Dissatisfied with the direction of the country and with the Democratic Party’s policies, which were doctrinally emphasized and implemented by the previous administration, such as the indiscriminate opening of the southern border and non-traditional issues in matters of sexuality, gender, family, etc., the recent presidential elections resulted in a second Donald Trump administration.
The policies of the current government, especially those on immigration, particularly mark and affect the present and near future of this nation’s Hispanic community. We have all witnessed the subjugation, petulance, insensitivity, and cruelty with which many Hispanics are being violently and indiscriminately expelled from U.S. territory, unceremoniously and in violation of their fundamental human and citizen rights.
According to political and economic analysts, the recent passage of President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” will severely, deeply, drastically, and lastingly cut social benefits to the poorest communities of this nation. As CEO of SOMOS Community Care, a healthcare organization in New York City, I am concerned about its impact and effects on our own organization and how the law will threaten our service and our recipients in the most vulnerable sectors of our city and across the country.
That is why, beyond the noise and folklore of these Hispanic festivals, we must – within our communities – ask ourselves and engage in our education and social awareness around the impact of our presence as Hispanics or Latin Americans in the United States, through education that allows us to debunk stereotypes and racial prejudices.
We must seek support for Hispanic organizations and businesses. We must participate civically and politically with our votes and in a “better kind of politics” as our beloved first Latin American Pope Francis said: in daily political exercise that does not seek the personal, individual, selfish, disinterested, and dishonest good of our own pocket, but instead seeks the best social coexistence through the common good and the well-being of all.
We must engage in developing civic leaders within our communities and integrating all people in the new societies and cultures to which we arrive, without losing – of course – our identity, historical roots, language, values, and traditions. We must seek times and spaces of dialogue where we pursue and find consensus that benefits both the dominant culture and the Hispanic community.
All the challenges faced by the U.S. Hispanic community are important. We cannot postpone finding their solutions. If we want our Hispanic presence – here and now – to be both relevant and important, we all must face and solve issues such as discrimination and racial and xenophobic governmental and social prejudices, stigmatization against immigrants in a country that has always been comprised of immigrants, economic disparities, language and cultural barriers, the issue of each person’s legal immigration status, issues about the health and disabilities of so many, access to social opportunities, and the wage gap.
We also must face and solve educational differences and gaps, insufficient financial support, labor exploitation, identity crises or generational traumas, misinformation, food insecurity or difficulties in acquiring housing, not to mention all the other challenges that touch our lives, every day, and those of our families and loved ones in our countries of origin.
These are our main challenges, our important and ongoing tasks. The importance or irrelevance, the quality or the defect, the value or insignificance, the success or failure of our Hispanic presence in the United States depends on the focus that these tasks receive and our successful arrival at their respective solutions. HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH is a propitious time and space to celebrate, but, above all, to think, decide, and act on all of this.
