Sparring in Spanish
Texas Democrats try Spanish-only debate.

By Jim Boulet Jr., executive director, English First.
March 4, 2002 8:30 a.m.

wo men running for governor of Texas planned to debate entirely in Spanish on March 1st.

At the last minute, one of the candidates involved, Dan Morales, decided to translate his answers into English because "the vast majority of the citizens of our state speak English," including "a significant number of Hispanic Texans."

Morales's opponent, Tony Sanchez, accused him of being "very ashamed and very embarrassed to be Hispanic." He added that it was a "slap in the face to seven million Latinos that live in Texas when you tell them that you do not want to communicate with them in the language that they prefer."

After the debate, the Spanish-language press asked Sanchez to detail how "Mr. Morales had insulted Hispanics" by asserting that English was the primary language of Texas.

That same mentality was displayed during an Olympic press conference last month, when the goalie for the Russian ice hockey team, Nikolai Khabibulin, began to answer a question in English. The New York Times reported that a Russian press aide snapped: "You are from Russia. Why don't you try answering in Russian?"

Contrary to the belief of people like Mr. Sanchez, the Spanish language is not somehow hardwired into every Hispanic's DNA. Even militant Chicano activists of the 1960s varied widely in their Spanish fluency, as Jose Angel Gutierrez's memoir, The Making of a Chicano Militant, demonstrates:

Corky [Gonzales] asked me for our support to elect him as the national chairman of La Raza Unida Party. [Reies Lopez] Tijerina immediately expressed displeasure at this notion. He asked Corky, en espanol, if this was a plan to run for President of the United States, as some people had suggested. The question in Spanish was a double insult to Corky because he barely understood it . . . [Corky] barely spoke Spanish.

This game of "I'm more Hispanic than you are" benefits no one. Sanchez, the ferocious fighter for a bilingual Texas, was forced to publicly deny that he had shaved off his mustache in order to look less ethnic.

While the Democrats held their Spanish-only debate, there were undoubtedly folks in Republican circles kicking themselves for not having thought of the idea first, if the GOP's January meeting in Austin, Texas, is any indication. At that meeting, the new GOP chairman, Marc Racicot, announced a new program to provide "Spanish lessons for party leaders in key states."

This unfortunately bipartisan view that Spanish is the only proper way to communicate with Hispanic Americans relegates them to a linguistic cul-de-sac well off the superhighway of American political debate.

This Spanish-only debate also set a poor precedent. Inevitably, there will one day be "advocates for the Vietnamese community" in Houston, themselves fluent English speakers, demanding a candidates' debate conducted entirely in Vietnamese.

And given the problems we already have holding politicians accountable for campaign promises made in English, opening the door to yet another excuse — "the translator made a mistake" — seems hardly likely to improve matters.

There are far more constructive ways for politicians to court Hispanic voters than to bombard them with condescending Spanish-language materials. Treating Hispanics like other Americans, instead of as Spanish-speaking foreigners within our borders, would be both better politics and better for our national unity.