>> host: felipe, thank you for being with us. >> guest: thank you for having an interest in my book. >> host: absolutely. it's quite an interesting one. we can start of a talking about the population of hispanics in the united states. in 1980 there were about 15 million hispanics in the united states and by 2012 nearly 53 million by 2015 we are expecting 128 malignant. your book helps give the foundation and explain how the population are right in the country and we will talk about where it's going by the time we reach that 128 million. >> guest: that's very kind of you to say that. you think of this relatively recent period image the profile

was revolutionized by -- there were vast numbers of people and the context that we understand this is a very normal one in which hispanics haven't elon in the united states by virtue of being immigrants and having been [inaudible] and the united states has a modern history as a hispanic country. the statistics you mentioned for restoring the united states, but the situation of the country and historically it is what was now the trenches of the united states first occupied and it was a kind of a blip in the story.

>> host: that's exactly what your book seems to cover is the myth that we have about the founding of the united states and if this methodology and you mengin the motors of history and your dhaka. i'm curious how did the book, about now with the and hell is this the time to undo the myths that we have and we will go through what some of those are. >> host: i'm sure there's an objective answer to that question for the reasons that are more powerful than the autobiographical i do see myself as a person trying to understand and situate myself but the book came to me when i was giving some lectures at the u.s. air force academy in colorado

springs and the broad minded liberal air force officer who was to look after me had lots of chats with me which i find interesting and he told me he was a liberal. he wanted to create in my mind an impression i might have gotten from the media u.s. air force academy sort of the radical fundamentalists can he told me he was fearful loss immigration. he said when people come to this country they should learn the language. i agree [inaudible]

the kind of argument on that and it made me realize even a liberal, brough broad minded humane americans don't realize what the country's got, this alternative history which doesn't go from east or west or south or north but which starts with the spanish mission. >> host: you start the book in the 1500's and part of rico -- puerto rico and the methodology of the english settlers in the north with the three pigs that landed in puerto rico. >> guest: when they colonize they always started by executing

livestock with the idea that there would be something there for them to eat. they were first european colonists on what is now the u.s. territory and in part rico in 1585 which is before the first permanent english colony was established on dessel leal of the country. i don't want to take anything away from the tremendous creativity and achievement of this anglo history of the united states because the wonderful stories of the pioneering and the fortitude and the vision which are very impressive, but we need to show there are stories that are just as good which constitute the hispanic side of the story.

there are possibilities that hasn't yet been exhausted so i just want to get people to see a little bit more of the history, not to displace the american they've already got, but to modify to see the aspect. >> host: it's quite timely given the fact the population is growing and we keep hearing about hispanics or latinos in the united states and before the show you and i were talking about the business is trying to attract that marketplace it's a growing market in the labour market so obviously it is an interesting time for the book to appear -- >> guest: on the web it said mal hiring bilingual speakers and that is the sort of icon of our time to which president obama did a tremendous favor by

giving people the impression that hispanics had elected him but it kind of tells you something about america, about the united states today which is a strong perception that you speak of the country is being transformed by the hispanic demographic. >> host: very much so. however i want to drill down on that point a little bit because obama did win in the last election more than 70% of the hispanic votes, but you don't think he one -- >> guest: there are places like mexico, colorado, florida which are very important marginal swing states which are always going to be critical in general elections in this country where you could have a situation, but i think if you really sort of breakdown of the

statistics in the case of obama's last election, he won by such a margin even if the spanish voted -- >> host: you mentioned for the when we were talking about obama just now come and florida is in the first chapter of your book and that's when you say it's the first time anglo american's fused. what did you mean by that? >> guest: well, it started in places which were far removed from one another, and that's really because the spanish pre-empted all parts of the hemisphere that more accessible from the side and that were exploited and worth colonizing. but partly because of the way

the wind wasn't current of the atlantic condition and even the shipping routes between europe and the americas. they kept having to control more of those natural ports and harbors and it's why they colonize florida. they call for the package to keep those missions going but it was kind of for that to keep them. it was the first region to be exchanged between the two empires and put in the 16th and 17th centuries. florida was a very general name for a large part of what is now

the united states, including what is now georgia and in some respects it stretches right up into the chesapeake which is the north area to control or at least found the presence. there's always a sort of extended from a year in which this of compositions and the north side colonization. especially [inaudible] >> host: the detail in the book was amazing. tell me about the research you did and how long did it take you to pull this together, what types of documents and sources were you looking at? >> guest: i didn't know how long it took i had a very bad

memory for dates and what i remember very vividly in the instance i just described i always write my books in my head. i think about it for so many years before i start putting it down on paper. as far as the resources are concerned, i wanted to tell all the stories about individuals. i don't think it was necessary to go over the breach of the u.s. history because it gets drilled into it year after year going through the school system

in the country. i didn't think it was worth taking the high level analysis, so i looked for individual what scholars and it's always been my practice which my fellow professional historians would condemn as serendipitous to try to find things that you would never find in any bibliography by sort of wandering and around the books that continued a lot of dust and obviously haven't been ready for a long time and that is how i found some of the i think more vivid stories in the book like the 18th-century domestic and mexico or in which the cleveland heritage of who wrote a wonderful memoir about

the life in mexico. it's a steny test. -- it is a test that record of all of the world testimony is and the personal encounters to experience what i was like to cross. those were the things i taught what made book interesting and there are real stories of heroism and tragedy which is the

story of everybody in the united states. it's never been an easy place to live claiming feet topography and the way the huge mess of the economy in cases long journeys and such. every story in the united states compounds the triumphs and tragedies and sometimes some of the hispanic immigrants who have already had to endure discrimination and impoverishment and it's even more moving but has many other people. >> host: going back to the sort of mythologies and the method that you are working through in the book you mentioned in the second chapter where we are going from

mississippi to the rockies and we hear the story then you mentioned that the spaniards will legitimize the conquest through their writing. can you tell a little bit about that, how is that a part of creating this with tashi? >> guest: the empire has sometimes people call that in the early modern period was a very strong element connected with the provincial. unlike the british and the french and the dutch empires in the americas and we should find people bellyaching about what are we doing here and what is our justification for being here and look right to we have to boss these nations are around. it's an almost inescapable part

when they write anything at all and the spanish prime most demanding of the justifications and why they had a right -- >> host: are you supportive for protective of the ids? >> guest: it does rather contrast with the indifference of the european community's because they wanted to protect the natives, wanted to keep them alive not because the spaniards are more morrill handan the

anglos' but because the ecology of the kind of serious of the spaniards, so in the americas they would join the spanish either by conquest or -- you have a very peculiar kind of environment in which the nation's labor issac absolutely critical. so you have to keep them alive so they would perform the label that you need otherwise you couldn't exploit, and whereas in the parts of the united states with is a english crowd called minus they could either rely on the important lever in the form of farmers from europe or they could bring in black slaves so they didn't really need them. they would ask why broadly speaking today exterminate and expel the natives whereas the

spanish america try to conserve them and keep them alive it's not to do with the different moralities but with different environments. >> host: as they are making their way across texas and new mexico and they are engaging and sometimes combating, how do these interactions differed? as the native tribes that they were encountering. >> guest: very crudely this question company to respond with liberalization of. very crudely speaking in the caribbean, florida and indeed in mexico in the hot land in the

economically productive parts of the spanish, the spaniards made mutually agreeable accommodations in the nation's, the nation's when the spaniards could make use of each other. they didn't see the spaniards in that way, they didn't on a whole see them as useful. if they saw them as enemies or potential conquerors to resist so that created a different dynamic on the fringes of the spanish monarchies in the new world and they were very different people, they were kind of imperial people who regarded their power and very large numbers to create the sort of empire in which they were controlling fat and exploiting

their native american peoples. if they were much more a group of loosely related people who could never collaborate in creating an enormous state in a way that they did. but of course because these three worlds met in what is now the southern united states, there were lots of opportunities for interactions between them and they were tremendously respectful in particular when they recognized the sort of imperial people and you've got all kinds of really peaceful trading interactions and the alliance's and spaniards and more commonly the spaniards against france and you name it to, much of what is now the southwest to the independence as you like them

>> guest: why should people in the and i did states potential reasons with my book bother a foreigner has the arrogance to tell about -- in some ways i think it helps to be objective. sometimes you can't see things in the difference and therefore helpful way if you are embarrassed -- immersed in the education system. so i do see the united states as an empire and i always say if it looks like an empire and walks like an empire then it's an

empire. this was a country in which was created in the 19th century by conquering the land at other people's expense and the margin from canadians and native but expanded like every other conquest by taking over other people's territory. that was the wave of the united states continued until 1917 which is the year that the overseas territory was of a sore to and took over in 1917 so there is a long period of construction at the heart of the making of this.

america has perfections deeply etched in the past [inaudible] >> host: in chapter number three you describe the cultural legacy that they left across the world. how would you compare that to the spanish? >> guest: there is an analogy between the english and the spanish. my mother was english, so this gives me object devotee or disqualifies but if you go to england or spain, people will tell you they are very different

and they are conscious of their differences because when you look from the inside you can see the differences and if you ask the producer who is watching this and is in washington, d.c. and new york and if you ask her to describe she would say [inaudible] and she is so young and he's old, he would say well, you know, these weird creatures so it is all a question of. and when i look at the english and the spanish i see similarities because i am trying to see them objectively and they

are both peoples with this object profile always conquering losing empires and also those people who as a result of that experience they carry their culture to different parts of the world. they have been more successful than the spaniards in shaping the world and exploring of the language. it's incredible how it's a very important part of the culture and how many of the games were invented and spread even beyond the british empire's and had no way a part of the imperial reach which adopted sports,

parliamentary, democracy, the adopted these things because they like them. >> host: one of the other myths that comes up is the myth of the pilgrim fathers. tell us about that because when you talk about how american students learn the american history, one of the images we all have as young americans is seeing that image around thanksgiving. >> guest: it starts with the pilgrim fathers. >> host: it's one of the iconic image is that we always take away, and by the way i did live in spain for a few years and i am familiar with the fact culture as well, but the pilgrim fathers are something about we as americans -- >> guest: i thought maybe they

did away from the program offered called nowadays and adopting a more pluralistic alternative. >> host: its been awhile since i finished the second grade -- >> guest: don't get me wrong. i'm not against the myths. i think the truth has unique virtues and protect you sometimes from the truths they make the compromise possible and between people they wouldn't get along. [inaudible] i think one should value what

they are, the pilgrim fathers stories that are commonly told in the history books. they weren't programs obviously. and they weren't refugees seeking liberty. they were looking for imposing their own culture and indeed, you know, the did extol anybody who didn't conform with the ideology. walter williams and [inaudible] for example people who didn't conform were persecuted or even after the union area of the three generations of the pilgrim fathers in massachusetts and the pretext to present to the

minorities who didn't conform and again they were not on the way they're on the contact in order to establish the space tradition there was just a coup d'etat can to impose their will on the rest. and of course they didn't leave england because of the religious persecution. i think on the contrary they didn't persecute people they love. these are the so-called programs. i money is a lot of people didn't even realize that they didn't get directed. they were already exiled and the rather grim utopia and they just stopped implement on the way to pick up a few more.

>> host: we have about a minute before we take a break and i want to ask you the big question. hispanic or latino? latino has come up the most recently. what is -- >> guest: i think it is rather a trivial question. i like people to call if somebody tells me how she wants to be called a latina, but i call myself hispanic and i can't see any good reason for abandoning that label. it includes me as someone has a spanish origin were people of latin american or spanish-american origen's so to me it is more inclusive than

latino and you have to remember all of these labels are imposed from the outside. but if people are happy to use them on themselves than i am happy to reflect that back at them in my work. >> host: we will take a break and be right back. >> host: during the break we were talking a little bit about our history is and the hispanic versus latino, and one of the things that has come back is i lived in spain for a few years and barcelona as a puerto rican woman who was also american and the issue of biculturalism would

come up occasionally in conversation and it was something that there wasn't a lot of understanding like how you could identify both african-american and as a puerto rican and that is something that still seems to be an issue. and in your book you and chapter three talking about creole and the by cultural identities that began to take shape and i would love to pick apart with you and talk about these identities that people have and biculturalism at least in that -- >> guest: in barcelona did you learn -- --guest >> host: i can speak a little bit of it. i understand it a lot better than i can speak it. >> guest: that's a very good example. people in barcelona typically switch between the two languages according to who they are talking. i think the identity is -- i say

in the book it is like a layer cake a matter which way you cut you take a slice out of the cake and you can see all the different layers. i think if people tell you they don't understand it, you just need to slice the kate. nobody has a single identity. even if you are a family who has lived in barcelona for centuries, you're probably going to feel catalan [inaudible] you're also going to feel european and there are those in barcelona approaching you for being open to a variety of negatives from your world.

he probably had the same equivocations and their own senses the they were not thinking about them. >> host: many of them wanted to resist the conquistadores and say people from the south and spain -- >> guest: we were not allowed to strictly speaking until 1778 catalan a riot to take place in the empire and they all found the loopholes and in the 19th century, the cubin empire was more catalan than the spanish empire in a large sense of the word. but it reminds me of out of the spanish professor who came to some american council and gave a lecture about the conquest and the latino hispanic person in

the audience who shook his hand and said how dare you come and tell us this story and your ancestors brutalized hours and they said no, no. mine were at home and was your ancestors [inaudible] >> host: as we start chapter 4 we get into california, which is a very interesting state today and back then in particular. you paint a fascinating picture of the missions and the ranch's and the group of sellers who began to get to the state. what was south america or what we know of has south america and mexico what were the trend is happening that might have been influencing what is now california? >> guest: obviously in the late 80's in the spanish part because obviously strictly

speaking the part of california didn't begin really until 1760 when they jumped and they didn't attempt to colonize the country to convert the natives or incorporate into the entire until very late, and by that stage what i referred to earlier in the conversation as a plan of the spanish and south america in the andes. you had the enormous wealth and engineering projects and it's still remarkable for anyone in the united states who goes to pereiro or bolivia or south

america or central america and mexico can to see how they were and this is of the spanish empire prosperity and the historical myths about the decline of the spanish because the did declined which the others were rising faster. the achievement in terms of the transformation on these great cities and the human purposes, the dynamic economy of the demographic is really extraordinary worst which is unparalleled in anywhere that is now the united states.

when i look at what the mission would do a california and the very late 18th-century are really animated by the standard. they had a standard of achievement which was represented by the great rich economies in the rest of the spanish empire. to create something like that in california as quickly as possible. when you ask why do they found so many mentions and sacrifice so much time and effort and money and power on this remote place, why so much, why do they agreed to so many cattle and work for juicing everything from

candles to metalwork it's because they knew that you could create a great european world in the of the environment and you could turn them into the productive citizens because that was part of what we were talking about earlier. they solve them as potential citizens they had to elevate for the status quo that they regarded of the child you could raise into adulthood, so i think the model of what you could achieve from the rest

represented the influence. >> host: one of the things what struck me about living in spain means united states in so many ways and this doesn't exist in english. we call ourselves american and yet they found north, south united states, canada. are there any thoughts as to why that is and why it exists? >> guest: as a former resident of barcelona you probably know the movie in which one of the characters deplores because he thinks it implies -- the words we use for each other's communities sometimes acquire

which they were never intended to have in the first place. obviously i don't think people in the united states realize how sensitive this that you appear have appropriated this word america just for one as many countries feel of the hemisphere and again, i don't get into trouble for being a foreigner coming over trying to tell you what to think that i'm not so sure for the future of the greatness of the united states which is a great country and a country that i admire and want to see it to go on succeeding but we all know it is in a crisis, we know the united states is faced with.

i think it is continuing from the usf -- we realize that there are opportunities that need to be embraced by collaboration among the different people in the hemisphere to continue to fulfill the potential but if you turn your back on your fellow americans you are just going to make the task much harder in the future not just as a neighbor but also on exploited wealth outside of the united states. you need a stake in that and you are not going to get one unless you increase your fellow americans.

all of those oil sands lease heartlands of opportunity but, you know, put it this way. i think -- i'm not sure for every historian in the united states would agree with this but i think this is true what made the united states from being a form of the colonial country into the world's great power house and a superpower in the 19th century what made that transformation possible was the exploitation on the prairie above all this land and which became the most productive farmland in the world.

they were in unexploited resources. you haven't got any more land. relatively speaking the underground water sources are depleted and to look elsewhere and they are in which the arctic and if you want a piece of those, start respecting fellow americans more. >> host: going in to part two of the book, we begin to see the rise of what you call, quote, institutionalized racism in the united states, and now we have the rise of the cultural the sum, creole, blacks, his hispanic, indigenous folks and so this is now becoming a more

complex and racial demographic that the united states is starting to deal with. tell about that. what were the rise of the institutionalized? we know it happened but give some examples of that. >> guest: it happened because it is a common feature of human psychology to seek people you can identify with and you can't do that unless you have other people you exclude. i don't suppose the we will ever get away from the tensions which are the tension in human psychology and if we want to sympathize with some people we can't do it except by

differentiating so that's always going to be around but it really is because people have a kind of ethos of racism by the scientific analysis of how the human populations differ with as a relatively uninvolved and others would be more revolved and you could see it in the cases everybody knows about that refer to racism to the extent of black people, but the same language was applied and was

transferred to hispanics dominant lead and also to native americans by people from those regions who settled in places like texas. so i see this is a myth of declassifying people scientifically which because people believed it came to animate and characterize the cultural attitudes and law. >> host: the way that they are counted today by the census as an ethnicity and as a race so you would check however many boxes apply to you racially and ethnically.

one of the things being considered now by the census is to eliminate 40 essentially change that so that hispanic would be considered a race. what are your thoughts on that? >> guest: if you abandoned racism where we still classifying people according to the race? what their people are good or bad or a drag on the community, these have nothing to do with what ancestors were and they are sort of powerful enough to meet people and we know that. i don't bother with them.

they are useful and the diversity statistics meaning that they get a lot of credit in the grand institutions and this is all a part that i thought we had outgrown by now. >> host: do you suggest we are entering into a post racial society -- >> guest: no but in some ways, you know, we have domesticated the language instead of eliminating it. we have made ourselves comfortable with talking about it because we think we have the mutual hostilities which are based on where ase and therefore we talk about it with a lot of freedom but since it doesn't mean anything very useful or true, i prefer not to talk about it of all.

was raised a fair amount in the book but it is either implied likely objective realities and the way people thought of each other in the past. >> host: as we make our way through the final chapters in the book, one of the things you begin to talk about is the rise of political activism among the hispanic community. we talked earlier about how president obama won more than 70% of the hispanic vote and the analysts and political analysts and strategists are looking to find out to capture the latino vote. we have seen marco rubio, ted cruce. what do these figures represent and can the democrats assume today that they have a latino voting bloc if you will?

>> guest: well i would be very happy to be wrong about this but if you profile of those that classify as hispanic alongside the voters who aren't, the hispanics look like they had been natural republicans. typically they have very high longevity and on local détente to be better represented than the democrats. they also have a lot of conservative social values and they seem to be decided to me it's not always the economy, it

is the social against the economic interest and its an interesting peculiarity. typically as far as i can talk about, hispanics tend to be much more committed and have low rates of stability and that is a value that you find much more strongly voiced in the republican rhetoric than of the democrats. hispanics tend even if they are not catholics they tend to be much more sensitive about the rights of the unborn than the population at large which identifies and the policy which

isn't typically republican. so the democrats have a lasting hold on hispanic vote and the reason - the simplifies the democrats have actually recently partly because the liberal social policies favor the decide on a poor and they are over represented in this country but in the long run that is going to even itself out. but the single most important is immigration. if the republicans can bring themselves to adopt the attitudes towards the immigrants to stop victimizing the so-called illegals and the humanity and kindness and which

they talk about immigration issues it is the inevitable future of the country to remain great which is an embracing attitude to the rest and i can't see any reason they shouldn't confuse us into the republicans in the future as they are for the democrats. >> host: you mentioned language in your book and i will give you 80 the plant from the census bureau. the number who speak english at home is expected to double from 11.1 to 20.52020 million according to the projections by the census bureau. what impact do you see that having if any? is language going to be unifying the elements?

>> guest: no. it's something very widely assumed in the united states. i was quite shocked to find that people have this attitude towards the country. it's completely contrary to all of the historical. you don't need to have one language to share a common allegiance or to collaborate. i do predict in the book that hispanics won't maintain their language in the future and i greatly regret that and i think that is a terrible shame because

if this were a genuinely binding country it would be twice as a good because [inaudible] you know how this enriches your life and how it doubles your vocabulary and opens up the different possible faults and gives you access and the literatures and it is life. the united states doesn't understand and they think it means teaching -- then you could have a bilingual country and

would be culturally so much more exciting to live and generate. i suggest it would generate so much more achievement and look at every other great society and the history it had more than one language. >> host: if that projection is true, one of the things we are looking at and one of the things that is talked about often when we talk about the 53 million hispanics living in the united states is how young they are and how by cultural they are and how they will become. there is a theory i have heard here and there from the business folks reaching the market in that younger hispanics are interested in this retro culture to have the two or three generations in the united states and realize i do want to teach my children spanish or writer --

i do want to learn how to. might that connect two or three or four or fifth generation hispanics to their original culture if you will? ..

>> said will put on traditional dress but it seems to be a cultural of retrieval that this has not happened so far. u.k. and will live make predictions about what will happen on the basis of the

four in the future of the united states and the country if it happens it will happen for the same sort of reason everything happens economic reasons that i suspect if attitudes step to become genuinely a national language because of the necessity to collaborate with the mothers who speaks spanish. >> host: netflix rich is not the defining factor and was like to close with this is there an opportunity to have a unified hispanic bloc?