An incompetent attempt to take down Samuel Huntington

The Chicago Tribune's Alfredo Lanier attempts to counter Samuel Huntington's 'The Hispanic Challenge' in the editorial 'Latino migration dividing America'. (use 'anonymous' as the username and password)

I'm not going to fisk the whole thing, just a couple things from it.

Lanier says this: "there is no evidence whatsoever that a reconquista--a reconquest--of the land lost by Mexico to the U.S. in the 19th Century is brewing in the Southwest."

Is Lanier lying, or just completely uninformed? Has he never heard of Aztlan, or the "liberation" of it as promoted by racial separatist groups? Some members of those separatist groups are now academics and politicians, so they do have a bit of power. Perhaps we should send Lanier a copy of Mexifornia so he could educate himself a bit. I hear it's a popular book, I'm surprised he's never heard of it.

Lanier gets even worse:

If Huntington is troubled by Mexican-Americans' failure to assimilate and their potentially separatist tendencies, he would not be altogether comfortable in Miami either. There, Cuban-Americans have assimilated so well they have taken over the place, leaving some native Miamians feeling like foreigners in their own city.

It's a puzzling concern. Huntington admits the obvious--Cuban refugees revived Miami's near-dead economy by making it the financial and commercial capital of Latin America. Politically, Cuban-Americans also assimilated with a vengeance. As Huntington points out, the mayor of Miami, plus the mayor, police chief and state's attorney of Miami-Dade County, plus several U.S. representatives and state legislators, are Cuban-American or of Cuban descent.

Isn't that the ideal of Americanization?

Huntington's treatment of Miami referred to how many "Anglos" feel unwelcome there, and how they feel that the Cubans took over and kicked them out. Excerpt:

The Cuban and Hispanic dominance of Miami left Anglos (as well as blacks) as outside minorities that could often be ignored. Unable to communicate with government bureaucrats and discriminated against by store clerks, the Anglos came to realize, as one of them put it, "My God, this is what it's like to be the minority."

Once again, is Lanier lying, did he misread that section of Huntington's article, or does he think that form of discrimination is OK and represents Americanization?

See also Jorge Castaneda's attempts to counter Huntington here. At least Castaneda knows what he's talking about.

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