Guard, in a unit composed almost entirely of
Americans of Mexican ancestry. His VDARE.COM articles
are archived
here; his
FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived
here; his
website is
here. Readers
can contact Allan Wall at
allan39@prodigy.net.mx.
