Fiesta DC and the false Hispanic identity

Fiesta DC is a very attractive and all around fun street festival, held annually in the historic neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, in NW Washington, DC. Fiesta DC includes live music and dance performances, food and informative booths. Some say this festival attracts as many as 80.000 people all day long, which make it one of the most attended street festivals in DC.

Fiesta DC 2007. Photo by The42Bus

The problem with Fiesta DC is that it focuses on promoting this “Latino / Hispanic” identities, created by the U.S. government, in some way to group all the ethnic and cultural groups of the regions south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and their descendants. It's a way to separate the Anglos.

The message of this identity implies the false idea that if you speak Spanish, then all your heritages are deleted and you become a person of Latin and Hispanic background. Fiesta DC reinforces wrong ideas and perceptions of who we are as people.

Five centuries after the European invasion of this continent, and thanks to the Nixon administration (who else?) we the original people of this continent called America, are grouped in with names that we didn’t choose. If you are brown-skinned, you look “Mexican”, or you come from Latin America –then you are a Hispanic or a Latino person. Forget about anything else.

Hispanic comes from the people and cultures of Hispania, the Roman province that included Spain and Portugal. Latino is Spanish for Latin, the southern European culture started by the Romans. I can deal with the Latino term, because it comes also from the region Latin America, and it's widely used in our streets and communities, especially in the East Coast biggest cities. Hispanic is a no, no.

What do Native and Black people of the Americas have to do with Hispanics? Not a lot. If you have been to Spain, Portugal, France, Italy or Greece, then you know this. Unfortunately, for most Americans the rest of the world is grouped in very simple regions and areas, each of them with their own stereotypes: it makes it easy for people in the U.S. to understand that the world doesn’t end in Mexico or Canada.

So it doesn’t matter that an Afro descendant from Colombia has little in common with an Italian from Argentina, or an Andean Peruvian with a Japanese from Sao Paulo, Brazil. As long as we all speak Spanish or Portuguese - that is enough to put all of us together.

What about Filipinos or West Africans? Some of them also speak Spanish. Perhaps the U.S. and Canada indigenous Cherokee, Dakota, Navajo or Seminole should be called Anglos, since they all speak English mostly, don’t they? But the first nations peoples of North America know well they are not Anglos, even if they are of mixed race.

However, when it comes to Native peoples from Mexico, Central and South America, it’s all about erasing the collective memory of ourselves, and making us think that WE are all part of the same European origins as the slavers of our ancestors. This is what being called Hispanic or Latino does.

That is why the “Hispanic Heritage Month” is celebrated every year in the U.S. beginning September 15 this US government-backed program includes ellaborated festivals, ceremonies and what not. They are organized and financed widely by the federal and local agencies, with avid politicians willing to content anyone in order to get more votes.

So there is not a single "progressive" authority nor a greedy corporation who would let this chance go, and they unlimit their resources in order to promote this fake identity. They go and help these “Hispanic/Latino” groups to collect money from people, and organize these festivals that make no much of a good impact among our communities.

Now the problem with these false identities, is that our youth born and raised in the U.S. are victims of this self loathing racism. Natives and African descendant peoples who speak Spanish –or descend from those- are the lowest-paid workers in the US, we have the highest rate of high school dropouts, we show the highest levels of urban violence, including domestic and street related crime and we own less businesses and homes.

If you come this weekend to Fiesta DC or any other "Hispanic" festivals around the U.S., then you will witness a theatrical where people from difference races and traditions are mixed up all together, like a forced melting pot. Pay special attention on the fake spectacles they present in order to content the “European way” of what the world should look like.

You will see Africans and Natives peoples presented as Hispanics, performing according to the taste of Anglo Americans. You will see our food, music and dances, our traditions presented as if they were invented by Spaniards or Latins, but there won't be a mention that we "Latinos" are also Native Americans and African Americans.

Don’t miss out also the parade with the flags of post-colonial "Latin American" countries, which make up the most unfair region of the world. In those nations the [mostly White] elites control de misfortune of those of us who happen to be dark-skinned. In the U.S. we just love to carry out the flags of the nations we left in disbelief and frustration, we love the countries that displaced us with poverty and merciless violence.

Fiesta DC has a wide range of events, including a children stage sponsored by McDonald's (!), a science fair so you don't think we are dumb, and two "Rumba" and "Fiesta" stages for the musicians and dancers. Finally but most importantly, there will be a Food vendor area which (I can see it now) will end full of trash and emptied cans of liquor that will be -not officially- for sale.

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