Publicity:

The nation of immigrants has undergone arguably the most dramatic demographic and cultural shifts in its history. Precise estimates vary, but it’s thought by the middle of this century (or soon after) Latin Americans will emerge as an American majority.

“If not one immigrant from a Latin country comes into the United States, still that demographic genie is out of the bottle. And they will change the face of America. I mean that’s just the way it’s going to happen. There’s no force on earth or in heaven that’s going to stop it. So, enjoy your Taco.” GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NETWORK

In recent times Latin Americans have surged their way into the USA - conventionally and illegally - in search of a better life.

Soon – to summon an Americanism – they’ll arrive, translating their sheer weight of numbers into a mighty political force and aiming to redress a power balance that’s seen them consigned to menial jobs, poverty and social dislocation.

By 2023 more children will be born to families of Latin American origin than any other grouping. The number of Latinos in the US is expected to triple between 2005 and 2050. A national census underway this April is expected to point to an inevitable Latino dominance.

The dramatic growth is bringing acute growing pains. Conservative commentators rail against porous borders and illegals taking jobs and draining the economy. Hate crimes against the Latino communities have exploded and elsewhere young and desperate Hispanics seek solace and solidarity in gang life and crime.

But increasingly Latino vibrancy and optimism is shining through.

North America Correspondent Michael Brissenden takes us on a sometimes bumpy road trip through the new and developing United States of Hispanica. From the so-called beaner communities clustering around the traditionally rich, white neighbourhoods of Long Island New York to the hip, pulsating communities of Los Angeles where there’s a new sense of empowerment among Latinos.

There’s a colourful and outspoken cast of characters: TV Anchor Geraldo Rivera – perhaps the best known Latino face on American television, Actor Lupe Ontiveros – the best known maid in Hollywood (she’s played the role more than 100 times) and Tony Cardenas – a charismatic local politician touted as a future political leader.

“Who is to say who this country belongs to? ‘We the people of the United States’.
It doesn’t say ‘We the white Anglo Saxon Protestant community’. This is my country.” LUPE ONTIVEROS, ACTOR

Mansions on the lake

Music

00:00

BRISSENDEN: If you went looking for a place that typifies old school American success, you really need go no further than here – Long Island, New York – a swathe of mansions and country retreats a comfortable drive from the towers of Manhattan.

00:13

Patchogue, the main street, the fire brigade and siren/Men on street

FX: Siren

00:35

BRISSENDEN: Now though, in towns like Patchogue, you’ll find the not too distant future.

PASTOR DWIGHT WOLTER: It was a very Anglo community and a lot of people in their minds still think of it as the good old days or when everybody was white and right. People would think

00:39

Pastor Dwight

this is not the Patchogue I knew and loved, this is changing, I don’t like this, I resent that. What happened to the businesses? Why don’t people do this?

00:56

Latino faces

Why should I have to learn Spanish?

BRISSENDEN: These are the faces changing the community of Patchogue and the face of America itself, Latin Americans. On Long Island they call these guys “beaners”.

01:04

Latino men around car

So has anyone got a job from here this morning?

01:23

Latino man

LATINO MAN: No, it’s very difficult in winter.

01:25

Latino faces

BRISSENDEN: They’re desperate and they’re cheap. Latino men hoping to find work. They’re Long Island’s plumbers and gardeners. No job is too small and neither is the pay packet.

01:30

Latino men outside store

How much do you make if you get a job? How much do they pay?

LATINO MAN: Before,

01:43

Latino man

the people pay a hundred dollars for eight hours,

01:47

Latino men on pavement looking for work

but now they pay eight or nine dollars per hour.

BRISSENDEN: The relationship between the Long Island establishment and the exploding Latino community is in many ways a microcosm of the nation itself. An underclass at once tolerated and exploited by what until now has been mainstream America.

01:52

Inside Pastor Dwight’s church

Now the weight of numbers is changing that balance.

02:15

Pastor Dwight giving sermon

PASTOR DWIGHT WOLTER: [Giving a sermon] And I saw this community tested to the limits as it struggled and it struggled, I believe it struggled well, and it struggled wisely and it struggled hard because we see this as a problem for the people…

02:21

BRISSENDEN: Patchogue Pastor Dwight Wolter has seen the shift first-hand and he’s watched the tension rise.

02:35

Parishioners in church

PASTOR DWIGHT WOLTER: The population had gone from a minuscule percentage of Latinos, let’s say two per cent or so, to let’s say thirty per cent in just a few years.

02:41

Pastor Dwight. Super:
Pastor Dwight  Wolter
Patchogue Congregational Church

You can’t have that amount of change without some response, or some reaction, some joy or resentment. Something’s going to happen.

02:50

Archive. Criminal arrest

BRISSENDEN: Something has happened, something very grim indeed and we’ll return to Patchogue to examine that later. But first

02:58

Californian city through wire fence

a journey to the heart of the new America, what might be for the rest, an allegory of where this country is heading demographically.

03:10

Music

03:20

BRISSENDEN:  There’s an old saying, “as California goes, so does the nation”.

03:28

Latino faces L.A.

Music

03:34

JOSEFINA LOPEZ: When I was growing up, I really believed that I was an alien, that I wasn’t human,

03:43

Josefina

because it was rare that you saw any Latinos, and the few times that I did see Latinos on television, they were always playing the criminals.

03:48

L. A. Night life

Music

03:55

Boyle Heights Bar

BRISSENDEN: It’s in bars like this on the wrong side of L.A. that the new face of America is all around.

04:08

Music

04:13

BRISSENDEN: I’ve come here to meet the writer and performer Josefina Lopez. In many ways Josefina and her neighbourhood signify the Latino awakening now underway.

04:17

This part of east L.A. used to be the badlands but these days, Boyle Heights is turning hip and Josefina Lopez is part of the reason why.

04:33

JOSEFINA LOPEZ:  I just thought what’s wrong with this picture? Why is it that in my real life,

04:44

Josefina. Super:
JOSEFINA LOPEZ
Screenwriter

my parents are really hardworking, they were dignified people but on television all Latinos are bad, and that’s when I said well, someone needs to do something about it.

04:50

L.A. Night montage

Music

04:59

JOSEFINA LOPEZ: There’s a saying that Latinos are the sleeping giants. We are awake now but I do think

05:05

Josefina

that we have to demand positions of leadership.

05:11

Our Lady mosaic

Music

05:14

Josefina in theatre.

05:19

BRISSENDEN: Josefina came across the border from Mexico when she was five. Like many, she was undocumented, illegal. She became an official resident at eighteen through an amnesty, and a citizen at twenty-six. Today, she runs a fast growing theatre company and writes for stage and film.

JOSEFINA LOPEZ: People you know give me attitude, like they tell me

05:31

Josefina

Oh, Latino films aren’t commercial or this. Then I just go back at them and I go well you’re wrong, because if we’re going to be the majority in 2050, then you know what, then I’d better go start that studio and make all that money that you’re refusing to make.

05:56

Theatre/ Poster for show

BRISSENDEN: The Josefina Lopez creation that made others sit up and take notice was this one – Real Women Have Curves.

06:08

Excerpt from film. Super:
“Real Women Have Curves” Time Warner

MOTHER: I’m no longer a woman.

ANNA: Mom.

BRISSENDEN: Her play became a movie and a huge success in a largely unacknowledged market.

MOTHER:  You know, Anna, you’re not bad looking.

06:15

If you lost weight…

ANNA:  Just stop it!

MOTHER:  …you could be beautiful.

ANNA:  Stop it! You’re overweight too. So why should I listen to you?

MOTHER:  Anna, don’t eat the flan.

06:28

BRISSENDEN:  In the film world, Real Women Have Curves is unusual,

06:43

Second excerpt from film

an honest portrayal of a three dimensional Latino family. More often than not the Latino presence in the movies is a very worn stereotype.

06:47

Excerpt from As Good As It Gets. Super: “As Good As It Gets” Tristar

MELVIN:  Is he dead yet?

NORA:  No!

BRISSENDEN:  Just ask Hollywood’s most famous maid.

07:02

NORA:  Open his curtains for him so he can see God’s beautiful work. And he’ll know that even things like this happen for the best.

07:09

MELVIN:  Sell crazy some place else. We’re all stocked up here.

LUPE ONTIVEROS: I make chicken salad out of chicken shit. You know,

07:18

Lupe

I work miracles with what I have been given, but I think those things and the thirty five years and the recognition that I’ve gotten through various projects, now have put me in a position, a pretty good enviable position where I can pick and choose.

07:28

Ext. Los Angeles Theatre Center

BRISSENDEN: Lupe Ontiveros has played the domestic servant more than a hundred times,

07:45

Lupe in rehearsal

but she readily admits she’s been held back by the broad reluctance of many in her own community to assert themselves.

07:53

But that’s changing.

LUPE ONTIVEROS: It used to be that to be a part of the American dream you had to lose everything at the border –

08:04

lose your language, culture, custom, attitude –leave all that behind. Now we are going to be Americans.

08:17

Lupe

Who is to say who this country belongs to, you know? ‘We, the people of United States’, we. It doesn’t say, we the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant community. This is my country.

08:30

Brissenden and Lupe in restaurant “La Parrilla”

Singing

08:49

BRISSENDEN: And when you’re eating and drinking in the restaurants of Boyle Heights, it’s easy to believe she’s right.

08:52

Lupe Ontiveros has won dozens of awards and she’s a celebrated Latino star, but there are roles she still yearns to play, that would really acknowledge the Hispanic emergence.

09:01

LUPE ONTIVEROS: I would love to play a judge.

09:16

Lupe

I would love to play a politician. I would love to play a doctor, a person that is mature and is brilliant.

09:18

Super:  Justice Sonia Sotomayor swearing-in ceremony, August 2009

BRISSENDEN: Art is lagging behind real life. After all there are some shining examples of powerful Hispanic women and one very important judicial appointment that’s moved Latinos from all walks of life.

GERALDO RIVERA: She is the perfect example of the possibility of social mobility in the Latino community.

09:29

Rivera

I mean here’s a person, who, regardless of what her particular ethnic group is, would be a pride and joy, and you can imagine in a community not, you know, overburdened with heroes, her ascension to the High Court was a thrilling, uniting moment.

10:01

Clip from “Geraldo at Large” TV program

BRISSENDEN: In a very different way, Geraldo Rivera has become a Latino star as well. He is one of the most recognisable Latino faces on US television, a Fox sensation who often finds himself at odds with some of the other personalities on this often confrontational conservative network.

GERALDO RIVERA: Latinos are coming. They are coming.

10:22

Rivera

They are here. They’re going to be recognised, they’re going to stand up at some point and there will be Latino senators and God knows going forward, maybe even an occupant of the White House.

10:53

L.A. traffic in rain

Music

11:03

BRISSENDEN: Latino’s might be the fastest growing demographic in this country, but they have been under-represented politically for a very long time, from Congress all the way to City Hall.

11:14

L.A. City Hall

But that too is changing fast. Just by sheer weight of numbers they’re becoming a political force that everyone has to reckon with, but they’re also becoming far more politically organised.

11:25

Cardenas inside City Hall

We’re here today at the L.A. City Hall to meet one of the rising stars of Latino politics, Tony Cardenas. The Town Hall itself is in session at the moment dealing with this most unusual weather for Los Angeles, but Tony Cardenas is one Latino politician with some very big ambitions.

11:35

Cardenas at microphone

TONY CARDENAS: Seventy five to eight five per cent of the Latino vote, votes Democrat in a national election and in most local elections as well.

11:57

Cardenas

There’s a lot at stake with the Latino vote, there’s a lot of attention being paid to the Latino vote, and the largest number of Latinos ever voting in a presidential election happened when Obama got elected. So Obama has noticed it, the Republicans have noticed it, everybody realises that it’s a major, major difference.

12:07

Cardenas and Brissenden in car

BRISSENDEN: A day out with Tony Cardenas gives me an opportunity to see the power of local Latino politics in action and to get a sense of the waking giant of the American electorate.

12:24

TONY CARDENAS: You’ll find Latinos living in almost every apartment building throughout southern California, you’ll find Latinos living in every community but where you find high concentrations of Latinos is places like this. Growing up as a little boy, probably one out of every ten homes was an Anglo family and now it’s probably one out of every thirty homes is an Anglo family.

12:40

Cardenas talks to people in retirement home

13:05

BRISSENDEN: Next month, the US will start rolling out its once a decade census and politicians like Tony Cardenas are working hard to counter a traditional Latino fear of official registration. The new figures will formalise the population shift, and likely result in more congressional seats and more Latino representation and political clout. Even the undocumented illegals are being urged to stand up and be counted.

13:11

Political power is the path to immigration reform.

TONY CARDENAS: When election day came, some people didn’t even speak English, they only spoke Spanish, but they volunteered,

13:43

Cardenas

because they saw something in me that they had never seen before -- somebody who looked like them, somebody who talked like them, somebody who had parents like they were, or parents like their parents, and they realised that there was hope for somebody like me to get elected.

13:55

Mariachi band at restaurant

Singing

14:09

BRISSENDEN: Latinos have spiced up the rhythm of American life for sure and they may be about to re-brand it altogether, but before their sheer weight of numbers add up to a controlling stake, they’ll need economic empowerment as well, and that will take some doing.

14:20

Mike having tattoos removed

So many Latinos are stuck deep in poverty, crime and a destructive gang culture.

14:46

What do these tattoos mean? What do they signify?

MIKE: My gang.

BRISSENDEN: But you’re out of the gangs now?

MIKE: No, but I’m going to change, that’s what I’m trying to do little by little.

BRISSENDEN: Why do you want to get

14:54

these tattoos removed?

MIKE: So I can better my life and quit going to jail and stuff, you know? Change my lifestyle.

BRISSENDEN: It will take as many as ten visits to the only free tattoo removal clinic in east L.A. to erase Mike’s accumulation of visible gang markers and all that only amounts to a painful first step. He’ll face derision and perhaps retaliation. Getting out of gang life is a lot harder than getting in.

15:15

Night montage

Music

15:43

BRISSENDEN: There are 700 gangs in the depressed south and east of L.A. -- 500 of them are Latino. The gangs are fiercely territorial. It’s a world defined by drugs and violence, and yet for members it’s a refuge from what they see as a hostile and un-accepting world.

15:51

Ginger

GINGER: Well, if you’re a nobody then you’re going to be treated like a nobody, like a piece of shit. But if you’re somebody then they’ll respect you… they’ll respect you. They won’t say anything bad about you or anything, and you have to earn that and you have to work with that.

16:19

Gang members

BRISSENDEN: It’s rare to get access to gangs at all and to talk to gang leaders. This is Ginger, she’s twenty four, a mother of four children and head of this Maravilla Gang Chapter in East Los Angeles.

GINGER: You want to make quick money,

16:38

you want to do something, so what are you going to do? You’re just going to do what you can and that’s hustle.

BRISSENDEN: When you say hustle, what do you do?

16:55

Ginger

GINGER: Rob, steal, kill, sell drugs. Anything easy.

17:03

Montage. Gang on street

Music

17:10

BRISSENDEN: Inevitably many of her gang ride the revolving door of prison. Latinos account for nearly half the inmates in California’s jails, the largest single ethnic group. Gang protection is often the only way to survive inside the prison system and back on the outside.

17:15

Police ‘Wanted’ billboard

GINGER: I chose this life

17:44

Ginger

and I chose it because it’s my other family. It’s my other heart. I love my neighbourhood. I love it.

17:47

East L.A.

Music

18:00

GERALDO RIVERA: If you go in east L.A. the gang culture, multi generational gang culture, is one of the most self-defeating phenomenon in our community.

18:04

Rivera. Super: Geraldo Rivera, Fox Network

I have no patience for people who say, oh, they join gangs because they need something to belong to or it’s part of the social structure of the community. I think it’s corrosive, it’s cancerous.

18:14

Music

18:24

Street shots

GERALDO RIVERA: I have a galaxy of well over one hundred first cousins and I was the first one to go to college. I mean it was like what a concept! But I want that to be the story of the Hispanic assimilation or increased participation in American culture, not gangster representation.

18:28

Latinos playing cards

Music

18:43

Clip from “Geraldo at Large” TV program/ News shots – Anti-Latino

BRISSENDEN: Geraldo Rivera has been accused of being a sensationalist in his long commercial career. At times he’s been something of a Latino human headline…

18:49

but around him on the Fox network and elsewhere, other commentators have left him in the shade, railing against porous borders and a weak immigration policy.

19:11

GERALDO RIVERA: The direct result of the populous ranting about immigration

19:29

Rivera

is the hate crime epidemic in places like east end of Long Island.

19:35

Long Island lakeside mansions/ Patchogue

BRISSENDEN: And so we come full circle on our trip through Hispanic America and to a crime that speaks loudly about the friction and discomfort that’s accompanying the Hispanic ascendancy, back to the Long Island town of Patchogue.

19:40

Patchogue railway station

About eighteen months ago a group of local youths killed a Latino man here at the Patchogue railway station. It was an extraordinarily violent crime but not many people were surprised.

20:11

Photo. Marcelo Lucero

This was a hate crime that rocked Long Island and the nation. Seven teenagers attacked and killed Marcelo Lucero, but only the one who actually used the knife

20:14

Railway line

has been charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter as a hate crime.

JOSELO LUCERO:  That’s why I’m looking for justice.

20:25

Joselo. Super: 
Joselo Lucero, Brother of murder victim

Not only for myself, I’m looking for my brother, for my family, for my community because I want this country to learn something. No matter who you are, no matter where you come from or how you look, you deserve justice.

20:37

Joselo looks at photos on phone

BRISSENDEN: Many people have happy snaps of family and friends on their iPhones. Joselo Lucero’s phone is a shrine to his brother.

JOSELO LUCERO: Just to imagine my future without my brother

20:55

Joselo

is terrifying because always I have in my future and my dreams and my hopes and my whole family with me which it means never, never is going to happen.

21:13

Latino men as at beginning, outside store

BRISSENDEN: In the last few years, Latinos across America have been the target of an increasing number of violent hate crimes, much of it fuelled by the continuing economic insecurity and fears about the impact of undocumented immigrant workers. On Long Island, bashing even became a bizarre sport for some. Around here, they call it ‘beaner hopping’.

21:27

Fast food outlets

PASTOR DWIGHT WOLTER: You don’t just all of a sudden find yourself in a completely different neighbourhood than you were raised in.

21:55

Pastor Dwight. Super:
PASTOR Dwight  Wolter
Patchogue Congregational Church

BRISSENDEN: And it was confronting for people?

PASTOR DWIGHT WOLTER:  Apparently so, because we had a group of teenagers who ran around and stabbed somebody to death because of the colour of his skin.

22:02

Soccer game

BRISSENDEN: This is a demographic transformation more rapid and more significant than any this immigrant nation has ever seen and as it comes, it’s tearing up many of the old, social economic and political certainties. It’s creating fear, suspicion and resentment, but it is also creating opportunities and challenges that Geraldo Rivera believes the political mainstream will have to accept.

22:12

GERALDO RIVERA: If the Republican Party doesn’t

22:40

Rivera

accept a more compassionate and measured view on immigration, then in my view the Republican Party will never be a national majority party in this country again.

22:44

Latinos in Hollywood/ Bars/ Salsa dancing

Music

22:54

BRISSENDEN: To Latinos at least, it’s already very clear that they are changing US politics and the country.

23:01

GERALDO RIVERA: If not one more immigrant from a Latin country comes into the United States, still that demographic genie is out of the bottle. And they will change the face of America and that’s just the way it’s going to happen. There’s no force on earth or in heaven that’s going to stop it, you know.

23:08

Rivera

So just enjoy your taco (laughing).

23:33