Title: Commentary: What Would America be like Without Hispanics? – Journal of Hispanic Policy
Headings: Commentary: What Would America be like Without Hispanics?
Commentary: What Would America be like Without Hispanics?
Stephen Balkaran

Content: The Hispanic presence in the election of President James Polk in 1844 and his future policy of annexation of Texas, the stolen land, the creation of the artificial border the Alamo, the great Southwest, and the Compromise of 1850 all help define our American history. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War, enabled the United States to gain Texas, New Mexico and Upper California, making way for the vast expansion of American land, but also a cultural history like no other. Some 20,000 Hispanics fought in the Civil War, some serving in the 1st Florida Cavalry, others serving in the Union forces in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. From the first battle in Fort Sumter to the last battle in Palmito Ranch, Texas, Hispanics served in the Civil War. Hispanics have always met the challenge of serving America with commitment and admiration in the midst of the great American Split. Likewise, Dr. Hector P. Garcia fought peacefully for the dismantling of segregation signs, racism and discrimination in many Mexican American communities in the great Southwest in the 1940s and 50s. He served as a role model for many Americans, from creating the Mexican American GI Forum in 1948, to his appointment as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, to the first Mexican American to given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. What would our first African American President campaign slogan “Yes We Can” be like without the Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta who coined the term “Sí, se puede” in the 1972 during the farm workers strike? Without the Hispanic struggle for economic equality, the term may not have had any importance. As we embrace the 21st century, what would America’s political future be like without the political importance of the Hispanic vote?