Why do we almost never hear about Spanish-Americans (no jokes about the war, btw )?
It seems as though there were large waves of immigrants from every large European country except Spain. And those who did come here from Spain seem to be mostly Basque. Spain was a poor country in the early 20th century, so why didn’t lots of Spaniards come here? Did they go to South American countries like Argentina instead? Surely the same forces were at work in Spain as were at work in Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, etc.
*In the period 1850-1950, 3.5 million Spanish, mainly temporary workers, left for the Americas from three areas: Galicia, Asturias, and the Canary Islands. Argentina received more than 1.5 million of these emigrants, and others went to Uruguay, Brazil, and Cuba. Spanish emigration to North Africa, though less well known, also took place from areas such as Murcia and the Balareas Islands. Algeria was the chosen destination of 94,000 Spanish emigrants in the last years of the 19th century. This flow shifted to Morocco after the establishment of the Spanish protectorate there in the period 1916-1919. During that period, some 85,000 Spaniards were counted, a number that rose to 250,000 when taking into account the residents of Cueta, Malilla and Tanger.
Spain’s migration flows in the 20th century changed radically in two different ways. First, the destinations of Spanish emigrants shifted dramatically. In the course of the century, some six million Spaniards left their country of origin, and until the 1930s, 80 percent chose to go to the Americas.*
Well, possibly they did emigrate in larger numbers to America… the rest of America. I can certainly see why it might be preferable to move to a Spanish-speaking nation south of the U.S. because cultural assimilation will be easier and the climate somewhat less chilly (heh, pun intended). I’d bet either of Argentina or Cuba, for example, received more Spanish emigrés than the U.S.
For about four decades beginning in the early 1920s, immigration to the US was limited to the percentages of origin found in an earlier census and most of the southern European countries represented small percentages.
Immigrants if given a choice will often go where the langauge and culture is similar to their homeland, so that’s a better description of Latin America. Even if there are several million Spanish Americans, news of their existence gets squeezed out by much larger immigrant groups of other Spanish speaking countries.
One reason that I found this situation somewhat strange is that there are enclaves of Portuguese in the US. Providence, for example has a large Portuguese-American population. Yet the Portuguese had Brazil just as Spain had the rest of S.A. to emigrate to. Still, I have never once heard of a Spanish-American enclave in any city in the US. Maybe I’ve missed it…
My best guess is that it was due to the particular patterns of immigration. Between 1880-1920 one estimate is that ~18-24 million immigrants entered the U.S. and this was also a peak period of Portuguese emigration. Yet that still only amounted to maybe ~150,000 Portuguese. Best I can extrapolate from various web sources ( my own resources pretty much end in the colonial period ) maybe 750-800,000 Portuguese entered Brazil in the same time-frame. So the Portuguese emigration to the U.S. was probably well under 10% of total emigration from Portugal ( when you add in various other boom areas like Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina ) and maybe <0.5% of total European immigration into the U.S. in that period.
The persistence of the Portuguese communities is likely related to the fact that those that settled in those years appear to have been overwhelmingly from the islands - the Azores ( most ), Madeira and Cape Verde - many involved whole families and overwhelmingly they were whalers and fishermen ( and gold-mining and later farming in CA ). So they tended to settle in discrete self-perpetuating communities ( mostly in Massachusetts and California ). Finally there was a last wave of Azorean Portuguese immigration in the 1960’s and '70’s after a series of natural disasters - maybe another 150,000.
Meanwhile one could speculate that a) Spanish immigrants had an even greater latitude to settle in Latin America than the Portuguese and b) later the Spanish-American war may have discouraged immigrants and c) it is likely the Spanish immigrant community was nowhere near as homogenous as the islander Portuguese and might be easily swallowed up if they settled in areas where Spanish speakers were already well-established ( i.e. Texas and the southwest generally ).
Tamerlane: Thanks for the detailed response. Having spent some time in Providence, I can attest to the fact that the Portuguese community there is linked strongly to the Azores. I figured that most Spaniards probably went to South America, but I just thought it odd that I never once heard of a city with a Spanish-American ethnic community. Seems like there would have been a few. Is anyone aware of even one? Any New Yorkers tuning in? (Seems like NY has an enclave of every ethnic community on earth…)
And, as I said in the OP, the few Spanish-American enclaves that I have heard of have all been Basque. Maybe they felt that the persecution they were under in Spain would conitinue in S.A., so they came to the US instead.
John, I am a New Yorker, but IANAH (I am not a hispanic), but I don’t speak Spanish, so to me, I would never know if a particular Hispanic area was Dominican, Mexican, Columbian, Spanish, or otherwise. Sorry to be of no help, but to be more specific, maybe you need a Hispanic New York doper to chime in.
BTW, in all my listening to Spanish being spoken around the City (especially on subways), I have never once heard that Spain-Spanish dialect where they say th instead of the s sound (like “Barthelona”).
I suppose if I had an entire continent to choose from, about half of it spoke Spanish (population-wise), and my native tongue was Spanish, I’d gravitate toward the Spanish-speaking areas.
Yeh, I know, that was exactly the point - although I can’t say that I’ve never seen any Spanish Americans here in New York, I can sure say that I haven’t heard any. Well, not any, because I may have heard the Spaniards from those regions who don’t do the “th” thing, but you see what I mean.
I see what you mean. I posted without reading it properly. Humble apologies.
NYC gets its share of Spanish tourists, many of whom will say ‘Barthelona’ or more likely ‘thervetha’ (but probably never ‘khamsta’ ) so you’re bound to run into one someday.
Enclaves -specifically enclaves that persist generations later- reflect the insularity of each immigrant population. There is no question that there was significant English immigration to the States, but you don’t see identifiable English enclaves, even among recent emigres. Some may hang out at English social spots, but they don’t live in a definable area of town, etc.
Quite often, persistent enclaves contain only a small subset of immigrants from a certain country. In larger immigrant populations, that subset can be large enough to sustain itself, but making it easier to avoid fully assimilating (and less necessary to do so). Until fairly recently, the primary goal of most immigrants was assimilation.
In reference to Spaniards in particular: in generations past, a homesick Spaniard might have found a home among the larger pre-existing Spanish speaking enclaves – there was a strong Spanish subpopulation among the emigres from other Spanish speaking nations a century ago. However, the Spaniards I’ve met recently often make a point to to distinuish themselves as Europeans, rather than South/Central Americans, Puerto Ricans, etc. It’s almost a class thing. They assimilate into the general population in much the same way as most other recent immigrants from Europe do.
I live in Boston, where there are strong multi-generational Irish and Italian enclaves, as well as “East Asian” and South/Central/Caribbean communities that act as a “port of first call” for a significant immigrant influx. Spaniards, however, tend to follow the pattern of contemporary Northern European immigrants, like Germans. These groups no longer form enclaves in Boston as they once did.
There’s another issue that’s been in play for at least the last fifty years, namely the educational / skill level of European immigrants to the US.
The old days of the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are long gone; nowadays it generally takes an in-demand skill for any European to immigrate to the US. Hence it’s extremely likely that a recent immigrant from Spain will already speak English quite well and have sufficient education to make his/her way in mainstream US society without relying on the social network of an ethnic enclave.
On the other hand, any Puerto Rican has automatic right of abode on the US mainland, and there are various immigration options (both legal and illegal) for unskilled workers from Latin America. Such immigrants may benefit strongly from living in a barrio such as East LA or San Francisco’s Mission District, and these places indeed have a constant arrival of new immigrants from the “traditional” ethnicity (whereas, in contrast, I doubt that there are many new Portuguese arriving in Providence or New Bedford these days, unless it’s on family reunification-style visas).
This also may help to explain KP’s observation that Spaniards in the US emphasize their European origin. The thinking is probably along the lines that “any old Puerto Rican or Mexican can make it to the US, but I needed to have a professional degree to get here”. After all, you don’t see many blue-collar workers from the poor areas of Madrid on the plane to JFK.
As I said in the thread Walloon has just linked to, some of my ancestors were Spanish immigrants to New Mexico when it was still part of Mexico, and they seem to have always considered themselves Spanish.
I have some distant cousins from that branch of the family who still look Spanish and have completely Spanish names. Next time there’s a family reunion I must get someone to ask if they consider themselves “Spanish-American” or what.
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) so you’re bound to run into one someday.