The Fiesta Culture
How America "Celebrates" Hispanic Culture and Trivializes Hispanic People
by
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The "salsafication" (rhymes with falsification) of America is fully underway, enabling Americans everywhere to enjoy – if not a spicier, more interesting life – tortilla chips topped with melted nacho cheese and jalapeno slices or picante sauce. The point at which this "salsafication" hit its full stride – or became fully strident at least in American popular culture – may be dated to the early 1990’s, not because it verged upon the 500th Anniversary of Columbus’ "discovery" of the New World, but because it marked the first time ever that sales of salsa picante sauce surpassed ketchup in the United States. At the time, record-breaking, ketchup kickin’ salsa was hailed in the popular media as a symbol of non-Hispanic Americans’ "discovery" of authentic Hispanic culture. And ever since, salsa has been widely served up as a convenient, compelling metaphor for Hispanics and Hispanic culture. This simplification of Hispanics – of who Hispanics are, and what they offer to other Americans – is a kind of salsafication as well, a pungent sharpening of perception itself. And it all folds in very neatly with the contemporary celebration in pop culture of the fiesta as the vehicle to carry salsafication forth to the far-flung reaches of America (and the world), and of Hispanics and Hispanic culture as the source of "salsafied" fiesta spirit to enliven other Americans’ lives. The extraordinary story of how "salsafication" is infusing American popular culture and American life more generally – effecting the wholesale transfer, the transfusion of Hispanic spirit from Hispanic people to non-Hispanics – and what this means for Hispanic-Americans and for our country is the story of this book. And although salsafication is often portrayed and promoted as a tribute to Hispanic people and their culture, it is, in fact, in effect, nothing of the sort. The success of "salsafication" is less about Hispanics – as will become all too clear – than it is about the primacy of pop culture’s appeal to the senses and emotions. "Salsafied" Hispanic spirit is simply becoming a featured part, a bigger player, in this appeal to consumers in American popular culture. Salsafication’s real strength thus lies in the self-interest, in the apparent longing, of individual non-Hispanic Americans for what they see as enlivening Hispanic spirit. The Scramble to "Salsafy" Pop culture’s creative people are scrambling as fast as they can to "salsafy" us, often following on, falling over, each other’s "salsafication" metaphors. The competition to characterize Hispanic life and culture as a source of enlivening spirit for non-Hispanics, and then coordinate its efficient "downloading" into pop culture’s "salsafied" products and entertainments, is more intense than ever. And the enthusiasm that pop culture’s marketers and promoters bring to this task is palpable – and catching. The excitement in pop culture over the perceived value and potential of "salsafied" Hispanic spirit – its ability to make money as it energizes the spirits of millions of non-Hispanic Americans (and millions more around the world) – seems to be boundless, bountiful enough to help sell all kinds of things that have nothing directly to do with Hispanics. In whatever category of consumer one falls at any particular time, this can come home to one. Sometimes literally, as when one is a homeowner, for example – for those who are so situated – and what happens by turning on the television and seeing commercials for, say, "Fiesta Orange House Paint." Slap a coat of "Fiesta Orange" on the walls of your "recreation room" and you’ve suddenly imported the spirit of the fiesta into your daily life, into your home!
Bizarrely – but all too understandably, considering the effort that pop culture invests in "salsafication" – the spicy, passionate Hispanic world existing somewhere, from which the resonance to revitalize us (the non-Hispanic ones of "us") originates, takes on plausibility, a tangibility that seems perfectly comprehensible. When the logic is spun out from this source of "salsafication", all kinds of things become clear, and all sorts of problems get solved. Hispanics are "contributing" to America, its morale and life, as never before, even if they are losing something as individual people. For salsafication is a group thing, and any considerations of Hispanics as complex, individual people aren’t very helpful to its resonance for the white (and other non-Hispanic) Americans who want it. Particular Hispanics – entertainers and actors, notably – may bring a new nuance, a fresh face or beguiling presence that helps to vary the persona of Hispanic spirit presented in pop culture and to keep it vital as it does its job of "salsafying" non-Hispanic spirits across America. But they are not changing its essential nature, and, with time, another new face, another Hispanic entertainer or actor will come along to exemplify Hispanic fiesta spirit. And if Hispanics are contributing their very spirit, and white (and other non-Hispanic) Americans are eagerly seeking to engage some of this "salsafied" Hispanic spirit to enliven their own spirits, well, then, the problem of Hispanic "assimilation" – the obstacles to the addition of a Hispanic mosaic in the American model of "multiculturalism" – has been overcome. If the logic of this pop culture-generated Hispanic model escapes some Hispanic-Americans – seeing as how, for example, it doesn’t deal with or focus on the very real needs of Hispanic-Americans ranging from education and employment to political and economic empowerment – it is because Hispanic-Americans are themselves failing to "get with the program," as the saying goes. Hispanics who can’t – or won’t recognize that their enlivening spirit is helping to energize the new spirit of America, the National Fiesta, figuratively speaking, of America’s exuberant affluence and hedonistic pursuit, are simply "party poopers." And nobody likes a person – or a people – who puts a damper on his or her party.
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The Fiesta Culture
But beyond this happy interpretation of Hispanic influence in America are troubling social and political implications and impacts. For one thing, the contemporary celebration of Hispanics in American popular culture is really just a polished-up, positive spin on long-standing stereotypes of Hispanics-As-The-Fiesta-People. And it forces us to face a central question about America’s future: Do we really want to keep trivializing the nation’s largest and fastest-growing minority instead of speeding their full participation in American life?
The Fiesta Culture examines the vital issues raised by America’s "Salsafication" for Hispanic Americans and, indeed, for all Americans.
About the Author
D. Russell Martinez has written extensively on Hispanics for newspapers, magazines and U.S. Government agencies. His work has been syndicated by the Los Angeles Times Newspaper Syndicate through its "Hispanic Link" column feature, appearing in such major newspapers as the San Diego Union and the San Antonio Express-News. He has also written "Op-Ed" columns for the Baltimore Sun and Denver Post newspapers, worked as a "stringer" for Newsweek magazine, and contributed to Americas, the magazine of the Organization of American States. In 1984, he contributed to the book Portraits of the Puerto Rican Experience. His writing career began in earnest at age nineteen when he joined the Riverside, California Press-Enterprise newspaper as a part-time general assignment reporter while still attending Riverside City College. As the daily newspaper’s only Latino or bilingual writer, he was quickly thrust into covering (on a full-time basis) the turbulent struggle of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement and of Cesar Chavez to organize farmworkers toiling in the county’s lucrative grape growing agribusiness industry. His reporting from the front lines takes on a new dimension with this book, in which the front lines of the Hispanic Civil Rights Movement are often in our pop and political cultures.