The Diplomat
The Hispanic Council presented the third edition of its report “Spanish in U.S. Politics” last Tuesday on Capitol Hill in Washington, in an event attended by the leaders of several of the main Hispanic organisations in the country.
Daniel Ureña, President of The Hispanic Council, stated that “it is worthwhile to care for and disseminate Spanish, as it is an essential element of American identity and culture“. He also referred to the Spanish language as “a treasure that belongs to the almost 500 million people who speak it around the world”.
The report includes some data on how Spanish is on the rise in US institutions, such as the Senate and the House of Representatives. Currently, 74 congressmen and 28 senators use Spanish in their digital communication with citizens.
The event was attended by the leaders of the main Hispanic associations in the United States. Jennice Fuentes, former chief of staff to Illinois Democratic Congressman Luis Gutiérrez, noted that “Spanish establishes a very strong connection and creates community, regardless of country of origin”.
Mary Ann Gómez Orta, president and CEO of the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI) predicted that “we are going to see more non-Hispanic members using Spanish as well as English”. That is a trend reflected in the report, as of the 74 members of Congress who use Spanish, 41 are Hispanic. In the Senate, the difference is even greater, as only 6 of the 28 Senators who communicate in Spanish are of Hispanic origin.
With regard to the legal responsibility of politicians to make their decisions clear, Marco Davis, President and CEO of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), claimed that “even if you don’t know Spanish, we must insist that political representatives communicate in Spanish” so that citizens “are sure to know in detail the laws and policies that affect them”.
The Hispanic community makes up almost 19% of the total US population. In fact, by the year 2060, it is expected to reach 30%. In this sense, supported by the sociological complexity of the country, Alfonso Aguilar, President of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, stressed that “the Hispanic community is not monolithic” and emphasised that “it is in the Hispanic community that we can see that we have a diverse country because we do not all think alike”.
The study, which is now in its third edition and is carried out every two years to measure the use that US congressmen and senators make of the Spanish language in their communication with the electorate, shows that there has been a strong upward trend in the use of Spanish in recent years. In the last four years, the number of senators already using Spanish to communicate with citizens has doubled.
