Unspoken fear among Hispanics
By Jose R. Martinez
The Denver Post
Colorado Voices columnist
Wednesday, November 03, 2004 –
The fear of divide-and-conquer is primal, especially when a weak group takes on a powerful foe. That’s why Benjamin Franklin said, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Do most Latinos hang together? Is there a unity, an alliance, among Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexican-Americans and all other Latinos? What about Latinos and African-Americans? Do they hang together? Or is such an alliance more illusion than reality? Maybe the reality is that intractable divisions have been there all along and it’s now time to talk about them, especially as some of the gaps widen.