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.