In an article citing two UNM professors, Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington warns that Hispanic immigration poses a major threat to America.
The statement was published in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy, a magazine Huntington co-founded. In his article, "The Hispanic Challenge," he cites UNM professors Charles Truxillo and Chris Garcia.
Huntington supports his argument by referring to Truxillo's prediction in 2000 that a sovereign Hispanic nation, "La Republica del Norte," will declare its independence from the United States and Mexico by 2080. The new nation would include areas in northern Mexico along with California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and southern Colorado.
"Demographically, socially and culturally, the reconquista (re-conquest) of the Southwest United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway," Huntington writes.
Because Hispanic immigrants neither assimilate into American culture at sufficient rates, nor accept the "Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream," Huntington writes, their unchecked demographic ascendancy may destroy America.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics made up 12.5 percent of the total U.S. population in 2000, and there were nearly 8 million Mexican immigrants.
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Truxillo, UNM Chicana/Chicano Studies professor said Huntington's thesis fits a historical pattern.
"It's typical of the way the dominant ruling classes always felt threatened by new influxes of immigrants," he said. "He (Huntington) is attributing to Mexico characteristics that Americans and Northern Europeans thought were typical of the Mediterranean and Latin America."
Truxillo said a self-governing Hispanic nation will be the response to hostility from people like Huntington.
"If we're not part of this country, if we can't fit in, if we're always going to be characterized negatively, why not assert our own identity, maintain it and then work toward this fulfillment in a self-determining homeland?" he said. "It would be similar to the stated position of the Palestinians and other stateless nationalities."
Huntington defines Hispanic culture as characterized by "mistrust of people outside the family; lack of initiative, self-reliance and ambition; little use for education and acceptance of poverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heaven."
He contrasted the Hispanic culture with Anglo-Protestant culture and concluded "profound cultural differences clearly separate Mexicans and Americans."
Truxillo said this combination is a false division.
"The U.S. doesn't have in its Constitution that (it must be) an English-speaking, English-culture society," he said. "Its documents are neutral. The U.S. could be a Chinese-speaking society and still have the values that are encoded in the Constitution."
UNM professor Richard Wood specializes in political and religious sociology and lived in Mexico for five years. He called Huntington's portrayal of Hispanics a caricature of reality explained by a lack of direct experience.
"To say that Hispanic culture isn't dedicated to work - that's just bizarre," Wood said.
He added Huntington's piece oversimplifies complex ethnic identity issues, overlooking that identity can coexist within other American identities.
"It's the kind of thing you say when you're sitting in some elite position and greatly fearful that the country is dissolving underneath you without actually being in contact with people who are claiming, 'Yes, I'm proud to be Latino, and I'm also deeply American, and I fought for this country,'" Wood said.
