History with David Rubenstein

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

I'm gonna be in conversation today with Marie Arana, who is the inaugural literary director of Library of Congress and an accomplished author in her own right.

And we're gonna talk today about her new book, Latinoland.

We're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium of the New York Historical Society.

Marie, thank you very much for joining us.

ARANA: Oh, it's such a pleasure.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, let's about your own background.

Um, where were you born?

ARANA: Lima, Peru.

RUBENSTEIN: And you were born there because one of your parents was Peruvian?

ARANA: My father, God bless him, uh, was Peruvian, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And your father Peruvian, did he say, "I need to marry a Peruvian"?

ARANA: No.

He didn't.

He, um...

It was interesting what happened to my father.

It, it, it's a story that repeats itself again and again.

When the United States needs, uh, uh, people to fill their armies or their classrooms or whatever their agricultural fields, they call on Latin Americans.

My father was, um, called to fill one of the classrooms at MIT, um, during the war, because all the universities were emptied out.

All the young men, American men, were at war, and the State Department went looking for Latin Americans to send to college.

So, he, he came to do his master's at MIT, uh, fell in love with my mother who was in the New England Conservatory of Music, and her building was right next door.

RUBENSTEIN: And she was, uh, Anglo?

ARANA: She was Anglo-American, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So they got married and then they decided to stay in the United States, they moved back to Peru?

ARANA: They moved back to Peru.

Absolutely moved back to Peru, uh, and, um, my mother was an immigrant to Peru.

RUBENSTEIN: So when you were growing up, uh, could you speak Spanish and English?

ARANA: You know, it's interesting because I was completely, um, imbued with the Peruvian culture.

My mother was sort of the odd bird out.

She was the only American I had ever known.

Uh, we spoke Spanish at home, she spoke Spanish.

But I was homeschooled, so she taught me in English but the universe was in Spanish.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

Now, in your book, you open your book by you're coming to the United States, I think, at the, under the age... Was it six or seven or eight?

ARANA: Six was my first visit.

And then we went back to Peru and I came, really, um, as an immigrant, um, at the age of nine.

RUBENSTEIN: So let's talk about the terminology.

Uh, what does it mean to be Latino?

Where did the word Latino come from?

ARANA: It's interesting because all of the labels for us were actually imposed on us.

Um, the, the, the word Latino came from, uh, Napoleonic times when Napoleon had designs on, uh, the Americas.

He, he wanted to come right up and take that territory that the United, the United States, uh, eventually took.

Um, and he planted himself, of course, in Louisiana.

We, we know that he, he bought it in secret from, uh, the Spanish and, to convince people that they were already related, he used the term, uh, Latine.

So, we became, the Latine part of, of the Americas.

Whereas, you know, the Anglo part was something else.

And, um, so we were sort of made La, Latin by Napoleon RUBENSTEIN: Napoleon came up with the idea and referring to the fact that we're all speaking romance languages.

ARANA: You're all people anyway, so... Yeah.

We're all the same people anyway.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

ARANA: And that was, and that was how the, the term Latin began.

RUBENSTEIN: Who came up with the term Hispanic?

ARANA: President Nixon.

President Nixon decided that, you know, people of, uh... And Hispanic was already a word that was being used to, um, to talk about Hispanic history, to talk about, you know, the Span, the Hispanic colonies, but he was the one who, who said, "Those people are Hispanic."

And he actually, um, baptized us as Hispanics as well.

RUBENSTEIN: He campaigned, uh, to get the Hispanic vote in 1968 and he got a large percentage of it, compared to what people thought he otherwise might get.

Right?

ARANA: He was very sympathetic to, to Hispanics or Latinos, whatever you wanna call us.

He was very sympathetic.

He had grown up in California.

His father was, um, a grocer and, um, they were using, um, uh, Hispanic workers, Mexican-American workers, so he knew them.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

Let's talk about, uh, kind of the history of Latinos or Hispanics in this hemisphere.

So, 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, there's a ci, there's civilizations in what we know call Peru, Chile, Columbia, which are modest or are they very elaborate civilizations?

ARANA: They were extremely elaborate civi, civilizations.

They had astronomers.

They had agronomers.

They had, um, uh, philosophers.

They had poets.

They had musicians.

They had everything.

They, they were, they were, um, great engineers.

They were, like, you know, Cheops, uh, in, in Latin America.

They were building great cities.

When the Spaniards who, you know, staggered in, uh, under Hernn Corts, uh, saw it, they were, they, they, they were amazed at the, the canal system, the, the beauty of the pyramids, the, the, uh, of the adoratoriums of Montezuma.

All of that was really striking.

RUBENSTEIN: So, in 1492, Christopher Columbus, did he discover America because there was nobody here before or what did he...

When he came over, what did he discover?

ARANA: Uh, he didn't discover anything.

He was, he, he... You know, there was an enormous, an enormous, um, sense in Europe at the time, particularly in Christian Europe, that, um, that they were bringing civilization, that they were bringing, uh, the religion, they were bringing Christianity.

And there was, of course, the crusades, which began it...

But the real, um, goal was because Spain was impoverished, it needed money.

It needed gold, it needed minerals.

It had just fought, uh, an enormously long war with, uh, trying to, to expel the Moors and the Jews, and so it was, it was bankrupt, and so the first thing that Christopher Columbus did was dig for gold.

The second thing that he did was start, uh, exporting slaves and, um, and the whole slave, slave system that he developed.

So, he, he didn't discover it so much as exploit it.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So ultimately, uh, the British say, "We need to get into this area, too," so they start up some colonies in what is now the United States.

And so there's competition between the British and the Spanish.

ARANA: Well, the British at the time... You know, they, they were, they were looking for money as well.

In fact, uh, Queen Elizabeth was sending out her galleons and Sir Francis Drake and, and all of those who were really pirates.

They were buccaneers and they were stealing the Spanish galleons, which were, which were stealing from the indigenous, right?

They were, they were taking the silver and the, and the gold, but, from the 1500s all the way through to the, to the American Revolution, the Spain was an archenemy of, uh, England.

RUBENSTEIN: So in addition to the original 13 colonies, which were British colonies, there are three other parts that the United States now has that were sort of part of Spain or part of something that was part of Spain, Mexico.

So let's go through those.

Napoleon had more or less had bought what is now known as the Louisiana Purchase from the Spanish, right?

ARANA: Spanish.

Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And he sold it to the United States for, I think, $15 million or something like that.

ARANA: It was the, the fanciest sort of, of sham deal that you can imagine.

In fact, people were questioning, um, Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson was questioning whether France had the right to sell anything to the United States, much less the land but, yes, this is how, this is how the United States got that territory.

RUBENSTEIN: So we doubled the size of our country with the Louisiana Purchase, but then there's this other thing called Mexico, which extended up through most of what's Western United States.

How did we manage to get that?

We just buy that as well?

(laughs) ARANA: Not quite.

Um, the Spanish... Actually, the, the colonies went right up all the way to Colorado and Wyoming, um, and all the way to, to Kansas from California.

And what happened was with that great expansionist movement that, uh, uh... RUBENSTEIN: Manifest Destiny as it was often called.

ARANA: Manifest Destiny, which was, you know, "Take your, take your family and go out there.

It's all yours.

Just put your stake in the ground and, and have it."

Um, in fact, in 1848, what happened was that there were so many settlers pushing into the, the Texas region, the California region, which were actually very heavily populated by, uh, the Spanish colonies and quite developed.

I mean, big, huge cities that had universities and had, you know, a, a whole, uh, market, uh, of, of trading goods.

And, um, the, the settlers moved into that area and eventually, um, it was nothing more than a land grab by, um, by the United States.

RUBENSTEIN: So the United States declared war on Mexico... ARANA: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And ultimately, I think under President Polk, and we basically... ARANA: They invaded Mexico.

They invaded, uh, Veracruz.

And, they just, took over that land and, they had to sign a treaty because they won the Mexican-American war.

And, um, the treaty gave that land essentially to the United States, and then doubled the land territory again.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

So the, the boundary then became the Rio Grande, and so everything south of that was Mexico, and everything north became the United States.

ARANA: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: And what about the Mexicans who were living in what became the United States?

Were they made American citizens or were they still Mexicans and they had to get out of the country?

ARANA: A lot of them were fearful of the American invasion, because it was an invasion, basically.

They were fearful and a lot of them left.

There were 80,000 who stayed which is ironic, because now, of course, there are millions of Mexican-Americans who came back over the border for many, many reasons, but that 80,000 that was left in that territory, um, basically held ground and were given American citizenship, and were called Whites.

Uh, they, they demanded that they be called Whites... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

ARANA: So that they could have the rights to vote.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

And then the third part is Florida.

How did we get Florida?

ARANA: Florida, Florida, um, traded back and forth from England to Spain to then the United States of America.

Basically the same idea, David, because, um, you had settlers that were moving in to, uh, particularly to western Florida, and, um, they rebelled and decided that they, uh, were willing to fight to make Florida America, so eventually, um, Spain didn't have, at that point, Spain didn't have, the um, the, the energy or the dedicated troops to defend it.

RUBENSTEIN: So, Andrew Jackson led a force of people among other, uh, leaders and we basically took Florida, you could say more or less?

ARANA: Correct.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So that's how we expanded to some extent.

Um, let's talk about the countries that now exist and how many have immigrants in this country.

So, um, Mexico is the biggest country that kind of closest to us, not counting Brazil.

Um, how many Mexican-Americans are there?

ARANA: Well, the total number of, of Latinos in this country and...

It's, it's grossly undercounted because a lot of Latinos don't put down Hispanic or Latino.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

ARANA: They put down White or they put down, um, African-American but we think that there are 63 million that are countable, uh, Latinos.

And of that 63 million, about 37 million... are Mexican-American.

RUBENSTEIN: Are Mexican-Americans, okay.

And, um, they are... Of, of those, what percentage, do you think, are legally in the United States?

The vast majority?

ARANA: Oh, the vast majority.

The vast majority are US-born.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

ARANA: People don't realize it.

They, they, they think that Latinos are, are, you know, somebody who just crossed the border yesterday.

Most, uh, uh, of Latinos in this country are American-born.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So let's talk about the other countries in Central America.

El Salvador, there are a lot of immigrants in this country from El Salvador?

ARANA: El Salvador, yes.

The Northern Triangle, um, Honduras and Guatemala and also Nicaragua.

But most of them have come in recently.

Most of them have come in, um, since the 1970s, and for many reasons, a lot of them political.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

What about, um, Dominican Republic?

You pointed out there's a very large percentage of the Dominican Population is actually in the United States.

ARANA: Exactly.

And they're mostly in the east.

They're mostly in New Jersey and New York.

A great deal of them, very artistic, um, very much in the, in the art world.

A lot of our writers are Dominicans.

A lot of our musicians are Dominicans as well.

RUBENSTEIN: What about Haiti?

A lot of immigrants from Haiti?

ARANA: Haiti, yes, and very recently.

Uh, I think that there has been a huge push of Haitian immigration coming over the border.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, uh, Cuba, who owned Cuba?

Uh, the United States didn't ever own it, but we were, had a lot of influence over it.

But when did Cubans start to come to United States?

Was that before Castro very much or not much or how... ARANA: Not really.

Cuba was a thriving, uh, economy.

It was ruled by Batista who was tre, tremendously corrupt and, and supported by the American, uh, commerce, really.

Uh, the mafia had a very big hold on Cuba.

Um, it was a, a very productive country but a very corrupt country, and which was the inspiration for the revolution, of course, the Castro's revolution.

And that's when, uh, Cubans, uh, really began to come to the United States, so it was a great flood after 1958, after the revolution.

And, um, it is so desperate was that move that people were sending their children.

People don't know about the Peter Pan, um, Effort.

Where, I think, it was 14,000 children were sent over by themselves, uh, four years old, uh, uh, right up to 15.

They were sent, flown in, and some of them didn't see their parents again for four years, five years.

One didn't see his parents for 35 years.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, what about Venezuela?

A lot of immigrants from Venezuela?

ARANA: Very much, and recently quite a bit, of course.

Um, there's been a great, uh, diaspora, a great exodus from Venezuela.

There had...

I think it's about 5 million people who have left Venezuela, um, in the past 10 years.

And a lot of them have, of course, have gone to South America, but there's been a great wave coming across the border as well.

RUBENSTEIN: What about the Andean countries, Chile, uh, Peru, Columbia?

Many immigrants there?

ARANA: Certainly from Peru.

Um, I cover in, in my book a village that's in the Colca Valley.

It's called Cabanaconde and, uh, the whole, al, almost the whole village has imported itself to the Maryland suburbs.

But, Chile, not so much.

Um, Peru, much more.

Um, Columbia, a lot because of the, uh, economic situation in Columbia now and the political situation.

RUBENSTEIN: What about Brazil?

ARANA: Brazil, not so much.

Brazil, we have actually very few Brazilians, uh, in this country.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

Let's talk about, uh, the subject of race, which you mentioned.

So, um, when you came here as a young girl, you had never really experienced racial discrimination and you didn't really know what the subject really was, um, but it's a very important subject for many, uh, Hispanics here.

Can you explain more the distinctions that Hispanics in this country see between White, Black, and Brown?

ARANA: It's a culture shock coming to this country, truly, because I think, uh, in, in Latin America, we're so used to 500 years of race mixing.

So, when you come to a country in which, uh, the obsession is binary, because the obsession here is Black or White, um, you don't know quite how to fit in.

I, I'll never forget coming to a bus station, uh, after we landed in Miami the first time when I was six years old, and there were, um, there were restrooms in the bus station where we were going to take a trip then to Wyoming, um, that were divided into, uh, Black and White.

And I remember that moment where I didn't know what color I was.

And I remember my mother just pulling my back and say, "No, you're White.

You're White."

And it was the first time I had ever considered that.

RUBENSTEIN: But the people in Latin America who consider themselves White now, is that everybody who's living there or is it people who came from pure so-called White European stock?

Let's say people came to Argentina, uh, very much as a European immigrant.

ARANA: Well, we all know that Argentina had a huge infusion and had a very deliberate infusion of, of European Whites, uh, that it sought.

Uh, the same in Uruguay, the same in Paraguay, uh, same in Chile.

And the, the countries are very distinct at that way.

In Peru, we have a very large indigenous, uh, population and we have a very large mixed blood population.

Um, I've done my DNA.

I have every race of man.

I have, I have Black, I have Asian, I have indigenous, and I have White.

RUBENSTEIN: The Europeans, when they came over, the, uh, the Spanish, were they not considered White because they were a mixture of, of Moors and, and Jews and, and Africans to some extent?

So, the Spanish blood was not, quote, "pure white"?

ARANA: Even the Spanish blood was quite mixed.

For over 800 years of Arab rule in the southern Spain, of course we have a lot of Moorish blood, and you see it when you go to Seville, you see, you see our Moorish blood.

And we have a lot of Jewish blood.

A lot of, a lot of Jews, uh, who were cast out of Spain were actually populating Latin America.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's talk about religion.

Uh, when the Spanish came over, they were all Catholics.

Um, they met indigenous people who were presumably not Catholic.

They were, um, had other kind of, of, uh, Gods they were praying to.

But did they spend a lot of time trying to convert people, and did that work?

ARANA: Totally.

There was a lot of slaughter.

There was a lot of forced slavery.

There was a lot of, of, um, uh, kidnapping and shipping, uh, hum, great shiploads of humanity of the indigenous.

And so, uh, when this got back to Spain, there was a lot of objection.

And Queen Isabella did not like this very much in, in what Co, Columbus was doing.

So, Columbus actually did not bring a priest onboard when he, when he came in, in, in 1492, but you better believe that after that, after there was that criticism that they were, they were, uh, totally expropriating whole villages and sending them to the mines, uh, and a lot of them were dying, um, then it became, it became necessary to include the church and to, uh, Christianize the population so that they could persuade the higher ups in Spain that this was actually an evangelizing mission.

RUBENSTEIN: Europe became less Catholic over the years and ironically Latin America became more Catholic, and for a while was the biggest number of Catholics in Latin America... ARANA: It still is.

It still is.

It still is.

Latin America is still the, the largest body of Catholics.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's talk about politics.

It's generally assumed that most Latinos are Democrats.

That assumption is, was one that, uh, lived in this country for a long time.

Is that the reality or not?

ARANA: You know, they have been largely Liberal, but it's a very fluid group.

There is no political block that you can identify, uh, among Latinos.

Uh, I think for a long time, the Democrats assumed they'd be Liberal, um, for a lot of reasons, uh, mainly because they were a minority, and that they were poor, largely poor.

Um, the Republican Party has been very, very strong among Latinos, so particularly in Texas and Florida.

The Cubans, of course, are almost entirely Republicans.

Um, but the, the Mexicans, too, particularly the, the, the Mexicans who have been there for generations, um, uh, have more of, uh, sympathies for the Republican Party.

But the, but Latinos in general are a mix of, of... You can call us, uh, conservative liberals, you can call us liberal conservatives, but we, we share, uh, a lot of the values in both camps.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about another, uh, subject you, you addressed in your book, which is growing.

Um, that Latinos have been very involved in helping the food base of the United States.

The, the, the Mexican-Americans are often seen as people who were picking, uh, food here.

Are Hispanics still actively involved in the food process in the United States?

And how does that work in the, uh, pandemic?

ARANA: Oh, tremendously.

Tremendously.

Well, the, the, the, people who feed this country, uh, we can say, uh, with complete confidence, are the Latinos, are the, the agricultural workers.

Almost... more than 80%, as high as 92%, is counted as, as Latino workers in the fields.

They're doing the stoop labor.

They're, they're doing the, uh, not only working in the, uh, in the fields, but, uh, they're actually the people who are marketing the goods.

They're the people who are actually working in the restaurants in the service industry and the hotels.

And in the pandemic we haven't even mentioned the medical workers.

You know, a lot of the nursing staff in the hospitals during the pandemic... Not only food service but the, but the people who were, uh, staffing the hospitals were Latinos, and they were, they were dying in disproportionate numbers during the pandemic as well.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, a large number of construction workers in the United States are actually Latino background.

ARANA: One out of three.

One out of three construction workers in this country is a Latino.

And a lot of them are undocumented, by the way.

RUBENSTEIN: So let's talk about the undocumented part.

So, when you have a construction worker or a farm worker and they're undocumented, they live in fear that they're gonna be exposed, so they often will not take the salaries that they're supposed to get or not get fully compensated.

Is that a real problem?

ARANA: That's a real problem.

You can imagine in the construction business, there's, uh, there's a lot of injury.

There's a lot of just physical injury, um, and they don't dare, uh, declare it or they don't, they don't co, they're not covered by insurance.

These are, you have to understand the undocumented, um, are paying bill, billions and billions of dollars in taxes.

They're actually taking, um, much less benefits than they are paying into the government.

RUBENSTEIN: So let's talk about DACA.

Can you explain what DACA is and what, why it's unresolved at this point?

ARANA: Okay.

DACA was a program that was developed in 2012, I believe, by President Barack Obama.

And it was basically to, uh, cover the, um, children who were coming in.

The average age was three.

Uh, they would come in with their parents and then they would be here, uh, and have absolutely no rights.

They could be deported.

Um, they could, they couldn't even get a license, uh, to be able to work or to identify themselves.

And so, uh, these particular children who were in school, they couldn't get, uh, funding of any kind, so the DACA program was developed as, "Okay, we're gonna give these children, um, the ability to have a, a license.

We're gonna give them the ability to, to work.

We're gonna give them the ability to go to school."

Um, and so that has become a sort of, uh, a fighting point as to when... We don't know whether it's going to be ended.

It's, it's sort of a political football right now.

RUBENSTEIN: But these students, these students are still here.

ARANA: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And now they are not citizens in the United States but they are here legally or not legally?

ARANA: They're undocumented, so they're here, uh, illegally.

But with the DACA, uh, assignment, they are actually able to have a license to work and to do that.

But if they are stripped of that citizenship, you have 98,000 kids graduated from high school every year who are, um, DACA und- or undocumented.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, uh, one of the points you make in the book is that some people, like you, uh, think that people who are of Hispanic background should know more about their history... ARANA: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: But that there's relatively small knowledge base right now in the United States by Hispanics, let alone Whites, of the Hispanic, uh, background that many of them have.

Is that right?

ARANA: This is one of my big missions.

Uh, I think it's, it's, uh, remarkable that in a country that values, um, its history and that values the democratic process, that we do not teach, um, this huge body.

I mean, now, right now, it's, um, one out of five of us is Latino in this country.

In 2060, it's going to be one out of three will have Latino heritage, and yet, um, we're not in the textbooks.

You don't know that, uh, Admiral Farragut, the, the very man who said, "Damn the torpedoes.

Full speed ahead," was a Latino.

Um, you don't know that, uh, Stephen Vincent Bent who was an incredible force for West Point, uh, during the, um, Civil War was a Latino.

Uh, we don't know these things and, uh, it's, it's a big mission of mine.

And this was the, the reason of why I wrote Latinoland is because we don't know enough of this history.

RUBENSTEIN: I found your book really interesting, eye-opening.

I learned a lot and, um... ARANA: Thank you, David.

RUBENSTEIN: Congratulations on doing it.

ARANA: Thank you very much.

RUBENSTEIN: All right.

Thank you very much.

ARANA: Thank you.

(applause) (music plays through credits)