hispanic resurgence in the united states. the program is about an hour. >> of >> host: the felipe, thank you for being with us. >> guest: thank you for taking an interest in my book. >> host: we can start by 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, and by 2020 we expect 128 million hispanics in the united states. your book helps to give the foundation and explain how this population arrived in the

country and how it potentially -- we will talk about where it's going by the time we reach that 128 million. >> guest: you think of the recent period and which profile has been revolutionized by the resonance of the global phenomenon which is migration and that is a very long one and which hispanics have to be long and in the united states but by virtue of the first one that has a long history in this kind of reverting to that now. the statistics you mentioned are restoring the united states but

more and more a situation of the country and historical the what is now the territory of the united states. they put a blip on the story that is not resumed. >> host: that is exactly what your book seems to tackle is the myth that we have about the united states and this mythology, and you mentioned that they are the motors of history and your book. i'm curious why now is the time to sort of on do some of the myths that we have and we will go through some of what those are. >> host: of course, you know, one writes books really for the reasons that are powerful and autobiographical. when i don't see myself as a

sort of message for my world but i do see myself as a person trying to understand. at the air force academy in colorado springs and a very nice and well educated air force officer which i find very interesting, but he wanted to create in my mind what i may have gotten from the media in the u.s. air force academy with the radical fundamentalist.

when people come to the country and they should learn the nature of the language. so i said yes i agree. everybody should learn spanish. there was no further argument on that, but it made me realize it's a broad minded, well educated, humane [inaudible] protestant's which starts with the spanish missionaries. >> host: you start your book in the 1500's and what is

interesting to me is when you contrast the methodology of the english settlers in the north and of those that landed in puerto rico, tell about that. >> guest: it started by introducing livestock and there would be something there for them on the european colonies on the territory. it was in the first permanent english colony was established. i don't want to take anything away from the tremendous creativity and achievement of this anglo history and the stories of pioneering and

fortitude fusion which are very impressive. we know that there is opportunity, but it needs to show it is just to constitute the hispanic side of the story. there are possibilities that have not yet been exhausted. so i just want to get people to see a little bit more of that. not to displace the image of the america that they've already got, but to modify to see the aspects. >> host: it is quite timely given the fact the population is growing and we have heard about the united states on a daily basis and before the show, you and i were talking about how businesses are trying to attract that marketplace and the growing market and it's a young market and bilingual market. so it is an interesting time for the book to appear.

>> guest: across from the j.c. penney. there were the present-day by giving people the impression and true that hispanics have the elected. it kind of tells you something about america, about the united states today which there's a strong reception that you speak of that the country has been transformed by the hispanic demographic. >> very much so. >> host: i want to drill down on that point a little bit because obama did when more than 70% of the hispanic vote. but you don't think that he one -- >> guest: there are places

like mexico and colorado and florida which are very important swing states, which are always going to be critical in the general elections in the country where you could have a situation, but i think that if you really sort of break down the us statistics in the case of the last election, he won by such a margin that'/50. >> host: you mentioned when we were talking to about the first chapter of the book that's where you say it is the first time that the anglo american and spanish americans fused. what did you mean by that? >> guest: it started in places that were very far removed from one another and that is really

because the spanish empire pre-empted all of the parts of the hemisphere thought were accessible and, but partly because of the atlantic needn't be determined. the conceit the natural ports and that's why they call one - florida they've never made any money out of that to keep the missions. they are -- the importance of

first region to be exchanged between the two empires, and in the 16th and 17th century, 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 into the chesapeake trying to control or at least find a presence. that is the sort of extended frontier in which the colonization also especially germans.

>> host: the detail in this book was quite amazing. tell me about the research that you did for this book. how long did it take to pull this together, what kind of documents and sources were you looking at? >> guest: i didn't know how long it took. i had a very bad memory and i remembered i just described the air force academy and i can't tell you -- you know what that was but i always write my books and my head, i thought about this for many years before i started putting anything down on paper and it sort of matures until it's got pretty corrupt. but as far as the resources are concerned, i wanted to make the book on the human scale.

i wanted to tell all of the stories about individuals. i do not think that it was necessary to go for the brief events of u.s. history because everybody in the united states gets that year after year you have seen the study in american history over and over again. i don't think that it was worth taking the high level of analysis. so i looked for the individuals and it's always been my practice which my fellow professional historians would condemn. they are the sort of books that accumulate a little dust on them and i found some of the visits

with new mexico and cleveland and that sort of a very sympathetic attitude heritage who read a wonderful memoir in the late 19th and early 20th century. i was looking for a human interest or the his hispanic experience in the 19th centuries for the books that recorded a long personal encounters and people's experience of what it was like to cross the border as a mexican immigrant or to seek

work. those were financed that i thought would make the book interesting. there are stories of heroism and tragedy of everybody in the united states. it was never going to be an easy place to live, kind of the typography of the land and the way to a huge mess of the economy in cases the long journals and such. they compound into tragedy and some of these hispanic immigrants have also had to endure what discrimination and

what the minister of deportation and it's been even more moving and has many other people. >> host: going back to the mythologies and myths that you are working through in this book you mentioned in the second chapter where we are going from mississippi to the rockies we hear this story and then in new mentioned that the spaniards legitimized the conquest in their ridings. can you tell how was that a part of creating this mythology? >> guest: sometimes people would call it in the early modern period it was on a very strong element of the conscience to get connected with the catholic connection and unlike the british and french and dutch

empires in who the americas, we should find people bellyaching about what are we doing here and what is or justification and what right do we have to boss of these nations around, it is an almost inescapable part of anybody that comes to the new world rights when they write anything at all and the spanish crowd was producing what justifications in line with theology and why we had a right to be fighting off enemies. >> host: were they quite supportive or protective? >> guest: it does contrast with the difference of the other

he european what communities who came because they wanted to protect the natives and keep them alive i don't think ultimately because the anglos. that isn't the case but because the ecology because of the kind of areas that they took in and the giant either by conquest you have a very kind of environment in which they are absolutely critical so you had to keep them alive so they would perform the labor that you need an otherwise you couldn't exploit and whereas, you know, in parts of the united states that they

colonized they could either rely on imported farmers from europe or they could bring black slaves we asked why broadly speaking did they expel we're they tried to conserve and keep them alive it's not with a different moralities but with different environments. >> host: as they are making their way across texas and mexico and engaging, how did these interactions differ from what they had experienced in the caribbean and in florida for example as the tribes that they were encountering? >> guest: this is to respond

with a level of generalization i'm not happy with what very crudely speaking in the caribbean florida and in mexico and in the andes which was a heartland, the spaniards made mutually agreeable accommodations that spaniards could make use of each other. but they didn't see the spaniards in that way, on the whole faded and see them as useful. they saw them as enemies or potential conquerors to resist so that created a different dynamic in the northern fringes in the new world but also they

were three different people. they were kind of imperial people who regarded their power and they're very large numbers in order to sort of create an empire of their own in which they were controlling and exploiting other native american people's. the apaches were much more a group of loosely related people who could never collaborate in creating an enormous state in which the comanche did, but of course because these three worlds met in what is now the southern united states, there were lots of opportunities for attractions between them. the spaniards were tremendously respectful of the comanche when they recognized the sort of imperial people and you have all kinds of really peaceful trading

interactions in the alliance's and spaniards against them and more commonly the spaniards against the comanche because they were a bigger threat in much of what is now the southwest to the apache independence if you like them. >> host: you mentioned the word empire in this last answer, and ignore what you said that u.s. citizens and even some historians are reluctant to call the united states and empire; why is that? >> well, you know, i don't show this reluctance because i'm a foreigner and one would say why should people in the united states potential reasons in my book it has the arrogance to tell -- in some ways i think it helps to be objective. sometimes you cannot see things different and therefore it helps

if you are immersed in the country and if you are a product of education and the system, so i do see the united states as an empire and if it looks like an empire and walks like an empire and is an empire. and yes this was a country that law was created by conquering land without the people's experience over the margins from canadians and such, but expanded like every other conquest stage by taking over other people's territory. the was the way that the united states continued to be shaped until 1917 which was the year in which the last overseas territory was a sort 282 --

absorbed so there is a long history of the imperial construction at the heart of the making of this country, and i don't think it detracts from american greatness loved someone coming you can genuinely loved america but it can also put in and perfectionist utter deeply etched in parts of the united states and you have to love america in spite of not pretending it didn't happen. >> host: in chapter three you describe the english and the cultural legacy that they left across the world. how would you compare that to the spanish? >> guest: there is a big an

allergy between the english and this . my mother was english, so i don't know whether this gives me objectivity or both disqualifies me for either but in england or spain the people will tell you they are very different and conscious of their differences because in the inside you can always see the differences. now if you ask the producer who is watching this i think in washington, d.c. or in new york if you ask her to describe us she would say she is female and he is male and she is beautiful and he is ugly and she is young at -- these are the differences but others would say they are the same weird creatures and

they have to i is. so it is a question of the sexes and when i look at the english and spanish i see similarities because i am trying to see them objectively. they have a profile always conquering and they are also people who as a result of that experience carried the culture very different parts of the world. they've been more successful in the spaniards in shaping in the united states and the stops are incredible how it is a very important part of the contemporary culture in these games were invented and spread

even beyond the british empire cultured that had no way a part of the imperial reached which adopted the culture like, parliamentary, democracy, we adopted these things from shakespeare. >> host: one of the other myths that comes up in the chapter is of the pilgrims father. tell us a little about that because when you tell how they learned their american history, one of the areas i think we all have of is that the young american is seeing that in this particular round of thanksgiving. >> guest: the country starts with -- >> host: it is one of those iconic image is that american children always take away.

by the way, i lived in spain for a few years so i am little familiar with that culture as well, the pilgrim fathers are something i think that we as americans are sort of shown -- so i just thought maybe they are getting away from the cult nowadays and adopting a pluralistic nation. >> host: its been awhile since i've been there in the second grade. >> guest: one is don't get me wrong. i am not against this. i think the truth has unique virtues but they also protect you sometimes from the unintelligible truths and they

make possible harm who wouldn't get along. i think one should value what they are and the pilgrim fathers stories are commonly told an american history books and it just isn't true. they were not refugees, they were looking for a paradise in the making where they could impose their own culture and indeed, you know they did expel anyone who didn't conform with the ideology. roger williams said to me, for example people who didn't

conform were persecuted or even after the pilgrim fathers in massachusetts they were in the pretext like witchcraft to prosecute minorities who didn't conform and they didn't compared to establish a space tradition. they just imposed noll will on the rest and they didn't leave england because religious persecution. i think on the contrary they thought they didn't persecute people enough, the so-called pilgrims, and i am money is to what people in america don't even realize and they started

from holland and they were already exiled and such from there rather grim utopia and they just stopped implement on the way to pick up a few more so -- >> host: we have about a minute before we take a break and i want to ask you the big question. hispanic or latino in terms of u.s. hispanics throughout the book and latino has come up most recently. what is your -- >> guest: it's interesting you recall that a big question. i like people to call themselves what they want to call themselves and if somebody tells me she wants to be called a latino -- but i call myself hispanic, and i can't see any good reason for abandoning that

label in the spanish origin as well as 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 them are imposed but if people are happy to use cut mode themselves, then i'm 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 histories and the hispanic versus latino and one of the things that has come out is i live in spain for a few years, i lived in barcelona as a puerto rican woman who is also american and the issue of biculturalism would come up occasionally in conversation and was something that there wasn't a lot of understanding like how you could identify african-american and as a puerto rican and that is something that still seems to be an issue and in your book you talk about creole and the identities that began to take shape and i would love to pick apart with you and talk about these identities that people have in the biculturalism. >> guest: did you learn

catalan? >> guest: >> host: i understand it better than i can speak it. >> guest: that is a good example. people in barcelona typically switch between the two languages. i think that identity is -- i say in the book is like a cake that no matter where you cut it to take a slice out of the cade you can see all of the different layers, and i think if people tell you they don't understand it, you just need to slice that the cake and no one has a single identity. even if you are, you know, a family that has lived in barcelona for centuries, you are probably going to see both catalan and the numbers -- also

if you are european and there are those in barcelona that are approaching you for being open to a variety of your world and probably had the same equivocations with their ancestors. >> host: many of them wanted to distance themselves and say those were people from the south of spain. we had nothing to do with that. >> guest: strictly speaking in 1778, the catalan more not allowed to take part in the overseas empire. of course they all found loopholes, and they did, and then they had the cubin empire that was more catalan than the spanish empire and in a large

sense of the word, but it reminds you of that old joke about the professor, the spanish professor who gave a lecture about the conquest and the hispanic who shook his fist and said how dare you come and tell us this story when your ancestors brutalized hours and a spanish said no, no, my ancestors were at home and was your ancestors -- all of this is true. >> 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 branches and a group of settlers who began to get into the state.

what was south america or what we know a faceoff america mexico. what were some of the trend is happening that might be influencing what is now california? >> guest: in the late eighties or in the u.s. part of california because obviously strictly speaking it was starting out but in the newest part of california the spanish didn't really begin until 1760 when they had just gotten on the map with any attempt to colonize the country to convert the natives or incorporate into the empire until really very late and by that stage in what i refer to earlier on the conversation as a heartland of the spanish monarchy in america, you had enormous wealth and

dazzling engineering projects and it was remarkable for anyone in the united states who would go through bolivia or not as far as south america if he would just go to central america or mexico, cities like wicklund mexico city and he would see how they were with the spanish empire and grander and prosperity and of course it did a decline of the stiffly with the others that were rising even faster by this period. but the level of achievement in the transformation and creation of these great cities brought

nature to the dynamic economy and it was extraordinary which was unparalleled in anywhere that is now a united states. when i look at what the missionaries did in california in the very late 18th-century, they were i think really animated by the standards. they had a standard of achievement was represented by the great populist rich economies and the rest of the spanish empire and wanted to create something like that in california as quickly as possible. when you ask why did they found so many missions and sacrificed so much time and effort and money and manpower on this

remote place and why did they breed so many cattle from the candles to the metalwork and the ammunitions, it's because the new that you could create a great world in this environment and that you could turn the indigenous into productive agriculture is and citizens because that is a part of what we were talking about earlier with the different attitudes they had. they saw them as potential

citizens they had to elevate from the status that they regarded rather like a child to be raised to adulthood, so i think that the model of what it could achieve for the rest of the spanish employers and the americas represented and grew up in its own years one of the things that struck me is that it essentially means united states in many ways and in english we call ourselves american and yet there north, south of the united states, canada. is there any thought as to why that is and why it exists in spanish but not english? >> guest: you probably know which one of the characters the

poor is the fact that he think it implies -- the words that we use for each other's communities acquire what they never intended to have in the first place but obviously, i don't think the people in the united states realize how offensive it is to other americans but you have appropriated this for so many countries that fill the hemisphere and again, i don't get into trouble for being a foreigner coming over here telling you what you ought to think, but i am not so sure for the future of the greatness of the united states which is a

great country that i had my ear and love and want to see it go on succeeding but we all know it is in a crisis and is going to remain the top. i think that it is a continuing future for the u.s. we have to reevaluate and realize that there r opportunities that need to be embraced to continue to fulfill its potential but if you turn your back on your fellow americans and the rest, you are just going to make the task much harder in the future with a

wealth outside of the united states unless you embrace your fellow americans. >> host: all of those canadian oil sands, these are the lands of opportunity and put it this way. i think every historian and the united states created but this is true what makes the united states range from being a former colonial country into the world's great power house and superpower in the 19th century what made that transformation possible one is the unexploited

resource which is the west on the prairie above all this land that had formerly been in the desert and which became the most productive farmland in the world that was an unexploited resource you haven't got any more land to exploit. a relatively speaking, even the underground water sources. you have to look elsewhere to the new resources and in chile and argentina, start respecting a little bit more. >> host: going into part number two in the book we begin to see the rise of what you call

institutionalized and sanctioned racism in the united states and now we have the rise of biculturalism and spanish indigenous folks here and so this is now becoming a much more complex racial demographic that the united states is starting to deal with. tell us a little bit about that. what was that rise of institutionalized sanctioned racism. we know it happened but give us some examples of that. >> guest: i think it happened partly because it's just a common feature of human psychology to seek people that you can identify with and you can't do that if you exclude. i don't suppose that we will ever get away from the tensions

which are functions of that tension of human psychology. and if we want to sympathize with some people, we can't do it accepted by differentiating, we have to sympathize with others. so that will always be, but the racism that you're talking about which is a particular historical period in the 19th and 20th centuries is because science endorsed it and people have a kind of ethos of racism which is supported by the scientific analysis of how the human populations differ on the deferred in terms of the uninvolved and the relatively

more ebal to. you can see the cases everybody knows about, but in the same language about in the deep south in the 19th century was applied to black by white was transferred to hispanics to mexicans and also native americans by people from those regions who settled in places like texas. so i think it is an erroneous method of classifying people scientifically which because people believe it came true can't characterize the attitudes and the law.

>> host: speaking about race and the way that hispanics are counted today by the census counted as an ethnicity and as a race so you would check however many boxes apply to you both racially and ethnically. one of the things that is being considered now by the census is to eliminate or essentially change that so that hispanics will be considered a race in and of themselves. what are your thoughts on that? >> guest: i never understood why people want these statistics. if we genuinely abandon, so completely meaningless category. the people of the good or bad, whether they are useful citizens or a drag on the community. these things have nothing to do

with parents are much less their ancestors and they are powerful enough to make people good and there are others to make people mad -- and we know that so -- i don't bother with them. i know they are a very useful to the diversity's because the statistics mean they get a lot of credit with a grant making institutions but, you know, this is all part of something we've outgrown by now. >> host: would you suggest that we are entering into a post racial when society? >> guest: no, that in some ways we have domesticated the language of race instead of eliminating it. we have made ourselves comfortable with talking about it because we think we no longer

have mutual hostilities which are based on race and therefore we talk about a lot of freedom. but since it doesn't mean anything very useful or true, i prefer not to talk about it at all. i do use the word race a fair amount i suppose, but it's always implied talking about objective realities and i talk about the way people thought of each other. >> host: as we make our way through the final chapter in the book, one of the things that you begin to talk about is the rise of the political activism in the hispanic community and you give the example of chavez, etc.. we talked about how president obama juan if he will more than 70% of the hispanic vote, analysts and political analysts and strategists are trying to find out to continue to capture

the latino vote and we have seen marco rubio, ted cruce. what do these figures represent and can the democrats assume today that they have a voting bloc if you will? >> guest: i would be very happy to be wrong about this, but if you profiled the voters of our present as hispanic alongside those who aren't, they are a bit like republicans and democrats. typically they have very high longevity and on wall they tend

to be better represented than democrats. the hispanic voters also have a lot of social values and the american eel elections seem to the exciting to me. it is the social values that animate people today often in the united states against their economic interest. it's an interesting peculiarities in the american psychological profile. there's hispanics typically as far as i can talk about, hispanics tend to be much more committed to their families and have relatively lower rates of family and civility and that is a value which you find much more strongly voiced and the republican rhetoric among the

democrats. hispanics tend even if they are not catholic they tend to be much more sensitive about the rights of the unborn than the population at large which identifies and the policy that is untypically republican. so i talk about the democrats that have a lasting to the question and hope and the reason why they have sympathized with the democrats and actually recently is partly because, you know, liberals and their policies favor the poor and hispanics over represented their ranks in this country in the long run that is going to even a self out. but single most important is immigration. republicans can bring themselves

through the attitudes the immigrants can stop victimizing so-called illegal to reinject humanity in which they talk about immigration issues and what i'm going to talk about is the inevitable future of the country to remain great which is a rather embracing attitude to the rest and i can't see any reason why they shouldn't become as enthusiastic as they are for the democrats. >> host: you mentioned language in your book and i will give you a point from the census bureau. the number of hispanics that

speak english at home is expected to double from the 11.1 million in 2010 to 20.52020 million according to the predictions by the census bureau. what impact do you see that having if any? is language one of the unifying element? you said no? >> guest: no, no pity if it something that is widely assumed in the united states and when i first came here i was kind of quite shocked to find that people have that obsessive attitude towards english and a country can't be a country if it has more than one language. that is completely contrary to all of the -- [inaudible] you don't need to have one language in order to share a common allegiance or to collaborate in a common endeavor

i do predict in the book that hispanics won't maintain their language in the future, and i greatly regret that. i think that is a terrible shame because if this were genuinely a bilingual country it would be twice as a good. [laughter] because if you no more than one language, you know, you are [inaudible] this enriches your of life and it doubles your vocabulary and opens up a different possible faults and gives you access to more literature and life.

they didn't understand it seems to me or bilingualism means teaching spanish children spanish and english teaching english. if you are english-speaking you should have lessons in spanish and if spanish then have lessons in english and you could have a bilingual country and it could be culturally so much more exciting to live in and would generate more. so i would suggest it would generate more achievement and look at every other great society in history. it's had more than one language. >> host: if protectionist true, then one of the things we are looking at and one of the things when we talk about the 53 million hispanics that are living in the united states it is how young they are and how by cultural they are and how they will become. there is a fury that i have

heard here and they're mostly from business folks trying to reach the market that in fact younger hispanics are interested in this retro culture, perhaps two or three generations in the united states and you realize i do want to teach my children spanish or i do want to learn how to cook certain types of food or listen to certain music. do you see that as something that might connect hispanics to their original culture if you will? >> guest: i have noticed that with families i know in the united states and it does impress me and i will have an affect but perhaps my pessimism is about the disappearance of spanish and the united states and in may be excessive or maybe anticipating a shorter timetable

for which this will happen and be the case in the reality, but i think it is characterized for every non-english speaking minority joined in the united states to become a part of debt but in no case so far has restored the use of the language. i know people are of italian, american, german american ancestry in this country, they are passionate about these legacies and they would all be very proud of the distinctive cuisine and they would take part in parades' then he won't speak german or polish and that seems to be the form of the cultural

retrieval which just has not happened so far in the parts of this country and, you know, i am a historian, not a future all well-dressed but you cannot make predictions about what this winter have been on the basis of what has happened before. i don't think for the future of the united states. if it happens it will happen for the same sort of reason that pretty much everything happens in the united states. ..

to have a unified hispanic bloc and united states? >> guest: yes there is but it's only going to be created by people from the outside telling all these different people of hispanic origin that they have formed one society and i think republicans are given an enormous ironically part of the republicans vision for the future, they have given a distinctness, a german disposed by being cruel and unkind about immigration. i have something in common men i have resulted in 70% is pretty remarkable for any community for a particular political party but i mean i don't think that single

issue is going to be sufficient to sustain neutral identification between all these different spanish and hispanic origins who are all very aware of their peculiar heritage and it's more important that you are a cuban-american to be cuban and it's more important if you are mexican-american to be mexican or dominican or colombian. i would suspect therefore that it's going to be, eight -- but it's going to be fairly detailed if i'm allowed to mix metaphors when you get to the surface and you get near the top of the

predominant coagulation. you will be feeling that you are american. >> host: i want to thank you so much for being with us today. it's a pleasure talking to about this in hearing about the trends and i hope you enjoy much success with the book. thank you. >> guest: you're very kind and thank you very much for having me on the show.