11 facts for National Hispanic Heritage Month

National Hispanic Heritage Month began this week to celebrate Latinos and their culture and history. Started as Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson, it was expanded to a month by President Ronald Reagan and enacted into law in 1988. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica celebrated their independence days Monday followed by Mexico today and Chile on Thursday.

Here are 11 facts that look at Latinos in the U.S. by age, geography and origin groups.

1. The U.S. Hispanic population now stands at over 54.1 million, making them the nation’s second-largest racial or ethnic group. Today Hispanics make up 17% of the U.S. population, up from 5% in 1970.
2. People of Mexican origin account for two-thirds (34 million) of the nation’s Latinos. Those of Puerto Rican origin are the next largest group at 4.9 million (with another 3.5 million on the island of Puerto Rico). There are five other Hispanic origin groups with more than 1 million people each: Cubans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Guatemalans and Colombians.
3. There is diversity among Latino origin groups in major metro areas. Mexicans make up 78% of Latinos in the Los Angeles area but, in the New York City area, Puerto Ricans (28%) and Dominicans (21%) are the largest groups. Meanwhile, Salvadorans (32%) are most numerous in the Washington, D.C., metro area, and Cubans (54%) are the largest group in Miami.
4. The share foreign born among Hispanics varies by origin group. Just one-third (34%) of Mexican-origin Hispanics are foreign born. That’s far lower than among the other major groups – Cuban (56% foreign born), Salvadoran (60%), Dominican (56%), Guatemalan (65%) and Colombian (63%). (Most Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens at birth.)
5. As the population of U.S.-born Latinos booms and the arrival of new immigrants slows, the share of Hispanics who are immigrants — as opposed to those who are born here — is on the decline. From 2007 to 2012, the number of Latino immigrants increased slightly, from 18 million to 18.8 million. But they constituted a smaller overall share of the Latino population — decreasing from 40% to 36% over the same time period.
6. Latinos are the youngest of the major racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. At 27 years, the median age of Latinos is a full decade lower than that of the U.S. overall (37 years). Among Latinos, there is a big difference in median age between the U.S.-born (18 years) and foreign-born (40 years).
7. The number of young Latinos has rapidly increased. From 1993 to 2013, the number of Latinos younger than 18 in the U.S. more than doubled (107% increase), compared with an 11% increase among the general U.S. population younger than 18, according to Census Bureau data. In any given year, more than 800,000 young Latinos turn 18.
8. Latinos make up the largest group of immigrants in most states, mostly because Mexico is the biggest source of immigrants in 33 states. In some states, though, other Hispanic groups are the largest: El Salvador is the top country of birth among immigrants in Virginia and Maryland, the Dominican Republic leads in New York and Rhode Island and Cuba is the top place of birth for immigrants in Florida.
9. A majority of Latino adults (55%) say they are Catholic, while 16% are evangelical Protestants and 5% are mainline Protestants. The share who say they are Catholic has declined from 67% in 2010. Mexicans and Dominicans are more likely than other Hispanic origin groups to say they are Catholic. Meanwhile, Salvadorans are more likely to say they are evangelical Protestants than Mexicans, Cubans and Dominicans.
10. A record 25.2 million Hispanics are eligible to vote in 2014, up from 21.3 million in 2010. But during the last midterm election, the voter turnout rate of Hispanics (31%) lagged behind whites (49%) and blacks (44%).
11. More than 35 million Latinos speak Spanish at home. About 38% say Spanish is their dominant language, compared with 25% who are English-dominant and 36% who are bilingual, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2013 National Survey of Latinos.

Pew Research Center

So long Joan

by Eddy Aguilar Saba

When I moved to the states permanently, I was only 16 years old. A tiny little baby, an unknown, an innocent little bird, learning how to fly. And, indeed, I was flying all over Los Angeles, where I established my first nest.

A friend, Sean, from my first college the Pasadena City College, was my first friend whom at the time invited me to go see a, not so unknown, stand up comedian called Joan Rivers. She was going to perform at the local Pasadena city Park, a yearly event that takes place up until now. And yes, to go see her back then was for free.

I clearly recall everyone sitting on the grass facing the park auditorium. A crowd of all ages. Everyone was laughing out of their lungs. Non-stop, for about one hour and a half laugh, laugh, laugh. Back then, I was a Peruvian kid with a very broken English. I had no idea what Joan Rivers was saying. But I was laughing. Her outfit, her face, her movements, her eyes, her hair and the fact that she was all over the auditorium, was just hilarious. The name of that energy at that park I called it now “just laugh”.

Since then, I have followed Joan Rivers career. I admire courage in people. And yes, she had courage.

A remarkable career I will never forget.

So long Joan.

New Hispanic Trends

After four decades of Hispanic rapid growth , the number of Latino immigrants in the U.S. reached a record 18.8 million in 2010, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Since 2000, the U.S.-born Latino population continued to grow at a faster rate than the immigrant population. 

Among Hispanic adults in 2012, 49.8% were born in another country, down from a peak of 55% in 2007. Among all Hispanics, the share foreign-born was 35.5% in 2012, down from about 40% earlier in the 2000s.

The slowdown in growth of the Hispanic foreign-born population coincides with a decline in Mexican migration to the U.S. Today, about as many people from Mexico are leaving the U.S. as entering, after four decades of explosive growth. Many factors have played a role in this trend, including the U.S. economic downturn, stepped-up border enforcement, growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings and demographic and economic changes in Mexico.

Key findings from the statistical portrait of U.S. Hispanics include:

Marriage and living arrangements

• Between 2000 and 2012, the percentage of Hispanics ages 18 and older who have never married increased from 29% to 37%. Meanwhile, the percentage that is currently married has declined from 55% to 46%. The share of Hispanics living in households led by married couples has also declined since 2000, from 65% to 57%.
• The percentage of Hispanic-headed family households with five or more people has declined since 2000, falling from 31% to 26% in 2012. There has been an increase in two-person households, from 24% in 2000 to 28% in 2012.

Population by geography

• The top five states by Hispanic population in 2012 are: California (14.5 million), Texas (10 million), Florida (4.5 million), New York (3.6 million) and Illinois (2.1 million).
• Between 2000 and 2012, the five states with the fastest-growing Hispanic populations were: Tennessee (up 163%), South Carolina (161%), Alabama (157%), Kentucky (135%) and South Dakota (132%).
• The five states where Hispanics make up the biggest share of the population in 2012 are: New Mexico (47%), California (38%), Texas (38%), Arizona (30%) and Nevada (27%).

Spanish use at home and English proficiency

• About 12.3 million Hispanics ages 5 and older (26%) speak English at home exclusively. That share is 39% among the U.S. born and 4% among the foreign born.
• Some 35.5 million Latinos ages 5 and older (74%) say they speak a language other than English at home, whether or not they also speak English at home. Among them, 35.3 million say the other language they speak is Spanish.
• Among Hispanics (ages 5 and older) who speak a language other than English at home, 56% report speaking English very well.
• One-third of all Hispanics (33%) say they do not speak English very well.
• Among immigrant Latinos, a language gap exists between children and adults. Some 70% of immigrant children between ages 5 and 17 say they speak only English or speak English very well. By comparison, just 32% of immigrant adults say they speak only English or speak English very well

Don't 'Es-stress' Over Spanglish.

As readers, booksellers and academics gather Wednesday onWorld Book Day to celebrate words and language, there is an interesting transatlantic tiff over the use of Spanglish - the mixing of English and Spanish often used among U.S. Latinos when they are hangiando (hanging) together.

In a tongue in cheek yet telling open letter to Spain's language arbiter, the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), a group of professors, journalists, translators, editors and even Mexican actor Gael García Bernal recently denounced the Academy's plans to define Spanglish as a mode of speech that “deforms” elements of Spanish and English vocabulary and grammar. The definition will appear in an upcoming edition of the Academy's dictionary.

The letter signers, who do not see Spanglish as a deformation, wrote that the Academy showed a "pathetic incapacity" to take into account the benefits and the social and linguistic nuances inherent in Spanglish.

Spanglish is a reflection of how immigrants here in the U.S. have defined and then redefined their identities.

Many of the Spanglish 'defenders' who signed the letter live in the U.S, where these words have been used for generations. Words include la marketa (English word is market and Spanish is mercado) or la boila (boiler in Engish, caldera or calentador in Spanish).

The tension between language purists and those who look at the lighter side of language is nothing new. But for language experts like Ilan Stavans, a Jewish Mexican professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College, Spanglish is a reflection of how immigrants here in the U.S. have defined and then redefined their identities.

ALVARO BARRIENTOS / AP

A man looks at books during International Book Day, in Pamplona northern Spain on Wednesday, April 23, 2014.

“Spanish language in Spain, and in fact all over the Americas has been the product of a ‘mestizaje,’ a transformation, that has been enriched by the words of the aboriginal languages that have made it back to Spain,” said Stavans in a phone interview from his home in Massachusetts.

Spanish itself has added words from other languages. An example of this canoa (canoe) which came from the Arawak Indians in the Caribbean, Stavans added.

While some may see Spanglish as a deformed Frankenstein experiment, others say it is an example of how immigrants who live between two or more cultures try to conserve their values, even when they can’t avoid changing over time.

"Immigration is not a one way street… to a certain extent, immigrants never leave home, at least in their imagination and psyche, and particularly in the United States, where immigrants are enabled and ennobled with the idea of keeping their roots and stressing their [hyphenated] identity,” said Stavans.

Stavans is at work translating the ultimate Spanish-language novel into Spanglish four centuries after it was first published.

“In un placete de la Mancha of which nombre no quieroremembrearme,” begins the Spanglish translation of "Don Quixote," which will be published in 2015. For the first time, bilingual Latino readers will appreciate the mock adventures of the errant knight who tilted at windmills through a nuanced translation that reflects their hyphenated Spanish-English culture.

The Spanish-language masterpiece "Don Quixote" is being translated into Spanglish.

Next year will be the 400th anniversary of the second volume of "Don Quixote". Stavans will publish a cultural history about Cervantes’ masterpiece named "Quixote: The Many Lives and Implausible Adventures of the World’s Most Popular Novel" (Norton, 2015). He will also publish a comic book edition of "Don Quixote's" first chapter in 15 languages, including French, English, Hebrew, Chinese, and Klingon—the fictional extraterrestrial language from Star Trek. For him, language is a living, adaptable experience.

And for those who worry Spanglish is a threat to the purity of the Spanish language, the group who does not think Spanglish is a deformity would perhaps tell them to tey kirisi (take it easy) and avoid getting es-stressed, (stressed), two of Stavans' favorite terms.

No mas humos.

Mientras llegaba a casa después de un día largo de trabajo, pero más que largo, un día lleno de dudas, de pensamientos antiguos que sólo te llevan a sentirte frágil, pensamientos que te hacen sentir sin la corona. Decidí sentarme en el balcón y mirar el horizonte. Mientras observaba la grandeza del mundo, entró en mi cerebro un tema que lo he puesto en espera por mucho tiempo. La pregunta vino a mi mente veloz, con furia, con tristeza, sin compasión y con un vacío que sólo yo podría llenar.

 ¿Quien realmente soy y que busco, hacia donde voy y que espero de mi? Llegó el preciso momento de juzgarme. Que mejor momento que ahora, ahora que cumplo un año mas de estar vivo  en este mundo lleno de humos. Que mejor momento ahora que he pasado vivo mas de la mitad de mi vida. Ahora me toca mirarme al espejo y sin miedo hablarme, contarme, compartirme todo lo que se, todo lo que no he puedo expresar, todo mis miedos, y claro porque no también, todo lo bueno que hay en mi. La he pasado hablando conmigo más de lo que me esperaba y me he reído mucho. Me he contado muchas cosas, me he visto bien, me he visto con ojos maduros, con mente grande y me vuelto a poner de pie. 

Ahora que veo el horizonte otra vez, lo veo más grande. La vista no tiene limites. Arriba me siento.

El silencio es el mejor regalo que dios me dado, sin duda. Ahora que el silencio ha hablado, tengo la certeza que mi vida a cambiado. Que el muro de Berlín que tenía al frente lo he derrumbado en 2 minutos, y he logrado dar varios pasos adelante. Ahora recién después de tanto tiempo, me toca correr solo unas cuantas millas más y listo. El momento llegó, no más humos.

New York needs a Cesar Chavez

Editor's note: Kerry Kennedy is the president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and author of "Speak Truth To Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World" and "Being Catholic Now." She has worked on global human rights issues for more than 30 years and serves as Chair of the Amnesty International USA.

(CNN) -- Forty-six years ago this month, my father joined Cesar Chavez in Delano, California, to share the Eucharist and end Chavez's 1968 fast for farm workers' rights. It took another nine years, but the state of California would go on to answer Chavez's call for justice and pass its groundbreaking Agricultural Labor Relations Act.

Kerry Kennedy

That law surged California forward in the global labor movement, but New York never had a Cesar Chavez.

And so today -- in the state where my father served as senator and where I now live -- our farm workers suffer from the leftover Jim Crow laws that California addressed nearly half a century ago.

As a resident of New York State, I wanted to see the conditions for myself. So I drove a few hours north of my home to Liberty, New York, and visited the largest producer of fois gras east of the Mississippi.

If you think what farms do to the geese is bad, you should see how they treat the farm workers.

I met a man who worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for 10 years without a single day off. He was paid minimum wage. And though he earned it, he could not claim overtime pay -- overtime that would be paid to any deli worker in New York City. If he tried to form a union, he could be fired.

I walked through one-room shacks that housed entire families and past queues that led to filthy bathrooms -- one toilet for every 20 workers. I met women sexually assaulted in the fields by supervisors in return for employment, and children doing backbreaking labor for $3.20 an hour.

The legacy of Jim Crow is alive today in New York, resulting in inexcusable conditions for people who plant our vegetables, pick our fruit and milk our cows. All this is legal in New York, the remnants of a bargain struck nationally with the Dixiecrats to exclude minority workers from New Deal federal fair labor laws.

Obama: Chavez sacrificed for his family

The Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, passed by the State Assembly last year and languishing in the State Senate, is the first step to addressing some of these egregious violations of international human rights New York farm workers still face.

Morgan Spurlock as migrant farm worker

The bill is far from radical; it merely extends to farm workers the same labor protections nearly every other industry in America has enjoyed since the industrial era. But it would be revolutionary for the roughly 100,000 men, women, and children who give New York its daily bread.

The State Assembly has passed the bill several times; where it stalls is in the Senate, a body that has the votes to pass the bill into law, but where special interests have prevented it from coming to the floor for a vote.

We cannot allow partisan politics to condemn New York's farm workers to another year of misery and abuse. New York's legislature must bring the FFLPA to a vote in 2014.

And when it does, I hope the members of our State Senate will think of that day in 1968, when in front of a crowd of 6,000 farm workers, Robert Kennedy said:

"When your children and grandchildren take their place in America -- going to high school, and college and taking good jobs at good pay -- when you look at them, you will say, 'I did this. I was there at the point of difficulty and danger.'

"And though you may be old and bent from many years of labor, no man will stand taller than you when you say, 'I marched with Cesar.'"

All of us still have the opportunity to join the struggle today.

And if we do, one day when we are old and bent, we will to turn to our children and grandchildren and say, "I was there at the point of difficulty and danger. I marched with the New York Farmworkers." Si se puede!

Hispanics, internet and cell phones.

The Internet is how many Americans get their news and weather, or interact with friends and loved ones—and Hispanics are no different. While using a home computer is the most common method of accessing the Internet among Hispanics, it seems that the cell phone is rapidly gaining popularity. According to latest research from Mintel, a quarter (25%) of online Hispanics who often or occasionally access the Internet through a cell phone use it as their primary device for connecting to the Internet.

Hispanic women are leading this trend, 30% of online Latinas report that their cell phone is the primary device used, while one in five online Hispanic men say the cell phone is their primary device for connecting online. Meanwhile, 38% of Hispanics who often or occasionally use their cell to access the Internet use it to check activity on social networking sites.

“For many years, a ‘digital divide’ has been seen between Hispanics and the total US online population. Broadband access lags that of other multicultural groups, largely due to a lack of home internet access among lower-income, Spanish-dominant Hispanics,” says Leylha Ahuile, senior multicultural analyst at Mintel. “But that’s no longer the case—that divide is rapidly being shattered by smartphone usage.”

Whether connecting to the Internet from a home computer or cell phone, Hispanics often use their online time to stay in touch with loved ones across the globe. Thirty-three percent of online Hispanics use the Internet to stay connected with family and friends outside the US, while over a quarter (27%) use it to read news about their home country.

“The internet has become an important connector between family and friends for Hispanics of all age groups,” adds Leylha Ahuile. “It’s vital for news and information from the US and the nation of heritage for many Hispanics. Additionally, video conferencing services—such as Skype—are used more by Hispanics aged 45-54 than among those in younger age groups.”