Monday, June 11, 2007

Illegitimate Hispanic Family Values?

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

In the public debate over illegal immigrants, advocates on both sides of the issue have included Hispanic family values into their arguments.  Interlocutors such as President George W. Bush have praised the family values of Hispanic immigrants and argued that, in an era of moral relativism, they would strengthen the national character. Not to be out-done, the opposing camp has published a plethora of articles suggesting that Hispanic family values are, in actuality, the very anti-thesis of American values.

Leading the charge are Heather MacDonald of City Journal, and Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies.  Citing statistics on “illegitimate births,” Mr. Camarota’s recent article, “Illegitimate Nation,” paints not only a grim picture, but proposes that there is an endemic pathology in Hispanic culture with regards to illegitimate births.  The arguments therein are, without a doubt, compelling, but flawed and untruthful in their conclusion because, as I remind my students, an argument may be “nothing but the truth” but not the “whole truth.”  A partial truth, thus, while creating a technically “valid” syllogism may still be fallacious.

First of all, let us concede that the numbers don’t lie.  Being that most of the populations of Latin America — including those who migrate illegally into the United States — are poor, the fact that an astonishing number of births occur outside of wedlock is not entirely surprising.  However, one must ask if this phenomenon is more of a result of the culture of poverty.  As Mr. Camarota points out, the rate of illegitimacy is even higher in Haiti, a Francophone, ethnic African, and even poorer country.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the same dilemma in poor white and black America as anyone who’s watched the despairing spectacle of The Jerry Springer Show can attest.  Moreover, no one has yet chronicled how many European peasant immigrants in previous migrations left behind spouses and children and started anew once in America and, thus, technically produced their own “illegitimate nation.”

But legitimacy of birth is beside the point.  As Jean Jacques Rousseau noted, the family is a natural, not a civil, institution.  In our evolutionary history, what made a family was a cohesive unit based on kinship.  The natural values of the family were and are based on the biological parents living together and caring for and feeding their offspring and older members of their kin group.  Just because the legal form of marriage did not exist prior to the rise of organized societies does not mean that families and the values of responsibility did not exist.

In today’s class of the immigrant poor, many parents may not have legitimized their union but nonetheless live, work, and raise their children together and send remittances back home to support elderly parents and even younger siblings.  It is not as though the lack of a marriage certificate precludes people from being responsible.  And it is not as though the vast majority of these “illegitimate” children are being raised in single households.

What is most troubling about Mr. Camarota’s assertion is that he ascribes the disregard for legal marriage as endemic not to the cultures of the poor, regardless of their ethnicity, but to Hispanic culture, proving at the very least the superficiality of the argument and the ignorance of the writer.  Legal marriage and the legitimate birth of children are actually highly valued in the Hispanic middle and upper classes, just as they are in other European-based cultures.

In researching my own genealogy on the American continent — which by the way is descendent of legitimate births all the way back to my Spanish ancestors in the 1500’s — I found that, unlike U.S. birth certificates, Spanish certificates list a birth as either “legitimate” or “natural.”  Additionally, the social distinction “somos de buenas familias” not only signifies respect for the legal institution of marriage but for honor and integrity as well.

There are many sincere arguments against illegal immigration and equally as many against amnesty, but disparaging the entire Hispanic culture is not one of them. This smear campaign — known as the Black Legend in the 16th century — equates anything from the Spanish culture as inherently inferior to that of Northern Europe.

With that said, if one criticism of Hispanic culture needs to be pointed out it is that it is too traditional, perpetuating the absurd Biblical assertion that man is in the image of God and woman in the image of man.  Paradoxically, many of the commentators who argue so passionately against illegal immigration are equally passionate about denying women in this country their reproductive rights and advocate for a return to traditional (and lesser) roles for women.

Perhaps the reason we don’t have as many illegitimate births in our country is because women have more rights in the first place.

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© Rosa Martha Villarreal, 2007.  Rosa Martha Villarreal, a MexiData.info guest columnist, is the author of "Chronicles of Air and Dreams: A Novel of Mexico," and "The Stillness of Love and Exile."  She can be reached via e-mail at rvillarreal@tertuliamagazine.com.