Spanish thrives despite drive for English only
ALBUQUERQUE — Wander into El Super, a sprawling grocery store in the same valley where fortune seekers on horseback laid claim nearly four centuries ago to one of Spain’s most remote possessions, and the resilience of the language they brought with them stands on display.
Reggaeton, the musical genre born in Puerto Rico, blares from the speakers. Shoppers mull over bargains in the accents of northern Mexico. A carnicería offers meat, a panadería bread, a salchi-chonería cold cuts, and there’s also a tortillería — that one’s self-explanatory for many who never even studied the language of Cervantes.
“Everything I need here is in Spanish,” said Vanessa Quezada, 23, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Chihuahua, gesturing toward the branch of the First Convenience Bank, where tellers greet people with a smile and “buenas tardes.”
Indeed, the United States is emerging as a vast laboratory showcasing the remarkable endurance of Spanish, no matter the political climate.
Drawing on a critical mass of native speakers, the United States now has by some counts more than 50 million hispanohablantes,
a greater number of Spanish speakers than Spain. In an English-speaking superpower, the Spanish-language TV network Univision spars for top ratings with ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. The made-in-America global hit song of the summer? “Despacito.”
At the same time, more than 20 states have enacted laws making English the official language, President Trump won the election with a platform that included building a border wall, and his push for new limits on legal immigration would require that applicants speak English to obtain legal residency green cards.
Juan Rodríguez, 44, a Colombian immigrant who owns La Reina, a Spanish-language radio station in Des Moines, Iowa, said it was an “extremely uncertain time” for some Spanish speakers, particularly undocumented immigrants who are trying to be seen and heard less often now that the president has made deportation a priority.
“But that fear doesn’t prevent us from living our lives in Spanish,” Rodríguez added. “Iowa may be an English-only state, but it’s also our state.”
Immigration from Latin America bolstered the use of Spanish in the United States in recent decades, but scholars say other factors are also in play, including history, the global reach of the language, and the ways in which people move around throughout the Spanish-speaking world.