Hispanic Fanatic

I’ve avoided commenting on the healthcare controversy too much because, first, it’s a massively complex issue that would require several posts to do justice. And second, I have no desire to spend time purging my inbox of illiterate screeds that insist I’m a socialist under Obama’s evil spell.

However, I do have to make a few points about the legislation that Congress is considering. Because my focus is on Hispanic culture, let me throw some information about Latinos’ healthcare at you.

Hispanics are younger than the general population, and therefore enjoy the health benefits that come with youth. Also, when compared to white people, we tend to have healthier hearts (yes, despite our infamous hot tempers) and are less likely to suffer a stroke.

However, these pluses must be balanced against the fact that we tend to be fatter, have a greater risk for diabetes, and are less likely to be fully immunized when compared to the majority culture.

Most interesting is that Latinos are the group most likely to be uninsured. A stunning 40 percent of Hispanics don’t have insurance, which no doubt accounts for a large chunk of the overall uninsured rate of 16 percent.

Of course, one reason for that is because the current system makes it difficult for immigrants to get insurance. And since we’re on that subject…

It’s telling that despite all the problems, controversies, conspiracy theories, and whacked-out distractions that accompany the healthcare debate, only one concept provoked a U.S. congressman to shatter decades of political etiquette and indulge in a childish outburst. You no doubt remember this magical moment:

What got Congressman Wilson so up in arms was Obama’s statement that illegal immigrants would not be covered under his plan. Now, it’s one thing to shout insults at the president on live television. It takes even more cojones when you’re wrong.

In fact, illegal immigrants are not covered under any public option. Nor would they be provided with vouchers to help them pay for insurance. The Senate version of the bill even prevents them from buying insurance on public exchanges.

So it seems pretty clear that they’re not covered, right? Well, what has Wilson supporters screaming that their man was right is that the House version of the bill does not specifically bar illegal immigrants from buying insurance with their own money at full cost.

Regardless of political ideology, it strains logic to say that this provision means that taxpayers will have to pay for illegal immigrants’ healthcare. Actually, it seems to me that it would be the other way around, in that illegal immigrants would pay full price and help lower the costs for everyone. But I’m not an economist, much less a right-wing one.

The only way to appease the nativist crowd is if illegal immigrants are not allowed to buy anything in this country with their own money. Their cash,incidentally, is usually earned by repairing your roof, picking your vegetables, and raising your kids. But that’s another story.

By the way, one late amendment would send the bill for illegal immigrants’ healthcare to their countries of origin, which is at least a creative (albeit farfetched) approach. I’m sure, however, that this idea will go nowhere.

In any case, we can have a legitimate discussion about how much all this costs, and if it’s the best way to address the problem, and how to address the healthcare of non-citizens. But we’re not having that discussion, because too many people are busy shouting “Communist!” and accusing Obama of setting up death panels while dishing out free healthcare to illegal immigrants.

In a decade or so, after all this is sorted out and the United States has some kind of public healthcare, we’ll be stumped over what all the screaming was about. That’s my hope, anyway.

As we know, President Obama has announced that immigration reform will have to take its place in line behind a sputtering economy and a faltering war.

At the risk of showing off, or lapsing into complete egomania, I will now quote myself. Months ago, I wrote that, in the near future “not much will come of the new president’s apparently sincere desire to make this country a better place for immigrants. There simply isn’t the bandwidth.”

I would like to think that this means that I am smarter, or at the very least, display psychic abilities. In truth, it just means that I made an educated lucky guess, or I’m just more cynical than other commentators.

But let’s not beat up on the president too much over his reprioritization. He still has three years in which to help right-wingers morph into irrational fear mongers with bulging carotid arteries who lash out at anyone who disagrees with them. Of course, when immigration reform happens, it will make the healthcare melee look like a junior high debate.

So President Obama has announced his pick to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is Sonia Sotomayor, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. She would be the third woman and – yes it’s true – the first Hispanic to become a Supreme Court justice.

There’s some debate about that, actually, because Benjamin Cardozo, who served in the 1930s, was Portuguese-Jewish. I’ve written before about the complexity of pinpointing exactly who is Hispanic (my first post, in fact).  However, I’m going to be bold here and say that referring to Cardozo as Latino is the stretchiest of stretches. And I’m well aware that “stretchiest” is not a word; that’s how much I mean it.

Therefore, Sotomayor would be the first. That’s enough to get my attention. A brief look at her record indicates that she’s slightly liberal, which pleases me (a fact that will surprise no one who has read this blog).

She seems to have the respect of her colleagues, a fierce work ethic, and a solid, fairly noncontroversial record. So why isn’t she a slam-dunk for the job?

Well, some commentators have questioned her intelligence. I find this perplexing.

If someone can graduate from Princeton and Yale Law School (with honors), work as a high-level judge for seventeen years, be considered for one of the most important jobs in the country, and yet still be considered dim… well, it either means that there’s something seriously botched in our educational and political system, or the standards for regular Americans to be considered “bright” are appallingly low (I don’t know anybody who has her credentials, yet I mistakenly thought I knew some smart people).

One has to wonder if her supposed tendency to be “kind of a bully on the bench” and the assertion that she “has an inflated opinion of herself and is domineering” have influenced the opinion of her intellect.

Of course, I have no idea if Sotomayor is really a bully or not. But Antonin Scalia regularly gets cranky, and people respect his assertiveness. Perhaps we just don’t like to see that behavior in Hispanic women.

Maybe the description that one of her former clerks offered –that “she’s not shy or apologetic about who she is” – provides sufficient ammo for her critics. But she just sounds to me like a confident Latina.

As such, I hope she gets approved for the gig.

Just like President Obama, Dick Cheney, and many other Americans, I’ve been thinking a lot about torture lately. I’ve been thinking how bad it is… unless it’s, like, you know, really needed and stuff… to stop bad people… right?

In any case, we’ve all heard the wobbly rationales justifying the waterboarding of terrorists (thanks for making us fall in love with you all over again, Mr. Cheney!). We’ve also heard the yowls of people upset that President Obama won’t release the latest batch of torture pictures. Let’s not go over those issues here.

What interests me – the guy who deals with Latino issues – is how this latest debate over illegal activity relates to immigration.

You see, conservatives who want to arrest every undocumented worker in sight often make the following argument: “They broke the law, so they can’t be integrated into American society. That would be rewarding illegal behavior. It’s the principle of law and order.”

Of course, I’m sure these statements are uttered only by virtuous souls who never steal office supplies, cheat on their taxes, or speed on the freeway (that would be illegal!).

The implication is that many Americans would be only too happy to accept millions of Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and so on – if only the newcomers followed the rules.

“I’m most dreadfully sorry,” the right-winger says. “But you didn’t fill out the correct paperwork and stand in line. So I’m going to have to demonize you, force you into the shadows, and kick you out of the country if I can. It’s the law, you know.”

Now, as I’ve stated before, I’m not in favor of throwing open the border and letting anyone who’s interested just climb aboard. Having millions of undocumented workers in the country is not good for the nation or for them. Furthermore, immigration reform will require a combination of liberal and conservative ideas to pull off.

But let’s stop with the self-righteousness.

For many Americans, this isn’t about respecting the law. This isn’t some principled stance for fairness.

It’s about lots of dark-skinned people speaking a funny language while crowding them at the grocery store.

The irony bludgeons me. Many conservative commentators identify jumping a fence as a heinous crime that must be punished. We can’t talk about issuing amnesty or making the undocumented pay a penalty or taking a creative approach to the problem. It’s zero-tolerance time.

However, many of these same commentators – in a truly astounding display of having it both ways – then turn around and say, “But torturing someone until they talk, that’s ok. Sometimes, you have to break the law, you know.”

Yes, there is a difference. For starters, crossing into America illegally is a federal offense. Torturing someone, however, is against the laws of the nation, prohibited by the Constitution, banned under international treaties, forbidden under the rules of war, and both ethically and morally repugnant.

So it’s clear which one is worse. Hey, it’s right there in the term: illegal immigrant.

My wise old grandmother used to invoke the Spanish phrase, “When money is tight, a nickel isn’t worth a dime.”

Actually, that’s not a phrase in Spanish (I think it’s Yogi Berra). And my grandmother has never passed along anything resembling sage-like insight. She’s much more likely to complain that young people don’t wear enough clothes.

The point is that we Latinos don’t have any special wisdom for dealing with this economic disaster, which has become (say it with me) the worst crisis since the Great Depression. In fact, the statistics indicate that Hispanics are ill-suited to weather this financial maelstrom.

Looking at one specific economic indicator, the almost laughably bad housing market, we see that Latinos have the highest foreclosure rate of any ethnic group in the country, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. In addition, Latinos tend to spend more of their income on housing than other demographics do, and we are more likely to have firsthand experience with the horrific phrase “subprime mortgage,” which has supplanted “Bush-Cheney administration” as the scariest word combo in America.

The Pew Hispanic Center goes on to say that over a third of all Hispanic homeowners are worried that their house may go into foreclosure, and that over half of foreign-born Latino homeowners share this fear. The Wall Street Journal adds that “In U.S. counties where Hispanics account for more than 25% of the population, banks have taken back 6.7 homes per 1,000 residents since Jan. 1, 2006, compared with 4.6 per 1,000 residents in all counties.”

Of course, the collapse of the housing market has become the prominent symbol, main indicator, and root cause/boogyman for the financial shitstorm raining down upon the nation. As a Latino who bought a house near the peak of the boom (my first house, thank you very much), I was surprised to learn that my home has dropped little in value since I signed on the dotted line. Nevertheless, at this point, I’m calling for a cyber show of hands from all those who miss their old apartments.

In any case, besides carrying the brunt of the economic blowback, Hispanics also have the burden of getting blamed for this mess. That same Wall Street Journal article points out that “in 2005 alone, mortgages to Hispanics jumped by 29%, with expensive nonprime mortgages soaring 169%.” The article goes on to present statistical and anecdotal evidence that Latinos, more than other groups, got in way over their heads with houses they had no hopes of affording. They then apparently dragged down the market in several regions by indulging in their pesky habit of getting foreclosed on.

To its credit, the Wall Street Journal does not explicitly claim that too many Latinos buying too many houses caused the market to collapse. After all, doing so would be both morally dubious and an extremely shaky economic hypothesis. But some obvious questions arise.

Who was soliciting all those optimistic dreamers, who were often less educated individuals or recent immigrants unclear on the concepts of their new country’s system? Who thrust documents at people who had been fed the American Dream, telling them that despite their rational hesitations, everything was going to be fine because trained professionals said that they could afford the house? More specifically, who marketed housing materials in Spanish, then performed the closing in English?

The answer ranges from sixth-generation Americans with a lot of money to Latino politicians trying to score some cheap points. Of course, some flat-out greedy Hispanic homeowners share the blame. But the bottom line is that Hispanics, as a group, are more likely to be kicked to the curb (possibly in a literal sense) because of system-wide epic stupidity engineered by people who should have known better.

The details of the Obama plan to help homeowners are still being worked out, so it remains to be seen if more Latinos can hold on to their houses. The only thing we know for certain is that once this plunge bottoms out – and it will eventually – many Hispanics will hesitate before applying for mortgages. They will wonder if they once again being lied to, and they may decide that the ideal of owning a home is some absurd fantasy that they would be better off ignoring.

How can that possibly be good for them, or for America?

At this point, Barack Obama has been president for about nine hours. Surprisingly, everything is not all better just yet.

That’s because regardless of one’s political leanings, religious beliefs, or philosophical affiliations, only a deluded optimist would insist that Obama has inherited a good situation. The last eight years have been a nonstop, unending, it-can’t-get-any-worse-but-it-has cavalcade of disaster.

I don’t mean that the Bush years were just bad for Hispanics. It’s true that, in the last decade, Latinos have become the top victims of hate crimes based on ethnicity. It’s also true that the economic wipeout has affected the lower classes more, of which Hispanics make up a disproportionate percentage. And it’s ultimately true that Latinos are currently being blamed for everything from the increase in petty crime to the housing crisis to the country’s apparent moral collapse (this latter disaster seems to happen every few years).

But we do not hold a monopoly on the suffering.

The past decade has been catastrophic for whites, blacks, people of Middle Eastern descent, intellectuals, scientists, union laborers, New Orleans residents, civil libertarians, gays, moderate conservatives, atheists, middle-class office managers, stay-at-home moms, rugged farmers, diabetic stock brokers, one-eyed dentists, and “Battlestar Galactica” freaks – in short, just about everybody in America.

As I say goodbye to President Bush, I’m trying to imagine any administration in history having even one of the following as its legacy:

• Two botched wars (including the worst foreign-policy decision since Vietnam)
• Two recessions (including the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression)
• The worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history (the mastermind behind it is still at large)
• The most inept handling of a major natural disaster in U.S. history (we basically lost the city of New Orleans to mud and water moccasins)
• An unprecedented, massive backsliding of civil rights (historians will be amazed that we put up with this fear-mongering)
• Overt, criminal corruption at the Justice Department (at least in the same league as Watergate)
• An incredibly tarnished image abroad (and yes, it does matter if we want to claim that we lead the free world).

 That’s just the big stuff. I know I’m forgetting a lot.

Any one of those top three items is sufficient to end discussion about Bush’s competence. Put them all together and pile on other major catastrophes and some lesser disasters and… well… really, I’m still trying to comprehend how all this happened under the watch of one guy. This much chaos usually gets spread around over a half-century or so.

Some commentators say that Bush’s reputation will be repaired as time goes on. I agree, in the sense that it can’t get any worse… then again, I’ve said that phrase many times over the last eight years.

Will Obama be a fresh start and the beginning of a bold new era of greatness and American strength? Or will he be our second dud in a row?

I’m optimistic that he will be a good president, even if I’ve never quite bought into the whole “Obama as Lincoln/Roosevelt/savior” thing. Hell, I’ll settle for basic competency at this point.

In any case, I join all Americans – Hispanic, white, black, Asian, and purple –  in wishing the new president well. Hopefully, we can get back on track.

It’s not like we’re due for some good news or anything.

As some commentators have noted, the election of Barack Obama has forced Europe to address one of its uncomfortable contradictions. This most progressive of continents has a reputation for being more enlightened than America. Indeed, their health-care policies, attitude toward gays, and work-life balance far exceed our stumbling, nineteenth-century approaches. In comparison to them, we look – and often feel – like beer-swilling cretins who fire shotguns at random while cursing out fancy book learnin’.

But there is one area where Europe can only gaze upon us in wonder. Believe it or not, we do a better job at integrating immigrants, promoting assimilation, and addressing racism than they do. Yes, even with all the screaming about Mexicans taking our jobs and Laotians refusing to learn English and Somalis creating their own ethnic enclaves and what have you, we’re far ahead of our European counterparts.

For starters, we have just elected a new leader who happens to be a biracial man whose father was an immigrant. I don’t see anything similar happening soon in Great Britain or Denmark. In fact, xenophobia is on the rise in Europe.

Or look at France’s National Assembly, which is the rough equivalent of our U.S. House of Representatives. Of its 577 members, only one is a minority. In contrast, of our 535 members of Congress, 75 are minorities (and 27 of those are Hispanics, thank you very much).

That’s just looking at the political breakdown of our leadership. There are other ways in which it is better to be a dark hue in America than it is in Austria, even though it’s clear that we have acres of room for improvement. Still, we’re farther along the path than many other nations are, and one factor for this headstart may be because of our view of immigration.

The writer Naomi Wolf points out several reasons why immigrants strive for a U.S. address, and why they tend to like it better here than in Europe.

First, Wolf points out that our national story is different. With the exception of Native Americans, we all came from somewhere else. To quote “Stripes” and the esteemed philosopher Bill Murray, our ancestors were “kicked out of every decent country in the world” (Ms. Wolf does not employ this reference).

Also, the values of immigration are admired – or at least the initiative and ambition of old-time Ellis Island immigrants are – while in Europe, immigrants are viewed with almost universal disdain. In addition, everyone gets to be hyphenated once he or she gets here (e.g., African American, Italian American, Asian American). See if you can find someone who considers himself a “Turkish German.”

Wolf also points that we emphasize values that everyone (in theory) can share, instead of focusing on a lineage of great kings or the specifics of a tiny geographical area, like they do in Europe. Finally, she stresses how the separation of church and state is vital to preventing a xenophobic culture, which is a point I’ve made several times in these posts.

Obviously, there are also geographical reasons why so many people from Latin America come here. There will never be an influx of Hondurans to, say, Belgium. But I imagine that if most of those Guatemalans who risk it all to emigrate could chose any nation on Earth, they would still look north first.

Despite the enormous obstacles that newcomers face here – some legal and necessary, others cultural and ugly – it’s better to be an immigrant in America than anywhere else. And it’s not just because we’re, you know, America – where everyone has nine iPods and drives hot cars and watches 188 channels of pornography and indulges in freedoms that terrorists apparently hate.

Really, you can have a good quality of life in Spain or Greece. But it would suck to start at the bottom in any of those countries, because that’s where you, your children, and probably your grandchildren will remain. That is often the case here, of course. But we at least offer the hope of progress, and as I can vouch from first-hand experience, one successful immigrant can create a situation where an entire family can thrive.

Is essence, perhaps the main reason America has always been a nation of immigrants is simple.

American is not race or an ethnicity. It is a nationality. More than that, it’s an idea.

First, let me thank Raul Ramos y Sanchez for his thought-provoking comment on my previous post.

Second, let me give you a warning. If you should ever walk down the street of a major American city with my wife, you should not (by her own admission) listen to her she asks the innocuous question, “What’s over there?” I speak from experience. Her curiosity about hidden doors and blinking marquees has mistakenly led us into shady dives from coast to coast (imagine my surprise at walking into an S&M bar in Hollywood).

One evening, “what’s over there” prompted us to enter a covert LA nightclub, where the doorman smiled and waived the cover charge. I had assumed he did so because it was Ladies Night. But when we walked in, I saw that he had not let us in for free because of my wife. It was because of me. It was a Latino gay bar, and the doorman assumed that I was a non-straight who had brought along my hipster female friend. To make things more interesting, a talent show for drag queens was just starting. What could I do but order a beer and watch the performances? My wife and I agreed that the Christina Aguilera was pretty close to the real thing.

I was not surprised that Hispanic gay men might establish a safe house off the beaten path. Loathing of gays shows hydra-headed persistence within Latino culture. We are the society, after all, that defined the word “macho.” The old-school standards for strong Hispanic males include getting into brawls, avoiding the kitchen, and womanizing at will. They do not include an affinity for techno music and an interest in Jennifer Lopez’s wardrobe.

As such, possibly the worst insult that one can lob at a Latino male is the dreaded M-word. To call someone a “maricon” is to take the nearest English equivalent (“faggot”), triple its intensity, add several layers of hatred and disgust, and square the result. In my generation at least, nobody jokes about this word or uses it lightly.

In contrast, American gay activists have adopted the words “queer” and “dyke” in an attempt to rob them of their degrading power, similar to the way in which many African Americans throw around the fabled N-word. It’s a subject of fierce debate whether these tactics work or are self-sabotaging, but in either case, I’m pretty sure nobody in Latin America is even trying that with “maricon.” In fact, being gay in Latin America ranges from affront to God (we’re talking about heavily Catholic countries) to active death warrant in the small villages of Central and South America.

I was talking with the Bitca about the level of homophobia in Hispanic culture. She said, “But you’re not homophobic” and added that this is one of my very few redeeming qualities. Then she said, “So I guess sometimes you’re an individual and not just a stereotype after all.” I thanked her for her high praise.

But she got me thinking.

The passage of Proposition 8 in California, which bans gay marriage, received ample support from Obama backers. Much of the coverage of this oxymoronic outcome has focused on the high percentage of black people who shouted, “free at last” when they voted for president and then muttered, “damn the homosexuals” as they revoked a basic civil right.

But California has a high number of Latinos (ask any right-wing demagogue for verification of this fact), and Obama was hugely popular with them (see my previous two posts on this). It is indeed a sad fact that a great many Latinos mimicked their African American brethren on Election Day.

To be specific, 53 percent of California Hispanics voted for the proposition. While this is not an overwhelming majority, it still tops the percentage of overall voters who approved of the ban (52 percent). It is also contradictory to their supposed enthusiasm for a liberal president.

Is it possible that my old boogeyman, the Catholic Church, is somewhat responsible for the invincible strain of homophobia in Latino culture? To the surprise of absolutely no one, the answer is yes. Hey, is the Pope homophobic… I mean, Catholic? Yes, that’s what I meant.

Statistics from Hispanic Business show that 64 percent of Latino Catholics voted for the proposition. Just 10 percent of non-religious Hispanics voted the same way.

So it’s not just burly macho hombres who hate gays that are tipping the vote. It’s quiet, polite Latina grandmothers who are willing to overlook Obama’s pro-choice tendencies, but can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that gay people have rights. Let’s be clear: When pundits talk about social conservatism among the otherwise Democratic-friendly Latino population, this is what they’re talking about.

However, despite the fact that homophobia is strong in Hispanic culture, Latino gays still find ways to burst out from underground. These manifestations range from the intellectualism of the great Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas to the pop-culture pabulum of Hank Azaria dancing around in “The Birdcage.” And what would a gay-pride parade be without at least one Carmen Miranda impersonator?

It’s a broad range of expression. Perhaps it’s hopeful, or maybe it’s pathetic. I can’t tell you, because I’m just a guy who walks obliviously into gay bars. 

Here at Fanatic worldwide headquarters, we all want to know what the Obama administration will mean to Latinos. My guess is that it will mean roughly the same thing that it means to everyone else (eg, change, hope, cries of “socialism!” etc), with an extra tint of pride beyond what most white people feel – but which still falls short of the absolute joy that African Americans feel.

The first detail to address is the makeup of his administration. We’re talking about a biracial liberal whose candidacy attracted voters of every conceivable race, creed, and demographic. He’s more or less promised to rehabilitate the term “diversity” and transform it, Cinderella style, into a beautiful princess, instead of leaving it to toil in the social conservatives’ kitchen.

Specifically, there is some talk (possibly scurrilous, because there’s nothing better than “scurrilous talk”) of Bill Richardson getting to call his Cabinet post. Besides being well-qualified for just about any administration gig, this high-profile Latino did help Obama score New Mexico. So a Richardson appointment would be both political payback and good for the country, and we know how rare that combination is after the abject cronyism of the Bush administration, where competence was a humorous afterthought compared to loyalty and ideology.

Next, we have to ponder those issues that resonate most with Hispanics. Conveniently, most of these issues are also big guns with the general population. After all, Latinos are not any more or less obsessed with jobs, health care, and education than white people are – it’s just that Hispanics have grown weary of receiving the poorest quality in all of these areas. Any Obama policies that move Latinos closer to the standards enjoyed by the general population will receive a resounding “Si, se puede!”

Already, Obama’s transition team has identified hundreds of executive orders that the new president will overturn, amend, or just bury in the White House backyard. In addition, Obama’s ideas on taxation – and his drive to reform the previously mentioned problem areas of education and health care – may have a direct impact on the Latino standard of living. Much depends on whether the minority party (an ironic moniker under the circumstances) decides to pick a fight over what constitutes “socialism.”

The most pressing topic that appeals specifically to Hispanics, of course, is immigration. This tends to be true regardless of whether one is illegal or a third-generation citizen. For Obama, this issue gets dicey, because Bush and McCain were actually at odds with their own party’s hard-line stance, meaning that the president-elect would have to be even more open about immigration to differentiate himself from his opponents.

So one has to ponder if guest-worker programs will move forward. Also, will there be a nationwide American Dream Act, or is this piece of equitable legislation fated to be battled over in state after state? And what will happen to those so-called amnesty provisions?

In all likelihood, the answer is that not much will come of the new president’s apparently sincere desire to make this country a better place for immigrants. There simply isn’t the bandwidth. Obama will be so swamped trying to dig the economy out of the toilet and dealing with two floundering wars that I doubt any serious movement on immigration will happen before, say, 2012.

And just think, at that point, all this fun starts again.

The dancing in the streets has subsided since Tuesday. Of course, I remain stunned that we had dancing in the streets at all. Seriously, does anyone remember this kind of orgiastic response over election results? Before this, the standard imagery was supporters in ballrooms laughing and waving signs, but now we see impromptu parades and ecstatic outbursts on street corners and strangers hugging each other in every city in the world. But maybe it just overwhelms in comparison with recent history, because the last two elections provoked either muffled wailing or smug insinuations that God had spoken.

Among last week’s celebrants were Hispanics. Anyone tuning in to more than twelve minutes of television coverage heard how the Latino vote was key to Obama’s win. We even got more air time and credit than the fabled youth vote.

The facts are that Hispanics favored Obama by more than two to one over McCain (67 percent to 31 percent, according to MSNBC). Looking at it another way, Latino voters accounted for 11 percent of Obama’s vote and 6 percent of McCain’s total.

In addition to crunching the raw numbers, MSNBC ran an analysis under the particularly ominous headline “What if there were no Latino voters?” (Indeed, many Republicans are probably muttering that exact phrase).

The analysis found that the Hispanic vote was the difference in New Mexico and Indiana, which means that in a Latino-free world, Obama would have still won the electoral vote but in less decisive fashion. However, being the swing group in two states is pretty cool, and Hispanics continue to exert their prominence in places such as California and Texas.

More interesting still is the fact that the biggest percentage increases in Latino voters happened in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada – all battleground states and all now freshly blue. As the GOP well knows, those states are getting more Hispanic, and those Hispanics are getting more Democratic, especially the younger generation.

Speaking of younger Latinos, they helped Florida become Obama country this year. Our new president won 57 percent of the Hispanic vote in that state, which is astonishing when one considers that the large Cuban American population there has been, in the past, so hardcore Republican that they make Rupert Murdoch look like a gay vegan folksinger in comparison.

Perhaps second- and third-generation Cuban Americans are tired of hearing how voting for the GOP is the only way to stick it to Fidel. They either don’t believe it (Castro is hanging on to power with his last, frenzied breaths and will only be removed through a natural death) or they simply have more pressing concerns, like job losses and collapsing education systems and shoddy health care and a thousand other American issues that have nothing to do with the unresolved, dusty battles of their grandparents.

One final bit of intriguing news comes courtesy of the Pew Hispanic Center. They found that 8 percent of this year’s voters were of the brown-skinned variety. Truthfully, this could have been better, considering that we make up about 14 percent of the population.

Regardless, it’s clear that Latinos, like just about every other demographic except for white evangelicals, were caught up in Obama frenzy this year. The long-term implications for Republicans look grim, as we get younger, more numerous, and more liberal.

And now that we have our first minority president, isn’t it just a matter of time before someone whose last name ends in Z takes the oath of office? It may be years away, but it’s coming.