In Impromptus today, I raise many questions (and answer some of them). One of them is, What’s an American? As I say in my column, this question has been around for a long time — since the 18th century. There are many books about it. And essays and poems and songs and so on.
During the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, a Trump activist said, “It’s rich that we allow ourselves to get lectured by a person called ‘Nimarata Randhawa’ about American values.” He also said,
Our society made it far too easy for someone like Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, who doesn’t know a thing about our constitution, values, and history, to ascend to the highest levels of power.
“Nikki Haley” is not American in any fundamental sense of the term.
And so on and so forth. That man is now President Trump’s liaison to the Justice Department.
It so happens, I am in Mexico City, doing some reporting — and thinking about Claudia Sheinbaum and other Latin American leaders. Sheinbaum was elected president of Mexico last year. Oddly, her Jewishness did not really come up in the campaign, in this traditionally Catholic country.
Except now and then. Vicente Fox, the ex-president, mocked her as a “Bulgarian Jew.” He said that his party’s candidate was “the only Mexican” in the race. His comment backfired — and he apologized for it.
But he backslid a couple of months later, tweeting that Sheinbaum was “JEWISH AND FOREIGN AT THE SAME TIME.”
Claudia Sheinbaum was born in Mexico, as were her parents. Her paternal grandparents were Ashkenazi Jews from Lithuania; her maternal grandparents were Sephardic Jews from Bulgaria.
The ethnic diversity of the Americas is tremendous. You can tell simply from the heads of state.
Dilma Rousseff was president of Brazil in the 2010s. Her father came from Bulgaria (“Rusev”). She was succeeded by Michel Temer, whose parents came from Lebanon.
In Argentina, President Javier Milei is of Italian and Croatian heritage. He holds Italian citizenship (as well as Argentinian, of course). The president of Colombia, too, holds Italian citizenship. He is Gustavo Petro. The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, is of Croatian heritage (“Borić”).
The president of El Salvador is Nayib Bukele. Not a very Spanish name, is it? His father was of Palestinian origin, an imam who set up several mosques in El Salvador.
Argentina had a president named “Carlos Menem.” His parents came from Syria. Argentina had another president named “Néstor Carlos Kirchner Ostoić.” What a moniker, huh? Lot goin’ on there. His father was of German-Swiss descent, his mother of Croatian. Alberto Fujimori was the president of Peru. His parents came from Japan. He was nicknamed, of course, “el chino” — “the Chinaman.”
What’s an American? Oh, what a question!