The day after Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, La Opinión, the biggest Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S., published Ted Cruz, primer latino en ganar en Iowa ¿Por qué no estamos celebrando? (by Pilar Marrero, February 2, 2016) which translates to “Ted Cruz, first Latino to Win in Iowa, Why Aren’t We Celebrating?” Note that “we” does not mean “Americans.”
The name on his birth certificate is Rafael Edward Cruz, born in 1970 of father Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, who was born in Matanzas, Cuba and of Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson, of Wilmington, Delaware. Theoretically then, Ted Cruz, the victor of the Iowa caucuses for the Republican Party, should be considered in the United States as part Latino or simply as one more Latino.Why then is there not a great headline on all the newspapers proclaiming the triumph of the first Latino candidate in the Iowa caucuses? Where are the declarations of national Latino organizations, declaring the triumph of Cruz for the first time in the history of the country, in the famous caucuses? Or the third place of Marco Rubio?The answer is complex and depends upon the meaning each person gives to the “Latino” identity…. [My translation]
So “we,” of course, refers to Latinos. Marrero’s article is a discourse on “Latino” identity—and, for those of us whose identity is “American,” it’s bad news ...
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