November 3, 1994: Vol26n9: UB scholar predicts 'marriage' of Anglo and Hispanic cultures

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
Alfredo Matilla, Puerto Rican scholar and professor and chair of the
Department of American Studies at UB, predicts a marriage "in flesh
and bone" of North America's Anglo and Hispanic cultures within 50
years. 
 Hispanic groups from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are
expected to comprise 30 percent of the U.S. population by 2020, but
Matilla says the merger will produce more than numbers. He predicts
the emergence of a "new U.S. culture," one distinguished by new ways
of using and understanding the English language and of experiencing
the world itself.
 In addition to manifesting the European Zeitgeist, Matilla says, the
new America will deeply reflect the world view of the telluric, or
earth-centered, traditions of the Western Hemisphere's Hispanic
cultures, which incorporate Indian and African sensibilities and
values.
	Matilla made his observations in August as one of the
principal presenters at the summer university program held at the
Universidad Complutense de Madrid at El Escorial, Spain. His comments,
which attracted considerable attention from the Spanish press,
specifically predict the evolution of a "vast, new U.S. culture with a
different world view - one that melds the African-Hispanic-Indian
rural, agricultural tradition with that of America's currently
predominant Anglo culture." 
	Enormous changes will result, Matilla said, as ascendant
Chicano, Cuban, Central American and Caribbean cultures begin to
enrich American life through language.
	"Language encodes culture, and so each language offers a
different cultural perspective - each language, if you will, opens a
different window from which to consider the world," he says. "The
United States has a constitution that is notable for embracing
different points of view. But the country has one major language, and
so Americans look out upon the world through one window. To speak or
write another language is to comprehend things in a different way, to
see the world and its people with a fresh understanding. This doesn't
guarantee peaceful coexistence," Matilla says, pointing to
multi-lingual Europe and its ongoing wars. "It takes centuries for
cultures to accommodate one another, but that process of assimilation
or amalgamation or whatever we choose to call it has already begun and
we will be a new nation because of it."
	He says important Latino and American-Latino writers already
are producing works in English that reflect this change - works that
show that they understand and use the English language in entirely new
ways, works that "open up" the English language in a way that augurs
the "opening up" of the American culture.
	There are writers who write within the English tradition, but
with a Hispanic frame of mind, says Matilla. Their work has earned
critical acclaim and public popularity. This, he says, represents an
acceptance of both their ideas and their ways of using language into
the mainstream body of literature in English. They are forging a new
Anglo-Hispanic consciousness.
	He calls poet William Carlos Williams one of the founders of
this tradition. The son of a Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican mother,
Williams' fresh, clear, discrete images of the sensuous world
dramatically influenced American writing in this century.
	More recently, Matilla cites the 1990 Pulitzer Prizewinning
"The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love" by Oscar Hijuelos, and "Bless Me,
Ultima," a trilogy by Chicano writer Rudolfo Anaya, as examples of the
new Hispano-Anglo consciousness.
	"Mendoza's Dream" by Puerto Rican author Ed Vega and "How the
Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" by Dominican novelist Julia Alvarez
also are cited by Matilla as examples of this new way of articulating
American culture.
	"There is also Colombian writer Jaime Manrique's book, 'Latin
Moon in Manhattan,'" says Matilla, "and Puerto Rican poets like Pedro
Pietri and Victor Hernandez Cruz have attracted the attention and
critical admiration of America poets like Allen Ginsberg and Robert
Creeley."
	The Chicano writing is particularly richly imbued with this
telluric sensibility, says Matilla. It is based in an understanding of
agricultural labor and the belief in the possibility of the myth of
Aztlan, which says the Aztecs occupied the American Southwest long
before the conquistadors arrived and so have an ancient connection to
that place.
	"Like the other Indian-Hispanic-African cultures of this
hemisphere," Matilla says, "Chicanos tend to consider all of the
Americas as one continuous space and have a very fluid sense of
political borders.
	"The peoples of Central and South America and the Caribbean
have moved back and forth into and out of various nations in this
hemisphere, including our own, for many years, without regard for
borders," he says, "but now they are staying in larger and larger
numbers, bringing their culture with them, and because of this, in the
next few decades, we will become a different nation."
	The week-long Universidad Complutense event included among its
speakers Rafael Hernandez-Colon, ex-governor of Puerto Rico, and
Antonio Colorado, former Puerto Rican secretary of the interior.
	Matilla, a Puerto Rican literary scholar and former Fulbright
fellow, holds a doctorate magna cum laude from New York University and
has conducted research in the field of Latin American literature,
theater and cultural studies for more than 20 years.
	He is the author or editor of a number of books, as well as
essays, criticism and translations of work by Puerto Rican
poet/playwright Pedro Pietri, James Joyce and others. 	 Matilla's
short stories, plays and poetry have been anthologized and have
appeared in distinguished literary journals.