society -
Hispanidad
The New Challenge
by Paola Ronconi
The alarm was sounded by the illustrious Harvard professor Samuel Huntington.
After his famous book, The Clash of Civilizations, in which he compared
the West and the Islamic world in light of September 11th, this American
intellectual explained that today, the real challenge for the United States
is hispanidad, the Hispanic immigrants who enter the United States in a
steady stream, especially from Mexico. Huntington accuses the largest minority
in America (39 million people, 12% of the American population) of not assimilating
with American culture, of creating political and linguistic enclaves, and
of rejecting the Anglo-Protestant values that made the American dream.
In short, they are a time bomb.
In all this, Spain, and its Catholicism, are still today a constant point
of reference for the 300 million Spanish speakers scattered throughout
the world, thanks to the myriad family, political, economic, and financial
ties due to relations of cooperation for development or the presence of
religious and missionary orders.
But the events of March 11th have shown that Spain represents a weak link
for the West, as the Spanish people no longer identifies with the Catholicism
that throughout history has been a factor of national identity and unity.
And this deterioration is mirrored also in Spanish-speaking America.
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