I SEE U, Episode 115: A Nation with No Name… with “LatinoLand” Author & Acclaimed Journalist Marie Arana

[00:00:00] Eddie Robinson: There are 64 million Latinos in the United States, nearly 20 percent of the population. But by the year 2050, it’s projected that a third of the country’s population will be Latino. How will this impact American politics? And what will this mean for the U. S. economy?

[00:00:21] Marie Arana: If you were just to take the Latino population by itself and consider it a nation, it would be the second largest Spanish speaking nation in the world.

[00:00:29] Marie Arana: But it’s also the fifth largest GDP in the world, just the Latinos of this country.

[00:00:38] Eddie Robinson: I’m Eddie Robinson and stay tuned as we chat unguarded with acclaimed author and journalist Marie Arana. Her latest book, LatinoLand explores the largest and fastest growing minority in America. Oh yeah, I feel you. We hear you.

[00:00:56] Eddie Robinson: I SEE U

[00:00:56] Eddie Robinson: you’re listening to I SEE U. I’m your host, Eddie Robinson. America is changing, like the immortal Sam Cooke saying, a change is gonna come, whether you like it or not.

[00:01:29] Sam Cooke – A Change Gone Come: It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.

[00:01:44] Eddie Robinson: The truth is that many Americans don’t like the sweeping demographic shifts that are taking place all over the country, especially as many parts of the country that were once solidly Become minority, majority.

[00:01:59] Eddie Robinson: That’s certainly true here in Texas, where Latinos now are the largest ethnicity. In fact, Texas is attracting many new arrivals from all over the country, and those new residents are more likely to be Latino, Asian, or Black. Texas has the largest Black population in the country, and is the state with the third largest Asian population.

[00:02:25] Eddie Robinson: And it’s not just Texas. From California to Massachusetts, the changes are plain to see. And even taste. And hear. As our culture reflects new influences. And it can be drastic. In the early 90s, gangsta rap took over the airwaves. The culture of South Central Los Angeles was everywhere, from the radio to the big screen.

[00:02:50] Ice Cube – How To Survive In South Central: My name is Elaine, and I’ll be your tour guide through South Central Los Angeles.

[00:02:55] Eddie Robinson: South Central in the 80s was also majority Black.

[00:03:05] Ice Cube – How To Survive In South Central: This is Los Angeles.

[00:03:06] Eddie Robinson: South Central Los Angeles. is now solidly Latino, and it sounds more like this.

[00:03:18] Eddie Robinson: But South Central is still influencing culture across the United States. This band, Fuerza Regida, is touring to places like Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, and Greensboro, North Carolina. Undoubtedly, the biggest change in the country is coming from Latinos. But despite being such a significant part of the country, Latinos are still often viewed as being immigrants, not fully American, even though they’ve been a part of American life for centuries.

[00:03:51] Eddie Robinson: Marie Arana is a Peruvian American author of the memoir American Chica, a finalist for the National Book Award, the novel Cellophane, and the prize winning biography Bolívar: she was also the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress. Her latest book is LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest And Least Understood Minority available now from Simon and Schuster.

[00:04:19] Eddie Robinson: And we’re so pleased to have her joining us in studio. Thanks to our partners at the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston. Marie, thanks so much for joining us here at I SEE U.

[00:04:31] Marie Arana: It’s great to be here, Eddie. Thank you so much for inviting me.

[00:04:34] Eddie Robinson: There are 64 million Latinos in the United States, nearly 20 percent of the population.

[00:04:42] Eddie Robinson: By 2050, it’s projected that a third of the country’s population will be Latino. You start the book off with a quote by the Peruvian writer, José Carlos Mariátegui.

[00:04:55] Marie Arana: Mariátegui.

[00:04:56] Eddie Robinson: Yes. And, and he basically says, We are not a race, a nation, a state, a language, a culture. We are the simultaneous transcendence of all these things through something so modern, so unknown, that we still, have no name. What does this quote mean to you, Marie, and why do Latinos remain so misunderstood by Americans who are not Latino?

[00:05:26] Marie Arana: Oh, that’s such a good question, Eddie, and it’s the theme of my whole book. The invisibility of Latinos mystifies me because we are so present in this country, and we have been so present in the country since its foundation and before. So that quote of Marietta, it means a lot to me because it’s really a nation that’s It has no name.

[00:05:48] Marie Arana: We’ve been called Hispanics, we’ve been called Latinos, we’ve been called Latinxers, we’ve been called a lot of things. And we don’t get called that until we come here. You know, otherwise we’re Peruvian Americans or Cuban Americans or Mexican Americans. But it’s really interesting, that transformation when we get here, and largely it’s just sort of put us in the background.

[00:06:07] Marie Arana: And the, my book is really meant to bring this population to the foreground because we’re here in every way. The economy, the political system. The structure of the country, the history of the country, the language, the way we’re changing the language. So that quote from Mariátegui just says it all for me.

[00:06:26] Marie Arana: You know, a nation that isn’t really considered, uh, in this country as it should be.

[00:06:32] Eddie Robinson: Let’s talk about immigration for a moment. If you watch or read certain media, you might think that we’re under an invasion at our Southern border with hordes of quote military age men overwhelming our border patrol. Who are the immigrants coming in right now?

[00:06:48] Eddie Robinson: You know, Where are they from? What do these numbers look like when compared to the past?

[00:06:53] Marie Arana: You know, the border situation has distorted the Latino story so much. Um, I wrote a piece about this for the New York Times a few days ago. And we forget. The Latino presence in this country when we look at the border because we’re already here.

[00:07:08] Marie Arana: We’re already here in great numbers. 64 million is not an insignificant number. We actually represent the, the second largest nation of Hispanic Americans, Latino Americans in the world, in the world. We are the second largest Spanish speaking nation in the world, uh, yeah, apart from Mexico. So the border is kind of a, another story.

[00:07:31] Marie Arana: I mean, it is, it is, it is a story that raises a lot of questions even among the Latino community. We don’t like it..

[00:07:37] News stories about deaths and conflicts at the border: This morning, tensions escalating on the Texas border.

[00:07:41] News stories about deaths and conflicts at the border: This desolate stretch of the Arizona border is one of the deadliest for migrants.

[00:07:45] News stories about deaths and conflicts at the border: Dramatic new video shows a struggle between Border Patrol and migrants in El Paso.

[00:07:50] News stories about deaths and conflicts at the border: On the border right now, the crisis in a standoff over the use of razor wire. In its latest annual count, Border Patrol reported a record 895 migrant deaths.

[00:08:00] Marie Arana: We don’t, we don’t like what’s going on on the border. We don’t like that families are being divided. They’re largely families and they come across in waves. I was in an airplane going from Tucson to D. C. and I sat next to a woman who was brought on board by the border patrol and she had been separated from her grandchild because she was not considered a parent of that grandchild.

[00:08:22] Marie Arana: That grandchild was four years old. It was taken off by himself, a little boy, four years old, and the grandmother was beside herself sitting next to me. This, it’s a horrible situation, what is, what is going on. And at the same time, it’s completely emotionalizes the issue, and it’s something that we all respond to.

[00:08:42] Marie Arana: However, it is not our story. It’s really not our story. Our story goes back to the 1500s. You know, we have been on this land since the 16th century and before if we are indigenous. So it’s sort of, um, taking the story away from who the population really is.

[00:08:59] Eddie Robinson: Interestingly enough, you know, with so many Latinos, you know, why are we seeing so much anti immigrant rhetoric?

[00:09:09] Eddie Robinson: Um, even legislation SB4 a law here in Texas, which is temporarily on hold because of a judicial order would allow Texas police to arrest people for illegally crossing the Mexico border. Many civil rights and Latino groups have decried this law because it would legalize racial profiling. And we’ve seen in the past how mass deportations of Latinos who were citizens have been happening, you know.

[00:09:34] Eddie Robinson: Um, This was decades ago, but those fears still resonate today with many communities. What are we to make of this, Marie?

[00:09:44] Marie Arana: Yeah, it’s a hard business because the actual truth is that the immigrants do so much to build this country and have since day one, really. The immigrant population has been largely the builders, the, the feeders.

[00:10:00] Marie Arana: So, uh, the, the, But there has always been a kind of xenophobia in the United States. You know, uh, immigrants, uh, are scary because they’re new and because they may not speak our language. And in fact, it is the Latino population that is the breadbasket of this country. We can’t deny it. They are the agricultural workers who feed us.

[00:10:20] Marie Arana: We would, we would not have bread. I mean, just simple thing as bread is actually owned by Mexican companies and it’s made for us by Mexicans. by Latino hands and of course, produce and all of that. The American economy is growing by leaps and bounds because of the Latino population. We represent 43, 44 percent of the growth every year, whereas the national average is 4%.

[00:10:43] Marie Arana: I mean, we are 10 times stronger. I mean, if you looked at those issues, you would say, Oh man, bring those immigrants on. Um, because that’s, uh, that’s really the truth of the situation. I’m trying to say that, tell that story in this book.

[00:11:00] Eddie Robinson: We continue our chat with renowned author and journalist Marie Arana. We’ll share more of her story and why it was so important for her to write her latest book, LatinoLand. We’ll also explore the reasons why the Latino community remains ignored for so long. And what makes non Hispanic folks always lump Latinos together as one big single group of people.

[00:11:25] Eddie Robinson: And what about the under representation in media? Why aren’t there more Latino Editors in Chief, Senior Producers, and News Directors in newsrooms across America? I’m Eddie Robinson. I SEE U. We’ll return with more in just a moment. If you’re enjoying this program, be sure to subscribe to our podcast.

[00:11:54] Eddie Robinson: I SEE U with Eddie Robinson. You can hear all the past episodes and be notified when new episodes are released. Also, please take a minute to give us a review or comment. We love getting feedback from our listeners.

[00:12:18] Eddie Robinson: You’re listening to I SEE U. I’m Eddie Robinson. We’re chatting with acclaimed journalist, Marie Arana. Born in Lima, Peru, she now divides her time between Lima and Washington, D. C. She was the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress. She’s also the author of numerous books, her most recent, LatinoLand.

[00:12:42] Eddie Robinson: Which weaves together personal stories with cultural and historical analysis to help explain why Latinos should not be looked upon as a single group of people. There are Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and so many others, each with a different cultural and political background, and each with unique histories and contributions to this country that many of us are only now starting to discover.

[00:13:09] Eddie Robinson: For instance, the recent tragedy of the Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse in Baltimore.

[00:13:15] CBS News Story – What we know about the Baltimore bridge collapse victims: We are also learning new details about the victims of this tragedy, six construction workers who were all pursuing the American Dream.

[00:13:22] CBS News Story – What we know about the Baltimore bridge collapse victims: We’ve determined the countries of origin of those that are presumed deceased to be Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

[00:13:34] CBS News Story – What we know about the Baltimore bridge collapse victims: This bridge was a symbol of America.

[00:13:37] CBS News Story – What we know about the Baltimore bridge collapse victims: We feel so proud. that they trust us to reveal, to record this beautiful bridge that have a huge history in our nation. And that is an example of our contribution.

[00:13:50] Eddie Robinson: This highlights the sacrifices that immigrant workers have made to help maintain our country’s infrastructure.

[00:13:59] Eddie Robinson: Marie Arana is joining us right here in our I SEE U studios in Third Ward, Texas. Thanks to our partners at the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston. Marie, let’s get into your own story, because there’s very important aspects of it into why you wrote this this book. Uh, you are the daughter of a Peruvian father and Anglo American mother.

[00:14:22] Eddie Robinson: You moved to the States at the age of nine and grew up in Summit, New Jersey. How did your parents meet and what was that transition like for you coming to the States as a young girl?

[00:14:34] Marie Arana: My parents met in the most unusual way, and yet, usual in the sense that when there is a critical moment in the United States, you bring in the immigrants.

[00:14:44] Marie Arana: I mean, when there was a, in, during the World War II, for instance, the Bracero movement started, where you brought in the farmers and the Mexican farmers came up and they worked the agricultural lands because there was no, everybody else was at war.

[00:14:57] PBS Story about Braceros: The Bracero program. Established by the U. S. and Mexican governments in 1942, allowed Mexican nationals to legally enter the U. S. for up to six months to work as contract laborers, mainly on farms. Bracero means farmhand in Spanish. The program merely legalized a migration that had been going on for some time.

[00:15:17] Marie Arana: Uh, same thing happened in the American classrooms. The classrooms emptied out, uh, the young men in the colleges went off to war, and the United States started looking for people to fill those classrooms in Latin America, particularly in the allied countries.

[00:15:32] Marie Arana: And so the State Department went down to Peru and, and checked out the classrooms down there. My father was a really good student. He was an engineering student. He was sent to MIT. And he went to MIT as a young, young man and, um, studied there during wartime. My mother happened to be in Boston at the same time she was studying music.

[00:15:54] Marie Arana: And the music students in the conservatory were next to the foreign, uh, MIT students in the next building, and they were sharing a cafeteria. It was wartime, they met, they fell in love, and my father took my mother back to Peru. So my mother was an immigrant to Peru, and she was for many years, and she had three children there, and we were living on the coast, just outside of Trujillo.

[00:16:19] Marie Arana: I was born in Lima, but lived outside of Trujillo. And, um, then come, uh, nine years old, uh, almost ten years old, they decide to move to the United States. And so we show up in New Jersey. This was a time, Eddie, When the U. S. Census was reporting 2 million, 2 million Latinos in the United States registering as Latinos and Hispanics.

[00:16:41] Marie Arana: At that time, we didn’t know anybody in Summit, New Jersey, who was Latino. My, the only Latinos I saw were in my own house. And we spoke Spanish. And when we left that front door, we spoke English. And so, um, this was the beginning of my new life, you know, and I had left a very warm, comfortable family in Lima.

[00:17:02] Marie Arana: Very loving. Uh, they didn’t understand why we would leave for hundreds of years. The Aranas had lived in Lima, Peru. So there we were in Summit, New Jersey with, um, nobody around. My father had to, um, get himself to Harlem to find any Latino food. I mean, we were so hungry for home. That was, that was how it began.

[00:17:21] Marie Arana: Yeah, Spanish Harlem was the only place we could buy a tortilla or, you know, a tamale.

[00:17:27] Eddie Robinson: What was the reason? Did your parents ever offer up at some point a reason why United States was in the cards for them?

[00:17:37] Marie Arana: Because my father had been at MIT and because he had that experience and he had some English. You know, I always understood my father’s English beautifully, but none of my friends or neighbors understood my father.

[00:17:50] Marie Arana: They said, you know, I can’t understand your dad. What does he say? That’s But, uh, to me, his English was perfect, and obviously to, to American employers, it was good enough.

[00:17:58] Eddie Robinson: Got it.

[00:17:58] Marie Arana: And so he got himself, uh, a job, did not like it, did not like, uh, working in New York and living in New Jersey. Eventually, uh, we all actually moved back to South America for his work.

[00:18:10] Marie Arana: But yeah, so there we were with no, no Latinos in sight, no Iranians. New Jersey, Eddie, is full of Latinos. It is a brimming, effervescent community of Latinos, very different time.

[00:18:23] Eddie Robinson: And your father was from a well to do family.

[00:18:27] Marie Arana: I would say, you know, not rich and by any means, not rich, but established for a long time and professional.

[00:18:34] Marie Arana: My grandfather was an engineer too. My uncles were architects. We all got by okay.

[00:18:40] Eddie Robinson: And I mean, How did he feel ethnically, culturally, politically, you know, going into the United States? I mean,

[00:18:47] Marie Arana: I could see, I could see that my father, it was, it was something that was very hurtful, really. My father was, uh, who, who was a very, uh, dignified and very smart, brilliant man.

[00:18:57] Marie Arana: Um, was treated like, you know, a second rate citizen. Um, you know, people would make fun. Where’s your poncho? You know, do you go barefoot back in your country? That sort of thing. Do our feathers. You know, stuff like that. And it was hard to watch. My father eventually had a, um, you know, started to drink, had a drinking problem.

[00:19:16] Marie Arana: And I think a lot of it, uh, stemmed from that insecurity that, uh, that he faced in this country.

[00:19:24] Eddie Robinson: With LatinoLand, you know, you interviewed. Over 200 or some odd, you know, personal interviews and stories. Were there any that stood out to you? And, you know, what are the themes that unite them all?

[00:19:38] Marie Arana: Yeah, it’s an amazing story right from the beginning, Eddie, because, you know, you go back and you see that Latinos have fought in every American war that was ever prosecuted.

[00:19:49] Marie Arana: I mean, they, they were contributors to the, uh, to American independence. I mean, the, the Latinos were coming up. From the Caribbean and to Louisiana, which was Spanish at the time, and going up river by the thousands to help, uh, American Independence. It’s something that is never taught. In school rooms or in textbooks, you don’t read that.

[00:20:11] Marie Arana: As far as American history is concerned, you jump from Columbus to George Washington, right? In your school books.

[00:20:17] Eddie Robinson: Good point! That’s true!

[00:20:17] Marie Arana: So, all this stuff, you know, that there was a very strong Hispanic presence. George Washington himself said that he couldn’t have won the War of Independence. the revolution without that help from Hispanics.

[00:20:30] Marie Arana: And it goes right through the Civil War. I mean, a Civil War hero was a Latino. He was the first admiral in the United States Navy. His name was David Farragut. He was the guy who said, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. He was a Hispanic. He was a Latino. And his, his statue stands on Farragut Square in Washington, DC, just blocks from the White House. There’s a bust of him in the Army Navy Club. But nobody goes by and says you know there’s a Latino hero, and there, there it is.

[00:21:00] Marie Arana: I mean, there are so many of these examples of, of real heroes. Uh, the military is just full of, of stories like that. But I’ve met so many people who, with sheer perseverance, right? I mean, there’s, there’s a story of a, a 14 year old Mexican American who came up to, uh, across the border, said, snuck across the border, got himself a job as a grape picker in California, was noticed by his teachers as being really bright, was helped along, mentored along, so important for Latinos.

[00:21:33] Marie Arana: In his classrooms in California, he eventually went to Harvard Medical School. He is now an extraordinary neurosurgeon who has developed techniques. That have brought neurosurgery to a very new place. His story is in my book.

[00:21:49] Eddie Robinson: Yes.

[00:21:49] Marie Arana: There are so many stories like this of people who jump generationally.

[00:21:53] Eddie Robinson: Sure.

[00:21:53] Marie Arana: Children of, of domestic workers or, or farm laborers who have become archeologists or professors or, you know, performers, musicians. Uh,

[00:22:04] Eddie Robinson: yes.

[00:22:04] Marie Arana: There are so many stories like that. The, um, the perseverance, the resilience, the ambition is so, um, so moving to me.

[00:22:13] Eddie Robinson: Yes. Yes. You talk about Gloria Estefan my favorite.

[00:22:17] Marie Arana: Yes.

[00:22:17] Eddie Robinson: When I was growing up, , you know. Yeah. A shout out to the eighties fans out there with, uh, the rhythm is gonna get you and Conga.

[00:22:25] Marie Arana: Oh God, yes.

[00:22:35] Eddie Robinson: I’m Eddie Robinson, and you’re listening to I SEE U. We’re speaking with author and journalist Marie Arana. Her latest book is LatinoLand: A Portrait Of America’s Largest And Least Understood Minority.

[00:22:51] Eddie Robinson: Is there anything in your mind that still divides the Latino community?

[00:22:58] Marie Arana: Yeah, it’s really the, the invisibility that bothers me.

[00:23:01] Marie Arana: That’s really, really what bothers me, and if I have a mission at all, if I’ve ever had a mission at all since I’ve started writing books, it is to, to, we should be educated about that. this right? I mean, we should know this. Our kids should be learning this, the history and the presence and the, just the economy of it.

[00:23:19] Marie Arana: If, if you were just to take the Latino population, Eddie, by itself and consider it a nation, first of all, we’ve already said that it would be the second largest Spanish speaking nation in the world, but it’s also in the world. It is the fifth largest GDP. Has the gross domestic product, fifth largest in the world.

[00:23:41] Marie Arana: Just the Latinos of this country. Uh, I mean, I, if I have a mission, it’s to teach people things like that, uh, that this is a, this is a population that has gone ignored, that nobody knows anything about, that school books really need to be full of this story because it’s, it’s, it’s a very inspiring American story. It doesn’t happen until we get here.

[00:24:03] Eddie Robinson: You’ve been a contributing writer and editor at the Washington Post. Uh, you mentioned that you just had a recent article in the New York Times, the National Geographic, Time Magazine. You’re very familiar with this field of journalism that we’re all in. In your opinion, you know, how do you grade our industry as it relates to covering the Latino community, both from outside and within? Is there adequate representation even in our newsrooms today? When we’re looking at those who are decision makers, such as editors and senior producers and news directors, are we seeing adequate representations there in the media?

[00:24:41] Marie Arana: Thank you for asking that question.

[00:24:43] Marie Arana: It’s such an important question, Eddie. And it’s so, it’s so the reason why I’m so excited. I’m glad to be sitting in this chair talking into this microphone with you because it’s people like you, it’s programs like this, like I SEE U and people like you, Eddie, who are actually addressing this problem squarely.

[00:25:00] Marie Arana: It is a, it is a huge issue. And now we have, actually, it’s a representative from Texas. Uh, Joaquin Castro, Representative Castro, who is, you know, fighting this, he has a huge campaign. Uh, he’s, he’s gone to media executives, he’s gone to CEOs, he’s gone to Hollywood. He has sat people down and he has said, name me three, uh, Latinos, famous Latinos, important Latinos in this country.

[00:25:26] Marie Arana: And he is appalled when they cannot name three, just three.

[00:25:31] Joaquin Castro speech about America’s recognition of Latinos: The level of cultural exclusion in American media. It’s shocking and it should alarm all of us. And by and large, the American people do not know who Latinos are, where Latinos fit into us history and the contributions of Latinos to our nation’s prosperity.

[00:25:49] Marie Arana: This he attributes to the lack of attention in the media. The media representation now is somewhere. I mean, it, it fluctuates depending on who, whom you ask, but it’s, it’s, It’s nowhere near the representation of the population. It’s somewhere between two and five percent, right? On corporate boards of America, it’s between one and two percent Latino participation.

[00:26:13] Marie Arana: So when you don’t have the participation in the boardrooms, you’re not going to have it out in the world, and the media is grossly under covering, under representing the Latino population. I mean, a population that is It’s going to be 30 percent by 2050 is right now being represented in very, very limited ways.

[00:26:35] Marie Arana: It is better than before because I’ll, I’ll tell you when I, when I came to this country, we were the villains in stories. We were the, you know, we were the servants. We were the villains. We were the drug addicts. We were the, uh, you know, all of the bad things that you can think of.

[00:26:52] The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: Badges? We ain’t got badges.

[00:26:56] The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.

[00:27:00] Marie Arana: Now we’ve turned a corner a little bit with America Ferrera.

[00:27:03] America Ferrera in The Barbie Movie: Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

[00:27:13] Marie Arana: We have some representation, but it’s still, it’s still something like five percent. It’s not enough. It is definitely not enough.

[00:27:20] Eddie Robinson: And Marie, just kind of, you know, you hit the nail on the head. Even when you look at the state of Texas, it’s really quite fascinating. What does political representation, you know, currently look like in your opinion? I mean, is it reflective of the population? What gerrymandering and efforts to make voting more difficult?

[00:27:41] Marie Arana: Yeah, it’s, It’s really an interesting story, particularly in Texas, Eddie, because, you know, here you have towns that are majority Latino and you only have 17 percent of them going to the polls. Why? Because they don’t feel they’re being represented. So they say, why should I go? I’m not going to get anything done that I want.

[00:28:01] Marie Arana: So there’s a, there’s a, that is why the Latino vote is now finally being seen as, as important because you know, not enough people are getting there. So this is an electorate. yet to be built. And as far as the, uh, the Republican Party is going, the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party is always considered Latinos, their constituency, right?

[00:28:23] Marie Arana: And the Latinos are not so sure, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re listening to the Republicans because at this point, the Republicans are very, very actively recruiting Latinos because they see that hole. And the Democrats have always assumed that that hole is theirs, you know, to take. And now there’s a very strong institution called Libre, which was developed by the Koch brothers in Wichita, Kansas.

[00:28:47] Marie Arana: And the Koch brothers have developed this very strong and very effective way of recruiting Latinos. They go door to door and they sort of network. They can do millions and millions of neighborhoods and people in the course of a weekend and recruit people.

[00:29:04] News story about the Koch Brothers: The billionaire Koch brothers have given 16 million to Libre.

[00:29:08] News story about the Koch Brothers: They give out free food to those in need while actively working against a living wage, which would help lift workers and their families out of poverty.

[00:29:16] Marie Arana: And so, you know, it’s a toss up. How is it going to go? Because you have that whole of a population that is not really represented in the voting booth yet to be built and yet to be persuaded.

[00:29:30] Marie Arana: But as far as, is there a Latino vote? Not yet.

[00:29:41] Eddie Robinson: Coming up, we wrap up our chat with award winning author and journalist Marie Arana. She sheds light onto the politics of being a Latino voter here in America. Plus, why is it still a challenge to convince Americans to learn more Spanish, especially when there are more than 40 million native Spanish speakers in the United States today?

[00:30:06] Eddie Robinson: I’m Eddie Robinson. Our final segment of I SEE U comes your way right after these messages.

[00:30:21] Eddie Robinson: If you’re enjoying this program, be sure to subscribe to our podcast. I SEE U with Eddie Robinson. You can hear all the past episodes and be notified when new episodes are released. Also, please take a minute to give us a review or comment. We love getting feedback from our listeners.

[00:30:51] Eddie Robinson: This. What does it really mean to be a Latino here in America? It’s a question among many that we’re asking our guest, award winning author and journalist, Marie Arana. She’s a Peruvian American with a very fascinating book, now available from Simon Schuster. It’s called, LatinoLand: A Portrait Of America’s Largest And Least Understood Minority.

[00:31:21] Eddie Robinson: The book draws from hundreds of interviews and expansive research that helps us examine not only how diverse the largest and fastest growing minority in this country, but also how imperative it is to understand who they are, their histories, and why their contributions have meant so much to this country and our world.

[00:31:43] Eddie Robinson: We’re so grateful that Marie, who lives in Washington D. C. in Lima, Peru, is here with us at our I SEE U studios in Third Ward, Texas. I recently read your article from the Washington Post. Brilliant article. And it reminded me of an incident that happened recently. I went to go rent. I rented a vehicle over at Enterprise over in Southwest Houston.

[00:32:06] Eddie Robinson: This gentleman. He’s a guy. He asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a journalist, but he was very adamant. Of course he was Hispanic, but he was very adamant in telling me that he was a Trump supporter and he continues to be a Trump supporter as a Republican. And I’m, I’m the kind of person that.

[00:32:24] Eddie Robinson: Excuse away from politics. I don’t want to talk about politics because, you know, it draws lines and people have their opinions, but he was just so adamant in wanting to tell me why he was a Republican. And it really shocked me, Marie, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it. And it kind of really hit home when I read your article, but he was basically saying that he agreed with Trump.

[00:32:51] Eddie Robinson: The border should be closed and there should not be any more families coming over here. And it just really threw me off. And you have a quote that I want to read from your article. You say, increasingly, we are an unclassifiable, protean, agglomeration of Americans, a web of contradictions, adrift in a purple sea.

[00:33:17] Eddie Robinson: And I had no idea that he would come at me, basically, with this ideology of they should, Pull themselves up from their own bootstraps, right?

[00:33:28] Eddie Robinson: Be there and do the best that they can we have enough here I was just really sort of shocked and surprised that he had that Ideology this man has a family of his own, you know with several kids But he didn’t see the value of allowing someone else the same opportunity he had for entering this country Is, is that surprising to you?

[00:33:51] Eddie Robinson: I mean, it was real talk and I was shocked that he wanted me to know all of this.

[00:33:56] Marie Arana: Right, right, right. No, it doesn’t surprise me, Eddie, because, um, this is a very prevalent feeling. I think the, the, the border raises hairs in the ways that nothing has to Latinos right now, because the, um, that issue and we’re talking about a specific issue, right?

[00:34:15] Marie Arana: It’s not the whole. Trumpian world that is appealing. It is one issue. And this is so true about Latinos because we don’t tend to think, you know, red blue.

[00:34:26] Marie Arana: There’s like a world of colors in between. This is why we are a purple sea. Um, there’s a world of colors in between. So, um, but if you’re going to take an issue, uh, definitely on that side, we want to stop what’s going on on the border for crying out loud.

[00:34:40] Marie Arana: We have not had any legislation. about immigration for almost 40 years. How can that time go by? You know, in 40 years, how many people have been coming across the border and creating a life for them that they can’t even expect they’re going to be creating when they become undocumented. Because to be undocumented in this country is to be living limbo.

[00:35:04] Marie Arana: Right? You can work, you can pay taxes, you can own a home, but you are in, you are in limbo as far as a citizenship is concerned. And you are deportable. You are deportable. And, and more and more people are thinking, all these Latinos are deportable. And we’re not. And if deportation begins, it’s going to be like the situation that you described at the very beginning of the program where millions of people are deported and a lot of them are citizens.

[00:35:34] Marie Arana: And this has happened before in this country. And, um, I, we all dread that happening again. So I understand that man’s emotion about, uh, the border.

[00:35:45] Eddie Robinson: Let’s, let’s talk about language and the preservation of language in our schools. You actually speak many languages, English, Spanish, but also Mandarin and Russian.

[00:35:58] Eddie Robinson: Did growing up bilingual help you to learn other languages, you know, to understand cultures that weren’t your own?

[00:36:05] Marie Arana: Oh, absolutely. There’s no question about it. You know, there, uh, the linguist Noam Chomsky. at one time devised this notion of the black box that is your brain, right? And when you learn a second language, when you are bilingual, you unlock something in that black box that allows you to decode languages a little bit more easily the third time and the fourth time.

[00:36:28] Marie Arana: And I think that’s what happened to me. I became fascinated with, with language. And I studied, I started in junior high school in Summit, New Jersey, during, during the JFK, President Kennedy had started this critical languages program, and suddenly Russian was being offered in our schools. And my, I thought my sister and my brother were really crazy to take Spanish.

[00:36:48] Marie Arana: They were taking Spanish and getting straight A’s, right? And I thought, no, I’m going to try Russian. So I tried Russian in the seventh grade, and I carried on with Russian. And that unlocked me. I, I’ve always thought, okay, I was learning tools. I was not learning anything. I was not learning facts. I was not learning a trade, but I was acquiring tools.

[00:37:08] Eddie Robinson: Yeah. And I completely agree with you because it builds upon relationships as well. Why is this idea so frowned upon in our schools? Shouldn’t we be teaching everyone Spanish right now?

[00:37:19] Marie Arana: Yeah. Yeah. And, and bilingualism has been so important in my life. I mean, even Even though I’m not what they call a lateral bilingual, um, I don’t feel that I could write the book that I’ve written in Spanish because my education, you know, from age 10 was in this country in English.

[00:37:39] Marie Arana: I could talk about this book in Spanish. But I wouldn’t have written it in Spanish. It needs to be translated into Spanish, but the bilingualism has been so important to me and languages as a whole have been so important to me, but there is a very strong and always has been English only constituency in this country.

[00:37:57] Marie Arana: And there was, uh, you know, the, the first Hispanic to be sort of an advisor to the president in the white house was Linda Chavez, who was, uh, from New Mexico and a Republican. And, uh, she was the, one of the heads, one of the leaders of the English only movement because here was a Mexican American family that had lived in this territory for so long, since 1601, that she felt that she didn’t need Spanish anymore.

[00:38:29] Marie Arana: She did not speak Spanish, uh, does not speak Spanish and felt very strongly, and she has a right to feel this way, that her, her ability to perform well and to advance in the American culture, and she might not be wrong here, was to be very strong in English. And so she was projecting this whole thing of English only.

[00:38:51] Marie Arana: And a lot of people were following that, and have followed that, that concept, that bilingualism, that you will not learn enough if you are splitting yourself into two languages, which is a bunch of hooey. You know, it’s just absolute hooey. You see some of the, in Washington, D. C., where I live, you see some of the best, Uh, schools are actually bilingual schools.

[00:39:13] Eddie Robinson: Interesting.

[00:39:13] Marie Arana: And the kids come out of there and go to, you know, great, great colleges and, you know, great predominance of college goers out of those schools.

[00:39:22] Eddie Robinson: Yes.

[00:39:22] Marie Arana: So it’s, it’s a lie that, um, uh, the English only is better for you.

[00:39:28] Eddie Robinson: After the death of George Floyd, uh, there was an explosion of interest in reading about BIPOC cultures and issues.

[00:39:36] Eddie Robinson: However, in the past few years, you know, there have been a push to remove literature that revolved around the D word, in D E I. And as the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress, Did you, Marie, receive any pushback on allowing certain inclusive books into the National Book Festival?

[00:40:00] Marie Arana: I would never have allowed that, for one. No, I did not. I don’t think anybody would dare to tell the Library of Congress what to do. It is an institution, the greatest cultural institution in the world. It has everything that is published. In this country, in its archives, everything that’s copyrighted in this country goes into the Library of Congress.

[00:40:26] Marie Arana: So there’s no banning, there’s no, there’s exclusivity, nothing. It is everything. So no, that sort of narrow mindedness does not even touch that institution. But it’s really heartbreaking to see I mean, I have friends who are writers, I mean, Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Junot Díaz, all of these people who are Latino writers, great American writers, whose work has been banned because, you know, they’re talking about racism in this country.

[00:40:57] Marie Arana: They’re talking about the fact that they have had to really, jump great obstacles to get where they are. And that is considered now, we don’t want to talk about that. We don’t want to talk about the troubles you’ve had. We don’t want to talk about slavery, we don’t want to talk about the history of lynching Blacks and Hispanics and Asians. And so that limited notion of what the history of this country has been is only damaging, I mean, and, and useless really, because we all know that it’s there. We all will know that it’s there eventually. So the point of, of blocking that information is, is absolutely mind boggling to me.

[00:41:41] Eddie Robinson: How can we find Common ground for Latinos to band together with other BIPOC communities so that they can all get closer to achieving goals of equality.

[00:41:54] Marie Arana: Yeah, you know, I think Latinos, so many of us and so many of us writers really, really are together on this point. We have learned so much from the Black experience. We really have. It has taught It has been our teacher. It has been our teacher because of the unity, uh, in Black Americans, which is so strong and so admirable.

[00:42:19] Marie Arana: Uh, and the narrative that, uh, Black Americans have built is such a model for any ethnicity, I think. And it’s a model that’s hard for us to replicate because we are every race of man. And we, I mean, I have subjects in LatinoLand who are Asian Hispanics, right? And those who are part East Indian Hispanics, because we are the population that most marries, intermarries other ethnicities.

[00:42:49] Marie Arana: So we can’t say that we are as unified as the Black American population in this country, but it is a real model. For us. And we have learned so much from it. I mean, we have learned so much from the civil rights experience and have tried to employ it, I think, in many ways. It is a great American story.

[00:43:11] Eddie Robinson: You’re listening to I SEE U. I’m Eddie Robinson, and we’re chatting in studio with author and journalist Marie Arana, her new book, LatinoLand. A Portrait of America’s Largest And Least Understood Minority now available from Simon and Schuster. Let us know your thoughts on our conversation as it relates to this burgeoning population.

[00:43:33] Eddie Robinson: Email us talk at I S E E U show. org.

[00:43:40] Eddie Robinson: Mamie Till-Mobley Let me ask you this in terms of, you know, as you’ve. Looked over the course of your life, is there a moment that still resonates in the back of your mind that it may even be somewhat of a motivational factor to you, but it just really sort of eats away at you and you’re thinking to yourself, I don’t believe he said this to me.

[00:44:03] Eddie Robinson: I don’t believe she said this to me, or is there a moment in time that you could reminisce upon that you could share with us that still resonates with you and it’s still just kind of. It gets to the core and makes you even fight more and makes you even feel proud of having a book called LatinoLand out there.

[00:44:25] Marie Arana: Yeah, you bet. You bet. And I experienced this Eddie way back. I remember my mother brought us to visit our American grandparents when I was six years old. It was a very, very sad trip because her mother was dying. So, and her parents were in, my grandparents were in Wyoming. And Wyoming, which used to be a Spanish colony, it used to be Mexico, you know, Mexico, Colorado, that whole area all the way up to there until the American invasion happened, all was Hispanic.

[00:44:56] Marie Arana: But you know, I remember being spit at. And being caused, told, you know, Mexican go home. Uh, and there I was and my mother, who was an American, had to beat off people, uh, who were trying to hit us with sticks. Um, that was my introduction to the United States of America. We went back to Peru. And my mother kept talking about how great America was and how wonderful and how the streets were paved with gold and how, and when we came at the age of nine or 10, we had already been through the Emmett Till murder.

[00:45:26] Mamie Till-Mobley: I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me. And if the death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world, then for him to have died a hero. Would mean more to me than for him just to have died.

[00:45:42] Marie Arana: We had already had the crowds of, of black protesters with dogs being loosed on them, uh, hosed, uh, the whole, uh, and then going on through high school and, uh, Dr. King was killed.

[00:45:56] Breaking News of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death: Martin Luther King 20 minutes ago, died.

[00:45:58] Marie Arana: Then Bobby Kennedy was killed.

[00:46:00] Breaking News of Robert Kennedy’s Death: Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:30.

[00:46:02] Marie Arana: And one thing after another, uh, the, the 60s were a very, very difficult time to be growing up and that was the time that, you know, I was getting used to America. I remember coming to our neighborhood the first few weeks, it was summer in Summit, New Jersey, and having the school kids tell me to go home, that I smelled, that I stank.

[00:46:22] Eddie Robinson: Marie.

[00:46:22] Marie Arana: You know, yeah. And so it, this was really, uh, A frightening way to enter this country and, um, what it, you’re so right because my father ignored it. My mother was the one who said, you’re gonna be stronger for this. You’re, you know, you’re better this and you just show them. And so that’s what I did, you know, I put my head down like most Latinos do and worked and got great grades and became the editor of my elementary school newspaper, you know, when I was just in the process of learning English. And so, you know, worked really hard to overcome that, but it was always something. And when I think back on it, and it brings tears to my eyes, it stings. It still stings still, that um, that little kid. Yeah.

[00:47:08] Eddie Robinson: Marie, I thank you so much for being involved, for you to mention about how you had to suppress those feelings and having to just kind of not say something about your own sort of identity and still sort of have to walk the walk, so to speak.

[00:47:28] Marie Arana: Yeah, yeah. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat at an editorial meeting in a publishing house and raised a subject, a Latino subject, and had, One of the editorial leaders use a four letter word and say blank that there’s no way that we would publish that there’s no way that there would be a readership for that and it, you know, it only shut me up for so long. Now, you know, I’m, I’m pushing back.

[00:47:59] Eddie Robinson: And we love it. so much. Keeping back that reminiscent feeling here. Is there. Any lesson as you’ve gone through your life, as you’ve written some phenomenal books, what life lessons have you learned about yourself thus far?

[00:48:21] Marie Arana: Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s interesting, uh, what I have learned so far is how, uh, you know, for the first part of, uh, after that part that I just described about, uh, being a kid and subjected to racism, uh, or ethnicism, whatever you want to call him, uh, uh, the, the, that, uh, ambition to prove myself, uh, that has been so strong, um, but it also was Not exactly what I would recommend, because what I did after that was ignore the fact that I was a Latina, right?

[00:48:58] Marie Arana: And when I went to actually begin my career, nobody asked me about my Peruvian past. Nobody asked me about the Latina that I was. I would, uh, sometimes, working in publishing, I was in book publishing in New York City, bringing ideas that might be Latino to the table, and they were always rejected. It was always like, Latinos don’t read.

[00:49:20] Marie Arana: Hispanics don’t read. You know, there’s no idea that you can bring to this table that’s valuable. So, you know, I dedicated myself to working on purely American subjects, American politics, American history, and ignored that whole part of myself. And I think that the fact that I was able to begin writing because every book I’ve written, Eddie, has been about Latinos, Latin America, every single book.

[00:49:46] Marie Arana: And this is kind of a pushback. I am pushing back now. So I want people to know about people like me, who work hard, have the best interests in making America great again, in a very different way. And so I think I’m, I’m really proud of the way that I’ve been able to go back to that little girl. That was spit on and that was rejected and told to go home and I made a place for myself in this country.

[00:50:15] Eddie Robinson: Thank you. After LatinoLand, what’s next?

[00:50:20] Marie Arana: Oh boy, you know, with every book I have tried to tell another story. It started with Latin America. Let me take you back to Latin America, right? I said to my readers, my initial readers, And I started with a memoir, I wrote two novels, I wrote a biography of a great liberator who covered enormous territory, geography down in Latin America, trying to say where we were from.

[00:50:43] Marie Arana: And now I’ve told who we are. Finally, I came around to describing the nation that is actually in this country. And I’m looking for ideas, Eddie, if you got any, I’m looking for ideas. Where do you go when you’ve dilated from, from a memoir to novels to history to biography to the biography of a whole?

[00:51:07] Marie Arana: Population of people who are sorely in need of being recognized. Where do I go from here? I am welcoming all ideas at this point.

[00:51:19] Eddie Robinson: Thank you so much for this time and this amazing book, LatinoLand.

[00:51:24] Marie Arana: Thank you, Eddie. Thanks so much.

[00:51:25] Eddie Robinson: Marie Arana. Thank you so much for being a guest on I SEE U. It’s a pleasure.

[00:51:35] Eddie Robinson: Our incredible team includes technical director, Todd Hulslander, producers, Laura Walker and Mincho Jacob. A special thanks to Ronan O’Malley and the world affairs council of greater Houston. I SEE U is a production of Houston Public Media. Subscribe to our podcast, wherever you listen and download your favorite shows.

[00:51:58] Eddie Robinson: Also visit our show page. I SEE U show. org. I’m your host and executive producer, Eddie Robinson. And I feel you. We hear you. I SEE U. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.