With
the exception of a year abroad as a Fulbright teacher in England, I have always
lived in the United States and until some trips abroad I really had no
understanding of what the “melting pot” really was. I just thought it meant
that we were a bunch of nationalities and races coming together to form our own
new nationality. I don’t really think that’s true anymore. I think we are still
all those various cultures that have come together on the ideas espoused in the
Declaration of Independence, still retaining our own individual cultures and
remaking them without even knowing it. We have changed greatly over the past
400+ years because we live together and learn from others.
Hispanic
culture that filters up from Latin America is a huge cultural influence that is
actually older than our “English” culture. And I love it. Come on, who doesn’t?
Even when some may deride Hispanic culture as garish with its gaudy colored
houses and chickens in the yard, we still eat Nachos, and drink Corona and
Margaritas. We love chocolate and coffee that comes from South America. We hike
through Canyons, wondering silently what a gorge even is. We Americans are so
heavily influenced by Old Spain and its New World children that sometimes we
don’t even know the words we speak as American English aren’t even part of the
British lexicon.
We
Anglo-Americans are so confused we honestly think we aren’t enamored of
Hispanic culture. I, for one, love that I can drive down the road and eat
street tacos. I love that I had a pork burrito in salsa verde for lunch
yesterday in Cle Elum, Washington. When I was in England I went to the one
Mexican Restaurant in Exeter only to find that they thought blackened catfish
with rice and beans was Mexican. I knew that even though Elizabeth I may have defeated
the Spanish Armada, the marriage of the two cultures has its progeny right here
in our New World country. So in my pursuit of happiness I wish to extol the
virtues of Hispanic culture in America.
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