The hyphen between communities

Prime Minister Vajpayee's visit to the USA may have created news in New York and Washington, but in the vast and populous border states of...

Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to the USA may have created news in New York and Washington, but in the vast and populous border states of Texas, New Mexico and California, it has gone unnoticed. Yet, it is these states that offer lessons of acculturation that Vajpayee could well take a few tips from. His government, with its constant diatribe against minorities, needs to learn from the borderland states of the US which bustle and thrive with their cultural, religious and ethnic diversities.

Here people who have resolved to co-exist peacefully, outvote the politics of divisiveness and politicians have had to follow suit. There are few international borders in the world that can match the one the US shares with Mexico. In Texas, the city of El Paso stands cheek by jowl with the Mexican city of Juarez, the two separated by a narrow strip of water — the river Rieu Grande. No vast stretches, known as "no man’s land", separate them. Instead, they are known as “sister cities” by the more politically conscious American. Yet rarely do two sisters have such contrasting destinies. The swanky roads and high-rise buildings of El Paso look down at the run down buses and congested housing blocks of Juarez.

Living in the border town of El Paso one experiences the thin but heartening line where high politics and diplomacy ends and people’s power takes over. In this US city of about 65,000 people, Hispanics and Americans of Mexican origin have left their cultural imprint in no small measure. One hears more Spanish than English; sees more Mexican food joints than the US fast food links and the local university is flooded with Mexican students who are bilingual. With cross cultural marriages and liaisons common, there is the emergence of yet another of those "hyphenated" ethnic categories — the Mexican-American. Beneath this cultural bonhomie there is an assertion of cultural identities on both sides. For the Mexican, “home” is still across the border. For the American, the cultural interaction and appropriation notwithstanding, there is resentment at “his resources” being shared. And, yet, despite these tensions, El Paso with its Mexican fairs, hybrid population, Spanish music and Mexican food is theepitome of that cultural melting pot that high politics can never empty.

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Of high politics, there is plenty. For the media, Mexico is the "bad brother" — the cause of most of southwest USA’s problems. The American attitude to Mexico was most evident during the recent visit to the US of Richard Fox, the Mexican president designate. Fox’s offer of European style open borders, where not just goods but even people can pass, was shot down instantly. For Fox, the border is hope for better life for his people and his chief electoral card; but for US politicians, it is a zone prone to mafia activities, illegal immigrants and drug peddlers. There are official fears that by 2060 the American white may become a minority due to more and more Hispanics crossing over.

Incidentally, neighbouring California has become the first majority-minority state in the USA. According to the US census bureau, non-Hispanic whites now make up only 49.8 per cent of California’s population. Yet, despite the official concern over the Mexican exodus, US President Bill Clinton’s senators are putting together what is called the Latin Immigrant and Fairness Act. This will accord amnesty to about one million of the five to six million undocumented immigrants in the US. This appears to be an election sop for the Hispanic population.

Unmindful of high international diplomacy and politics, the southwestern US states that border Mexico not only continue to be cultural melting pots but operate more powerfully than they did in the past. It is of no small significance that the US census report about whites becoming a minority alarmed Europe more than America. US census report predictions meant as little to Americans as they did a century ago when similar fears were sounded about the decline of the Anglo-Saxon population, vis-a-vis Italians, Greeks, Poles, Jews and others. Plurality of cultures and traditions is what the people have preserved to the utmost. Political diplomacy has been made to bend. Some lessons here for Vajpayee and company to take back to India.

The writer is a visiting professor at the University of Texas