Summit of the Americas: An American Domestic Policy Issue

The Summit of the Americas, which opened Friday April 10 in Panama, falls first of all under the category of international policy. The United States will have the opportunity to evaluate the influence they have left on a continent which they have long dominated and where their influence will be from this point forward contested by the more autonomous nation states like Brazil, and even those that are hostile like Venezuela, but also by new external players such as China. They will also ratify the return of Cuba, ostracized since 1962 for “crimes of Communism and Sovietism.” The handshake between Barack Obama and Raul Castro will be indisputably historic.

This summit, nevertheless, also falls under American domestic policy, as illustrated by the recent warming of relations between Washington and Havana. On the cusp of the 2016 primary elections, the more conservative faction of the Republican Party has seized this case, not only to ruin the end of President Obama’s term, but also to make it a marker of “ideological purity” at the heart of their faction. Two of the candidates, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, are of Cuban ancestry. Jeb Bush, who has also announced his candidacy, was governor of Florida, the most Cuban state in the country.

Even if the Cuban community has become more moderate over the course of generations and generally approves of the current dialogue, spokespeople from anti-Castro groups in Miami continue to refuse to make any concessions regarding the Castro brothers and to dream of an abrupt change of regime in Havana. It is these conservative Cuban-Americans who come out in large numbers during the Republican Party’s primary elections. If played delicately, the Democratic Party can subsequently still hope to increase its score among a community that has always given it the cold shoulder, with a possibility of winning Florida, a swing state that, with its 29 electoral votes, is as crucial as the state of New York.

More commonly still, Latin America is established as a matter of domestic policy because the Hispanic communities established in the United States are in the process of drastically changing the demographic composition of the country and thus redrawing its political map from top to bottom. Hispanics, also known as Latinos, today make up 57 million out of a total population of 321 million. In 2050 they will be at 106 million, a quarter of the American population.

The Latino Rainbow

The history of the United States consists in part of waves of immigration where at each crest, the presence of these ethnic communities has had influence on both domestic and foreign policy. Each time, the maps have been redistributed and new power ratios have been created; for example, between religions, as when Irish, Italian and Polish immigration made Catholicism the country’s primary religion. Hispanics are far from constituting a monolithic group, incidentally reflected by a subcontinent that, despite its features of common language, culture or religion, presents real diversity and is not devoid of strong hostility. Cubans, Mexicans, Colombians or Puerto Ricans do not necessarily see the world in the same manner. Social, ideological and national differences fracture the community.

However, everyone recognizes that Hispanics’ rise in power will have significant consequences on American politics. But in what sense? A few years ago, in a contentious book titled “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” Samuel Huntington, who was also the troubled author of “The Clash of Civilizations,” sounded the alarm by predicting that Hispanics would not accept assimilation into Anglo-Saxon culture and would subsequently pose a threat to the American ideal. Just as hostile, other Cassandras now emphasize, as in a recent article in The Economist, that Hispanics will “drag the United States down” because they won’t succeed as much as other migrants, they have poor grades in school or their children are caught up in gangs. Numerous people, however, contest this apocalyptic vision and instead emphasize the exceptional demographic contribution and the rejuvenation that the Latinos’ rise in power signifies.

Politically, nothing is decided. Today, a large majority of Hispanic voters lean toward the Democratic side, mainly because the party has a generally favorable position toward immigration and social justice, two fundamental issues within the Latino community. But it is not certain that the Democrats will be able to count on the loyalty of this electorate with as much assurance as they can of African-Americans. “Hispanics are Republicans – they just don’t know it yet,” President Ronald Reagan famously declared, emphasizing “conservative cultural values” that prevail within Latino-American communities. “They are very religious, in favor of the right to bear arms, distrustful with regard to a bureaucratic state,” insist Republican strategists. They consider proof of this “latent conservatism” to be the growing conversion of numerous Latino Catholics to Evangelicalism, a gateway to the Republican vote.

During this historic summit in Panama, meant to celebrate the return of Cuba to the Organization of American States, there is no doubt that Democratic political advisers will look at the scene through the eyes of politicians just as much as those of diplomats. Already, it’s whispered that a Texan Latino, Julian Castro, Obama’s current secretary of housing and urban development, could be the vice presidential candidate if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic Convention in the summer of 2016.