0.1 Preface  (Page 4/7)

The utopia of hispanics in the xxi century

In this same line of thought, in which our maximum power, with political weight, it is our cultural singularity, the Conclusions of the First Conference are situated in Spain on “Hispanic Cultures in the United States of America: Towards the new synthesis” (1988), that counted on a numerous attendance of Hispanics of different national origins, and that proclaimed the following political message, except with cultural ethnic clothes:

1. “We affirm the radical right of the nations, singularly the Hispanic ones, to be the protagonists of its history and the creators of its project of life in the community, condemning all form of domination and ethnic and racial discrimination, and proclaiming the exigency of a real and effective pluralism, with respect to all the minority cultures that form the American and European societies.

2. We proclaim our identity as Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Hispano-Americans with pride, demanding respect for our identity as a nation and the recognition of our singular past, present, and future contribution to the historical creation and development in the United States of America.

3. We commit to look for and to deepen the common roots of the culture and history of all those that form the Hispanic nation, as much in America and Europe as of any part of the world.

4. We as European congressmen, and singularly Spaniards, show our solidarity and support the process of the cultural creation of Hispanics in America that bravely defend their identity, language, and culture, and constitute a model for other nations of ethnic minorities, that demand respect for the cultural difference as a foundation of all true democracy.” (First Hispanic Conference, Spain, 1988).

The Conference, besides being a proclamation of intercultural communitarian aspirations and experience, was an academic interdisciplinary form with a serious and fecund university task. The benefit was more than a hundred addresses and communications that were presented at the Conference These addresses (767 pages) and these conclusions can be consulted, in the work publisher by the Spanish organizers of this conference, M.J.Buxó y T. Calvo Buezas (Eds.) Culturas Hispanas de los Estados Unidos de América, Madrid, Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1990. .

A crucial agglutinant of that Hispanic cultural political power of the United States is the language. For that reason, the "English only" (Proposal R. Unz 227, California) is more than a battle, just for the “communication-information,” it is a fight for the right to cultural difference, for autonomy as ethnic group, for vindication of the most powerful substrate of creation –ethno genesis– of a nationality in a plural-ethnic and plural-cultural State-Society.

Language, the political weapon of hispanics in the u.s.

The Spanish language is multiplied –with political and economic power– in the social mass media; television, press, and radio. Univisión was ranked as the fifth largest television network in the United States in 1998, reaching 52% of 30 million Hispanics in the US. And in that same year, Nueva Mega , a radio transmitter in Spanish, has been ranked first in the metropolitan area of New York... “If yesterday was missions, today is emissions.”