Conversations with the Dean
Featuring Professor Gerry Cadava
Professor and Director of the Latina and Latino Studies Program, Gerry Cadava and Dean Adrian Randolph discuss the meaning of diversity in the United States through the lens of Latino identity, as our nation approaches its 250th anniversary.
 Gerry Cadava is the Wender-Lewis Teaching and Research Professor in the department of history and the Latina and Latino Studies Program. He is also a Contributing Writer for The New Yorker, and co-editor in chief of Public Books, an online magazine of arts, culture, and ideas. Cadava is the author of The Hispanic Republican and Standing On Common Ground, and is now writing a third book called A Thousand Bridges, about Latino history over the past five hundred years. |
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Conversation Transcript
Adrian Randolph: I'm really delighted to be joined by my friend and colleague, Professor Geraldo Cadava. Gerry Cadava is the Wender-Lewis Teaching and Research Professor in the Department of History and the Latina and Latino Studies program. He's also a Contributing Writer for The New Yorker and co-editor-in-chief of Public Books, an online magazine of arts, culture, and ideas. Cadava is also the author of The Hispanic Republican and Standing On Common Ground, and he's now in the process of writing a third book called A Thousand Bridges, about Latino history of the past 500 years. So just to kick this off, Gerry, we've known each other a while and we've spoken a lot about some of these issues, but we're coming up on a big event in the United States history, the 250th anniversary of this country, this experiment. How do you see the role of Latino identity shaping the country's diverse cultural landscape and national identity? And as you and I have spoken, you know, it might be nice to say a little bit about what does the word Latino mean to you, or what currency does it have today? Because of course, its evolved over time.
Gerry Cadava: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for asking and it's so good to be here. And thank you for others who've tuned in for joining us. And I'm coming to you from my office here in Harris Hall on the first day of the quarter and the second week of Hispanic Heritage Month. So, I feel like there's a good time to be talking about these subjects. So, you know, Latino, I'm not sure if those of you out there are inclined to see it as a kind of like, pretty precise term that has a pretty clear meaning, but it's contested in all sorts of ways. One of the things that I refer to most often is a report by the Pew Hispanic Research Center, which answers the question, "Who are/What is a Latino?" And they have this kind of funny answer where it says, "A Latino is anyone who says they're Latino and a Latino is not, or you are not Latino if you say that you're not Latino." So, you know, it's a meaningful category to those who embrace it, and identify that way. But, you know, it still has lots of meanings. So, you know, I think there are lots of debates. One would be that Latino just means that you are a descendant of a country of Latin America. That leaves open the possibility that Brazilian Americans could be Latinos since Brazil is in Latin America, but they speak Portuguese. And if you believe that the Spanish language is an important marker of Latino identity, then maybe you wouldn't consider a Brazilian to be Latino. I see Cesar on here. But you know, maybe Cesar you can come at me with some questions about that, but I've talked to you Brazilian Americans here in the United States who both say that, "Yes, they are Latino," and "No, they aren't Latino." And Latino is a slightly different connotation than the word Hispanic, which does connote a relationship with the Spanish Empire. And I've had people ask me if Spaniards are Latinos. And one answer to that is that "No, they're not Latinos, but they're Hispanic." That's one answer I've heard. So, this is a term that, you know, means lots of different things to lots of different people. And I've had arguments with colleagues here at Northwestern in Latino Studies about how when they were growing up, they didn't even consider Latino to be related to heritage and blood. They saw it more as a political identity that was about like solidarity with other groups of Latinos advocating for particular political causes. So, I think that, you know, Latino, like many other kinds of identities is something that's not static, but open to interpretation and has a long history.
Randolph: And as you see us approaching this celebration or marking of this 250th anniversary, do you see the role or the definition of a Latino group, let's say a vector of society playing a particular role? I mean, 'cause I'm assuming when I, and I avoided the word celebration, not that I want to discount, many people will celebrate this and then be proud of this event. But of course, there were some Latino people here before the founding of the country and there's plenty of people who've come afterwards. I wonder if it has a slightly different inflection in that community.
Cadava: It does. I mean it does. I think that there's no doubt that with 2026 what we're going to be commemorating specifically is the birth of the United States as an independent nation. So, there's no doubt that that's the particular year that we're celebrating. But I think the, the 250th anniversary of the United States will also invite a lot of conversations about America's beginnings and what the origins of America mean, and how we can see the evolution of the country into the country that it's become today over the course of a long period of time. And I think for the past few years we've already been engaged in revisiting our national origins with things like the 1619 Project, which is an argument about the role that the enslavement of Africans and capitalism played in the founding of the United States some 160 years before. But part of, I think what Latino history introduces to this conversation is that even if you take Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the 1619 Project on her own terms, that the enslavement of Africans and capitalism as a system as important to the beginning of the United States, those practices, habits, whatever they were, sins, existed for more than a century before the arrival of Africans to the coast of Virginia. I mean, throughout Latin America. And it remains true that that, you know, vastly more enslaved Africans were sent to Latin America and the Caribbean than to the US colonies. So, I think that, and then certainly, so even at the beginning of this continent's history, Latino history has something to offer to that story. But I think also if the 250th anniversary of the United States is supposed to be about the celebration, or at least acknowledgment of the country as it exists today, you have to understand the Latinos as an important part of that since we're now 20% of the population. And that's already very different than the last time we celebrated a major milestone like the 200th anniversary in 1976 when Latinos were probably still only about 5 or 7% of the population, and now we're 20% of the population. So, I think wrestling with what it means to be American today necessarily involves a conversation about Latinos.
Randolph: And I can't help but note that the context of this question has changed a little bit over this weekend when of course, you know, so many people are celebrating Mexican Independence Day in Chicago, for those of us in Chicago it was very present in our lives. And so, there is this sort of multinational celebration of what, you know, which countries, which heritage we're celebrating at a certain moment.
Cadava: Totally. Totally. And you know, just for those, those out there who don't know what the history of Hispanic Heritage Month is and why we celebrate it at the time that we do it, it does explicitly have to do with the celebration of so many Latin American independence holidays. There were a lot of Latin American independence holidays, not just Mexico, but El Salvador and others that happened during this, you know, middle period of September. And in the legislation that established Hispanic Heritage Week and then Hispanic Heritage Month, the government explained that the reason we're celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month now has to do with its simultaneity with these celebrations of Latin American independence. Just FYI, yeah.
Randolph: So, you could, this next question, you could take a longer view, or maybe we could bring it a little bit closer to the contemporary situation I was going to ask how the perception, understanding of Latino identity has evolved over time because it's not a static thing, right? I mean, it's evolving and changing-based, I assume, on ideology, but also just immigration patterns. And what impact has this had on policies and attitudes toward Latino communities?
Cadava: Oh my goodness, it's a great question. With a lot of answers. I mean, when I teach Latino history at Northwestern, it's a course I've taught maybe 10 or 12 times in the time that I've been here, and I have students, the first essay question they answer responds to the question, like, "Should the Spanish colonial period be considered the beginning of Latino history?" And sometimes... They say one of three things inevitably. One is, well, no, the Spanish colonial period shouldn't be seen as the beginning because that prioritizes the European part of Latino identity. So, in order to understand Latino history, we actually have to go back to Mesoamerica and the pre-Hispanic period to understand our indigenous roots. Sometimes on the other end of the extreme, they say that, no, you know, Latino history doesn't even really start until the 1960s, which is when politicians, businessmen, Latinos themselves tried to think about what our group identities were together. But many do say that the Spanish colonial period, that's say from like 1500 to 1800 should be seen as the beginning of Latino history. Because it's where we, first of all, like the roots of our racial mixture has mestizos, a combination of Spaniards or Europeans, indigenous people, Africans, Asians and others. That's where that came from. But then also Catholicism, which many still consider to be important to Latinos language, the Spanish language, and the mixture of Spanish with indigenous and African words, and even, you know, our systems of capitalism, labor exploitation, a lot of that has its roots in the Spanish colonial period. So that's one, you know, those different possible answers to the question of, when is the beginning of Latino history as part of an answer to how it's evolved over time, but just to focus, that's, I guess the long trajectory that you're talking about. But, and there are markers along the way. There's like in the era of independence, you have kind of Latin American national heroes like Simón Bolívar articulating a kind of Latin American identity in contradistinction with a North American identity later in the 19th century. You have people like José Martí doing the same thing. He's a Cuban intellectual and author of Cuban independence from Spain. And you know, he's also thinking about what Latin American identity is in contrast with US identity. So those are some kind of longer roots. But I think, you know, if you want to look at it more recently, say from the 1960s forward, Latino has been a political identity. It's one that political parties have tried to mobilize in order to recruit a diverse group of voters and new voters, to be honest. So in 1950, I always find this fascinating. In 1950, New York still had the largest number of electoral votes in the United States. New York was the most important state in elections because it had the highest number of electoral votes. But in 1950 when that was true, the Latino population of the United States was still like 2% of the whole national population. But because of the growth of the Sun Belt from say 1950 to 1970, states like Florida and Texas and Arizona and California became much more electorally important because the population of those states was growing. And those are also the states with the largest number of Latinos living in them. So, when that population shift happened, parties really started to pay attention to who Latinos were, how to, you know, get these people naturalized and registered to vote. So, I think a political identity is a really important part of the story of Latinos over the past six years. I also think a kind of identity as consumers beginning in the 1980s when, you know, Cinco de Mayo became a thing, like the celebration of the Battle of Puebla wasn't really a thing. It's never really been a thing among Latino communities, but it wasn't a thing in the United States until the 1980s when companies like Corona or Dos Equis wanted to market their products to Latinos. So, I think, you know, a commercial identity is an important part of what it's meant to be Latino over the past 50 or 60 years. The last thing I'll mention, I guess is, is immigration. I mean, it really is the case that the Latino population has exploded since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act signed by Lyndon Johnson. That act prioritized the reunification of families. So, it made it much more possible for immigrants who were already here to bring their parents, to bring their children, to bring their grandparents. And this is the period when you see the population of Latinos in the United States really expanding from, you know, 2 to 4% to 20% as it is today. And we know that that's come with all sorts of fretting, anti-Latino discrimination, increased attention to Latino voters kind of spreading of Spanish across the United States and fears of a kind of Reconquista. So I think, you know, these are all some of the ways in which the term Latino and ideas about who Latinos in the United States are, have intersected with politics over the past 50 or 60 years.
Randolph: And this might be just a little addendum, you know, when you said the population of individuals or groups calling themselves Latinos expanded, has immigration, and this is my lack of knowledge, is it sort of the same proportions from the 5% to the 20 coming from, let's say, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, I don't know where from or has it really shifted in important ways?
Cadava: That's an awesome question, and it's shifted in really important ways. I mean, for most of the 20th Century when we talked about Latino groups, it was the main groups of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. There were still, there were smaller groups of Colombians, Venezuelans and others, small pockets living in the United States. But it's really, again, in this period from the 1960s forward, not only because of the Immigration and Naturalization or Immigration and Nationality Act that I was talking about, but also like, you know, domestic and international conflicts within Latin America. So, it was in 1961 when the Dominican dictator, Trujillo was assassinated, and that sent a wave of Dominican Americans from the Dominican Republic to the United States between 1961, 1965. So that's when you see the Dominican population skyrocket then, you know, I guess more famously, more well-known as all the wars in Central America and Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua that sent a lot of Central Americans coming north and Americans here, white Americans, Latino Americans receiving them as participants in the Sanctuary movement. And then finally, I mean, since the Chavez regime in Venezuela that's sent a lot of Venezuelans north to the United States, to places like Weston and Doral and the Miami area of Florida. So yeah, I mean the composition of the Latino community changes a lot, but I have heard people argue there's a guy, Ruben Navarrette for example, who's provocatively trying to argue now that it's still really about Mexican Americans because Mexican Americans still do comprise two thirds of the Latino population overall. And so, we need to kind of still give appropriate weight to that story.
Randolph: Yeah, and maybe I'll add a question, but the next question I was going to ask, and maybe you've covered some of this already, is you're currently working on this book, A Thousand Bridges. Maybe you've said some things you know, about that book already in answering my questions, but you should feel free to say anything, you know, what might be in there. But as a follow-up question, is there some politic stake at defining a Latino identity in the United States rather than the various national identities? You know, Chicano used to be a term that was more common, I think, and it just seems to be less so now. Is there some politics about banding this group together as a group rather than having it fragment? But the real questions about your book, I mean, you can.
Cadava: Yeah, well, they're related. They're of course related questions because when I'm trying to figure out what the scope of my book about is going to be, you know, I need to think about what groups I'm including, what to call them. I guess part of part of an answer is that like maybe people like me would be out of work if there were no such thing as a group identity for Latinos and thinking about what our group identity meant, and if we're just kind of some compilation of a bunch of representatives of different national groups, then, you know, we might not need someone called a Latino historian to explain this whole population to us. But I think also, you know, there's definitely a politics to it. I mean, there are still, and it really runs the gamut. I mean, there are still people who call themselves Chicano today, even more radically than calling themselves Chicanos. Some will precisely state that they are Chicano with an X, meaning you spell Chicano with an X-I-C-A-N-O. And that is supposed to mean some sort of identification with indigenous populations like the Mexica or something, or the former inhabitants of Aztlán, which is the mythical homeland of Chicanos in the southwest. And Chicanos, by the way, for anyone listening who might be interested in this, was a term embraced in the 60s and 70s and was about kind of political activism. And it was explicitly like the LA Times columnist Ruben Salazar defined a Chicano as a Mexican American with a non-Anglo image of himself. So, it was about, you know, expressing your alliances and identification with indigenous people. So, there's definitely a politics to this. I mean, I think that I don't know if the question about whether Latinos are the different Latino groups are more similar to one another than different, or whether Latino is a meaningful group identity or whether we should really be just Americans or whether we should really just be Mexicans or Nicaraguans. I don't know if that question is ever meant to be answered precisely. In some ways I've come to think that the very essence of Latino identity is just the ongoing conversation about what it means to be Latino. And I think that's all that Latino identity is, in a lot of ways, and this does relate to my book in different ways because, you know, the book covers a long period of time. I am going back to the Spanish Colonial period to try to understand what are the parts of that period that Latinos most want to pull forward into the present from then. But it involves also a lot of blurring of categories. I mean, there was no one in the 16th century or 17th Century who would've called themselves Latino in the way that we understand it today. So I am, as a historian, kind of, imposing that category on the time period. Maybe, you know, my history colleagues wouldn't like that 'cause they think I'm being kind of presentist and applying our standards of the present to the past. But I am, in order to understand Latino identity today, trying to go back to the past and kind of pull forward some of the threads that existed way back then. I think the main thing that I'm trying to do in the book that I'm writing is, you know, challenge this idea that Latino history is only the history of a colonized people and people who have been victims of imperialism and haven't at all been complicit with expanding Spanish and US Empire. So, in my book, I'm going to be focusing on how Latinos are and have always been both colonizers and colonized. And by colonizers, I mean people who've kind of identified with the Spanish and American empires and have been patriotic in different ways toward both of them and allied themselves with them. And I think that that diversity kind of helps us understand all of the complexities of Latino communities today.
Randolph: I want to mention to the auditors that we'll be taking some questions, if you have questions, put them in the Q&A and I'll get to them in a few minutes. So, now's the time to start typing away. I'm going to skip a little bit, you know, to a different set of topics. You were on “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah in November 2020 promoting your books. And you said something like this, that Americans seem to rediscover Latinos every four years of election time. You also discussed the fact that there's no such thing as the Latino vote. And I think you've touched on some issues related to that, but rather many diverse groups. What assumptions do you see in America that you'd aim to correct or add nuance to, in, you know, in that sort of politics? Or that political election cycle thing? Is there something, a couple of things you'd say we could do better in this way, talking about Latino politics?
Cadava: Yeah, yeah. So that appearance was actually the Wednesday right after the election, which was on Tuesday. And it had already started to come out that there was this surprising move toward Donald Trump of all people by Latinos. You know, he had won something like 28% of the Latino vote in 2016. And then it was being reported the day after the election that he had won something like 32% over the months after the election, which is when precinct results come in. And we got a much kind of much more fine-grained understanding of what Latinos did in 20, the margin became even bigger. So, it was like 38% of Latinos who had supported Donald Trump. And this surprised a lot of people. So that's when I got a call from the Daily Show asking me to try to explain how this happened and what all the misunderstandings were. And so, you know, I think it is true that for the most part, Latinos kind of only rise to the level of national consciousness when there's a kind of crisis along the border. So as, as immigrants, people looking to enter the United States and therefore as like foreigners who are kind of invading America, that's one time when Latinos rise to national attention. And another is usually in the context of elections. I mean, everyone's curious about how Latinos are going to vote. I mean that's a story that's kind of been ongoing for the past 40 years. This idea that Latinos are a sleeping giant that are going to wake up and transform American politics, it’s never quite matched that the reality is never quite matched that description because it's still the case that only 50% of Latinos who are eligible to vote eligible to vote actually show up to vote. But you know, there's still this idea that Latinos are about to transform American politics. And it was a real story. I feel like one of the main two or three stories coming out of the 2020 election was how Latinos are going to vote. I think that, you know, politicians and campaigns still don't always know how to approach Latinos. I think some have come up with this idea of micro-targeting specific Latino communities, Puerto Ricans in Florida, Cubans and Florida Mexican Americans in South Texas. I think part of the problem is that the way our elections are structured these days, I mean it's really only like five states that are deciding elections and so many resources get pumped into those five states. And yes, a lot of Latinos live in those states like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Georgia now too. You know, these are all states where there are enough Latino eligible voters to sway elections. This is why I think that there's so much attention to the Latino vote because Latinos are kind of helping to decide elections on the margins. But you know, there's still a lot of talk about the Latino vote as though there's one kind of one story about how Latinos vote. And what I'm trying to shift is, I'm trying to move away from an understanding of the Latino vote to an understanding of 60 million Latinos to whom their Latino identity is meaningful. So, I think like to move away from the Latino vote doesn't necessarily mean saying that well, Latino doesn't exist. It's a meaningless category because I think for millions and millions of Americans, being Latino is an important part of their identity. It's how they see themselves. But I really want to insist that that doesn't mean one thing. I think people have become more accustomed to thinking about Latinos as not a monolith. You'll hear that a lot. Latinos are not a monolith, but when they say that, what they're really talking about is different national groups. Well, there are Mexicans, there are Colombians, they're Cubans, but even members of those groups believe very different things. Just to give you one example, I mean if you think about California for example, there are large Latino populations in Los Angeles and large Latino populations in the Central Valley, which is largely rural ranching, agricultural area. Then go to Texas. Similarly, there are a bunch of Latinos in Houston, but then there are also a bunch of Latinos in rural ranching areas of Texas. And I would say that the rural ranching Latinos in the Central Valley of California and rural Texas are more like one another than Central Valley Latinos and Los Angeles Latinos, even though they're in the same state. So, I think like rural and urban is a really important divide. College-educated, non-college-educated is an important divide. Man, woman is an important divide. You know, religious or non-religious immigrant or someone who's lived here for five generations. I mean, these are all really important, you know, fault lines I guess within the Latino community that I think not many political analysts understand well.
Randolph: In fact, I was going to, as you were talking, I was thinking one clearly important thing to track is sort of the religious affinity stroke activity of Latinos in various arcs, 'cause even though religion is not homogenizing in the same way, but it does pull people together in a slightly different configuration than pure just politics. And it'll be interesting to see how it evolves, yeah.
Cadava: It does. It does. Totally. Totally. I mean, you know, 50% of Latinos today still identify as Catholics. So, the highest percentage of Latinos still identifies as Catholic. So, we've long known that. But the fastest growing religions among Latinos are various sects of evangelical Christianity, Pentecostalism, Mennonites. And so, you know, what I always find interesting too is to think about churches not only as religious spaces, but spaces of like social organizing where like evangelical churches are, it's largely a kind of immigrant religion. You know, evangelicalism has grown a lot in Latin America and when Latin American immigrants arrive in the United States, often their first point of connection and community formation in the United States is an evangelical church. And not surprisingly therefore, like politicians, this is where there's a kind of nexus between religion and politics. You know, politicians have seized on evangelical churches, not only because of the ideological leanings of evangelicals, but because it's a place where you can try to reach new voters, you know? So, it's really, it's really interesting.
Randolph: I see a follow up question on that. You know, 'cause in some ways we're talking about possible divisions, you know, when you talk about evangelical voters, Catholic voters, and then I assume sort of non-religious voters. But what about some of the other divides about, you mentioned gender, country of origin, rural, urban, beyond saying it's not a monolith Latino individuals, groups, in the United States. Are there tensions? Are there actual, you know what I mean? I'm sure there are, so, you know, are there particular fault lines that you see as being particularly important, let's say in the context of the next election or even just moving forward?
Cadava: Oh yes, absolutely. I mean, one we'll hear a lot about for sure is socialism and communism. You know, I think on the right that has been a very effective way to mobilize Latino voters because ever since the Cuban revolution going forward, new groups of Latin American migrants who are fleeing countries with leftist leaders, with liberal leaders, with socialist democrat leaders, they kind of like, it fit the mold of the Cuban exile story. So, and this is a very literal connection. I mean, like Cuban exiles who participated in the Bay of Pigs in 1961, trained contra soldiers in Miami who then went and fought in Central America and then like those who fled Chavez's Venezuela kind of get folded into that same story, you know, with Chavez and Castro being equals being synonymous in a lot of ways. So, it's been a really effective way of mobilizing by the Republican Party. And so that, that'll be one fault line. I think Democrats are still kind of wrestling with how to respond to that idea that we're all socialists. You know, I think the thing with socialism is of course it's like not, I of course I don't think Joe Biden is a socialist, but I think socialism comes to stand in for so many other issues like religion because communism is a godless religion or whatever, or you know, the appropriate relation between the state and its citizens. Because communism is a kind of totalitarian big government's interventionist set of politics compared with, you know, the free-market economy or you know, limited government that Republicans say is a hallmark of the United States. So, I think it comes to stand in for so many things. I do think, you know, the divide between men and women is also really important. I mean, I think that over the past couple of election cycles, something like two thirds of Latinas have supported more than that. Like 75% of Latinas have supported Democrats. But it's actually, so when we talk about like the drift of Latinos toward the Republican party, what we're really talking about is young Latino men without college degrees. And that intersects in some ways with just broader population trends. You know, not just Latinos.
Randolph: There's a sort of related question you referred before about Latinos being, of course, both colonizers and the colonized. And someone asked a question about what is the ratio of colonialism descendants to, and it says here, more recent immigrants. But I think what it means is somehow, you know, is, and let me reframe that question 'cause I'm assuming you don't have like a number because we're talking about, you know, centuries of colonization. But maybe if the question, it doesn't mind me reframing it a little bit, is there a class, I mean there obviously are class issues here, but does that break down in any easily comprehendible way? Is it just college educated versus not? Or is there something else that people who don't understand Latino culture might be able to better understand when it comes to that?
Cadava: I love this, and this is a hard question. It's one I'm wrestling with a lot. I think really what's at the core of the question is if I'm claiming that Latinos are and have always been colonizers and colonized, what's the appropriate balance to place on those two terms? Because I don't want to suggest that it's 50/50. I'm not saying that, I'm not saying like half of Latinos are colonizers, half of Latinos are colonized. What I'm trying to do is kind of just the way my editor described it to me is that this is a kind of like aperture opening kind of argument where I'm just expanding the frame of how we see Latinos rather than trying to quantify what percentage is this and what percentage is that? And the term colonizer, I mean, in some cases it's literally true because take Southern New Mexico where in order to establish some of the earliest Hispanic settlements, Hispanic people did in fact displace native peoples from their land. So, this is a story that the Pueblo in New Mexico tell when like Don Juan de Oñate in 1598, first crossed the Rio Grande and entered Santa Fe, you know, he massacred indigenous people. So, you know, the ancestors of Latinos, if we want to think of Spanish conquistadors in some sense as related to what it means to have Latino ancestry, then they're literally colonizers. So, it plays out in that way. But then also I think that, you know, take some, take an issue like citizenship and like there are, if you go to New Mexico, if you go to Texas, you can see like long lists of names of families that have been in New Mexico for hundreds of years. They claim, you know, they claim that place because they were originally from there. And that's a fault line between people who've lived in a place for hundreds of years and recent immigrants where, you know, sometimes people who've lived there for hundreds of years sympathize with the plight of immigrants and believe that the United States should continue to provide them opportunities that their families have had to be here for a long time. But immigration status has also been a kind of point of division between many Latino families who do see immigrants as, especially undocumented immigrants, as kind of skipping the line, devaluing the meaning of citizenship because they're, you know, trying to get ahead of others who've immigrated the right way. I mean, this is something my grandfather said all the time, is that, you know, "He came the right way." He joined the military, he served in the Korean War, and that's how he became a citizen. And I think that that kind of relationship to citizenship and belonging is another interesting fault line between or among Latinos. I mean, I could go on.
Randolph: I've got one more big question. I just wanted to follow up on that 'cause we had a question about, locally, do you think it's possible to achieve unity, to reach the strengths or the power of the Latino vote? And I think, I don't know what locally means, but it might be Chicago or Illinois, but it could be even regional or national, I suppose. Do you think it's a possibility? Are there issues or are there ways to do that?
Cadava: Locally it's possible. I mean, I think like, you know, very progressive Latina and Latino congress members were elected in November 2022, like a whole new generation of very young progressive Latinos. There's a guy named Gregorio Casar in Austin, a woman in Chicago named Delia Ramirez, a woman in, who's the other one? Oh, Maxwell Frost, you know, the first Generation Z Member of Congress, an Afro-Latino from Central Florida who kind of like became politically active in the wake of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. These are examples of, so I think locally it's possible because I think that, you know, communities cannot, they won't be homogenous, but they can be more homogenous in local areas. And we saw this even in the Chicago mayoral election in the spring. You know, like I think a surprising number of Latinos supported, not Brandon Johnson, but what was his name, Vallas? I can't even remember the guy's name, Vallas? Vallas. But it really depended on like the particular neighborhood, like Little Village compared with the far South Side where, you know, the far south side is closer to the steel mills of, of Gary and East Chicago. And they were much more conservative. So, it, really, you have to kind of get to that micro level to find pockets of uniformity or consensus or unity. That's the word. But nationally, I absolutely don't think there will ever be unity among Latinos pushing in the same direction. And in fact, I don't, you know, this is just a guess, but I think that we're entering a period where there's more and more questioning of what Latino identity means than there has been at any other point in my lifetime. Because, you know, in 2020 it didn't surprise me that a good number of Latinos voted for Donald Trump. That's what I had written my book about the history of Hispanic Republicans. But what did surprise me is just the national conversation about Latinos, that Latino support for Trump started. Because I think people were asking the question, well if 38% of Latinos could support this guy, not just any Republican, but a Republican who had like based his campaign on anti-Mexican immigrant statements, what does that even mean about who Latinos are? And you saw a kind of flurry of op-eds after the 2020 election saying like, you know, the category Latino is meaningless. We should just be Americans, or we should just be Cubans, or something like that. And that to me was interesting. On the one hand, like this conversation about who are Latinos, what does it mean to be Latino? That's a conversation that's very old among Latinos. Again, it's something we debate all the time, but to see that conversation rise to the level of national attention, what does it even mean to be Latino? That was an interesting phenomenon after 2020. And I still think we're kind of in that period of questioning.
Randolph: I suppose, one thing which would bring this really to the fore is if we had, you know, one of the two main parties electing to put forward a candidate of Latino heritage into a national presidential race would certainly draw out and be very interesting statistically. To see how many people might totally unify behind that candidate for various reasons. See with gender as well and female candidates.
Cadava: Absolutely. And it's never happened. That's never happened. I mean, there have been Latinos who've competed in primaries for nominations, but the theory about like, or the question about whether they would appeal as the nominee, we don't know the answer to that.
Randolph: It'll happen sometime. Hopefully find out sometime soon.
Cadava: Yeah, that's right.
Randolph: I have more questions, but we're at our end and we have a rule of trying not to go over for everyone. So, thank you so much, Gerry. It's a fascinating discussion. Well, I may have to have it back for part two.
Cadava: Great talking to you. And anyone who's here who wants to follow up, I mean, I spend my days in Harris thinking about Latino history and politics and identity. So be in touch.
Randolph: Well, we didn't get to, I mean, people wanted to know about your teaching and your public, you know, sort of writing for The New Yorker. We'll get to that in the future. Anyway, thank you so much everyone for joining. I hope you founded a valuable way to spend 45 minutes of your life. We're really grateful to all of you in the alumni and leadership circle and supporters of Weinberg College. Your efforts really help us support, you know, great faculty members like Gerry and others. So, thank you, Gerry. Thank you, all the auditors, and have a great day.
Cadava: Thank you.