What if Latin America Ruled the World? by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

Author:Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-06-28T20:00:00+00:00

8

Revolution, or How to See the Beginning in the End

Rebellions of Everynight Life

‘Tonight we’re not going to discuss the Cuban Revolution. Tonight, I’m going to tell you about another kind of revolution. It started in the Caribbean, moved to New York first and then to Miami, and it’s about to change the face of America.’ This is Celeste. She is Cuban American, lives between Miami and New York, where she freelances as a journalist and engages in her most cherished passion, salsa dancing. Nobody I know cares more about Latino music and culture in the United States than Celeste. I joined her in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where she has promised to show me some of the most significant places in the history of the rising Latino presence in the East Coast of the United States.

At the moment there are only four states in the Union where non-Latino whites, or Anglos, are in the minority. In America, these are known as ‘minority-majority’ states. They are California, Texas, Hawaii and New Mexico. It is expected that the 2010 Census will show that as many as ten or twelve states have passed that milestone. If this is the case, it is likely that by 2040 the United States will be a ‘minority-majority’ nation. The steady rise in the Latino population, coupled with a slow but steady increase in the Latino vote, will have dramatic consequences for the political future of America. On the one hand, it bodes well for Democrats in key states like Texas. On the other, as Latinos become more powerful in a stronger Democratic Party, it is likely that they will turn against a model of economic development in which access to common goods such as housing, health and education have taken the form of private debts. Furthermore, given the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis, only the provision of mortgage refinance funds associated with a common right to housing would restore value to the toxic derivative assets that are today poisoning the world banking system. In this context, claiming access to common goods in the form of a social rent rather than as private debts has become a local issue of crucial global importance. Latinos, who bear most of the burden of the crisis and, as the majority, have the chance to turn things around, will be protagonists in their own right. The United States are set to become the next Latino States of America.

‘This is the place where the Hernández brothers, Rafael and Jesús, held their dances and political meetings,’ says Celeste, pointing at the building in Brooklyn where legendary promoter Federico Pagani conspired with fellow tuxedo-wearing men of the growing Puerto Rican community in late 1940s New York. This is one of the places in the United States where the story of the political rise of Latinos started. ‘Rafael and Jesús were first recruited by jazz bandleader James Reese Europe to join the US Army’s Harlem Hell fighters musical band, the Orchestra Europe, during the First World War,’ she explains.

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