History with David Rubenstein

(theme music playing) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.

I'm gonna be in conversation today with Geraldo Cadava, who is a professor of history at Northwestern University, and we're gonna talk about his book, "The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity from Nixon to Trump."

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's go through your book, and before we do that, let's go through some of the terminology because it's always confusing to me.

Tell me what an Hispanic is and how that's different from a Latino.

CADAVA: Well, Hispanic tends to connote a relationship with a Spanish, Spanish empire, descent from Spain.

So, for example, a Spanish immigrant from Spain living in the United States today, some would argue that they can be Hispanic, but they can't be Latino.

A Brazilian, uh, had nothing to do with the Spanish Empire.

They were descendants of the Portuguese Empire.

RUBENSTEIN: So, somebody from Brazil, what would they be?

CADAVA: They, some call themselves Latino, but... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: I speak with many students at Northwestern who are from Brazil, and they have very complicated feelings about the term Latino.

I personally, I, you can call me whatever you want because I... The reason I don't get too worked up about any one of these names is that they're always changing.

They're always changing.

And so, yes, I think hi, Hispanic and Latino, that's safe territory.

You can call someone Hispanic or Latino.

The census, that's the category of the U.S.

government... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: It says, "Hispanic/Latino."

That's okay.

But if you call an 18 to 20-year-old political activist on a college campus Hispanic, maybe they'll get upset.

But... RUBENSTEIN: Do they wanna be called... CADAVA: They would like to be called Latine today.

RUBENSTEIN: Latine?

CADAVA: Latine, that's the newest one.

Uh, that's the newest one.

RUBENSTEIN: The new one.

CADAVA: They'd probably be okay with Latinx, although they, um, yeah, they didn't love Latinx either.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so in 1960... CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, the population of the United States was, was 90% white... CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: 8% Black, and 2% Latino or Hispanic.

CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: What is that percentage today?

Latino, Hispanic, what, what percentage is it?

Much bigger than African American at this point, right?

CADAVA: Yeah.

It's by, by far the largest, uh, non-white ethnic group in the United States.

RUBENSTEIN: So, what percentage of the population?

CADAVA: It's about 20%.

RUBENSTEIN: 20%?

CADAVA: A fifth, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: And yeah, so one in every five.

And if you think about it, I mean, it's an overwhelmingly young population.

Where I live in Chicago, 50% of the, uh, K-through-12 students are Latino.

In places like Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, it's more like two-thirds.

RUBENSTEIN: So, if you were to do a normal population kind of, uh, extension... CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: In 50 years, will the population of the United States be a majority Hispanic-Latino?

CADAVA: Maybe, I mean, there are arguments for and against that idea.

I mean, part of what happens is that Latinos, the longer they're here, intermarry, move out of Latino-dominant areas into suburbs that maybe are only 5 or 10% Latino.

So, the population becomes more diffuse.

It's truly national now.

So, I don't think it's gonna be a majority Latino.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, in 1960, uh, we have 2% Latino-Hispanic.

I assume most of them came from some Central America, some Mexico.

Where did they come from?

And the earliest, uh, people who are Latino, Hispanic, where do they come from?

CADAVA: The vast, vast majority of Latinos in the United States in 1960 would've been overwhelmingly Mexican American, probably 60, 70%.

A smaller number from Puerto Rico.

The 1940s and 1950s was a period in Puerto Rican American history called the Great Migration, where hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans left the island to come to New York in particular.

RUBENSTEIN: Why was that?

CADAVA: Oh, um, economic troubles... RUBENSTEIN: Economic reasons, okay.

CADAVA: On the island, yeah, primarily.

But this is like the origin story of West Side Story.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so in 1960, '61... CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Fidel Castro takes over Cuba.

CADAVA: '59, yep.

RUBENSTEIN: And, uh, '59.

CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And then, um, the Bay of Pigs is in 1961.

CADAVA: '61, yep.

RUBENSTEIN: And is that when, um, uh, people from Cuba started flooding into the United States, um, after Castro and after the failure of the Bay of Pigs?

CADAVA: They came immediately.

I mean, they came in '59.

They came even beforehand.

But, um, you know, like Marco Rubio, I think, talks about how his family came in 1956.

So, there were streams... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: Coming earlier, but, uh, the first mass wave was from '59 to, say, the mid-1960s.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Now, it was always said that the people from Cuba that came over, they were very anti-communist... CADAVA: Yep.

RUBENSTEIN: Anti-Castro, and they were die-hard Republicans.

Is that true?

CADAVA: No, not, not really.

I mean, um, first of all, they didn't really naturalize en masse until the mid-1970s.

So, for the first, say, 15 years that they were in the United States, they were committed to politics on the island of Cuba.

So, they were forming in Miami, you know, governments... RUBENSTEIN: On the idea, they would go back?

CADAVA: That was the idea that they were gonna overthrow Castro.

They were forming governments... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: In exile.

They had already, the exile community in Miami had already chosen a successor as president after Fidel Castro.

So, the idea for the first 10, 15 years was that they were going to overthrow Castro and go back and... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: Form a government in Cuba.

RUBENSTEIN: So, when Kennedy is running for president... CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: In 1960, and then when Lyndon Johnson was running in 1964... CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Did they have large, um, Hispanic get-out-the-vote operations?

Or do the Republicans have large get-out-the-vote operations, uh, for, for Hispanics in '60, '64?

CADAVA: Both parties do, um, both parties do.

And it's mostly Mexicans in the Southwest.

It's related to what you were saying about the population of the United States in 1960.

Because of the growth of the Sun Belt, beginning in, you know, immediately after World War II, states like California, Arizona, uh, Texas, New Mexico, Florida, tho, populations of those states grew.

So, in 1950, the greatest number of electoral votes in the United States was here in New York.

By 1970, the electoral map had begun to shift west, and the biggest Latino populations were in the places that were becoming more electorally important where Mexicans live in Southwest.

RUBENSTEIN: And Mexicans, when they came in, what, they, uh, there's a word, "bracero."

CADAVA: Oh, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: What was that word?

CADAVA: Well, it means, uh, those who work with their arms.

Brazo means arm in Spanish.

And, um, the Bracero Program, it was, the, the official name was the Emergency Farm Labor Program, it was a temporary guest worker program, uh, a bi-national agreement between the United States and Mexico for Mexico to provide a large number of immigrants to do work in the fields, ranches, railroad tracks for a certain period of time... RUBENSTEIN: But very often, the Mexicans... CADAVA: And return.

RUBENSTEIN: Would come back and forth.

They would go back and forth across the border.

It wasn't that hard to get in and out.

CADAVA: Correct, yeah.

It, it was not hard to get in and out.

Braceros could be here legally.

They were in the United States legally on temporary guest worker contracts.

RUBENSTEIN: In 1968, uh, Richard Nixon is the nominee of the Republican Party.

CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, and he begins to appeal to Hispanics.

What did, why did he think he would appeal to Hispanics particularly well?

CADAVA: Ah, such a good question.

You know, we, a lot of attention has been paid by historians to, uh, the Southern strategy.

And, uh, you know, the Republican Party started hemorrhaging African American support.

It had long been the, the, uh, you know, the party of Lincoln, and so most African Americans were Republicans.

But when the Republican Party did not support civil rights in the 1960s, they began hemorrhaging African American support.

And so very intentionally, Republican political strategists knew that they had to make up for that loss support from somewhere, and Latinos became, uh, their prime target, in part because of anti-communism in the '60s.

That was a, a really important factor.

But there was also this idea that, uh, Latinos shared many of the cultural traditional values of the Republican Party.

And, they were aspiring business owners.

RUBENSTEIN: But at that point, the Cuban American community is probably not rushing to go back to Cuba.

CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Famously, uh, Nixon has a friend of Cuban ancestry named Bibi Ro... CADAVA: Bebe.

RUBENSTEIN: Bebe Ro... CADAVA: Bebe Rebozo, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Bebe Rebozo.

CADAVA: His bartender, yeah, fascinating story.

His chauffeur... RUBENSTEIN: So, what was the story with Bebe?

What was, where did he get that nickname from, and... CADAVA: Bebe Rebozo.

Um, I don't know the origins of the nickname Bebe, but he was, um, you know, in a lot of ways, his best friend, Nixon's best friend, one of his closest confidants, and was... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: A, a, a presence in the White House.

RUBENSTEIN: So, did he help drive the push to get more Cuban Americans to support, or that didn't really happen?

CADAVA: I don't think so.

I don't think he's seen as one of the drivers of... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: Cubans moving to the Republican Party.

He's like Nixon's friend and buddy, and he, his drinking buddy.

You know?

And helps Nixon kind of make ties with, uh, the Miami mafiosos who help Nixon get his house in South Florida.

That's Bebe Rebozo's scene.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: Less politics.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, Nixon began a tradition that it's inexplicable why it began this way, but it seems that to be the treasurer of the United States, not the Secretary of Treasury, but the treasurer of the United States, you need to be a Mexican American woman.

CADAVA: Yeah, isn't that fascinating?

RUBENSTEIN: Why is that?

And he began that tradition, and we still have, every treasurer seemed to be a Mexican American or Hispanic woman.

CADAVA: Yeah, well, this was just one pillar of Nixon's effort to recruit more Latinos in 1968.

He called support for business owners "the third prong of the Civil Rights Movement."

He saw economic uplift as a really important issue, not only for, uh, Latinos, but for African Americans as well.

Historians call it Black capitalism, Brown capitalism.

And so, he helped Latinos start a lot of savings and loan and thrift banks, and really helped the small business community.

He hired an economist named Ben Fernandez, who would go on 12 years later to become the first Hispanic to run for president as a Republican.

So, business and economics was one of the main ways that he tried to recruit Latinos.

So, this woman, Romana Acosta Bauelos, who was the first Hispanic treasurer of the United States, she had started a bank in Southern California called the Banco del Pueblo.

She had started a tortilla factory called Ramona's Mexican Food Products.

It's still the largest kind of Mexican food distributor in the Southwest.

And, uh, so she projected a lot of... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: How Nixon wanted to communicate with Latinos.

Here was a woman business owner.

So, women can have careers; they didn't just have to be mothers.

But very importantly, in 1968, she was not a, a political radical at all.

She was not a Chicana.

RUBENSTEIN: So, for those who aren't knowledgeable about how the U.S.

Treasury works, what does the treasurer of the United States actually do?

CADAVA: They, they sign the currency and they sign the currency.

And they sign the currency.

They have no, it's the Secretary of the Treasury that has all of the policymaking power.

It's largely, um, symbolic.

It's a symbolic position.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: But it's one of the ways in which the Republican Party has tried to signal support for Latinos.

And so, after Bauelos, it was Katherine Ortega, Catalina Vasquez Villalpando.

Ortega was under Reagan.

Villalpando was under Bush.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, the current woman that's running the Semiquincentennial... CADAVA: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Commission is a former treasurer of the United States as well, I think, Rosie Rios.

CADAVA: Rosie Rios, yeah, yeah.

It's a tradition, it's a tradition.

A symbolic tradition.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Nixon leaves office.

Gerald Ford becomes president.

What does he do in the Hispanic-Latino world that's still noteworthy?

CADAVA: Oh, boy.

Well, he was president at the time that the Republican National Hispanic Assembly was formed as, uh, an auxiliary of the Republican National Committee when George H.W.

Bush was the chairman of the, um, RNC.

So, and that was, that group, the existence of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, was an effort to bring more Latinos into the Republican Party apparatus.

So, he was supportive of that, and he largely wanted to duplicate Nixon's support among Latinos.

But it's important to note that Reagan did a lot better than Ford did among Latinos.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: Reagan had been the governor of California, you know, uh, developed... He, he, his, a point of pride for him is that he hired in his cabinet more Latinos in California than any other governor since the 19th century.

So, he claims to have had a real... RUBENSTEIN: Right, okay.

CADAVA: Relationship with Latinos.

So, he, he did much better than Ford in the primaries in states with large Latino populations.

Ford didn't really have a natural connection, so... RUBENSTEIN: The Voting Rights Act.

CADAVA: Yes, yes, that is... RUBENSTEIN: That's his big claim to fame, right?

CADAVA: That is a big part of it.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: The amendment to the Voting Rights Act in 1975 was crucially important for Latinos because it, um, mandated the publication of ballots in Spanish in areas where the population was maybe 5 or 10% Latino.

So, in places that had large concentrations.

It was a way of supporting the franchise among Latinos.

Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: The Voting Rights Act is amended.

CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And it now says that if you can only read Spanish... CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: You can still vote.

CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: You don't have to read English, right?

CADAVA: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: You can get ballots... RUBENSTEIN: All right.

CADAVA: In Spanish.

RUBENSTEIN: So that was a big change.

So... CADAVA: A big deal.

RUBENSTEIN: ... let's go forward to 19, uh, '76, Ford loses to, uh, my former boss, Jimmy Carter.

CADAVA: Yep.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, does Carter do anything for Hispanics or Latinos of any note?

CADAVA: Sure.

Well, he, I mean, he does.

He appoints the first, uh, head of the Border Patrol who's Latino.

I think his name's Leonel Castillo.

But, among conservative-leaning Latinos, and probably a lot of conservatives in general... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: They thought that Carter had taken the country in a really wrong direction, and, uh, that gave a lot of fuel for... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: Reagan to recruit Latinos.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

George Herbert Walker Bush... CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, spent much of his adult life in Texas.

Did he do anything particularly for, uh, let's say, Mexican Americans who were then living in Texas?

CADAVA: Yes, he did.

I, I think that he, he's the, you know, patriarch of the Bush family in a political sense, and I think a lot of the ways that the careers of George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, they kind of rode that legacy.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: But, but I actually think that it was Jeb and George W. Bush who leaned into the Latino community much more than George H.W.

Bush.

RUBENSTEIN: But George Herbert Walker Bush does lose the next election, though.

CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: To a guy named Bill, uh, Clinton.

CADAVA: William Jefferson Clinton, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And did Bill Clinton do anything particularly to help Hispanics or to appeal to them?

CADAVA: I think that maybe this is more in, in retrospect than anything else, but I think he has become less and less popular among Latinos in the rearview mirror in part because he was kowtowing to the Republican Party's rightward turn on immigration.

And, uh, you know, he might not have supported Proposition 187, but he did pass, uh... RUBENSTEIN: Proposition 187, what is that?

CADAVA: It's, uh, a state voter ballot initiative in California from 1994 that would have, um, stripped away public education, public health benefits and other social services to undocumented immigrants.

And it became a kind of rallying cry for republicans across the country.

RUBENSTEIN: So, they were not in favor of letting these people have those, um, benefits?

CADAVA: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And, and Clinton went along with that to some extent?

CADAVA: Clinton went along with it.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: He signed, um, it's called the, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

It did a lot of things like, um, establish the 287(g) program, which allowed local police officers to deputize them, basically to become immigration, uh, officials.

And it also took away a lot of, um, social benefits, economic benefits to refugees.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so, George W. Bush is elected in the year 2000.

CADAVA: Yep.

RUBENSTEIN: He grew up in Texas, um, had much more contact than his father had with, uh, people, uh, in Texas in some respects because he spent his whole life there.

CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Did he do anything particularly to woo the Hispanic or Latino vote?

CADAVA: Absolutely.

This was, this was a kind of watershed moment, I think, for the Republican Party.

He, uh, first of all, as the governor of Texas and as a presidential candidate, vowed to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

And, therefore, that was good because it was seen at the time as kind of pulling the Republican Party back from the brink of anti-immigrant fervor.

And so, he was a, a compassionate conservative, as we call him.

So, he had developed a pretty close friendship with the Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Uh, they were both elected in the same year.

And the way that the Latinos who worked in the Bush White House tell the story is that from his inauguration until 9/11, it looked like comprehensive immigration reform was gonna be done.

They, they tell this story about the week before 9/11; Vicente Fox was at the White House.

All 150 Latinos who worked in the Bush White House lined up for a photo.

They called themselves "Los Bushes," and they, uh, lined up for a photo that stretched from one end of the White House to the other.

And it was a big celebration because they felt like comprehensive immigration reform was gonna get passed.

And then 9/11 happened the next week and shut down all talk of comprehensive immigration.

RUBENSTEIN: So, we haven't had comprehensive immigration reform yet, or ever?

CADAVA: Not, not for a long time.

Yeah, not for a long time.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: It's been a lot of fits and starts and, uh, kind of... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: Individual initiatives.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, Bush is succeeded, at, by, at the end of his second term, by Barack Obama.

CADAVA: Yep.

RUBENSTEIN: Did he do anything particularly to help woo Hispanic or Latino voters, or help them?

CADAVA: Uh, he's become thought of as the deporter in chief.

You know, he deported more... What Trump, when he talked about, um, kids in cages, family separations, he will frequently note that Barack Obama built those camps in 2014, 2015, that were detention centers.

But he also, uh, I think as an executive order, put in place DACA, it has allowed minors who came to the United States at a very young age to remain here, work here, go to school here.

RUBENSTEIN: Those that came under that program... CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Their legal status still has not really been clarified.

CADAVA: They're in limbo.

RUBENSTEIN: Right?

CADAVA: Yeah, they're in limbo.

It's not permanent.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, Barack Obama is succeeded by Donald Trump.

CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And Donald Trump made one of the major tenets of his, uh, election campaign building a wall, uh... CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Around the Mexican border.

Did that wall get built?

CADAVA: No, parts of it.

I mean, uh, a, a few miles here, a few miles there, but the US-Mexico border is more than 2,000 miles long.

There are walls along maybe seven or 800 miles of it in cities... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: In areas of the border where there's a lot of crossing.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, today in the United States... CADAVA: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: The largest percentage of Hispanics, Latinos, come from Mexico, would you say?

Is that the... CADAVA: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Have you looked at the population, is it... CADAVA: By far, yeah, it's two-thirds, maybe.

RUBENSTEIN: Two-thirds.

CADAVA: 60%.

RUBENSTEIN: What's, what's second?

CADAVA: Uh, it's still Cuba and Puerto Rico at about 10% each.

But, uh, the, the, this is what has really changed since the 1960s with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

Not just because of that.

But, uh, at different moments in the second half of the 20th century, the Latino population has really diversified.

So, there are more Colombians, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Chileans now.

RUBENSTEIN: So... CADAVA: There, those were very small populations... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: Before the '60s.

RUBENSTEIN: In the Hispanic community, Latino community who, uh, among Americans are heroes, people would look up to?

These are role models.

Are they athletes?

Are they scholars?

Are they scientists?

CADAVA: You know, there, there are a lot of role models.

Some of them are more or less famous.

There was a Spaniard named Bernardo de Glvez who played a prominent role in the American Revolution.

He helped gain funds from the Spanish crown from Cuba, which was the kind of island where a lot of Mexico's and Latin America's wealth flowed through.

He secured financing for the Battle of Yorktown.

Uh, so a lot of Spanish historians argue that the United States couldn't have won the American Revolution without Spanish support.

His portrait is hung in the Capitol.

It was unveiled maybe 10 years ago.

So, he's a hero.

But I would say there are people like Ellen Ochoa, who was the first Latina astronaut in space.

There are people like, oh, boy, so many athletes who... RUBENSTEIN: Well, athletes for sure.

CADAVA: Athletes for sure, there's no doubt, educators, industrialists, I mean, I'm thinking about, uh, Roberto Goizueta, the chairman of Coca-Cola for a long time.

I'm thinking about Bob Unanue, one of the founders of Goya Beans.

There are a lot of... RUBENSTEIN: So, people that are coming into our country, quote, "illegally"... CADAVA: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Coming through Mexico of, or the southern border, they, are they escaping political persecution or are they escaping a bad economic situation or gang, uh, violence?

What do you think their, the main reason that people are coming in so much?

And are they coming as much now as they were under previous presidents?

CADAVA: I, I think they're coming as much now as they were under previous presidents, and I would think that it's only going to grow because of climate change, uh, you know, environmental instability in other parts of the world.

I also think that political instability in Latin America is ongoing.

So, I think, I think it'll continue to grow.

I think they come because of fears of political persecution and because they're economic migrants and are looking for jobs.

And that's, that's really the critical... RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CADAVA: Question when they present themselves for their asylum hearings.

Can they demonstrate a reasonable fear of persecution?

Because for the past 40 years, I would say, since the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, the conservative argument has been largely that they are here for economic reasons, and it's not our responsibility, the responsibility of the United States to protect economic migrants, but there are asylum laws that... RUBENSTEIN: But are, are... CADAVA: Obligate us to... RUBENSTEIN: Are people coming in carrying drugs, as often thought, and they're smuggling drugs in, or is that not as big as a problem, uh, as big a problem as it once was?

CADAVA: No, it's still a huge problem, but interesting, now, now, I mean, fentanyl is more of a problem than marijuana, for example.

But, 50% of the fentanyl arrests are of American citizens who bring it across the border on their way back.

They're paid by cartels, pressured by cartels to smuggle fentanyl into the United States.

RUBENSTEIN: So, for anybody that's watching, what would you most want somebody to know about the Latino-Hispanic community in the United States?

CADAVA: I would say, first of all, we've been here for as long as the country's been here, even before.

I think that's an important recognition for how you think about American history.

We know we have our 250th anniversary as a nation coming up.

I'm very curious to see how and whether Latinos are included in that story, and even whether some of the, the forebears before the United States who were of Spanish descent are included in the story of America's beginnings, but I'm focusing on the beginning.

You could tell a story about Latinos in the United States in every period of American history, and so I think recognizing our long presence in the country is one thing.

The second thing is understanding that we are an incredibly dynamic and changing community.

So, the vast majority of Latinos now are native-born Americans.

There was a brief period in the early 20th century when there were more immigrants from Latin America than native-born Americans, but that's no longer true.

Hasn't been for decades.

And so, what that means is that we have first-generation immigrants.

We have people who've been here for five, six, seven generations if your family's lived in Texas since the early 19th century.

And we all... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CADAVA: Can believe very different things about ourselves, our place in the United States.

RUBENSTEIN: So, your next book is gonna be what?

CADAVA: It's a history of Latinos over the past 500 years that tries to understand Latinos as always both, um, you know, a crude way of putting it is colonizer and colonized.

I think most Latino historians have understood Latinos as a colonized population, the victims of the American Empire, the victims of racial discrimination.

But for our whole nation's history, there have been many Latinos who have been enamored with the American project.

I mean, there are Cubans who, in the 1830s, wanted to be annexed by the United States, largely because, uh, you know, of their relationships with southern, southern plantation owners.

There are many Latinos who fought in World War II, the Vietnam War, and so I want to tell a kind of fuller Latino history by looking at all sides of the story.

RUBENSTEIN: Thank you very much for an interesting conversation, I enjoyed it.

CADAVA: Thank you.

RUBENSTEIN: Thank you.

(music plays through credits)