Speak Spanish? Who cares

Language wars among Latinos political nonsense

FOR many Latinos, conservatives have a reputation for being heartless. Now some folks on the right are trying to be cute.

Some conservatives are trying to have some fun and turn the tables on liberals. They’re doing so by advancing an idea that is often used as a weapon against Latino Republicans — namely that you can’t be authentically Latino, or a credible leader of Latinos, if you don’t speak fluent Spanish.

Over the last several decades, Latinos on the left have often attacked their colleagues on the right for not being Latino enough. And the measuring cup they’ve used to assess how much is “enough” is one’s ability to speak Spanish.

My, how things have changed.

You know who speaks Spanish really well? Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican who is often attacked by other Latinos as a “sellout” who puts his party before his people.

And do you know who, by his own admission, doesn’t speak Spanish well at all? San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The speech was a touchdown. Castro masterfully delivered a moving tribute to his family, culture and country that spoke clearly to a group of voters that has helped elect Democrats for 50 years but gotten little in return. It was a nail in the coffin of Mitt Romney’s Latino outreach efforts, as feeble as they have been.

What were Republicans supposed to do? They had to respond by attacking Castro. But with a reputation for being squeaky clean, he didn’t give them much dirt to work with.

Except that Castro admits he “doesn’t really speak Spanish” as well as he would like. That’s what the mayor told a writer for The New York Times Magazine, who penned a profile of him in 2010.

For some reason, the conservative website The Daily Caller found this admission damning — along with the additional fact that Castro hired a Jewish woman in 2009 to tutor him in Spanish. It published an article noting that while Castro had sprinkled some Spanish into his speech, comparisons to Rubio were incomplete because “Rubio is fluent in Spanish.”

It’s true that Castro doesn’t speak Spanish very well. I watched him struggle through a recent interview with Univision’s Maria Elena Salinas. When speaking Spanish, he has a smooth delivery and not much of an accent. But he seems to be missing vocabulary. Simply put, Castro doesn’t know enough words in Spanish to allow him to communicate as effectively as he does in English. It’s obvious that, when he is asked a question, he thinks of the answer in English and then quickly translates into Spanish. His mind is probably racing through the answer, and, so when he tries to speak, he sometimes gets tongue-tied.

I’m the same way. It’s a common story among Mexican-Americans who were born in the United States to parents who were also born here. We might understand Spanish, and speak a few words. But our native tongue is English.

And we’re not alone. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, only 8 percent of second-generation Latinos use Spanish as their dominant language. By the third generation, that figure falls to 2 percent, and almost all Latinos are either bilingual or English-dominant.

During the interview, Salinas asked Castro if he thought it was necessary these days for politicians to speak Spanish. He gave a diplomatic answer, explaining that it wasn’t necessary but that it was useful and beneficial.

Perhaps the better question would have been: “Is it necessary for Latino politicians to speak Spanish?”

The answer is still no. The fact that a Latino politician does or doesn’t speak Spanish tells us nothing about what kind of leader he’ll be or where his heart lies.

I’m tired of Spanish being used as a weapon. This was a silly, childish and counterproductive exercise that Latino liberals have long used to attack Latino conservatives. And now that the arrows are flying in the opposite direction, it is just as silly, childish and counterproductive.

Some Latinos are fluent in Spanish, while others don’t speak of word of it.

What does it matter? In my book, they’re all equally authentic. It’s time to stop insisting otherwise. No matter what language it’s delivered in, this is the message that Latinos, and non-Latinos, need to hear and spread and take to heart.