西班牙裔美国人的崛起正改变着我们对于国家所下的定义
The surge of Hispanics is changing the way we think of ourselves as a nation
韦斯菲尔德中学位于印第安纳波利斯市北部, 管理很好, 几乎全是白人居住的郊区. 它在1998年第一次招收了把英语作第二语言学习的学生。 现在学校聘请了全职的助教来帮助只会说西语的新学生。 “我们这里许多说西班牙语的学生都是新来的”, 校长爱姿•曼多泽如是说.. “我们就是要帮助他们解决语言造成的障碍。” 去年九月, 一年一度的印第安纳波利斯圣人节在该校往南的几英里处举行, 吸引了三万五千位参加者, 这几乎是三年前的二倍. 和以往不同, 这个节日毫不费力就可以邀请到赞助公司的加盟. “我们再也不用去寻找赞助人了,”组织者卡门•德露莎说, “赞助商主动联系我们, 如软饮料公司, 银行和一些主要的商店都想参与其中。”
Westfield Middle School, located among the well-tended and nearly all –white suburbs north of Indianapolis, enrolled its first student studying English as a second language in 1998. Now the school employs a full-time teaching assistant to aid students who arrive speaking only Spanish. “So many of our Hispanic students are new arrivals,” says Ed Mendoza, the school’s principal. “We’re just trying to help them get connected.” A few miles south, the annual Fiesta Indianapolis had 35,000 people turn up last September, nearly double the number of three years before. And, unlike in the past years, Fiesta had no trouble attracting corporate sponsors. “We don’t have to go looking for them any more,” says organizer Carmen DeRusha. “They’re coming to us. Soft-drink companies, banks, major grocery stores—they all want to be involved.”
类似的传统美国面貌改变的迹象在各地都可以找到. 西语裔人络绎不绝地涌入印第安纳州和其他的四十九个州。 在弗吉尼亚和威斯康辛等州西班牙语裔人的数量翻了一番。 在韦斯菲尔德所处的汉弥尔顿郡，西语裔人口在十年中增加了143℅。 上周人口普查报告的数据反映了美国生活深刻而剧烈的变化。 去年人口普查员统计的西语裔人数量为三千五百三十万， 占美国人口总数的八分之一， 这比十年前统计出的两千二百四十万增加了58℅。 现在西语裔人的数量比加拿大人口总数还要多。 有史以来， 首次有超过三千四百七十万自称是黑人的人。 另有一百七十万人称他们一半是黑人一半是另一种族。
Similar signs of the changing face of America can be found all over the place. Hispanics are streaming into the Hosier state 2—and most of the other 49 states as well; the number of Hispanics doubled in states like Virginia and Wisconsin. In Hamilton Country, where Westfield sits, the Hispanic population has increased 143 percent in 10 years. Behind the dry columns of numbers in last week’s Census Bureau population report lies a story of profound and dramatic change in American life. Census takers last year counted 35.3 million Hispanics—1 out of 8 people in the United States—an astonishing 58 percent increase over the 22.4 million Hispanics counted 10 years earlier. The number of Hispanics here today is greater than the entire population of Canada. It’s also, for the first time, more than the 34.7 million people who identify themselves as black. An additional 1.7 million said they were partly black and party another race.
西语裔人已经成为，或者说正在变成美国最大的少数民族群体。 与此同时， 我们关于少数民族的概念也必然随之改变。西语裔是政府为来自拉美或西班牙后裔以及有西语背景的人所发明的词汇。 目前还没有一个确切的标准来衡量谁是西语裔人， 人口普查员就是以人们的自我描述为准。 美国在2001年呈现的新形象可能与一个世纪前的自画像十分相似， 当时许多国家移民来到爱丽斯岛， 使得我们能再一次把美国看成由不同渊源的人构成的国家。现在， 人口调查局已经允许63个不同的两色人种划分。
Hispanics have now become — or are on the verge of becoming —the nation’s largest minority group. And with that, our ideas of what a minority group is are bound to change. 3“ Hispanic” is a government-invented term for people of Latin American or Spanish descent or Spanish-language background. There are no clear criteria to determine who is Hispanic; census takers simply accept a person’s self-description. The emerging portrait of America’s self-image in 2001 is one that could closely resemble that of a century ago, when immigrants from many lands arrived at Ellis Island. Once again, perhaps, we will see ourselves as a nation of people of many different origins. Indeed, the Census Bureau now allows for 63 different biracial classifications.
关于孩子。西语裔人口数的激增主要是由来自墨西哥和拉美其他地区大批移民的涌入造成的。 他们之中的许多人只是来这里工作而后返回故里。 在二十世纪九十年代来美国的西语裔人中仅有7℅成为了美国公民。 此外， 由于在此出生的孩子自然拥有美国国籍， 大约70℅的西语裔人是美国公民。西语裔人繁衍旺盛，31℅的家庭有五个或更多的人口，而非西语裔的白人家庭只有12℅是这种情况。多于70℅的西语裔人是四十岁以下， 这意味着即使移民潮突然中止， 西语裔人在总人口中所占比例也将持续上升。
Kids at home. The huge increase in the Hispanic population is mostly the result of large immigration flows from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Many come only to work and expect to return home; only 7 percent of those who arrived in the 1990s have become U.S. citizens. Still, partly because children born here are automatically citizens, about 70 percent of Hispanics have Americans citizenship. And Hispanics have plenty of children; 31 percent of Hispanic households have five or more people, compared with 12 percent among non-Hispanic whites. Over 70 percent of Hispanics are under 40, which means that even if immigration were suddenly to stop, the Hispanic percentage of the nation’s population would continue to rise.
为什么有这么多的西语裔人到美国来？简言之是为工作， 是受强大的职业道德观的吸引。在男性西语裔人中劳动力的分布是80℅，比其他任何群体都高。 来自墨西哥的移民安东尼奥马丁奈兹说，“人们去纽约是为了工作吃饭和睡觉。”即使是贫穷的西语裔人也比贫穷的黑人或白人得到少的多的福利。尽管许多西语裔人从事低薪的工作，西语广告联合会声称西语裔人家庭收入在过去的五年里增加了7.5℅。
Why have so many Hispanics come to the United States? In a word: work. And a powerful work ethic. Workforce participation among Hispanic males is 80 percent, the highest of any measured group. “You go to New York,” says Antonio Martinez, an immigrant from Puebla, Mexico, “to work, eat, and sleep.” Even those in poverty receive welfare far less often than poor blacks or whites. Though many work in low-wage jobs, the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies says Hispanic household incomes have been growing 7.5 percent year over the past five years.
虽然西语裔人的贫困率仍然高居不下，那些数字却掩盖了在美国定居已久的移民和美国出生的拉丁人所取得的进步。 十年前，美国大多数西语裔人都集中在加利福尼亚，德克萨斯，佛罗里达，纽约，新泽西和伊力诺依的商业区。而在过去的二十年中，来自拉美的移民和美国出生的西语裔人开始大批地出现在他们从未到过的一些地方，特别是居住环境良好的郊区。数以千计的西语裔人搬到了大平原上的一些小城镇和工厂，从事肉类加工业。不过，也有的人迁往北佐治亚的红山上。在亚特兰大外围蓬勃发展的圭尼特郡，西语裔人口从1990年的八千人增加到1999年的两万六千人。在波福德主干道上，你可以找到爱尔公共汽车，兰考斯餐馆或者西斯帕那。尽管对许多人来说低薪的工作是最初的诱惑，还是出现了明显的社会地位攀升的迹象。霍曼罗鲁纳离开了墨西哥，前往戴尔顿，在那里的一家畜牧工厂的屠宰部门做工。而现在，二十七岁的他已经是北佐治亚一家有两万八千份发行量的周报的老板。类似的例子还有许多。“我遇见的开卡车的拉丁人中，十个里就有三个拥有自己的小公司”，住在亚特兰大的萨拇说，“他们是真正的企业家”。
And while poverty rates among Hispanics remain high, the numbers also mask the progress of long-established immigrants and U.S. born Latinos. Ten years ago, most of America’s Hispanics were concentrated in a few metropolitan areas in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. But in the past decade immigrants from Latin America and U.S born Hispanics have been appearing in large numbers in places they have never been seen before, particularly in the nation’s iconic suburbs. Thousands have moved to small factory towns on the Great Plains to work in meatpacking plants. But they have also moved to places like the red clay hills of north Georgia. The Hispanic population of booming Gwinnett Country, outside Atlanta, increased from 8,000 in 1990 to over 26,000 in 1999. On the main drag, Buford Highway, you can find the E1 Expreso Bus Co., Los Ranchos Restaurant, or Carniceria Hispana. While low-wage jobs are the early magnet for many, there is also evidence of decidedly upward mobility. 4Homero Luna left Mexico for Dalton, Ga., and a job in the poultry factory’s killing line. Now, at 27, he is the owner of the weekly tabloid EL Tiepmo, with a circulation of 28,000 in north Georgia. And there are many others. “For every 10 Latinos I see driving around in trucks, I know 3 of them own their own little companies,” says Sam Zamarripa, head of HispanB2B in Atlanta. “They are completely entrepreneurial.”
还有宗教上的体现。西语裔人使美国天主教徒的队伍得以壮大。在过去二十年里，洛衫机红衣主教罗杰玛好尼一直要求他管区下的教士能说和英语一样流利的西班牙语。来自拉美的移民一般教育程度不高，几乎一半的成年西语裔人都没从高中毕业。可是造成这种情况的原因错综复杂，而找到这些问题的解决办法将会是我国教育体系的主要挑战之一。
And religious. Hispanics have swelled the numbers of American Catholics; 5 for the past decade, Los Angeles’s Cardinal Roger Mahony has required that al priests in the archdiocese be fluent in Spanish as well as English. Immigrants from Latin America tend to have little education; nearly half of adult Hispanics have not graduated from high school. But the reasons are complex, and finding solutions to that problem will be one of the fundamental challenges of the nation’s education system.
语言问题仍旧是个障碍，不过学习英语的渴望还是可以清楚地感受得到。西语电视节目已在美国赢得了广泛的收视群体，其中以墨西哥和其他拉美国家制作的电视剧为主。而西语广播的听众几乎都是成年人。儿童和青少年更偏爱他们的同龄人收看的英语节目。
Language remains a barrier, but the desire to learn English is clearly there. Spanish-language TV has developed a large audience in the United States, with programming dominated by telenovelas produced in Mexico and other Latin countries. But the audience for Spanish broadcasting is made up almost entirely of adults. Children and teenagers prefer the English-language programs that others their age watch.
在许多方面，象黑人和白人一样，西语裔人的口味也不再相同了。节目制作人发现墨西哥的娱乐节目并不能吸引迈阿蜜的古巴人或是纽约的波多黎各人。特哈诺音乐在德州引起轰动，在加州则不受欢迎，而加州的高技术管乐在其他地区也不受欢迎。电视联播公司的新闻主持人乔治雷蒙斯是墨西哥公民，他努力地学习说不令古巴人，波多黎各人以及中部和南部的美国人感到别扭的西班牙语。 西语裔人的多元性在政治上也显而易见。尽管乔治布什在争取其支持上做了相当大的努力，民主党仍在2000年的大选中获得了西语裔选民的多数票。不过，西语裔人已经学会基于他们的来处和定居地来决定其政治上的倾向性。
And in many respects, Hispanics are no more homogeneous in their tastes than blacks and whites. Programmers have found that Mexican entertainment does not appeal to Cubans in Miami or Puerto Ricans in the New York area. Tejano music is dynamite in Texas but not in California, whose technobanda music does not sell elsewhere. 6Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos, a Mexican citizen, has worked to develop a Spanish accent that does not sound jarring to Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Central and South Americans. Diversity among Hispanics is also evident in their politics. Hispanics have developed political preferences based on where they came from and where they have settled, though Democrats still captured a clear majority of Hispanic vote in 2000 despite George W. Bush’s considerable efforts at outreach.
现在我们看到所出现的不是一个新的少数种族，而是如同美国以往一样，一个由不同背景和血统的人所组成的群体。
What we are seeing is not so much the emergence of one new minority group but of a population made up, as American always has been, of people with a variety of backgrounds and origins.