Scheer Intelligence on LatinoLand: Complex, Resilient and Powerful

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Author Marie Arana, former book editor and columnist for the Washington Post and the inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress, joins today’s episode of Scheer Intelligence with host Robert Scheer to discuss her new book, Latinoland: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority, to answer the question — what does it mean to be Latino? While many know that Latinos often come to America, many forget that they have, in fact, always been in America. 

With many Latinos being a mix of indigenous, European, African and Asian ethnicities, the complexity and diversity of the Latino people is “huge,” she says. Despite “representing race mixing that is really unequal in the rest of this Earth,” when Latinos come to America they arrive as “separate quantities,” categorized into different nationalities and ethnicities. 

Arana says this is a result of Spanish colonialism which sought to separate the Latino people from each other and “keep [them] conquered by not allowing [them] to communicate with each other.” With communication forbidden, the Latino people could never understand themselves as a “unit,” and only as divided entities, complicated even more by the Spanish allowing the rampant raping of Indigenous women by the conquering conquistadors. 

As Arana notes, “For all the glory of being the ethnicity that holds all the races of man, it came from an absolutely chaotic and disastrous past.”

Latinoland captures the contradictions of a deeply racist past on both sides of the border, and the tunnel-vision view of the soul enabled by categorizing human beings based on the color of their skin or their country of origin. When Arana arrived in Florida the bathrooms were still racially segregated. As someone with European, Asian, Black, and indigenous ancestry — Arana was unsure where she fit into the binary camps of “colored” or white. 

Going back all the way to the time of Columbus, Scheer and Arana delve into the dehumanization of people through the brutality of colonialism, and how borders create realities that can never capture the complexity of human existence. The result is a feasting ground for bigoted exploiters of America’s largest and most productive immigrant population that is on full display in the current election season.

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Credits

Host:

Robert Scheer

Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Introduction:

Max Jones

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where I hasten to say the intelligence comes from my guests, in this case Marie Arana, and a great pedigree. But I want to say at this stage of my life, I basically only do books, first of all, I read them,  which may be unusual in what remains of the book reviewing industry.

And I only do books that I actually think people should read and take seriously. So this is a book that I’m unabashedly enthusiastic about. It raises many, many questions. The book, let me get the title. It is Latino Land. It’s Simon and Schuster. It came out, I think, last week. And it’s a portrait of America’s largest and least understood minority.

And you know, living in LA and so forth we don’t think of Latinos as a minority.  We think of them as the dominant culture here correctly and as a positive thing. But what your book does, let’s just, begin right off the top.  you present a very complex portrait and the power of it is in the complexity and you even question your own title. What is Latinoland? What is a Latino, Latinx, Latina, et cetera. But what comes across very clearly is we’re talking about a population.  However, it’s described in, does it…it’s still not clear whether it includes Brazil and Portuguese, but Spanish is the sort of the language of the colonizer is the unifier.

In your own case, you come from Peru. You were six years old the first time you visited the United States. You had a Peruvian father and I gather a very typical Wasp, American mother from Wyoming or someplace. And then later you end up at the Miami airport and you don’t know what, but you’re now going to stay here and you go on, let me just put your credentials right out there.

You go on to a really illustrious career, you end up being a very famous columnist about books and books related for the Washington Post, you were the book review editor, and the title I love most of all is the literary, the inaugural literary Director of the Library of Congress. I can’t think of a more impressive title. And you’ve written some really important books. Before I got this book, I read American Chica, which is really your own journey, and it’s a marvelous book. story. But there’s something so powerful about this book because it, it embraces complexity.

Who are we talking about? We’re talking about people like you with different background.  Are we talking about indigenous people? Are we talking a Spanish colonialist, the dominant mixed breed of a whole new creation. And, and so what we can lose in this complexity is the sense that there is a people here.

That’s the power of this book. Like it or not, a distinct population. Even though I just happened to be at a great Mexican restaurant here with the best chef in LA last night. And he said, well, you know, I was always raised to be prejudice against people like me who are mixed up you know, white people.

And that’s still true, you know? And so we had one of those kinds of restaurant conversations and I talked about your book and that I was going to do it. So. There’s no denial of the complexity and what title and what should you call people and so forth. On the other hand, there’s no denial that a people has emerged from this, you know, almost like any other diaspora living group beginning with the indigenous.

And they are a force. To be reckoned with, and they have some common points of identity. And I think, I don’t want to misstate this, but I get the feeling there is a sense of exploitation of anti-colonialism of take us seriously pride at the heart of it. So maybe we should begin with that.   what, what is that basic, unifying idea? 

Marie Arana: Yeah, you know, when we come to the United States, and you know, I have to say, I’m saying when we come that we have always been here, we have always been here, and people don’t realize that, and that was an important mission of my book, is to tell the, the history, really, of the, of the Latino people in this country, which goes all the way back, of course, to pre Columbian times because so many of us are a mix of indigenous and European and African and Asian, and we are a great mix and as you say so, so well, Bob, the complexity, the diversity is huge. There is inclusivity in the name of a Latino. We begin with inclusivity because our races are so mixed. When Latin America was formed by the conquest, the Spanish conquest in this hemisphere, it was an incredible experiment in itself.

I mean, it was an experiment of race mixing that had never been done on this planet before in recorded time. So start with that.  We are diverse in ourselves, but then we come here and we are Peruvian Americans or Cuban Americans or Mexican Americans or those and, and Mexican Americans have been here since before. Actually way before the pilgrims landed in Providence in Massachusetts.  So, this is a population that is diverse in itself, mixed in itself, even the Spanish, when they arrived, had been mixed for eight centuries with the Moors and the Jews. So we represent a race mixing that is really unequaled on the rest of this earth. 

But when we come, we come as these separate quantities, because the one thing that Spanish colonialism did, was to separate us and keep us conquered by not allowing us to communicate with one another. So the Vice Royalty of Argentina did not communicate with the Vice Royalty of Peru, which did not communicate with the Vice Royalty of New Spain, which was Mexico, and that was forbidden, so we didn’t really know each other as a unit. 

What Simón Bolívar, who was the, the liberator of six republics, did was create this idea, if we only all got together, we would be one of the most powerful forces on earth, if we created Latin America from all these separate republics. That never happened, but it sort of happened here in the United States.

When all of these groups came up and it happened in, in our lifetime, Bob. It happened in our lifetime. I remember when I arrived at the age of 10, there were recorded on the U. S. Census 2 million Latinos in this country. 2 million. 

Scheer:Tell us when you — sorry to interrupt, but when you arrived in Miami,  I don’t remember the exact year, but the bathrooms were still racially Segregated and you didn’t know which one to go to. 

Arana: Exactly. 

Scheer: That’s a powerful opening because, you know, in a great American celebration, you know, is it Donald Trump America? I’m going to make America great again. Or is it Hillary Clinton? We’ve always been great.  Your book is right at the beginning. There are many other reminders of another side of the story.

But you arrived in a segregated America. What year was that?  

Arana: Well, I was slapped with that reality from the very beginning because, I mean, you arrive in a bus station headed west to visit my American grandparents in Wyoming and they’re in the bus station. It was the whites only bathroom and then the colored bathrooms.

And I was hit with this reality right away.  It’s so binary, so un-nuanced, you know, where you had to choose between one or the other. And, And I didn’t know what color I was, you know, and, and in fact, my, my DNA shows that I am Black and Indigenous and White and Asian. So I am all the things that Latinos can be.

And I just remember being confused by that binary system. And it is a confusion that has lasted I think since then to now. Because we are the hardest ethnicity to record on the U. S. census, because we are so many types. I mean, the Dominicans and the Puerto Ricans are heavily mixed with black.

The Cubans who are here, the Cubans are, are largely black now on the island of Cuba, but the Cubans who are here are largely white, who, you know, the exodus of whites from the island.  And then the Mexican Americans, the Central Americans are mixed with indigenous, and it’s a very different sort of thing.

But what I was going to say was when I came there were 2 million recorded Latinos in this country. Today, there are 64 million.  So imagine in the course of my lifetime, going from 2 million to 64 million. And it has been a uh well, part of this country that is undeniable.  and as I say, it has been here since the very beginning because.

Um of course, the United States pushed into Mexico. Of all the lands that we’re sitting on now, I’m in San Diego, you’re in Los Angeles, all the way to Colorado, all the way to Kansas, that whole area was Mexican. And the United States pushed into it, just, you know, in a sort of happy go lucky way.

 President James Polk said, Go take your stick and go put it in the ground and that’s your land and we’re going to spread this country all the way to the–

Scheer: Yeah, you actually have a chapter that I, the phrase in it The Border Crossed Me. I didn’t cross the border, which I first heard from Dolores Huerta, who I met when she was still, was a farm worker organizing person.

And her family, literally, the border crossed them. And that slogan.  I want to go back to the history a little. This is interesting because you obviously, an accepted establishment thinker. I’m not putting you down, but you know, you’re not some wild radical. You mentioned the Brown Berets.

I knew some of those folks back in L. A. in the old days and people searching for, you know, you’re…. Half of you, anyway, comes from America and it’s apple pie, for better or worse, or what have you. But, your book, I happened to go to Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx. By no means an exceptional school, it doesn’t even exist anymore.

But, we did have the honor of a prominent place in the Columbus Day Parade, going down through Manhattan, I think it was 5th Avenue, I’m not sure. And I would be march in this parade for those years, and so forth. And frankly, you know, I was raised with the idea that, you know, Columbus, I thought, you know, that’s sort of respecting my Italian classmates.

But you know, how could anybody be against Columbus? And this gets into something very provocative about your book. Who owns the narrative, and what right do we have to question the narrative? And the reason I bring up your establishment credentials is because it’s so refreshing that you embrace an alternative, well alternative narratives. There are many, and it begins for me in your book with Columbus and you point out you know, if you take the period from 1492 to 1612, you call it the Great Dying and, and, and what it is, is as you say, a genocide of historic proportions and the indigenous population goes from being 60 million to 6 million, the combination of disease and murder.

But one of the interesting things about it, you just mentioned that Spanish didn’t permit communication between different people, except sexually.  And in your book, that whole period of the Spanish conquest first is really the Great Rape. It is in fact a systematic sexual exploitation of the indigenous population, a few who even could get married, but that was not the norm as you think about.

So if you think in biblical terms, I mean, what is this? The thing that we celebrate now as the center of civilization, some celebrate it, the fact is is that it was born in the most horrific of circumstances. And you don’t mince words in this book and you document it, you go through it.

So why don’t we begin with that because that’s a reckoning, you know and let me just throw in another little  caveat there: it is also a result of slavery. And you have an interesting statistic in your book. You say, I think if I got the numbers right, yes, a million slaves were brought to what is now the United States, you know, to be agriculture.

But I think your figure is 13 million or 12 million  were brought to Latino land.  

Arana: 12 million Africans were  put on slave ships and in the hold of slave ships in chains brought over 350, 000, went to the United States.  All the rest, 11  plus, 11 million plus all went to Latin America and the Caribbean.

So we have the preponderance in the Latin world of the African slave market on the African slave trade. It’s phenomenal,the race mixing. And as you say, the, the raping, really, of the indigenous, because for all the glory of being the ethnicity that holds so many races, that holds all the races of man, it came from an absolutely disastrous and chaotic past.

Scheer: Brutality, the brutality, these women, the indigenous women  were just available, had no rights, no way of protecting themselves. I mean, I, you know, because people get tired. Oh, don’t bring up history. Don’t bring up the past. Don’t talk about reparations. Don’t talk. Well, that’s utter nonsense.

That’s like saying don’t, you know, forget about the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide. No. No, you can’t forget about it. And in fact, the very reason we’re having difficulty defining what is this peoplehood you’re talking about is precisely, I mean, the main instrument of destroying any unique sense of peoplehood was rape. 

 I want to be careful, I’m not grafting this onto your book. This is basic, this is a scream at the beginning of your book.  

Arana: Right. Very much so. Because, I mean, that’s the reality. That’s the history. And we have to look at it squarely in the eye, and even if we have become a great and glorious population that has achieved a lot, we have to realize what our past was and factor it in the whole story, and we can’t ignore it. We can’t ignore it because it’s there and it is there now in ways that we couldn’t have imagined if we had lived in those times.  it is there now with  a very racist and a very stratified Latin America because don’t….

The white elites. The people who can say that they’re pure Europeans are still the top of the top dogs in, in Latin America. And they’re the ones who rule, and they’re the ones who have the money, and they’re the ones who have the haciendas. And then there’s a whole stratification, of course. But what you can say about us is that there was no hesitation to intermarry. 

What Isabella then discovered when all of this business of the mistreatment, the brutality against the indigenous happened. And she being a very good Catholic lady said “well we have to stop this.” We have to completely stop this. So she, they began then to come with their white wives. The people, the Spanish who began to populate.

But until then, I mean there were, we’re talking about hundreds of years and then just the natural.  There was so much population to mix with. Interestingly enough, Bob, today, in the United States of America, we are the ethnicity that most intermarries. So, a Hispanic will intermarry with a Black, will intermarry with a White, will intermarry with an Asian.

We have  the most proclivity to intermarry in general of any ethnicity in this country. So that has carried through as well. That sense of, yeah, it’s all right. It’s okay to mix. It’s not you know, we, we are so mixed ourselves, so why not?  So that still lives, but you are absolutely right. We cannot ignore that history.

That history is blatant clear, and lives in us. 

Scheer: Well, and as you pointed out, even with migration, it’s reflected. I, not, again, not to drop names here or anything, but I once interviewed Fidel Castro about this, and he came from the white elite, And Cuba, I think, roughly could be then described as one third white, one third mixed, and then one third black.

And he was, and Che Guevara, they were very conscious of it. And yet, when they got involved with Africa, where they basically, I mean, many people would say played a progressive role. I mean, they seemed to be on the side of some resistance to apartheid and racism. Nonetheless, I mean, what are you doing in Africa?

And Fidel Castro’s answer was, this is the unresolved issue of Cuba and the rest of Latin American race. We have to come to grips with it. And, you know I, there’s another person, I wanna drop the name  but you, you mentioned, he says, we have to recognize, I wrote it down…Carlos Fuentes, I think it was right? 

You quote him.  

Arana: Yeah. Yes. Yes. 

Scheer: And yeah, Crossway, he says, when we understand that none of us is pure. I forget the rest of the sentence, but then we will understand this. And so this struggle over, you know, what is race and what is the significance of skin color is very critical to how you, relatively easy it was to divide and conquer this whole people.

And, and so that’s the only reason I mentioned the Castro thing. I mean, I think throughout Latin America, this question of how are you going to deal with race and the indigenous, because I know like in the United States, we take, we have a pretty good accounting now of indigenous people, what happened in Mexico, they don’t have that sort of thing.

And yet, as, as you point out if we think about genocide, going from 60 million people living in relative harmony and caring about the environment. One thing you can say about the indigenous population, they were  pretty good at handling nature and existing and, and you slaughter or through your import of disease and violence and rape and everything else, you reduce it from 60 million to 6 million. Is that a contested figure? 

Scheer: Some say it was greater,100 million. People assume the  Columbus landed and then  the rest of the Spanish conquistadors came, that there were very few people in this hemisphere. In fact, it was percolating with people, the populations of all the tribes.

And there were, there were, you know, thousands of tribes of people. And all very sort of lively population throughout the hemisphere and those people, some people, some historians say that it was as large as 100 or 110 million in this hemisphere. The conservative figure is 60 million and it was reduced to, to just a few million, which is extraordinary, really, by disease, by genocide, by simple massacres, and by the slave trade, because People were uprooted from their homes and sent to the mines. 

 And whole families were divided. And the mining, extraction became the whole story. I mean, getting the gold and the silver and the copper. And look, Bob, it’s still the same. It’s still the same.  Today, the biggest business in Latin America is the mining. And you see it still, that obsession with extraction, where, where the resources and the goods are taken and removed and sent away.

And very little of the profits and the progress stay within the countries that actually, you know, sit on the minerals.  So it’s long and very dramatic. 

Scheer: Yeah, you’re a brilliant writer. I mean, I’m not stoking you. I mean, it’s, I just want to be clear. It’s a joy to read. And, fortunately, it’s not some thousand page tome.

I’m not putting down all thousand page, fifteen hundred page books. But I’ve been doing this show now for about six years, and yours is a pleasure to read, but, but I, I wonder about, well, okay, let me put my own view because we’re going to run out of time. I think people should buy this book, read it, but I also think it should be required. It should be required as part of any education. I happen to teach at a college, at USC, but it should come earlier. And the reason I think it should be required, is that you’re very insistence on two things, as I mentioned before, the complexity, but then people take the complexity as an excuse to ignore a problem because, oh, there’s no such people.

What is an African American? What is a Latino? What is this? What is that? They’re just arguing about labels or they’re trying to grab labels. No, you make a forceful argument throughout this book that there is a people here. It’s a people, and you cannot deny it’s a people, complex, varied, not always in agreement.

Some are Democrats, some are Republicans, some like this, some reject the Catholic Church, some embrace it. You know, you go through all the complexities on every page, beginning with your own family, complex, you know, and why you stand out in this little mining village. You talk about mining. Your father was involved in that activity.

You are the odd duck, the American chica, which I thought was a very powerful book. You mentioned some Bolivia, you know, you wrote that book. I’m not going to go through the whole thing, but as a book person, I sometimes wonder what are we doing here? Does anybody buy books? Does anybody read books?  And I did want to tap into a little bit, you know, yes, this is a very important book and I think you’ve spent a lot of time writing it.

I don’t know why, but I get 10 years is sticking out in my mind. And I do want to assure people, you’re not going to have to spend a lot of time reading it.  You know, I’ve read it now twice and it’s a joy to read and yes but, and you could make a movie over lots of it. I’d love to see a revisit of the whole Columbus legacy. I think we’re long overdue, but I want to ask you as a professional, a major figure in the book world, is this book being well received? Well, are you going to get it out there? Is there a reason to write books? 

Arana: Thank you, absolutely there’s a reason to write books. I’ve spent my whole life working  for publishers, working on the critical side and then writing them myself.  I think the pandemic proved that there is a hunger for books. When people are given the time, books are very much alive.  And to me, what I wanted to relay, mostly in this book, is the sense of pride that we should have as, as Latino people, Latinx, Hispanics, whatever you want to call us, all those labels are fine as far as I’m concerned, is, is the fact that we have contributed so much. I mean, the economy of the United States is hugely bolstered by the Latino people. If you were just to take the Latino people, Bob, by themselves and consider them a nation, the Latinos here in this country, the Hispanics, it would be the fifth largest GDP in the world. 

Think about that.  It is already, the Latino population is the largest Spanish speaking country, nation, in itself, other than Mexico. It’s larger than Colombia, it’s larger than Venezuela, it’s larger than, than any,  Argentina, Chile, you name it, whatever. We are, we are larger as a people, as a nation than any of those countries, barring Mexico.

 We also, the history that we have had here, the Latinos have fought in the American Revolutionary War. Washington actually said we could not have won this war if the Spanish troops that came in from Latin America did not come up and sort of forced the blockade that the British had on the waters and help the rebels to win the Revolutionary War.

So that was Latinos participated in that. Latinos participated in the civil war. Every single war that the United States has fought,  the Latinos have been a part of it.  In fact, today, 26 percent of the United States Marine force is Latino. 

Scheer: Wow. 

Arana: One out of four.  And it goes all the way back. People I don’t think will read in a textbook, in an American textbook, that David Farragut, there’s a Farragut Square in Washington, D.C., right? There’s a bust of Farragut in the In the Army Navy Club in, in D. C., nobody goes by and points to Farragut and says, well, there’s a Latino. There’s a Latino hero. But David Farragut’s family had come from the Canary Islands. He was an absolute Latino. His name was Farragut,  which became Farragut to us.

And he was the first admiral of the United States Navy, a Latino.  So this isn’t taught in, in schools, and this is, this is my great mission is to convey this, not only this history, but this presence, this incredible presence. And as you say, and thank you for saying it, Bob, the sense of unity that although, although we may be very, very different in the pockets that we occupy in this country we are quite unified.

When Trump said that we were rapists, or the Mexicans were rapists, and criminals, and they were all pouring across the border,  that alone was unifying to Latinos. I mean, you, even if you, we say, oh, you know, I’m not exactly like the Salvadorans. I mean, I don’t know anything about the Salvadorans, or I don’t know you know, I’m really not like them.

You say a bad word about a Salvadoran, and we’re there. We’re there. That’s where you see the unity in these people and it’s, it’s a very strong sense. 

Scheer: Well, you know, I’m very conscious in these interviews or discussions.  First of all, I’m accused of talking too much and interrupting, but I’m talking to one professional to another and I’m on guard against that.

And so I do want to pick up on what you just said, but I don’t want to impose my own bias on this. But we live at a time where there’s sort of the emergence of this global South and an objection that the decisions should be made in white Europe or Western Europe, the United States, you know, and so forth, and there’s a pushback and you have strange, not alliances, but like the BRICS alliance and so forth of You know, I just was talking to a, a young man yesterday from India who was actually born in England and so forth, talking about why Modi in England, in India has some appeal, a lot of appeal because of nationalism and, and so forth, and manages to get along with others under the, even though when they can’t get along with China, but they now get along with sort of a whole idea of the South.

And, and I was reading your book and there is, I don’t want to read into this.  But there’s an indictment of colonialism,  and a view that what defines Latino Land, I should give the title of the book, I’m being remiss here, Latino land, a portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority. 

And I happen to, because I live in L. A. and through intermarriage and everything, I’ll spend  right through the weekend with Oaxacan people in Salvador and so forth and, you know, be the odd person out or at least the old gringo here and so forth. And so in L. A. it’s really, inescapable that we’re talking about a majority that is varied but shares something of what you’re describing.

That’s the something I want to get at because that’s what makes it a political force that you have to deal with which is a sub theme of the book and why the book is so important. We have to understand this population and because it’s complex you better read a book that embraces the complexity and tries to parse it, so we just don’t get in this stupid stereotyping.

But whether you cross the border legally or illegally, you know, people from Salvador mostly came, many of them came in legally, because we messed up the politics of their country, so they got an exception. Obviously, people from Puerto Rico were always well, for the longest time legal, you know, very confusing growing up in the Bronx and recognizing these people have full citizenship. So we never had that kind of “papers” argument. The Italians were called wops, without papers, when you wanted to be derogatory, but not the Puerto Ricans, they, they had papers. But I want to end this discussion really on what is the point, what is this unity? And you just touched on it because it’s not voting. It’s not religious practice.

It’s not degree of economic success. It’s not skin color but  to put it crudely, is it anti colonialist? Is it a recognition that maybe all virtue and significance is not with the dominant Anglo culture here?  

Arana: We are survivors of colonialism in a way that the United States of America is not. I don’t think anybody looks back and says, Oh, the English were really awful.

You know, nobody’s thinking in those terms. But we are survivors of colonialism and the very rigid grid that was put on Latin America by the Spanish conquerors. And I think that defines us in a way. Also, we are defined by the failure of so many revolutions.

I mean, we won our independence in Latin America. But that independence that was promised, which was fully quality.  no slavery, all of that sort of stuff became very, very complicated. And the laws became very confused because of the different republics, and there was no unity there.  I think that the, when you say, what is the unity here, It really is a celebratory unity, is the way that I see it, because very many things that did not happen, that were promised when colonialism was  shoved from the Latin American shores, are kind of achieved in this country.

And that’s, I think, what the sense of unity that we have as American Latinos is that we’ve come from a similar past. We are all, you know, initially we were Catholics. We were imposed with Catholicism, let’s not forget. We were either imposed with it or we were imposing it. We are, as Mario Vargas Llosa, the great writer, said, you know, both master and slave in having been as fixed as we are. bBt the unity that we have here I think comes from a lot of similar ethics. I mean, we, we are a very musical people. We are a very cultural people. We appreciate storytelling. We are also a people who value family.  ou won’t see a strain far from family for a long time.

Corporations in this country trying to hire Latinos couldn’t get them to leave their families behind and move somewhere else.  We are very family bound.  So all of these things, when you look at the things politically, I mean, the Republicans and the Democrats are both saying, What’s important to Latinos? We want to get at what’s important. What’s important is work. Jobs are number, is number one.  then there’s a split between Republicans and Democrats on the number two. Number two for Republicans is security, safety, gun policy. For the people who lean toward the Democratic side for Latinos, it’s education.

So there’s become the divisions, but the work ethic, that sense of, of having a job. We are the least unemployed people in the country.  There, we, our purchasing power is 3. 5 trillion. I mean, it’s the economy, the workplace life of a Latino is, is hugely important. And that unites us as well.

I think that ethic unites us as well. But yeah I am so grateful, Bob, for your enthusiasm for this book, because this is really a mission for me as to, to make people aware, not only of who we are, but of the history of us and the importance of us to the world. 

Scheer: Well, let me stress, I mean I’m a fan of the book because I think the ideas are very powerful and not properly understood. 

Aside from that, it was a joy to read.  And that’s not always the case. A book can be very important and really not, I have to keep pinching myself to read it. Your book is the opposite. It’s mercifully short yet very well informed, very well thought out. So it all comes from a book professional. And so I really appreciate that, but I think the big idea, and again, I don’t want to impose, I don’t want to co-opt the book.

It’s a danger in what I do here.  But to me the big idea is this question of American exceptionalism and the melting pot. That we have a lock on virtue. That we’ve become a superior, this is what, and it’s not just Donald Trump. It’s Joe Biden. It’s everybody, you know we have the secret sauce. We are the highest, what Ronald Reagan, you know the city on the hill, we’re the highest expression of humanity.

And I remember as a kid in the Bronx, really being offended by the melting pot notion, because I saw things that were interesting about people in my own family. I, like you, come from mixed Jewish, German, Protestant, Russian, Jewish, blah, blah, blah. But everybody was kind of like that. And, I always thought that was a virtue.

Their food was different, their attitude, and so forth. That’s what we have in Los Angeles now. Let me celebrate Los Angeles. I think we’re the greatest city around. And we’re also, California is also a fifth of the world, you know, fifth largest economy. So we have all these great statistics.. But what I like about L.A, these people don’t melt as easily as you might think, you know we have very distinct neighborhoods, whether they’re Korean or whatever, you know, Chinese, but,  you know, and different. As you know and I think that your book represents a challenge to that stereotyping of the other and, and I think it’s time because particularly as we have this shifting demographic, to not, and, and we marginalize people like your papers or what, how did you get here?

Well, come on. That’s a story for everybody. I mean exclusion or inclusion or what have you, but your, your book is an introduction to the vibrancy of, of this complex assortment of this, you know, knitting it together. And I think that’s important. And it’s not a question of being politically correct.  There’s nothing politically correct about your book.

You, you show there’s a dark side to nationalism, a dark side to people stressing things, and even within a group, there are people who behave well and people who don’t behave well, and so forth. But I think, but maybe that’s a good way to wrap this up, again, I don’t want to hijack the idea, but I think there’s a radical inside here. 

Arana: I like that. I have to say, Bob, you know, as someone who’s devoted their  life to  books, that a book is a vehicle between two thinking human beings, you know. And the way that you receive the book,  when you say, I don’t want to co-opt, it’s your right to co-opt what I’ve written. And I think that’s a beautiful thing.

So, I like your interpretation. 

Scheer: Okay.  So, okay. You hear that, folks at NPR? I’m not co-opting the book. Okay. So, I want to thank you for doing this. The book is Marie Arana. The book is now out there. It wasn’t when I started this. Latino Land, a portrait of America’s largest and least Understood minority. We’re heading into an election season where it’s already begun about the border, the border, the border, real borders, real. There’s a lot of human stuff, but come on, this border has broke, if that’s the right word, a long time ago, and, and we have this reality now we have to deal and, you know, it’s sad because in the last election, we heard about the dreamers. And were we going to make it right? Were we going to have decent immigrant reform and you know, the old argument. I mean, I always, always believed in what used to be Republican doctrine making them people legal because then they have rights to join unions, to protect their interests, to have a day in court claim the money that they put into various programs they can also use, I mean, that’s so old argument and the Democrats weren’t always so wonderful on immigration. Now they, I don’t know how wonderful they’ll be, but this will be a hot issue. In the election. So I want to say Latino land. There could not be a book, I would put it number one on my list, given how much we’re going to be discussing immigration and the immigration issue in this election, this should be number one on what you read for being prepared for the election.

Okay. So that’s enough praise here. But I mean it.  I want to thank Christopher Ho and Laura Kondourajian at the NPR, the great NPR station, KCRW, here in Santa Monica for posting these shows. Joshua Scheer, our executive producer. Diego Ramos, who’s right now in Chile who writes the introduction and represents just this kind of Latino world and he’s back visiting with his family. He was born here. I want to thank Max Jones, who also has a part Asian in his, even though he seems, all white and for doing the video editing. And I want to thank J. K. W. Foundation in memory of Gene Stein, the former publisher of Grand Street, an important literary publication for providing some funding for this.

 So that’s it for this session. I’ll see you next week with another edition of Sheer Intelligence. 

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