Racism Within A Biblical/Theological Framework: Americans of Central and South American Descent

Racism Within A Biblical/Theological Framework: Americans of Central and South American Descent

In this essay, we will focus on Latinos/as who have come to the U.S.A. from the strip of land known as Central America and from the South American continent.  We will discover that there is a similar pattern with Latinos/as who have migrated here for economic and political reasons.

Himilce Novas informs and reminds us in her book, Everything You Need to Know About Latino History:

Latinos with roots in Central America include Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Panamanians, and Costa Ricans.  While Central Americans began entering the United States in small numbers, as early as the nineteenth century, immigration from Central America to the United States did not reach significant high levels until the late twentieth century, and so Latinos with roots in Central America are truly newcomers.  They are such newcomers that in 2000, 34.5 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States was from Central America, according to the March 2000 Census Bureau Data.  Scourges of every kind-from military dictatorships, right-wing death squads, and guerilla insurgencies to grinding poverty and hunger-are what triggered the movement north of peoples from most Spanish-speaking Central American countries.  In the 1990´s, with democracy in place in some Central American countries, economic chaos was the primary factor motivating Central Americans to head north to the United States.  Economic upheaval continues to drive Central American immigration to this day (Novas, p. 241).

We may want to stop here for a moment and ask if our brothers and sisters from Central America should be ¨grateful¨ for the opportunity to better their economic and social conditions, and also, to live free from the fear of death squads?  The answer of this writer would be a resounding ¨no!¨  While economic conditions and corrupt politics were present in their countries, driving them to come here,  we should never overlook the fact that those economic conditions were generated, in part, by our foreign economic policies.  Our market economy (capitalism) has penetrated these countries and wreaked havoc on the populations of Central America.  Furthermore, we have provided military and economic support (as we shall see in subsequent essays) to many of the dictatorships in Central and South America, which in turn, deny their citizens the same democratic rights that we have here in the U.S.A.

A significant percentage of the Central American population in the United States has relatively low levels of educational attainment.  Among the foreign born aged twenty-five or older, only 44.3 percent have at least a high school diploma, according to Census 2000 Data.  The high school graduation rate is is lowest among those born in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and highest among those born in Costa Rica and Panama.  As a consequence, the overwhelming majority of Central Americans are employed in low-paying jobs, and a good number live in poverty (Novas, p. 241).

Before moving on to discuss the issue of Latinos from Spanish-speaking South American countries, I stop here momentarily to raise the following questions:

1. Since race-based discrimination and injustice are the central themes of this and of previous essays, what, if any, is the relevance of discrimination based on country of origin and social class relative to the people who have come here from Central America?  Is it the same as race-based discrimination and injustice?

2.  Is there, in your opinion, a Christian theological response relative to the socio-economic conditions of Latinos of Central American background who are living in the U.S.A?

3.  What is the role of the Church relative to the socio-economic conditions of our sisters and brothers of Central America living in the U.S.A.?

4.  In your opinion, does a ¨Heaven-bound¨ Gospel message have anything to say to our sisters and brothers from Central America living in such deplorable and inhumane conditions in the U.S.A?

Your response to the above questions will help us establish the basis for a healthy dialogue on this issue.

Please feel free to share your opinions, perspectives, and views on this subject.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Redeemer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Racism Within a Biblical/Theological Framework: Dominican-Americans

               Racism Within a Biblical/Theological Framework: Dominicans

People of Dominican background in the U.S.A. are here primarily for the same reason that other Latinos/as are, i.e. to escape the cycle of misery and poverty in their country, which was generated to a large extent, by its colonial history with Spain, and its neo-colonial history with the U.S.A.  In this essay, I will deal with those who came here as a result of the neo-colonial history with the U.S.A. and its foreign economic and political policies, and how, in turn, those policies resulted in a mass migration to this country.

The Dominican Republic and Haiti share the island of Hispaniola, which is the second-largest island of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica).  The eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola constitutes the Dominican Republic, and the western one third, Haiti.  To the northwest of Hispaniola lies Cuba, and to the east is Puerto Rico (Himilce Novas:  Everything You Need to Know About Latino History, p. 220).

Christopher Columbus made his first landfall on Hispaniola on December 5, 1492.  There he established the very first Spanish colony in the New World, which he named ¨La Isla Espa~nola¨ for Spain itself.  At some point, historians are uncertain exactly when the island earned a second name, Hispaniola. In Spanish, the 

land is nowadays known as both La Isla Espa~nola and Hispaniola; however, internationally it is called only Hispaniola.  Columbus was delighted when the Tainos, the natives of Hispaniola, who were a subgroup of the Amerindian group called the Arawak, welcomed him bearing masks and amulets made of gold, for he supposed that the island harbored great riches.  In fact, Columbus was so taken with Hispaniola that he made it his main base for exploration of the region.  Incidentally, Dominicans claim Columbus as a virtual native son and allege that he was buried in the oldest cathedral in the Americas, the Cathedral of Santa Maria La Menor, which was completed in 1520 in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.  The Spanish refute this claim and maintain that the conquistador´s remains are in Seville, Spain (Novas, p.221).

Before 1960, few Dominicans made their way to the United States. The ironfisted regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo maintained strict control over visas and travel abroad.  After Trujillo´s assassination in 1961, and fueled by the 1965 civil war, Dominican immigration rose to significant levels and then remained steady through the 1970´s.  Then in the 1980´s, when economic depression plagued the Dominican Republic, immigration soared.  In that decade alone, 250,000 Dominicans entered the United States legally, constituting the second-largest national group of immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, with Mexicans being the largest.  The 1990´s and the early years of the new century also saw an unprecedented number of Dominicans immigrating to the United States, due to enduring social injustice and a continued lack of economic opportunity in the Dominican Republic (Novas, p. 232).

One may ask what is the relationship between the internal economic and political problems of the Dominican Republic and U.S. foreign policy? The reader is encouraged to research the history of how the U.S.A. has lent economic, military, and political support to the Dominican government in times of dictatorship, and how the U.S.A. intervened militarily and economically in the time when Dominican leaders who sought the well-being of the Dominican people were undermined and even removed with U.S.A. assistance.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center tabulations of the Census Bureau´s 2005 American Community Survey, there were 1, 135, 756 Dominican-Americans and Dominican nationals in the U.S.A in 2005, a significant rise from the 764, 945 tallied in Census 2000, and more than double the 520, 151 counted in 1990.  Census 2000 figures reveal that the five states with the largest Dominican population were New York (455, 061), New Jersey ( 102, 630), Florida (70, 968), Massachusetts (49, 913), and Rhode Island (17, 894).  In 2000, Dominicans were the largest foreign-born contingent in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, surpassing all other immigrant groups (Novas, p. 232).

Washington Heights, Hamilton Heights, and Inwood in Manhattan, as well as Corona in Queens, are the very heart of Dominican life in New York City. Washington Heights has the largest Dominican community in the nation; Dominican Americans refer to it as Quisqueya Heights, after the native name for Hispaniola (Novas, p. 232).  

In addition to Dominicans who enter the country through ¨legal¨ channels and secure U.S. citizenship, there is also a sizable undocumented Dominican population in the U.S.A.  No reliable data on this population´s size have been published, but many researchers assert that as many as three hundred thousand undocumented Dominicans have settled in the United States.  One way that they enter the United States is by paying a small fortune, often an entire year´s wages, to smugglers to transport them across the shark-infested Mona Passage, the eighty-mile stretch of turbulent separating the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. This perilous journey, undertaken in small, rickety boats or on rafts, costs thousands their lives each year.  If they make it across the Mona Passage and succeed at dodging the U.S. Border Patrol agents combing the western coastline of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory with commonwealth status, Dominicans customarily work until they have enough money to travel to the U.S. mainland.  They either hop a plane from Luis Mu~noz Marin International Airport in San Juan to the mainland, usually to New York, with false documents, pretending to be Puerto Ricans, who are American citizen, and thus needing no visa or passport, or they board container ships sailing to mainland ports, sometimes paying crew members to look the other way.  Naturally, it was much easier for Dominicans to travel ¨illegally¨ from Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland before September 11, 2001, and the establishment of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Novas, p. 233).

Although clearly defined Dominican communities first appeared over fifty years ago, Dominican Americans have always been the invisible Latinos/as, especially in comparison to Mexican American, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans.  And since a large percentage of Dominicans are of mixed African, native, and Spanish descent, they have encountered  the same prejudice and racial discrimination that African Americans have suffered in the U.S.A. Operating under the false belief that Dominican immigrants represent the poorest, most disenfranchised members of Dominican society, some Americans have argued that these immigrants burden the nation´s social service system.  While Dominicans do dominate the ranks of the small percentage of Latinos/as receiving public assistance, the truth is that the vast majority of Dominican-Americans are extremely hardworking people who have never been on welfare, or received food stamps or worker´s compensation.  What´s more, as a group, Dominicans who come to the United States are more highly educated than those on the island, and a good number among them are professional (Novas, p. 234).

This essay raises the same questions that have been raised by previous essays, i.e. what is a biblical/theological response to the racism and ethnic discrimination that our Dominican sisters and brothers encounter in the U.S.A.? In what ways do we in the community of faith evaluate the plight of Dominican-Americans.  Do we dismiss their condition as the result of indolence and laziness?  Is there a viable faith approach that we can take to address and remedy their situation?  You, the reader, are invited to share with us what you think about this issue.  Please feel free to share your perspective, opinion, and view.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Racism within a Biblical/Theological Framework: Cuban Americans

In dealing with the Cuban-American community as part of the larger Hispanic-American community in the U.S,A., we find a very interesting situation.  While the vast majority of Latinos/as that came to the U.S.A. from different Caribbean, Central and South American countries for economic reasons, the presence of Cuban immigrants in the U.S.A. is for the most part, for a different reason.  The vast wave of Cubans who came to the U.S,A. after 1959, came to flee from what they considered to be a ¨dictatorship¨ imposed by Fidel Castro, who subsequently, after overthrowing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, declared himself a ¨Communist.¨ And because there was acrimony and hostility between the Cuban and American governments at the time, the U.S.A. welcomed Cuban refugees who, some of whom later on would be involved in an American plot to overthrow the Castro regime.

When Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, his revolutionary regime welcomed middle-of-the road politicians and citizens, a large number of whom viewed him as a democratic reformer with an honest, clear-cut agenda to rein in the widespread corruption and mis-management in Cuba´s government, and get on with the island´s constitutional democracy.  In a matter of time, however, Castro began implementing socialist reforms, which included the confiscation of privately-owned land and industries.  As early as 1961, he publicly declared , ¨I have been a Marxist-Leninist all along, and will remain one until I die.¨ Castro proceeded to align himself with the then Soviet Union, both economically and politically, in effect, from some standpoints, handling the island over to Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev (Himilce Novas:  Everything You Need to Know about Latino History, p. 187).

Whether Castro, had indeed, been a Marxist-Leninist ¨all along¨ as he stated is a matter of debate.  And whether he aligned himself with the Soviet Union after being rejected by the U.S.A. for financial help, is also debatable. Some would argue that the refusal of the U.S.A. (Batista´s benefactor) pushed him into the embrace of the Soviet Union, not so much out of conviction, but rather from economic and political expediency.  That perspective is one among several others.

By 1960, a large wave of Cuban immigration to the U.S.A. had been unleashed. Most of those who came were white middle class Cubans, who fled the island, especially for the U.S.A, especially Miami, where the U.S. government welcomed them as refugees (Novas, p. 187).

Another wave of Cuban immigration to the U.S.A was unleashed in 1980, when Castro lifted his seven-year ban on emigration and declared that every Cuban wishing to leave the island, should report to the port of Mariel, where Cuban-American families could pick them up by boat.  At least 11,000 Cubans showed up and got this second wave moving.  Castro then flung open the doors of his prisons, and between April 21 and September 26, 1980, allowed Cuban-Americans from Miami to load nearly 125,000 Cubans, approximately 1.3 percent of the Cuban population at that time, onto shrimp boats and over vessels, dubbed the Freedom Flotilla. The Cuban refugees, known as ¨Marielitos¨ because they departed from the port of Mariel, were boatlifted to Key West.  On May 11, 1980, alone, 4,588 Cuban refugees sailed to the U.S.A, breaking the the record for the most arrivals in a single day.  A good number of these refugees were convicted criminals, and people with mental health issues.  Unlike the refugees of 1960, the vast majority of these refugees were poor and black.

The way the U.S. government dealt with the first group of refugees and with the second group, raises questions of racial preference.  Why is it, for example, that the first wave was accepted with open arms, and treated with more dignity than was the second wave?   Why is it that white Cubans do not consider themselves to be treated as ¨second-class citizens¨ in America, while black Cubans identify with their black sisters and brothers in the African-American community and with blacks from other countries?

Once again, the issue or racism and racial preference within the framework of the community of faith comes into play.  How would you as a member of the Church or other community of faith respond to the rampant racism in our society, especially as to how it affects the Hispanic community?  Your input is much appreciated.

In the Name of the Creator, Liberator, and Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona