Hispanic Fanatic

Yes, things have been grim in America for the past few years. To be honest, they haven’t been that great for a couple of decades now.

In fact, a serious case can be made that the nation’s high-water mark was the 1990s, when we had grunge rock, the X-files, a booming economy, and a conservative movement that was going crazy (but not yet fully psychotic). 

Also, I was still young, which is, when you think about it, really the most important thing.

But in the spirit of optimism — and before we get too far into 2023 and allow it to crush us like the other 2020s so far — I will point out several positive developments.

First, child poverty has “dramatically decreased in the U.S. over the past 25 years.” The chief reason may be the Child Tax Credit, which helped cut child poverty by roughly 30 percent. 

Of course, that tax credit has now been eliminated, so there is a chance the rate will go up again. And compared to “other developed nations, child poverty rates in America remain higher than the rest.”

But hey, let’s not kill the vibe.

Moving on, we see that the rates of cervical cancer have “dropped an astonishing 65% among women in their early 20s.” This is primarily because of vaccinations against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes this type of cancer. So many women have taken advantage of the HPV vaccine that herd immunity has kicked in, and “rates have dropped among unvaccinated women as well.”

It’s true that many religious zealots refuse to let their teenage daughters get vaccinated because they would literally rather have their kids get cancer than engage in premarital sex, but… ha, I see what you did there. Almost got me to go negative, didn’t you?

Nope, we’re going to continue on the good-news train.

Here’s something: inflation is slowing down, and the federal budget deficit has fallen significantly, going from $2.6 trillion to $1.4 trillion.

These are very positive economic developments, and everyone can cheer them. Well, except for Republicans, who are determined to drive America into default and wreck the economy out of some bizarre desire to punish Biden or parade their ignorance or just burn everything down. Who can tell anymore?

No, we are staying positive. 

So ignore all that GOP nonsense and move on to this intriguing fact: The racial gap in death rates of covid has disappeared.

We all know that the pandemic hit ethnic minorities far harder than white people, but “in a country with deep racial inequities, where covid was initially another tragic example, the virus is no longer disproportionately harming Black and Hispanic Americans.” This improvement is due to “passionate advocacy and hard work by many community health officials.”

That’s uplifting, right?

Don’t be a buzzkill by pointing out that “this accomplishment continues to receive relatively little attention,” probably because “the remaining pool of unvaccinated Americans is disproportionately Republican, and Republicans are disproportionately white.”

You see, white Republicans don’t want to admit that vaccines work, and that the pandemic was real. And the mainstream media does whatever white Republicans say, which is another example of the lobsided balance of power in this country and how we all bend over backward to appease ignorance.

It doesn’t even matter that Latinos “suffered more COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people than most other racial and ethnic groups for most of the pandemic” and that “the Latino community’s rising prosperity may be in jeopardy” because of the devastation that the virus wrought. 

But no, let’s talk about how white Republicans can’t have their feelings hurt and…

Stop. Stay calm. Ok, moving on.

Another upbeat development is that there has been mild progress on climate change, as “renewable power soars, vulnerable ecosystems gain rights, and climate protocols start to pay dividends.”

That’s almost enough to make you forget that “the oil giant Exxon privately ‘predicted global warming correctly and skillfully’ only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business.”

It turns out that “the only thing Exxon did better than predicting the future was lying about it.” If you need a refresher on how evil corporations can be, and how climate denialism indicates sheer idiocy, this is “your umpteenth reminder that we’ve known about the coming (now here) disaster for decades.”

Well, my quest for positive news is getting shaky now. Perhaps I can combine my last two items — the pandemic and climate change — into one hopeful story.

Yes, here it is: As global temperatures rise, it becomes “more likely that viruses and bacteria locked up in glaciers and permafrost could reawaken and infect local wildlife.” This means that the next killer pandemic may not come “from bats or birds but from matter in melting ice.”

So if the heat doesn’t kill us, the viruses will.

Damn. There goes all my optimism.

Ok, what was I saying about the 1990s? Yeah, I guess those were the motherfucking days.

At least we’ll always have Soundgarden.

I am the child of an immigrant. My mom is from El Salvador, so I grew up with the tastes and influences of a typical American teenager, all mixed with a strong awareness of Latino culture and history. I’m pretty grateful for the combo.

You know who else is the child of an immigrant? Omar Mateen, the psychopath who murdered 49 people in Orlando a few nights ago.

Mateen and I clearly had different interpretations of the dichotomies that come with being members of the first generation to be born in America. For example, I blended a love of hamburgers with an appreciation for pupusas, and I gave the music of my mother’s homeland a fair listen before popping in a Soundgarden album. It was a bit of a mezcla.

But Omar Mateen wasn’t interested in mixing cultures. He found it easier to just embrace the problems, prejudices, and anger of his parents’ country. Mateen latched onto his father’s homophobia and the religious mania that is widespread in his family’s homeland. And in so doing, he set out to be more culturally authentic than his parents ever were.

This is not an issue of assimilation or integration, as so many people believe it to be. No, it is more of a cultural mindset.

It is a mindset that provokes young men, born and raised in America, to adopt the radical politics of their parents’ homelands. It is a mindset of fear and fury.

The massacre in Orlando — and the fact that so many of the victims were Latino — got me thinking about how this cultural perception forms one of the many roots of bigotry and violence.

Let’s ask, why are there no Latino terrorists, going on shooting sprees or strapping on bombs to avenge the pain and misery that the United States government has inflicted upon El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and other Latin American countries?

Indeed, there is ample reason for Hispanics to be more than a little pissed about our treatment and standing in the United States.

And yet, survey after survey shows that Latinos are more optimistic about the future and more positive about life in general than just about any other American demographic. We are pretty much the last people to use the injustices of the past to justify abhorrent behavior.

One reason for this is so obvious that it borders on the simplistic. But here it is: Latinos tend to look forward.

We pack up and move to new countries in search of better lives. We assume our kids will do better than us. We have faith that circumstances will improve.

And this forward-thinking mindset, this cultural tendency to dismiss the woes of the past, helps us to maintain optimism in the face of economic and political tribulations. It helps us to set aside our pain and disappointment, rather than hoist them upon our backs for all to see.

In contrast, angry and hate-filled people tend to look backward, toward some vague past, and then they threaten to make America, you know, “great again.”

And other people, like Omar Mateen, not only look backward — they glare at it with a white-hot obsession and rage. They believe that their culture’s best days are long behind them, that the present holds nothing more than humiliation and despair, and that someone — maybe American society or gays or left-handed dentists or whoever — is to blame.

Omar Mateen, in addition to being a pathetic and homicidal loser, was an unimaginative, scared person who had no faith in the future. And someone taught him that mindset, inculcating him with the belief that it was reality.

As for his victims — people with names like Almodovar and Guerrero and Rios and Flores — they most likely had great hopes for tomorrow and next year and the next decade. But that optimism and those dreams were cruelly taken from them by a furious man who could do nothing better with his life than stare backward into the distant past.