When browsing the various social networks, it is not uncommon to find several videos of how Americans (mostly white) attack people when they hear them speak Spanish, arguing that they are in the United States and therefore must communicate in English. This action has a name: Hispanophobia.
According to the Royal Spanish Academy, Hispanophobia is the irrational fear or aversion to anything Hispanic or Spanish, including the language, which has become the second most spoken in the United States.
The Hispanic Council states that 57 million people speak Spanish in the United States, and the number of Spanish speakers grows in the country by around one million annually.
In 2018 the number of Spanish speakers was 53 million, by 2020 it rose to 55 million, while in 2022, that figure exceeded 57 million, reflecting that the Hispanic community is the group that grows the most in terms of population each year.
An analysis carried out by Ana Celia Zentella, from the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) of Iztapalapa, Mexico, indicates that the initial formation of national identities is based on language and it is much easier to focus on it or on the identity than to explain complicated political or civil rights issues.
?Where old social relations have become unstable, amid the rise of general insecurity, belonging to a common language and culture may become the only certainty in society, the only value beyond ambiguity and doubt?, he says.
From that perspective, he says, Americans who do not speak standard English are deficient, and those who speak other languages are even less equal; Those who do not speak the English language are not worthy of equal protection under the law.
For various analysts, nationalist exaltation was widely promoted during the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump, who among his promises was to deport immigrants, build a wall on the southern border of the United States, return the jobs that industries they had taken to Mexico, renegotiate the Trilateral Free Trade Agreement and expel the Muslims.
The Republican appealed to the feeling of nostalgia for a mythical era in which the country had been "great." At that time he called on the electorate to recover that greatness, which, he said, had been lost because immigrants, Afro-descendants and other minorities, including Latinos, had taken over the country.
Trump won, and made the phrase Make America Great Again (MAGA) a banner for many who already had racist behavior. Empowered, they demanded immigrants speak “American” (American), without often keeping in mind that America is a continent, not a country and much less a language.
Just a few months ago, a video on Tik Tok went viral. In it, a 55-year-old woman attacked some employees of a pizzeria, arguing that there were programs in Spanish on the establishment's television.
@kosipics #racistoftheday #racissinthewild #racistwhitewoman #racistkaren? #karenalert #whitepeople #mexicanrestaurant #laraza ? Good Cumbia – La Cumbia Group
"You're in America, you're supposed to learn English," said the woman who was demanding her payment back, because "she wouldn't give her money to an illegal immigrant."
Speeches like that are repeated throughout the country daily, but many of them are not recorded and much less reported.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 53 percent say the biggest problem is that people don't see racial discrimination where it really exists.
The same research institute specifies that the proportion of Latinos in the United States who speak English fluently is growing.
In 2022, it points out, 72 percent of Latinos ages 5 and older spoke English fluently, up from 59 percent in 2000.
Thus, the proportion of U.S.-born Latinos who speak English fluently increased by 9 percentage points in that period, compared to a 5-point increase among Latino immigrants. In total, 42.3 million Latinos in the United States spoke English fluently in 2022.
This publication was supported in whole or part by funding provided by the State of California, ayou administeredred by the CaliFornia State Library.
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