An American Language

Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

An American Language is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States. The nation has always been multilingual and the Spanish language in particular has remained as an important political issue into the present. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Spanish language became a language of politics as Spanish speakers in the U.S. Southwest used it to build territorial and state governments. In the twentieth century, Spanish became a political language where speakers and those opposed to its use clashed over what Spanish's presence in the United States meant. This book recovers this story by using evidence that includes Spanish language newspapers, letters, state and territorial session laws, and federal archives to profile the struggle and resilience of Spanish speakers who advocated for their language rights as U.S. citizens. Comparing Spanish as a language of politics and as a political language across the Southwest and noncontiguous territories provides an opportunity to measure shifts in allegiance to the nation and exposes differing forms of nationalism. Language concessions and continued use of Spanish is a measure of power. Official language recognition by federal or state officials validates Spanish speakers' claims to US citizenship. The long history of policies relating to language in the United States provides a way to measure how U.S. visions of itself have shifted due to continuous migration from Latin America. Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are crucial arbiters of Spanish language politics and their successes have broader implications on national policy and our understanding of Americans.

Author(s):  
Craig Allen

The first completely researched history of U.S. Spanish-language television traces the rise of two foremost, if widely unrecognized, modern American enterprises—the Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. It is a standard scholarly history constructed from archives, original interviews, reportage, and other public materials. Occasioned by the public’s wakening to a “Latinization” of the U.S., the book demonstrates that the emergence of Spanish-language television as a force in mass communication is essential to understanding the increasing role of Latinos and Latino affairs in modern American society. It argues that a combination of foreign and domestic entrepreneurs and innovators who overcame large odds resolves a significant and timely question: In an English-speaking country, how could a Spanish-speaking institution have emerged? Through exploration of significant and colorful pioneers, continuing conflicts and setbacks, landmark strides, and ongoing controversies—and with revelations that include regulatory indecision, behind-the-scenes tug-of-war, and the internationalization of U.S. mass media—the rise of a Spanish-language institution in the English-speaking U.S. is explained. Nine chapters that begin with Spanish-language television’s inception in 1961 and end 2012 chronologically narrate the endeavor’s first 50 years. Events, passages, and themes are thoroughly referenced.


Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

The Spanish language in the United States has a long history. An American Language rediscovers the politics of the Spanish language in the period following the U.S.-Mexican War. The story begins with the United States takeover of Mexican lands that included American Indians and Mexican settlers. The settlers became U.S. citizens at the end of the war through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. These Spanish-speaking Mexican settlers thereafter used the treaty as the arbiter of their citizenship, making them treaty citizens. The United States permitted Spanish to become a language of politics in the Southwest in the nineteenth century. Comparing Spanish as a political language across the Southwest and Puerto Rico provides an opportunity to understand larger shifts in national views of citizenship. Comparing federal, state, territorial, and local approaches to the Spanish language also demonstrates the resilience of Spanishlanguage preferences among residents of the Southwest. Spanish is an American language due to its long history and continuing importance in the nation. Tracing the multilingual history of the nation provides an opportunity to include the United States into larger discussions of how migration changes a nation and how its citizens view language.


1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Marian McDonald

November 1988 marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Government's adoption of guidelines for federally-funded sterilizations. This action was the result of years of organizing by the anti-sterilization abuse movement which grew in the early 1970s in response to the alarming increase in numbers of coercive sterilizations, particularly among poor and minority women. This retrospective examination looks at the strengths and weaknesses of anti-sterilization abuse organizing in the United States, and draws out lessons for other areas of work. It begins by exploring the problem of sterilization abuse and the history of the movement against it. The movement is analyzed using key theoretical concepts of community organizing. An evaluation indicates that the anti-abuse efforts were successful and rich with lessons for reproductive rights and other popular health struggles today.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-376
Author(s):  
Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson

In December 1977, a tiny group of U.S. glove makers—most of whom were African American and Latina women—launched a petition before the U.S. International Trade Commission calling for protection from rising imports. Their target was China. Represented by the Work Glove Manufacturers Association, their petition called for quotas on a particular kind of glove entering the United States from China: cotton work gloves. This was a watershed moment. For the first time since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, U.S. workers singled out Chinese goods in pursuit of import relief. Because they were such a small group taking on a country as large as China, their supporters championed the cause as one of David versus Goliath. Yet the case has been forgotten, partly because the glove workers lost. Here I uncover their story, bringing the history of 1970s deindustrialization in the United States into conversation with U.S.-China rapprochement, one of the most significant political transformations of the Cold War. The case, and indeed the loss itself, reveals the tensions between the interests of U.S. workers, corporations, and diplomats. Yet the case does not provide a simple narrative of U.S. workers’ interests being suppressed by diplomats and policymakers nurturing globalized trade ties. Instead, it also underscored the conflicting interests within the U.S. labor movement at a time when manufacturing companies were moving their production jobs to East Asia.


1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 918-923
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Price

In response to a request by Canadian tax authorities under the United States-Canada Double Taxation Convention (Convention), the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued summonses to obtain U.S. bank records concerning certain accounts of respondents, Canadian citizens whose Canadian tax liability was under investigation. Respondents sought to quash the summonses, arguing that because under 26 U.S.C. §7609(b) the IRS is prohibited by U.S. law from using its summons authority to obtain information about a U.S. taxpayer once a case is referred to the Justice Department for prosecution, and because the tax investigation of respondents was part of a Canadian criminal investigation, the IRS should be precluded from using its summons authority to honor the Canadian request under the Convention. Unsuccessful in the district court, respondents prevailed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which held that under the “good faith” standard applicable to enforcement of domestic summonses, the IRS may issue a summons pursuant to a Convention request only if it first determines and makes an affirmative statement to the effect that the Canadian investigation has not reached a stage analogous to a Justice Department referral by the IRS. The U.S. Supreme Court (per Brennan, J.) reversed, and held: (1) that if the summons is issued in good faith, it is enforceable regardless of whether the Canadian request is directed toward criminal prosecution under Canadian law; and (2) neither United States law nor anything in the text or the ratification history of the Convention supports the imposition of additional requirements. Justice Kennedy (joined by O’Connor, J.), concurring in part and in the judgment, filed a brief opinion to state his view that it is unnecessary to decide whether Senate preratification materials are authoritative sources for treaty interpretation. Justice Scalia, concurring in the judgment, wrote separately to oppose the use of such materials in treaty construction.


2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Skop ◽  
Wei Li

AbstractIn recent years, the migration rates from both China and India to the U.S. have accelerated. Since 2000 more than a third of foreign-born Chinese and 40% of foreign-born Indians have arrived in that country. This paper will document the evolving patterns of immigration from China and India to the U.S. by tracing the history of immigration and racial discrimination, the dramatic transitions that have occurred since the mid-20th century, and the current demographic and socioeconomic profiles of these two migrant groups.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Gasca Jiménez ◽  
Maira E. Álvarez ◽  
Sylvia Fernández

Abstract This article examines the impact of the anglicizing language policies implemented after the annexation of the U.S. borderlands to the United States on language use by describing the language and translation practices of Spanish-language newspapers published in the U.S. borderlands across different sociohistorical periods from 1808 to 1930. Sixty Hispanic-American newspapers (374 issues) from 1808 to 1980 were selected for analysis. Despite aggressive anglicizing legislation that caused a societal shift of language use from Spanish into English in most borderland states after the annexation, the current study suggests that the newspapers resisted assimilation by adhering to the Spanish language in the creation of original content and in translation.


Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano

This epilogue briefly identifies some of the major changes in Spanish language politics since World War II. These include community shifts in activism. For example, the Chicano Movementreclaimed the language and advocated for culturally affirming bilingual education programs. The epilogue also turns to federal support for Spanish instruction with the 1968 Bilingual Education Act and with the 1975 extension to the Voting Rights Act that provides federal protection for ballots in languages other than English. Spanish is no longer a language of just the Southwest and there are major populations of Spanish speakers in cities like Chicago, New York, and Miami today. In 2013, tens of millions of U.S. residents spoke Spanish in their homes. Spanish language perseverance in the United States is due to a long history of Latin American migration to the country. It began as a language of settlement and power in the nineteenth century and has transformed into a language often deemed as foreign or un-American. Spanish is an American language historically and this book has recovered that history.


Author(s):  
Kelly Lytle Hernández

The third chapter is a western tale of national and global import. That tale, which sutures the split between the history of incarceration within the United States and the history of deportation from the United States, swirls around the passage of the 1892 Geary Act, a federal law that required all Chinese laborers in the United States to prove their legal residence and register with the federal government or be subject to up to one year of imprisonment at hard labor and, then, deportation. Chinese immigrants rebelled against the new law, refusing to be locked out, kicked out, or singled out for imprisonment. Launching the first mass civil disobedience campaign for immigrant rights in the history of the United States, Chinese immigrants forced the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a set of sweeping and enduring decisions regarding the future of U.S. immigration control. Buried in those decisions, which cut through Los Angeles during the summer of 1893, lay the invention of immigrant detention as a nonpunitive form of caging noncitizens within the United States. It was then an obscure and contested practice of indisputably racist origins. It is now one of the most dynamic sectors of the U.S. carceral landscape.


2018 ◽  
pp. 15-51
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Conner

This chapter looks at the establishment of the ABMC and the history of American cemeteries and monuments in Europe. During the First World War, in a span of about seven months, America left more than 75,000 American soldiers dead in Europe. Torn between bringing the soldiers home and the expense of doing so, the U.S. government allowed the families to decide the fates of their fallen loved ones. Two parties arose from the controversy over whether the fallen soldiers should be brought home or left in American cemeteries abroad. The “Bring Home the Soldier Dead League” wanted the former, and the “Field of Honor Association” wanted the latter. Most of the soldiers’ bodies were shipped home to America, but in 1920-1921, eight permanent cemetery sites were designated in Europe: Suresnes, Romagne, Belleau Wood, Bony, Brookwood, Fère-en-Tardenois, Thiaucourt, and Waregem. In addition to the American cemeteries, it was also decided that American monuments would be erected in Europe. General Pershing emerged as the “chief of national remembrance” for the United States, and the first chairman of the ABMC.


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