Jill Biden, wife of the President of the United States, attended this week the annual conference of the organization UnidosUS, which promotes the civil rights of Latinos, and committed there the nonsense of saying that Hispanics are as unique as "breakfast tacos".
By Guillermo Alvarado
Jill Biden, wife of the President of the United States, attended this week the annual conference of the organization UnidosUS, which promotes the civil rights of Latinos, and committed there the nonsense of saying that Hispanics are as unique as "breakfast tacos."
As expected, the representatives of that community, which is one of the largest in the northern power, immediately reacted with indignation at such a banal and unfortunate comparison, which denotes a brutal ignorance of what they represent socially, culturally and economically.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists asserted that using breakfast tacos to try to demonstrate the uniqueness of Latinos demonstrates a lack of knowledge and sensitivity to the diversity of these communities in the region, and I would add, within the United States as well.
In fact, there are currently around 60 million people of Latin American origin in that country, of which some 39 million are Mexican, which is explained by the proximity and history of both nations, in addition to large groups of Central Americans, Caribbeans and South Americans.
All of them are accompanied by their respective traditions, customs and a common factor, which is language.
In a relatively short time, the United States will be the second country in the world, only behind Mexico, where Spanish is most spoken and studied, but beyond this fact, very important indeed, there is also a large part of indigenous migrants, who are there with their culture and worldview.
It is undeniable that there is a process of hispanization of the American society, something that the wife of President Joseph Biden ignores.
Moreover, recent research, conducted by the Latino Donors Collaborative and academics from Lutheran University and the University of California at Los Angeles, provides an interesting fact.
It turns out that if the economic strength of Hispanics in the United States were that of an independent country, it would have the seventh largest Gross Domestic Product on the planet, equal to that of France and higher than that of Brazil, Italy and Canada.
This was pointed out by David Hayes-Bautista, an academic at the University of California at Los Angeles, who said that Latinos participate and increase the labor force in various sectors, raise wages, have a strong consumption, form households and buy homes.
At the same time, he added, they suffer discrimination, are seen "as an underclass", criminals, rapists, drug traffickers and illegal migrants.
When Donald Trump uttered these insults, remember? it was no coincidence, they already existed in the xenophobic and racist imagery of many Americans.
