Whose America?

For those Latinos who live in the United States and have visited their ancestral homelands, they may have encountered friends or relatives as I have who enjoy utilizing the following gambit: “So, what nationality are you?” Naively, a Latino might say that he or she identifies with the country they are visiting. So, twelve-year old me telling my cousins in Mexico City that I am “Mexican” is met with uproarious laughter. “How cute, he thinks he is Mexican.” They may follow up with questions like, “Really, you’re Mexican, so what do you eat?” “Tacos,” I might say, “chorizo con huevos, enchiladas, tortas, frijoles, mole.” Again, laughter that is enough to make even the most radical Chicano separatist exclaim, “Well, then I’m American!” In spite of every playground argument I’ve had, every ignorant teacher who asks where I am from, all which tell me that I am not of this country, only in it, to paraphrase a repeated saying by African American leaders, in that moment I conclude that I am not Mexican either; so, I say I am American. But that is the trap. The argument up to this point was only a prelude to the main event.

“So, you are American?” “What country is that?” “There is no country America.” “Your country does not have a name, so you take a name that belongs to all of us.” “No,” I argue, “Our name is the United States of America.” “But that is not a name,” they say. “That only describes your location and government. We are the United States of Mexico. Mexico is the name. The United States part only describes how our government runs and the same is for you.” “OK then,” I say, “I am American, you’re right about the United States part, but that doesn’t change that I am American just like you are Mexican.” Now the fireworks fly, because this was the trap all along. “No, we are both American.” “No you are not, you’re Mexican.” “No,” my cousin says, “I am American, just like you.” We both live in North America, so I am American too.” “And Brazilians are American and Ecuadorians and Argentines, and so on…” And because I am only twelve and don’t really speak Spanish well enough to continue the conversation, and because it seems that I was destined to lose, and honestly it does seem that my cousin has a point, the conversation ends.  

I have heard this line of reasoning many times and it is at this point a bit tired and cliché, but I have taken it for granted that it is not really a conversation worth having. I imagined that the argument was also a bit disingenuous, an attack meant to put down Americans in at least one way, when materially and in terms of power they have so much. Much to my chagrin, I saw the seeds of the same recently on a Facebook status update of a graduate student I know, “I learned today that America does not have a real name, but nobody questions that. Think about it.” I believe it was the “think about it” part that actually got me thinking. Could it be true that the U.S. of A. does not have an official name and if not, so what?

Upon a quick Google search I learned that our country’s official name is outlined in the Articles of Confederation, section I, ratified in 1777, where it states: “The Stile of this Confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America’". I posted this as a response to the initial FB post, to which I got a response that followed the “who is American” line of argument I described above. To paraphrase how the student elaborated, American hegemony leads it to believe that it has power and dominion over the Americas. That belief manifests itself in the way that “Americans” believe that they have exclusive right to the demonym, when it can apply to people of all of the Americas, North, South and Central.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that it just doesn’t work out chronologically. The signatories of the Articles of Confederation were members of a colony themselves. They were the subjects of British hegemony at that time. They decided to create an independent federation of states to be free of British rule and taxation. There is no way they could have had the foresight to know that they would be an imperial power even greater and at times more oppressive than the monarchy they lived under.

As was noted in a previous post, the U.S. has been screwing Latin America for a while, despite public relations efforts that try and support the contrary. The most recent time happening in both literal and figurative terms. So, trying to return the favor and sticking it to the U.S. can be fun for our friends south of the border; but if they loathe us so much why would they want to share a moniker with us, and if we actually decided to call them Americans, would they even respond? I think energy would be better used to show the innumerable other ways that the U.S. has intervened in Latin America to its own advantage rather than focusing on such a trivial issue as I just have.