Hispanic Insight Report

Whenever we watch the news and learn of any issue related to some sort of injustice or any type of aggression aimed at the African American community we have come to expect that at some point or another, we will be hearing from someone like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.  Whether it is a political issue, an outright display of racism or some perceived inequity which could be considered to be fueled by someone’s racism, Al Sharpton will be interviewed by any number of media outlets.  When he is interviewed he will, as always, call attention to the racism that still exists in certain pockets of America and he will make reference to the long and difficult road that African Americans have toiled over generations in order to gain the freedom and opportunity they enjoy today.

So why can’t we as Hispanics expect that at some point a single voice will rise, an individual that likewise will come to represent our interests?  The answer is simple, really.  Because our interests are as varied as the cultures that make up the US Hispanic population.  You see African Americans have achieved what they have achieved because regardless of their background, their age, their socioeconomic position or political affiliation there is a common thread that unites them as a race and that thread is slavery.  If you are African American in the US somewhere in your history, in your lineage it is likely that you will find a connection to slavery in the 1800′s.  That commonality is what drove the Civil Rights movement in the 60′s and it is what continues to galvanize the African American today. 

Clearly we live in a new era, in an era where there is a universal condemnation of the idea that a human being could be owned by another as if they were property.  But while we all recognize the fact that we live in a much more enlightened era, African Americans are also aware and more empowered than ever to make sure that mentality is condemned as it should have always been.  Any time there is an instance in which African Americans feel disenfranchised or taken advantage of they make reference, as subtle as it may be, to that far gone era.  That is what Al Sharpton represents, a voice that will never let Americans forget where blacks came from and what they had to go through in order to have the right of every other American, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What is the common thread for Hispanics?  To begin with we are not a race, but rather a culture, a culture that includes blacks, Asians and hundreds of other permutations.  The difference between being part of a culture and a race is that we can choose to be or not be a part of a culture.  The same cannot be said of being part of a race.  If you are part of the black race, you are part of that race whether you choose to be so or not.  When we think about Hispanics from the Caribbean, Hispanics that can also be a part of the black race we realize that racism aimed at blacks in general includes them.  The do not stop being black because they are Hispanic so when it comes to a commonality that can galvanize a population it is easy to see how those who are black Hispanics may find more in common with the history and a common thread of the black culture that they would with that of Hispanics.  When we think of Cubans in Miami and Puerto Ricans in New York is there anything that we can Historically point to as a common issue that has been shared or overcome by those cultures?  When it comes to Mexicans and Central Americans in Los Angeles is there something in their history and the issues they have overcome or for that matter are still overcoming that would have something in common with Hispanics in the East coast?  The answer is no.  There is no historical singularity when it comes to an era that we can all look back at and point to as a common thread that can unite us as a culture, which is why we don’t have a single voice that can represent Hispanic interests in the same way that Al Sharpton can.

We don’t have a historical or generational commonality that can give birth to a single voice, but that does not mean that a single voice cannot rise and come to represent Hispanic interests in the US.  You see, our common thread, the singularity that can bring a voice to our culture is taking place NOW.  For African Americans it was in the 1800′s through slavery, for us it is now.  Today, there is an anti-Hispanic sentiment growing in numbers and more importantly in influence.  This movement is just as ignorant and wrong as slavery was, but it is far more insiduous.  It is not as overt or as tangible as slavery was, but it is just as evil and like slavery goes against everything this country claims to have been founded upon.  Across states legislation is being passed that allows not only law enforcement, but citizens to demand proof that an individual has the right to be in the US, all based on what the individual looks like.  Lines of demarcation are being redrawn in order to ensure that whatever voting power Hispanics from various parts of the country are divided.  Sting operations are being planned in order to capture individuals that may be undocumented while they are picking up their kids from school.  Politicians are screaming loud and campaigning on their ability to stop the ’invasion from the south’. 

All of this is relevant to all of us as Hispanics, whether you were born here or not and the fact that we cannot seem to realize it and to come up with a well-thought out and organized response ensures that this anti-Hispanic sentiment will continue to grow.  The time in history when the Hispanic culture can and should galvanize under a single powerful idea, the same idea that fueled the Civil Rights movement, that individuals can and should have the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is NOW and the fact that we do not have  single voice to represent us does not mean there is not a single idea we can organize around, it simply means that so far no one has been articulate enough to be able to capture the interest of all the various interests that make up our culture.

I have a question, it is a question that comes up often and that to my knowledge i have never heard an answer to.  When we look at the African American culture we can see that over the decades their political and social influence has grown exponentially.  During that time we have seen the Civil Rights movement and we have seen an entire people galvanized by the unfairness and evil of slavery.  In every discussion relative to African American rights the constant has always been the recognition that the South was built primarily on the backs of slaves and African Americans of today have made sure that is never forgotten.  It is something that has galvanized blacks as a people and has helped to forge a considerable amount of social and political influence.

On the other hand, when the topic of illegal immigration is brought up, when the discussion is about how people come to the North to take jobs and use up resources we have nothing to say other than some permutation of “But they are just coming here looking for a better life.  They are not criminals.”  This litany has never worked and it is never going to work.  What I have NEVER heard is somebody bring up the fact that just 150 years ago the United State under the Polk presidency invaded Mexico during a time of civil unrest within the country and demanded that Mexico give up half of its territory as payment to have the US army leave the country. 

One only need look at the map of the United States and Mexico to see how significant this was.  Polk’s decision that the US should be able to reach the West coast and his expansionist mindset were the catalysts for a naked aggression and invasion.  It wasn’t until Harry Truman during a visit to Mexico apologized for what the United States had done that the injustice was recognized.  In 1996 President Bill Clinton once again apologized for the US invasion.

Now I am not deluded enough to think that we should engage in discussions of what happened in the hope that we will get any of the land that was stolen back.  What I am saying, however, is that when the shouts of ‘illegals’ and ‘they are taking our jobs’ and we have to stop this migration north, somebody should bring up the fact that had the US not invaded Mexico and stolen the land they did, there might not be any illegal immigration.  In fact we might be seeing some folks heading south instead of north.  MY question is if African Americans can rightly make reference to the injustices of slavery and the growth of the south on the back of slaves and if the Civil Rights movement is still a part of African American rights to this day, why can’t we bring what was done in 1847 into the discussion of illegal immigration?  I wonder how many Hispanics in the US truly know what happened during the Mexican-American war.  I wonder if they realize just how much land was taken and I wonder what some of our young leaders might do if they understood just how unfair the aggression on Mexico was. 

Every time there is an argument about illegal immigration or a politician brings it up I wonder when someone will bring up the elephant in the room, the elephant no one talks about and for some reason seems to have been forgotten.  Personally I would deeply enjoy watching some politician stammering around trying to find any conceivable excuse for the United States invading Mexico and stealing half the country.  It would almost make it worth it to watch a debate.

So I want those of you who can to remember when you first came into this country.  For those of you who came after 1995 listen up children, you might learn something.  Anyway for those of us who can remember what it was like when we first got here let me remind you of a few things.  Remember how if you wanted to talk to folks back home you had to use the phone (land line at that) and remember how if you wanted to know how everyone was doing you had to look at pictures and read letters (yes, actual pictures and letters) and remember how if you were hearkening for a brand from back home you either had to go on a treasure hunt here in the US or go back home or have someone send whatever it was to you?  Remember that?  And remember how when we first got here and you went to school you were one of a handful of Hispanics in school if you were lucky (unless you went to public school in LA or Miami) and do you remember how finding another Hispanic was a big deal and you automatically tended to drift towards that person?  If we wanted to listen to music from our culture we needed to buy a tape or a record of that music.  If we wanted to watch television from back home we had to rely on Telemundo or Univision, period.  If you lived by the border you could watch television from Tijuana.  If you wanted to buy things, snacks, that kind of thing from back home you had to usually go to the bad part of town to find a store that sold those brand. 

Before the internet, email, social media and global media keeping your country of origin influence alive required proactive efforts.  We had to make the choice that we wanted to keep connected to our place of origin and take steps to do it.  As teenagers making this choice was difficult.  Did we want to integrate into the culture around us or did we want to keep our birth culture alive?  Most of us being normal teenagers chose to belong, we chose to absorb the culture around us because we knew if we wanted to have any semblence of a social like we had to do it.  This was usually true until our late teens or early adulthood.  At that point perhaps we missed our country of origin culture and decided to explore it more, to make it more a part of who we were growing up to be.  That was the point at which it could be said we went into retroacculturation.  Retroacculturation was the point at which something clicked inside of us and we decided we wanted some of our culture back and we actively went looking for it.  But that was then and as they say this is now.  Just looking at my children and their friends it has become clear that the concept of retroacculturation is completely obsolete. 

Technology, global media and the growth of the Hispanic culture in the US have all served to make the concept a  .  Today if my children want to know what is going on in Puerto Rico or Mexico all they need to do is get on the computer.  They chat with their cousins and uncles daily.  They exchange pictures of quinceaneras, their swim meet, their cousins getting drunk in Garibaldi, anything they want to know about is at the reach of their fingertips.  On television they can watch whatever they want, CSI at 8 PM, Al Rojo Vivo at 9, etc. There are countless choices for them to tune into whenever they want in whatever language they want.  If they want to make a play list on their iPod they can buy Metallica, Tito Puente, Cafe Tacuba, Cold Play and Enanitos Verdes in minutes, without moving from the couch.  When they go to school, if they don’t find Hispanics there they know where they hang out, where they gather and surprise, surprise it’s usually a place also frequented by Anglos and by blacks.  

The evolution of the Hispanic culture in the US coupled with the technology available to us has made living in the United States as a Hispanic a simple part of life.  We no longer need to engage in a search for our culture, it is all around us.  Children born into this culture grow up with a knowledge of their origins and utilize that knowledge to access whatever aspect of it they are interested in.  There is no hesitation, no conscious choice to be made, they are born into and have the expectation that their choices, whatever their choices may be are a simple part of the culture they live in not something they have to go out and find.  Aside from technology and global media Hispanics are now the second largest population in the US and will only grow even more.  There are areas in the US where the dominant culture is Hispanic.  That population growth has also shifted the way Hispanics are viewed in the US, especially given that Hispanic is not the only culture to have evolved over the decades.  Asians, African Americans and even native Americans have grown to become an integral part of the fabric that makes up US popular culture.

So, the idea of retroacculturation as previously understood and considered relative to Hispanic marketing is dead.  Technology, media and the way in which the overall popular culture in the US has evolved have made retroacculturation completely unnecessary.  As a culture and particularly teens within that culture, we now have the ability to acculturate and retroacculturate at the same rate without a specific distinction as to when either one of them is happening.  The days of engaging in deep introspection in order to decide whether to make our country of origin culture a part of who we are are gone.  Today, by the time a Hispanic teen realizes that their country of origin is and has been a part of who they are becoming their attiude runs along the lines of “Of course it is, what’s the big deal?” which in all honesty is hard to listen to when you remember the angst you might have gone through as a teen deciding just how Hispanic you wanted to be just two decades ago.

One of the best things that I think I got from my experience speaking to thousands and thousands of Hispanics while doing research over the years is that I got to hear a lot of things they wanted to bring to the table without much prompting.  True, in most instances I mentioned the topic myself, but once I did the floodgates opened and we were underway.  One of the topics that came up a few times was the issue of homosexuality.  I have spoken to both males and females, heterosexual and homosexual Hispanics and the very terms under which those that were homosexual and willing to talk to me, speaks volumes about what it is like being Hispanic and homosexual.  Most were only willing to speak in the safety of somebody’s home and only there.  They did not want a public place, not even the sterile and drab environment of a focus group facility.  It was particularly true of males, although females were also concerned.  It is interesting that as I began to write this article my first reflex was to state upfront what my own sexual orientation is.  It was that, a reflex, one burnt into me by my culture, by every Hispanic male and for that matter female that I have ever held as a role model or teacher.  I caught myself and came to understand that it is still very taboo in the Hispanic culture to be and to discuss the idea of homosexuality.  In the interest of full disclosure, in addition to my research, one of my nephews recently came out in Mexico City of all places.  I also took a class in law school about sexual orientation and the law. 

The idea of coming out holds deep emotions that are the same whether you are Hispanic, white, Black or Asian.  There is immense fear, a sense of shame, of letting your family down and the idea that you simply will never be accepted.  These are things everyone experiences, but what became clear to me was that for Hispanics these ideas and emotions are in most cases very deeply entrenched and no matter what kind of support people get, it is very difficult to shake loose of them.  It also became very clear to me that when it comes to Hispanics the experience is very different for women than it is for men.  This should not be a surprise to anyone that knows the Hispanic culture and the idea of the ‘macho’ man.  While the culture has most definitely evolved and we have definitely softened on the concept of machismo, we have not let go of it completely.  It becomes very apparent when this topic is brought up, the way it became apparent for me when I began writing.  I have to be honest and say that before I began doing research I believed that as a culture we were more enlightened.  I wanted to think that the idea of the male dominated culture I grew up in was now more evenly influenced by both males and females now and I actually found that was the case, until the topics of infidelity (something that deserves its own post) and homosexuality came up and then we regressed, not quite to the caveman stage, but close. And as you can imagine males had the stronger point of view, regardless of the issue.

I know that you are probably thinking that I was probably speaking to a bunch of troglodytes and yes, there were a few, but for the most part I spoke to well-educated, articulate individuals who were actually very open and enlightened when it came to male/female issues, males having a broader role in the home, helping take care of the house and the kids, women and their career, almost every topic where you would expect some type of gender-bias to come up.  As soon as the idea or concept of homosexuality came up most heterosexuals just looked at each other and waited for the first person to make a comment and then we were off to the races.

Male heterosexuals tried to be open for the most part and in fact most stated that they didn’t really care what someone else’s sexual orientation was.  When asked, however, almost every single one of them stated that they would be uncomfortable with someone in their family being homosexual.  Most also stated that they would never leave a child with someone they knew to be homosexual.  I really wanted to know about that so I asked why and most tried to remain ‘enlightened’ and responded something along the lines of ‘Well, they just have other things on their mind and they don’t have children of their own so they don’t know how to take care of them’ or some permutation of that statement.  Pushed, however, most admitted that they believed one could be made homosexual by another homosexual and they did not want to risk their children.  I pointed out there were many studies that show homosexual is most likely something you are born, not something you become and while most admitted to having heard that they still believed it could be learned.  Males were also of the opinion that when it comes to gay men there is no such thing as ‘experimentation’, that once you step over a certain ‘line’ you are homosexual, no matter how you want to position it.  A significant percentage of Hispanic males said the same thing, ‘A man kissing another man sexually means you are homosexual, no heterosexual male would ever do that’.  Asked about females, they responded, almost to a one, that it is different for women. ‘Women are different, they are softer and they like all that affection and touching.  A woman could be with another woman, but not be gay’ or ‘maybe they are gay for a few months and then they just come back and they are normal again.’  Perhaps the most telling thing I got from heterosexual males was this, ‘I don’t care about other people, but if my brother was gay, I probably wouldn’t talk to him for a while.’  Many others said they flat out would never speak to their brother again if they found out he was gay, but would have no problem speaking to their sister if they found out she was gay.  In their opinion males were more open and ‘different’ when they were gay, they were somehow perceived as being more deviant.  This coincides very well with what I heard from Hispanic homosexual men.  Every single individual that I spoke with told me they had lost contact with at least some part of their family, extended or immediate, over the fact that they came out.  Some told me that their families flat out refused to believe it and would still ask, years after they came out, ‘When are you going to marry a nice girl?’  Most told me they would never bring a date to a family function and that when they themselves went to a function, sans the date, they felt like they were the family secret and the topic of everyone’s secret conversation.  They also felt like they were lying to others and to themselves.  There was a very high incidence of depression and anxiety among this group.  I wish I could say this was not the case, but based on what I heard they are actually right.  When I spoke with heterosexual males and females they all admitted that when a gay family member showed up they tended to be the topic of conversation and the target of looks.  There was also a significant percentage of males that had flat-out just not come out yet and who believed it would be a long time before they came out, if ever.  A good deal of them believed that when their fathers found out they would disown them, stop talking to them or maybe even have a heartattack.  I never ran into anyone that caused a heart attack, but there were plenty who were disowned and/or their father had just stopped talking to them.  The interesting thing about some of these men was that when I spoke to their parents (when the father was willing to talk that is) the father was floored when he found out about their son, but a good deal of the mothers told me that they knew something was different about their son.  Most didn’t come out and say ‘I knew he was gay’ but they told me that they had known something was different about their boy.

When it comes to coming out, Hispanic males, almost every single one I spoke with, would not have considered and would not consider coming out without the support of others who had come out already.  It could be anyone, but most preferred it if it was another Hispanic male.  I have not had the privilege to speak to gay people in the context of this research and perhaps someone could correct me if I am wrong, but I would imagine that when they decide to come out they have a good network of support from friends and loved ones.  I imagine that’s the case no matter where you are from.  Hispanic males, however, had to have this network of support completely in place and most had asked this group to help them by hearing them practice come out to their parents.  This was especially true if any of them had brothers than knew they were gay and were willing to help.  Gay Hispanic males, particularly those whose mannerisms were somewhat more obvious, were much more willing to come out.  Most were of the opinion that their parents and families already knew.

The experience was different for heterosexual females.  While they also believed that once men went past a certain line, they really were gay, they also believed that females could in fact experiment and not necessarily be gay.  They explained that females were naturally feminine, affectionate, touchy, ‘softer’ than men and that when men displayed these traits it most likely meant they were gay.  It was also very clear that females had much less issues with being friends with gay men or women.  In a great deal of the situations I encountered it was in fact heterosexual females that appeared to provide the most outspoken and fervent support of males that had not yet come out.  Because of these differences, homosexual women tended to have an easier time keeping their orientation a secret or even coming out.  Many gay women explained that there really was never a question when they brought a ‘friend’ to a get a together, even when it was the same friend over and over to other get togethers.  Being in their room with their friend, going to the movies, etc. was just seen as two women doing things together to stay safe.  When women finally did come out, they explained that in a great deal of instances their families believed it was a ’phase’ something they would get past and would grow out of. 

I shoud make clear that going into this I believed that the experience would vary greatly depending on what generation the individual coming out was.  So, I believed that if they came from a family where they were the third or fourth generation Hispanics, it might be easier to come out and deal with the truth.  issues and explain to your family that you are someone else, someone they might not know about is a very difficult proposition for anyone, let alone someone for who their gender role and the idea of a traditional family is almost burnt into their DNA.  Most of all I think that I found it very sad that there are so many individuals out there that have the ultimate choice to make: be who you want to be, be true to yourself or be who your family thinks you are.  It was particularly difficult to understand that for many of these individuals their choice means the loss of their family, their history, their support system.  It is no wonder that none of them would be willing to even consider coming out of the closet without having established a significant network of support from their friends and those that share their situation.  In the second decade of the 21st century, a time where where we are pondering the idea of quantum computers, time travel and clean nuclear energy, Hispanics cannot look past what is something fiercely intimate and personal and to the core of an individual, to their innate goodness, generosity  and intelligence and must concentrate on who someone chooses to call a partner.  This, among many other things, is a prime example of how we can get in our own way when it comes to recognizing what’s an important segment of the US Hispanic population and a rich pert of our culture.  

I am of a generation that can still remember having to find a payphone to make a call away from home or having to use whiteout to correct a typed paper.  I am of the Lloyd Dobbler, Crazy Trained Ozzy pre-rehab and the Babbit brothers kicking ass in Vegas generation; a generation that was trying desperately to find something to define us by other than the Challenger disaster or Ronald Reagan and Reaganomics.  Little did I know that up north in a garage somewhere, in the Silicon Valley, there was a once in a generation mind mixing a magical brew that would turn the most ubiquitous of all fruits into the most singular word in the realm of marketing.  In the realm of everything other than fruit, really.  When you hear, read or say the word Apple you know at once what is being talked about.  The truly amazing thing is that it could be anything from the world of computing, to a school of thought on design or most amazingly to describing a ‘type’ of individual.  “You know, he is one of those Apple people.”  That single word, Apple, was magically transformed into something far beyond what any brand could ever hope to become.  It became the first true claim to fame for our generation, the Apple generation and it defined a culture, a fiercely loyal culture.  True, it has now been pilfered by all subsequent generations, but those of us who clacked away on our first Commodore or our first Lisa or a Macintosh or saw that cute rainbow Apple for the first time, we know, it is ours.

It is no surprise that now that Steve Jobs is gone we all realize what he meant to the world.  Anytime a true genius passes we all sit around and take in everything that the individual contributed to us, to humanity and we wonder how a mind like that works, how it develops and whether they realize just how much they have contributed.  Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, genius artists who met their demise much too soon come to mind, but only in their recency.  Steve Jobs is more in the category of an Einstein or Nikola Tesla, men whose genius have transcended time.  Their contributions have gone far, far beyond their field of expertise; what they did has helped to define humanity.  They were men that somehow were able to tap directly into the vast and dark uncertainty of the future and were able to shine a light for the rest of us to follow.

When I was in school and we read about Alexander Graham Bell, Benjamin Franklin, Tesla and others like them I wondered what it must have been like to live in those times, what it must have been like to live in an age when so much was still to be discovered or it seemed to be anyway.  I wondered how it could possibly be that someone could invent something or come up with an idea that we hadn’t come up with already.  Back then, it seemed like we had been all ‘invented’ out.  I know different now, we all know different now.  We could, every one of us, think of something, some way in which Steve Jobs’s genius has touched our lives and more importantly how it has evolved the way  later generations’ expectations of what the world has to offer, what is possible . 

There have been signs all along the way that the man was simply something special.  From the early beginnings with Steve Wozniak and their Apple I to the journey where he took a company 90 days from bankruptcy to a rise in the company’s share price of 6,700%, yeah he was someone different.  Apple was him and he was Apple and as soon as the company and the man were at peace with that, the market drank, no downed the Kool Aid.  Although he has more than 200 patents to his name, he wasn’t an inventor, not in the traditional sense and he balked at the suggestion; he didn’t ‘invent’ anything the way that we think of an inventor or an invention, which makes his genius that much more impressive.  It wasn’t about inventing things that weren’t there, it was about making the things invented come to life, to develop a relationship with their owners.  Apple products were and still are in my opinion, the only products to say ’Hi!’ when you pull them out of the box.  MP3 was no major breakthrough, but the iPod made it human; your playlists played on request and were labeled to match your moods.  The stylish, colorful little box became a friend, the one you go to when you want to be pumped up or when you want a good cry.  That to me was at the core of Steve Jobs’ genius.  He had a preternatural understanding that in order for technology to advance there had to be an emotional attachment between those that were crafting the technology and the users and the ony bridge between users and technology was the previously unexplored witches brew of ergonomic design, aesthetic insights into who would be using the computers and plain old artistic flare. 

There are hunderds of Steve Jobs stories, from his management style, not too friendly as told by some, to his flashes of brilliance, to his volatile temper and tendency to be impatient and unforgiving, to his ultimate and absolute ownership of the world of personal computing and smart phones.  If these idiocyncracies were the price to be paid to work with the man, you got off light!  There are hundreds, no, thousands of things that I feel I need to say thank you to Steve Jobs for.  In the end, however, as I send a note of I love you to my children with a picture I just took, hear a soft voice giving me directions for where I’m going and I select a playlist to put over the car radio, all from my phone, I just want to say thank you for giving our generation a personality and an incredible place in history.  Nothing more needs to be said other than, Gracias Steve Jobs.

It has literally become a weekly thing.  Every single week there is a story about the brutality and sheer savagery of the drug cartels in Mexico.  It is sad that these stories have become so commonplace that their impact has begun to wane.  It is no longer a reaction like ‘Dear God, that is horrible!’ and more a reaction like ‘How many heads and where’.  Most recently the news have in fact brought new elements to the season of horror that is gripping a nation.  Two people that had written posts ridiculing the drug cartels were hung by a bridge with a note letting people know that if they felt like ‘being funny’ about the cartels on the internet would meet with similar ends.  Only two weeks later news broke of five heads found in Acapulco, heads of teachers that refused to pay extortion money to the gangsters.  A week after that there was news of the cartels threatening a high school football team in Monterrey coming to play in the US, as they had every year, with reprisals if they did not pay them to ensure the team’s safety.  The game was cancelled, neither school willing to risk their students.  It is indeed a weekly happening. 

The stakes couldn’t be higher, on the one hand you have a business conservatively valuedat over $17 billion dollars and on the other you have, literally, the ability of a state to protect its citizens.  Looking at Mexico’s situation from a purely foreign policy standpoint, it is indeed a failed state.  By the Mexican governement’s own estimates there are 237 ’zones of impunity’, zones where the crime and the terror being perpetrated on the citizenry are considered to be uncontrolable.  There are people leaving border towns by droves and not all of them are coming across over the fence.  Many families are using visas granted them to come across to the US and just staying.  The US entered into the Media Initiative, an initiative slated to provide 1.4 billion dollars over the next few years to fight the drug war in Mexico, Central America and places like Haiti.  It was a great photo op for Felipe Calderon, president of Mexico, George Bush and other Latin American officials that pointed to it as another step in the partnership between Mexico and the US to fight the war on drugs.  And yet the violence continues, the deaths continue, 40,000 since 2006, and the weekly notices of other mutilated bodies and mass graves.  Anyone with a semblance of experience in  international conflicts can see that Merida Initiative, drug war partnership or not, there is no end in sight.  It is estimated that 90% of all cocaine consumed in the United States comes through Mexico, and methamphedamines are also on their way to record numbers.  So what’s really going on here?  At some point someone needs to step up and call a spade a spade.  There is something seriously off about all of this, other than the obvious.

The United States has spent close to a trillion dollars fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that for all intents and purposes have not have any effect whatsoever on what is happening here with drug consumption, murders spilling over into the US, droves of what should be considered refugees more than illegal immigrants and the ongoing scourge that drugs are in the US.  $1.4 billion dollars in aid to cover Mexico and Central American countries and Haiti is a pittance, less that the monthly bill for activities in the Middle East.  Initially the plan covered equipment and weapons for the countries involved, now it is planned to cover training of local police departments.  The futility of it is not lost on anyone older than 18 who knows the level of corruption at every level of the government and police organizations.  We all know where a great deal of that money is going to end up and if no one else will say it, I will, I would be interested to know Mr. Calderon’s financial status when he leaves office.

The level of brutality, the pervasiveness and reach of the rule of the cartels from border to border, from state to state, the number of deaths resulting from the drug war are all clear and absolute indications to anyone with half a brain that whatever it is that is being done right now is completely ineffective.

Let us examine an alternative scenario.  What would happen if the Obama administration decided, the way it has in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lybia, Iraq, that the drug cartels pose a direct and imminent danger to US interests and that their reach has now clearly reached every major city in the US.  Drug Cartels death squads have been sent to operate and kill in every major city in the US that functions as a distribution hub.  What would happen if even half of the resources military and intelligence that have been utilized across the world were utilized in Mexico?  What would happen if it was decided that a force of just 200 men, a good deal Special Forces, anti-terrorist untis were dispatched to target and eradicate the drug cartels?  What kind of an impact do we suppose that would have on the hold the cartels have on the country.  Is anybody naive enough to believe that if President Obama let Mr. Calderon know we are doing this, with or without your support there would be any pushback?

Let’s assume that the Mexican government pushed back and claimed their sovereign right to say no.  And let’s assume that instead of accepting US military aid, the Mexican government admitted the obvious, that they simply cannot deal with the problem.  Let us further assume that the Mexican government instead opted to hire a private army, an army of mercenaries.  I’m not talking about men from just anywhere, but men like those that helped Angola and Sierra Leone.  Organizations that employ professional Special Forces operators with twenty years of experience running ops in Africa, Easter Europe and Asia.  These types of organizations helped the governments of Angola and Sierra Leone take their countries back from dissidents and militias that had established the same things that wereestablished  in those countries, zones of lawlessness and terror.  In Angola it took just over a month for a force of 500 professional soldiers to take over the country from more than 12,ooo militia men.  The same thing in Sierra Leone.  These to me are questions that have no easy or obvious answer.  This to me is the missing piece to a puzzle of terror gripping to closest neighbor to the US.  None of this begins to deal with the effects it is having on illegal immigration.  We are going back to the days were people were not just coming to the US to seek better employment, but when they were escaping the violence of the regimes in power in their countries. 

Bottom line, someone is benefiting from this dynamic, someone, perhaps within both governments looks upon this as a strategically significant situation at much higher levels within both governments.  We found Osama Bin Laden and took him out.  We found another significant target in Yemen and took him out with Predator drones run by the CIA, how hard would it be to take the heads of every cartel in Mexico and every senior lieutenant after that?  At some point there will be a reckoning on both sides of the border.  At some point someone will have to step up and answer these questions.  They are not hard questions to answer if at last someone is willing to step up and ask them of the people that they need to be asked to.  And that’s the real problem, that’s the thing that unfortunately will cost thousands more lived before a significant change is made, anybody with the weight to ask the questions, with the position to ask the questions and more importantly with the courage to ask the questions has the life expectancy of a 19 year old in Vietnam and that’s not lost on anybody because that will need to be someone who is willing to give their lives for their country and for bringing hope to a land where there is none.

I have been in the marketing field for over twenty years and in Hispanic marketing for over fifteen years, in that time i have come across all kinds of experts in both marketing and Hispanic marketing.  When it comes to Hispanic marketing, some have the goods to actually be called experts, most, however, call themselves experts because they themselves are Hispanic or because they have worked in the Hispanic marketing field for any number of years, yet others call themselves experts because of their academic credentials.  If there is one thing that has become clear to me over the years is that without actual consumer insights, without a tangible exposure to a significant number of the intended markets, any claim of expertise should be considered lacking.  How in the world can you ever call yourself an expert when you have never actually sat down with consumers to talk about how they buy things, how they make their decisions?  It doesn’t matter how many diplomas you have on your wall and it doesn’t matter how many campaigns you have put together, if you are going to make the claim that you are speaking on behalf of consumers, if you are going to tell a client that whatever your recommendation is it is based on consumer insights, shouldn’t you have spoken to consumers themselves?

Unfortunately, the vast majority of ’experts’ believe they know what the consumers want, not because they have actually spoken to the consumers, but because they have studied research done by other people or they have put together commercials or campaigns.  Somehow they believe that because they have done the work that qualifies them as experts.  Don’t get me wrong, doing the work is definitely part of being able to advise clients on what to do and having the academic credentials is incredibly important in making sure the research conducted is solid, but without consumer exposure those credentials are incomplete.

I am a part of a number of online groups of marketing professionals and for the most part people in these groups temper their opinions and their hypotheses because they realize that maybe they might be wrong, maybe what the consumers have to say could contradict what they are saying or maybe an actual expert has something different to say.  Unfortunately, there are also individuals in these groups that speak as though they were the final authority on Hispanic marketing.  They believe that if they scream loud enough, if they tout how long they have been doing their work, they will be considered experts.  Again, these are people that fail to understand the importance of speaking to consumers themselves, of going to where they work, live and play and of speaking to a full range of consumers.

I have spoken at over a hundred conferences on the topic of Hispanic marketing, I have spoken with more than one hundred thousand consumers over the years through a variety of methodologies including ethnographies, qualitative and quantitative research and through anthropological studies.  These consumers have ranged from fluent in English to completely Spanish dominant, from very well to do to very low socioeconomic levels, from kids seven years old to seniors and from Cubans in Miami, to Puerto Ricans in New York to Mexicans in LA and every permutation therein and still, I consider myself to still be learning, I still think I should know more and I still think I need to speak with more consumers.

I suppose that in the end that is what has emerged as the biggest insight over the span of my career, you can never stop learning, never stop speaking to consumers, not if you expect to be considered an expert.

I believe social media will expose those that claim to know what they are talking about, but who have nothing to back their opinion other than the fact that they are Hispanics themselves.  I believe that now more than ever it is critical to understand how consumers have evolved, how they use technology and whether they in fact are part of the vast net of social media and there is just no way to know all of that without going out and speaking to the consumers themselves, no matter how loud you scream.  Technology is absolutely redefining marketing and that includes Hispanic marketing, but the basic premise of backing what you say and what you claim with solid consumer insights will never change.

If you have an even nodding acquaintance with marketing to the US Hispanic market, you have undoubtedly heard, used or in some form come across the term ‘Acculturation’.  It is most often used to define where an individual is in the process of going from recent arrival to established resident.  Sometimes the  term is used interchangeably with the term ’assimilation’, something that is a huge mistake.  While ‘assimilation’ is a linear dynamic where an individual picks up a new culture while steadily drifting away from their country of origin culture.  This was what happened to the Irish and the Italians in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Acculturation is a fluid process through which an individual adopts elements of the new culture while still maintaining their country of origin culture.  It is a continuous process that an individual will go through at varying rates of adoption in specific life situations.  In other words it is not a static process, but a continuous process that varies depending on many other circumstances present throughout an individuals development and growth.

The problem is that most marketing professionals charged with helping clients to capture the US Hispanic market position it as a static element of segmentation of the US Hispanic market.  In most instances the idea is that acculturation is the primary basis for a segmentation of the market.  Each segment of the model is based on an all-encompassing definition of acculturation.  Whole media plans and strategic briefs are based on how ‘acculturated’ the intended market is.  Language fluency, educational level, socioeconomic status are all parts of the segmentation process and all are then considered relative to where on the acculturation process an individual is.  The bigger problem lies in the fact that the acculturation base these segmentation models are based on is a static one.  Individuals are placed on a specific place in the acculturation timeline regardless of the category being considered.  In other words, once an individual is found to be unacculturated or partially acculturated they are considered to be so whether the category being considered is automobiles or detergent or computers.  Acculturation is seemingly a transcendental definition that encompasses all marketing considerations.  This, in my opinion, is one of if not the biggest problem with Hispanic marketing theory today. 

After 10 years if conducting research among Hispanics of all socioeconomic backgrounds, educational levels, age ranges and categories ranging from laundry detergent to Mercedes Benz I have come to the ultimate conclusion that the level of acculturation depends on the category you are considering.  The level and rate of acculturation is different when you are talking about a Mercedes Benz than when you are talking about beer. 

The epiphany came while I was doing research on a particular retail store.  It was an ethnography and the interviews were conducted at each respondent’s office or home.  The woman I was interviewing was a PR executive with a telecomm company.  Throughout the interview her responses placed her squarely in the unacculturated segment for me.  Her views on family, language, culture all fit the definition already established for an unacculturated consumer.  As the interview moved along her responses affirmed my assessment.  After finishing the interview relative to the study’s category the conversation began to drift into the realm of sexuality (don’t ask me how, I’ve tried to remember and I simply can’t)  Given her previously stated views it seemed completely out of character for her to be engaging in the conversation, let alone saying the things she was saying.  She believed in complete sexual freedom of expression, in being able to pursue one’s sexual fantasies without the fear of being persecuted or being thought of as a promiscuous individual.  This led to a discussion of how the definition of family was now much more fluid and open than it had been in the past and that just because a family did not fit the traditional definition of family it did not mean that the relationships were any less real.  In short, the subsequent conversation made me rethink whether she was in fact unacculturated based on the definition I had already established.  It became clear that when discussing the category the study was meant to address the respondent fit the definition of an unacculturated consumer, but when discussing the topic of sex she went 180 degrees and fit squarely into the acculturated category.  After this interview I began to pursue the theory with other respondents in other studies and found the same to be true.  The fact was that the level of acculturation was specific to the category being discussed, it was not in fact static, but rather it was a fluid element of the segmentation process.  After refining the process of developing an actionable model a lot of things became very clear, the biggest being that to continue using acculturation as a static baseline risked developing a segmentation model that was not reflective of the target consumers.  Unlike language fluency, years in the US, educational level and socioeconomic background, segmentation elements that are in fact static across categories, acculturation was specific to the category being considered.

Today acculturation is still being used as a the unmoving base of a majority of the segmentation models out there.  If thought of in a visual context, current models would appear as a single continuum with Unacculturated being at one end and Acculturated being at the other, a static and linear model that is simply not reflective of the way consumers evolve.

I recently sent a letter to MENSA asking them whether they had considered reaching out to the Hispanic community for potential members.  This was during a time when the organization was looking to increase its membership.  I wrote the letter to the organization itself, but someone thought I meant for it to be published in the Letters section of the MENSA bulletin and I saw it published in the next edition.  The following month they published a number of responses that members had written answering the question I posed.  I was amazed at the passion and emotion that these people displayed in what they had written.  A great majority of them wanted to know why an organization like MENSA, an organization that is apolitical and whose sole criteria for membership has nothing to do with ethnicity or race, should decide to reach out to any one ethnic group or race.  They basically stated that by trying to reach a specific group MENSA would be in fact admitting that whatever that group happened to be had been ignored or was somehow underrepresented and that would violate the organization’s claim that it was open to all who qualified.

I read these responses and thought that they had a great point.  If the organization did come up with an outreach program for Hispanics or Blacks or Asians it would be tantamount to saying whatever the group happened to be had been neglected or not considered to be MENSA material and it was not until now that the organization was looking for new members that Hispanics, Black, etc.  Whether I completely agreed with all of the responses or not, they were well thought out and in no way insulting or bigoted.  And yet the following month the Hispanic special interest group (SIG) within MENSA wrote a scathing response, stating that in the entirety of said group’s existence within MENSA nobody had ever reached out to Hispanics who might want to join.  They further claimed that the responses came from individuals who hated to see minorities show intelligence or any form of success.  Everything that the letters in response to my question had not been, this response was.  I am Hispanic and it was painful to read this reaction because it demonstrated a complete lack of understanding about the point the people who had written in were trying to make.  I was not looking forward to what was coming as a result of this ignorant tirade, but I knew it would come on the next month’s issue.  Most people basically said something along the lines of ‘Now you know why we should never reach out to any specific ethnic group.  They have a sense of entitlement, a sense that they should be members because of their ethnicity and not because of what they bring to the table’  There were others, but that was the primary message of all of them.

What really upsets me is that it didn’t have to be like that, it didn’t have to devolve into a argument about ethnicity and whether people from one group or another were being disrespected.  The initial answers given by all members said exactly that, it is an organization with one single qualifying criteria and that criteria is color blind.  I have never understood why it is that any time a question is raised about Hispanics or why they should be given any special consideration, there is always a group somewhere willing to take up the war flag when there is simply no war to be had.  I found it ironic that it was a group within the organization itself that stepped up to take up the cause.  It wasn’t surprising when one of the responses that came asked the very pertinent question ‘How exactly did you all become members again?’