Book:  

Hispanic Nation: Culture, Politics and the Constructing of Identity

Essays:

Global patriotism (New York Chileans & the elections in Chile, unpublished, 2000-09-10)

'Minority Groups' Have Outgrown Their Labels (Los Angeles Times, 2003-01-27)

Peruvian New Yorkers and a New Yorker in Peru (unpublished, 2001-05)

"Race" and "Hispanics" (NYT letter, 2001-05-13)

"Race" and "Hispanics"

Letter that appeared in The New York Times Sunday, May 13, 2001.

To the Editor:
According to Orlando Patterson (Op-Ed, May 8), the Census Bureau has created a false impression by counting as ``Hispanics'' millions of people who are really white. He calls Hispanics a ``sociologically meaningless collection of peoples from Latin America and Spain.'' But this category is no less meaningful than the United States' traditional ``races'' of ``black'' and ``white'' -- all are social fictions that have real consequences when individuals and institutions treat them as real.
Hispanics themselves are helping make this category meaningful by developing social and economic institutions like Spanish-language media, Latino coalitions and caucuses and business enterprises.
The growth of a self-defined Hispanic population, united by a common linguistic heritage regardless of skin color, challenges our stultifying racial dichotomy, and creates a few more degrees of freedom of self-definition for all of us.
GEOFFREY FOX
New York, May 10, 2001
The writer is the author of a book about Hispanic culture and identity.

See Orlando Patterson's essay, Race by the Numbers
Cf. also Geoffrey Fox's op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times, 'Minority Groups' Have Outgrown Their Labels

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Peruvian New Yorkers and a New Yorker (Lori) in Peru

(Written in May 2001. Unpublished)

© 2001 Geoffrey Fox

On Tuesday night (May 22), at the CUNY Grad Center across the street from the Empire State Building, a couple of hundred Peruvian New Yorkers packed the Siegel Theater for an intense, family discussion of the Peruvian presidential run-off scheduled for June 3. This is not where you would normally expect to find an open community meeting conducted entirely in Spanish, but the locale was appropriate for a couple of reasons: It was available to José Luis Rénique, a history professor at the Grad Center and Lehman College, who organized the gathering, and it was neutral and prestigious territory for people from widely separated parts of the tri-state area who are just beginning to get organized.

For the most part, the 200,000 Peruvians scattered through the tri-state area cope with the economic and psychological stresses of immigration as individuals or isolated families. Some find companionship in Peruvian soccer clubs and religious societies, but the only larger organization, Peruvian Parade, Inc., is devoted exclusively to setting up the annual July 28 Independence Day celebrations in Paterson, NJ ­ one of the few places were there is a significant concentration of Peruvians. But, according to Rénique, Peruvian Americans have yet to develop the broad, multi-issue civic associations that other immigrant groups, including other Latinos such as Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, have used to negotiate their accommodation with the host society.

This may explain the outpouring of passion for politics back home ­ it is the one area, besides the national soccer team, where they can root as part of a larger community. Also, it matters: what happens in Peru affects how the immigrants see themselves, and may also affect how their American neighbors see them. Peruvian Americans can retain their Peruvian citizenship even after becoming US citizens, and about 40,000 are registered with the consulate to vote on June 3. This year, for the first time in over a decade, there seems to be something to vote for.

The sudden resignation and self-exile of President Alberto Fujimori and the collapse in scandal of his whole political apparatus, after ten years of populist autocracy, has opened up possibilities, releasing a swirl of ambitions, hopes and calls for retribution for the corruption and injustices of the past regime. Alan García, the president immediately before Fujimori (1985-90), who had spent the Fujimori years in self-exile and disgrace because of corruption during his presidency, has made a surprising come-back and now has a (remote) chance of winning the election. The favored candidate, Alejandro Toledo, a political novice plagued by personal scandals (alleged cocaine use and an illegitimate daughter), is running on his Amerindian looks and origins and the fact that he is not García. The third option, which has become a vociferous political movement, is for the "blank" or "spoiled" ballot, a way of saying "no" to both of them in a country where voting is obligatory

The crowd heard four speakers, three Peruvians and an American, present mostly pessimistic views on the chances for real reform. The one hopeful note was sounded by Ricardo Ramos Tremolada, a professor at the College of New Jersey, who stressed Alan García's discovery of a new (for Peru and for him) way of politicking ­ he has suddenly become the candidate who listens and is conciliatory toward his critics. If that catches on, Ramos argued, Peru's political culture might be transformed, ending traditions of impunity and authoritarianism. Or at least García's party, APRA, will be renewed and he may win, if not this election, then the next one in 2006. But then, as José Gonzales, director of corporate finance for Crédit Lyonnais Securities in New York, suggested, the change in García may be only tactical and temporary.

When it was the audience's turn to ask questions, many people preferred to make speeches declaring their adherence to one of the three options or, in many cases, their repudiation of disgusting politics of the past. And after the adjournment, their party labels and literature were pulled out

"Se Siente, Se Siente, Alan García Presidente," said fliers handed out by people with huge APRA badges.

Party of a Possible Peru" said leaflets handed out by others, backing Alejandro Toledo.

Appropriately, the "blank vote" contingent refrained from handing out anything, but they had made their presence known and continued arguing over wine and cheese.

Also over wine and cheese, I got into a conversation with Luis Passara, a panelist who is a professor at Notre Dame and a former a long-time columnist for the Lima political magazine Caretas. I wanted to know what he thought about the trials and punishment of Lori Berenson, the US-citizen now being retried for (among other things) treason to Peru and complicity in terrorism and already punished by years in Peru's harshest, coldest prison in the Puno. Did not this case show a need for fundamental reform of the judicial system, beyond what any of the candidates was suggesting? Yes, of course, he said. But he had no doubt that Lori was guilty, especially after seeing the endless replays of the video clip of her at the first trial, where she shouted statements that sounded like slogans of the MRTA, the guerrilla movement to which she is accused of belonging. And he was also a little tired of hearing "gringos" insist on the case of one American, when there were many other cases of miscarriage of justice against people who were more obviously innocent.

I disagreed with the first point ­ Lori's sharing some of the convictions of the MRTA hardly proves, it seems to me, that she was working for them ­ and on the second, I pointed out that it echoed what Lori herself has been saying ­ that, for all her hardships, her plight is much less than that of many other prisoners. But we did agree on one point:

"It is certainly true," said Passara, "that the punishment was extreme and brutal ­ they sent her to the Puno to kill her." He thought she should be transferred to the US to serve out her Peruvian sentence in a US prison.

But the fate of the New Yorker Lori Berenson is a remote issue of only minor concern to most Peruvian in the New York region. The fate of Peru, however, is not remote from them at all. And these New Yorkers can have the satisfaction of knowing that at least some of their views will be heard in Peru. Among the news organizations present were Caretas and, with reporter and camera crew, Canal N, the cable TV station that did more than anybody else to bring down Fujimori, by showing the first of the "Vladivideos," of Fujimori's right-hand man (now a fugitive) Vladimiro Montesinos bribing senators.

 

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00/9/10 - Global patriotism

This week, the heads of state of most of the countries of the world have been in New York City for the Millennium meeting of the UN. A gathering with one of them, Ricardo Lagos, the new president of Chile, has made me reflect that sometimes it makes sense to think locally and act globally.

On Thursday night, September 7, Lagos made room in his hectic schedule to speak in the large assembly hall of Local 169 of UNITE, the garment industry union, near Union Square, before a mostly Chilean-émigré audience.
In January, Lagos became the first Socialist elected to the presidency of Chile since Salvador Allende, killed in the military coup more than 26 years earlier (September 11, 1973). During the campaign, this local had organized a broad support committee for Lagos, who was running against a younger conservative closely identified with Pinochet,. The New York committee paid for, printed and shipped campaign stickers ­ a novelty in Chile ­ and held fundraisers and pushed for favorable press coverage of the Lagos campaign -- coverage likely to be picked up and echoed in media in Chile.

Why? A big part of the reason was the presence of Chileans in UNITE and other unions, notably the healthworkers' 1199, and of one Chilean in particular. Ernesto Jofre, a one-time mid-level mineworkers unionist in Chile, a prisoner of Pinochet after the coup, is now the Manager/Secretary Treasurer of the Amalgamated Northeast Regional Joint Board of UNITE. His everyday union concerns are with immigrant workers from all over, and not just in the garment trades. Lately he has been in the news (the labor news, anyway) for the crucial support his union for the successful unionizing of Mexicans working for mostly Korean greengrocers in Lower Manhattan. But he also managed to get back to Chile several times, delivering supplies and money and even advising on how to distribute party literature and get out the vote -- using experience gained not just in Chile, in the old days, but in more recent electoral campaigns in New York.

Lagos' visit to the union hall was more than payback. It ws also a gesture of genuine affection for the Chileans in exile, whom he calls Chile's "14th region" -- there are 13 regions (jurisdictions) in Chile. He sees this "14th region" as a political resource, not only because Chileans abroad may be able to send money and supplies. Because they were forced abroad, these Chileans have a different perspective on Chile and what is possible there, and can make crucial contributions to the culture and political thinking of the country. Lagos has presented a bill to grant them the right to vote in presidential elections, and in the meanwhile he urges them to speak with their families and neighbors still in Chile about this and other bills his government wants to get passed.

The Chileans filling the room on Thursday, separated decades ago from their country by the violent acts of its dictatorship, responded with enormous enthusiasm to this long-awaited recognition of their Chileanness and of their worth to the homeland. By having to make new lives in a foreign land, they had been forced to act globally. But they also, like migrants everywhere, want to continue to think and feel locally, as long-distance patriots.

---

P.S. In February 1974, I was one of a 10-member "Chicago Commission of Inquiry into the Status of Human Rights in Chile." Frank Teruggi, father of one of the two Americans slain by military and/or carabineros in the first weeks after the coup, was part of our group. We also had a Jesuit professor of philosophy from Loyola U., a City Councilwoman, a Lutheran minister's wife, two international trade union v.p.s, et alii. We stayed in the Carrera Sheraton, from whose roof we could look into the destroyed rooftop of the Palacio de la Moneda, where Allende died. It was but a week we spent there, a very tense week. We met with officials at as a high a level as we could, and had several unscheduled, semi-clandestine meetings with Communists, Socialists, MIR-ists and Catholic nuns (al of whom were regarded as subversive). Chilean police security was extremely brutal, but not terribly efficient -- which may be why it had to be so brutal, lest somebody dangerous get away. We made as much publicity as we could when we returned. Maybe, just maybe, we contributed to the pressure that allowed some of the disappeared to appear again. 00/9/12

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