The Arizona Law 1079

Gaspar Mairal Buil

(Published in Spanish in the newspaper Heraldo de Aragón in 2010)

     Throughout its history, the United States has had to solve in various ways the problem of its national identity in the face of its mosaic of peoples  and also in the face of a multitude of people from all over the world who arrived there. They have always sought to preserve the backbone of this Anglo-Saxon identity, which  expresses in English. So the principle of the "melting pot" was created and later, they appealed  to "ethnicity" as a new formula to manage this plurality of origins and cultures,  The 2010 US census form is a striking example.  one can select  in it from countless options the one that interests him most and for those who do not consider themselves "ethnic" or "racial" there is a box with the denomination of "white". However, the number of alternatives that are presented to those considered otherwise is very abundant, no less than thirteen among which is,  just as it sounds,  "chamorro". It is clear that the United States is mired in a kind of ethnic paranoia, to which anthropologists have contributed a lot, capable  of finding new ethnicities anywhere.

     In the United States "ethnicity" has become the basic principle for managing cultural diversity and it has also been selected for those who are classified, according to the terminology of the USA census, as "Hispanic, Latin or Spanish origin". The problem is that in a part of the United States such as the southwest (California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas), states that were for several centuries under the sovereignty of the Spanish crown and afterwards and for several decades of the Republic of Mexico. But this does not seem to work very well. African Americans, Indian Americans, Italians and Asians, among others, have constituted themselves as the main minorities but lack a common language and history of their own. This also happens to Hispanics in the north of the US, but not in the southwest where Spanish is permanently on the street and history is even more Hispanic than American. For example, the first record of anyone speaking English in Tucson, the large southern Arizona city, is a 1826 document in which "anglo" beaver hunters inform the city's Mexican authorities about their presence in the territory. Spanish had been spoken in Arizona for several centuries and, of course, a good number of indigenous languages. This is the context proper to Arizona and the other states to which I have referred and where it is necessary to look for the deepest  meaning for the already known Law 1079  issued by  the state of Arizona, which will enter into force on July 29 and which President Obama opposes.

     The new law allows Arizona state law enforcement to determine the legal status of a suspect using some indicators to justify who is identified. Proponents of the law deny the use of indicators that have to do with appearance and can therefore be considered racial. However, it is difficult to ignore that the Spanish accent when speaking English is going to be a fundamental indicator and in fact it already is for the "Border Patrol", the federal police whose competence is to control the US border, as I have had occasion to verify personally. Hence, a law that in principle aims to apply to the control of illegal immigration, actually has much to do with the use of Spanish in Arizona. But also the implementation of other initiatives of the state government in relation to education, such as removing teachers who have a Hispanic accent from the classroom or suspending programs dedicated to teaching the history of the Spanish and Mexican periods, allow us to venture that Law 1079 is part of a longer-term strategy to curb Hispanic expansion in Arizona, combating bilingualism and the historical awareness of its Hispanic population, for it is feared that one day this population will claim its own identity on the same level as the Anglo-Saxon identity that already exists. Groups linked to the so-called "white supremacy" or those in the orbit of "Anglo" nationalism have taken advantage of the logical concern that exists in Arizona for the presence of drug trafficking north of the border, to go a little further in their strategy to curb the growing Hispanic influence in Arizona. In my opinion, this is the meaning of the adoption of a law such as this and which has aroused so much interest in the Spanish press.