>> Beatriz Haspo: Good afternoon
[speaking Spanish],
and welcome to the 24th Annual
Library of Congress
National Book Festival, 
a place where
books build us up.
I am Beatriz Haspo, head of
the logistics of the
Library of Congress, 
National Library services for
the Blind and Print Disabled. 
We are joined this afternoon
by Marie Arana, a prize 
winning author and Literary
critic and former 
Literary Director of the
Library of Congress. Yes.
(applause)
Among her numerous books
are the National Book Award 
finalist "American Chica,"
the Novels 
"Cellophane" and "Lima Nights,"
the Biography
 "Bolivar: American Liberator,"
and a sweeping history of 
Latin America,
"Silver, Sword, and Stone."
Her new book is titled,
"LatinoLand: A Portrait of 
America's Largest
and Least Understood Minority."
She is in conversation with
María Peña, a former journalist
for outlets such as Univision,
Telemundo and NBC Latino,
among others. She is now a 
public relations specialist at
the Library of Congress, and I
hope you enjoy the festival.
Let's welcome them to our
stage.
(applause)
>> María Peña:
So thanks to everyone here.
Thank you for joining us.
I hope you get a lot out of
this conversation because it
will be an engaging
conversation. This is the book
that we're going to be talking
about.
It is a great overview of the
history of Latinos in the U.S.,
way before it was a country.
Their challenges, their
hopes for the future,
how we contribute to the U.S.
It's very packed with a lot of
information.
Marie did a thorough research.
She interviewed over 237 people
across all parts of the Latino
community. So it's a very
engaging
book. I recommend it.
It's a timely topic, of course,
because we are, what, 72 days
away from election day?
Very timely topic and
immigration, of course, for
better or for worse, it is an
immigration--
it's an electoral topic.
So I encourage you to read it.
There's a lot to unpack.
I wanted to ask you, first
of all, what inspired
you to write this book?
>> Marie Arana:
Thank you, Maria.
And first of all, I want to
thank the Library of Congress,
for holding this festival,
(applause)
which is an incredible tribute.
(applause)
Thank you to you for
coming on this beautiful day.
And thank you to Beatrice for
introducing us.
And to Maria, who is a sister
Latina from Nicaragua.
And I'm so proud and happy to
be in her company for this
conversation. What prompted me
to write this book?
This has been a long journey
for me.
I have been in the books
business for a long time.
I was a journalist at the
Washington Post.
At every point along the
way, this population was
growing. In my lifetime, it has
grown from 2.5 million
to 64 million people.
An extraordinary thing for me
to be watching along-- all along,
and yet feeling all the way
that we were invisible in some
way that we always were,
explaining ourselves in some
way. When I worked for a book
publishing company, it was one
of the biggest publishers,
Simon & Schuster.
I was never asked about the
world of Latinos.
Whenever I brought it up at an
editorial meeting, I was told
that Latinos don't read.
So, don't bring me your
ideas about Latinos.
Bring me your ideas about
everything else.
And I got to the 
Washington Post
and they were curious.
They were curious because there
weren't that many.
I was one of very few Latinos
on staff at the Post, and I
offered to be sent out, even
though my job was for books to
be sent out and to talk to
Latinos and talk to them in
Spanish and bring to the paper
stories about them, because that
population was growing in in
Washington, in the area.
And the Post being a good
journalistic institution,
was curious about them.
So, I began at that point, I began
 to write books about every
aspect of of Latinos, starting
with myself.
My first book was a memoir,
because I was suddenly made
aware of that little girl, ten
years old, who arrived in this
country. And where did that
little girl go?
Because I had been erasing her
ever since.
So I wrote "American Chica" to
remind myself of who that was.
That was 24 years ago. I
presented that book at the very
first National Book Festival,
here 24 years ago.
>> María Peña:
Yes. (applause)
>>Marie Arana:
And so every other book has
been a chapter of sorts.
I wrote two novels, one a very
broad epic novel
set in the Amazon jungle.
Another one a very short, sharp
love story set in Lima. That was
"Lima Nights" and then I
began to think, well, how can I
tell the story of these people,
the history of these people and
where we come from, where we've
been, who we are.
And I tried-- it was kind of a
parlor game that I played with
myself who would tell that
larger story.
And I came to Simón Bolívar,
because his family had been in
the hemisphere for 300 years
before he decided to mount, the
revolution for independence of
of six republics.
And he had traveled.
I mean, he traveled 75,000
miles up and down the hemisphere
on horseback to prosecute that
revolution.
I thought that would be
the way, to put into human terms
where we're from and where we
come from.
And then I went from there to
dilating the story to the whole
of Latin America with 
"Silver, Sword, and Stone,"
which was really a portrait 
of the region, as it was through
history, and why those things 
have not changed, and that you
can recognize history in the
population that lives today in
Latin America. And then, of
course, it was
that population is here.
We're here, we are 64 million.
That started with 2.5 million.
When it started, when I first
arrived, and it was at 
2.5 million.
That population was largely
Mexican, largely
Central American and people who
had been here for generations.
And now there was this wave
that happened during my
lifetime. And who were we?
And we were by now
the second largest Spanish
speaking nation in the world.
And so, I don't know 
where to go after "LatinoLand"
because, I mean, this is
the broadest subject I ever--
>> María Peña:
It was a massive undertaking.
I could tell that you spent 
so much time researching it.
You left no stone unturned 
because there's
just so much data in there.
I actually saw a census report,
an update a few weeks ago that's
actually 65 million Hispanics
now, close to
20% of the population. 
"LatinoLand."
Why did you come up with that
title?
Or how did you come up with
that title?
>> Marie Arana:
This is such a Latino story.
(laughs)
Just a few months ago.
It was actually my
last birthday, which is in
September, and I didn't have
a title. I had no title.
I was going through every silly
assemblage of words you can
imagine. And my editor kept
saying, no,no.
My publicist kept saying no.
My agent said no.
And I was desperate.
I got a call from my very
dear, wonderful friend,
Sandra Cisneros, who is here 
today in the main hall.
(applause)
And Sandra says, I'm going to
be in Washington, D.C..
I know it's your birthday.
Let's have lunch for your
birthday.
So on my birthday last
September, I went to lunch with
Sandra. We sat at an Indian
restaurant, fabulous food, and
she said, you look so
depressed. What's going on
with you? And I said, well, you
know, first of all, tummy
troubles, but also I don't have
a title for my book.
She said, "Here is what you do.
Here is what you do.
You go home, spend the rest of
the day, have a very happy
birthday. Get into your
pajamas.
Go to bed, turn off the light.
Look up. And you think about
the person that you love
absolutely without limits.
And you concentrate on that
image.
It can be also a thing that you
love doesn't have to be a
person, but if it's a person,
better."
So I did that.
I got in my pajamas.
I got into bed. I turned off
the light.
It had been a very nice
birthday. Thank you.
Except for this problem
that I had.
And I look up and I think about
the person that I love without
any conditions, unconditional
love.
And then I go to sleep, and I
wake up in the morning.
"LatinoLand" is in my head.
Okay. That's part of the story.
That's only part of the story.
So I call up Sandra
immediately and I say, I have...
"LatinoLand" and she said,
that's fabulous.
That's it, that's it, that's it.
I called up my editor. That's
it, that's it. Publicist, agent.
They all say that is the title.
Wonderful. Okay, great.
A few months later, my editor
calls and says, you have to come
to New York because we have to
have a conversation.
And I said, okay, so I came to
New York.
It's not too far. 
Washington, D.C.
drive 4.5 hours, and I'm
sitting with him at lunch and
Bob says, here's what I have to
tell you.
We're speeding up the
publication.
You're going to have two days
with the pages.
You're going have two
days with the proofs, you're
going to have three days with
this, and you're going to have
to do everything very quickly,
because we're speeding up the
publication because it's
election year.
I said, that's fine. And so
 I said, when, when's pub date?
And he says February 20.
And I almost fell off my chair.
That is the birthday 
of my father.
And that is the person that I
thought of when I looked up.
(applause)
So he gave me the title.
And as I say, that's a total
Latino brujeria
which is wonderful.
>> María Peña:
Thank you so much.
It's such an intimate story.
It almost gets me
teary eyed because a lot of us
were probably not lucky to have
beautiful fathers like that in
our lives. But thank you so
much for sharing that story.
You talk about
"LatinoLand," a country unto
itself almost, that if it were
a country, we would be the fifth
largest economy in the world.
That's how powerful 
we are, right?
With our purchasing power 
and all of that.
But you said that we are
also a people with no name.
Explain what you meant by that.
>> Marie Arana:
We've been given all these
names. We've never really 
announced a name for ourselves.
I remember coming at the age of
ten to Summit, New Jersey and
where there were no Hispanics
at all, except for
my family that I could see.
And I remember being called a
Mexican, and that was fine with
me, but I wasn't. So I would
say, I'm actually
I've never met a Mexican.
And people would say, that's
okay, you're Mexican,
you speak Spanish.
(laughs)
And so, from then on.
Then suddenly Nixon was in the
White House.
He needed to be reelected.
He hadn't had a very good
turnout, from among Latinos.
In his, in the first go round.
And he wondered why.
Why? Because I'm from
California
I am from California.
I'm not only California, but my
father was a grocer.
I worked with Latinos.
I piled fruit from their 
gardens and their vegetables
from their fields
into my father's truck.
I worked with them, I know
them.
Why didn't they vote for me in
big numbers?
And so he was the one.
President Nixon
was the one who established 
Hispanic Heritage Month,
Hispanic Heritage Day,
who gave us really the name of
Hispanics, who insisted then
because he brought Hispanics to
his first White House and said,
what do I need to do?
And the Hispanic advisor
said, you need to have
Hispanic generals. You need to 
have Hispanic Bishops.
You need to have Hispanics in
the White House and Nixon did.
So this strange, wonderful 
way that we
were given the name Hispanics,
then we became Latinos and
we became Latinos, which is
really not a great name for us,
because it was imposed really
by Napoleon, of all people.
When Napoleon had his eye on 
Mexico and on taking a-- really
moving into the hemisphere,
 in a very large way.
He appealed to Hispanics, to
South Americans, to the
Latin American world by saying,
we are Latin.
You're like us. You're like
French.
You're like, we're
all the same thing.
We come from Latin blood.
And so the word Latino became
in Latin America came from that
time. And so that was an
imposition as well.
And now, of course, we have the
variations which are Latinx.
Very few of us use the term
Latinx, but it's
very much in the academy.
And the people prefer it
because it's gender equal.
And now we have Latinae, which
is another variety of
Latino, Latinx, Latinae because
it is a vowel at the end.
We don't like X. I mean, 
dont X us, right?
So there is a nice vowel at the
end and now it's Latinae.
So these are all names that
have been imposed on us by
Nixon, by Napoleon, by the 
academic world,
by the U.S. Census and so we
 are, in a certain way,
a people who have never chosen 
the name for, ourselves.
Most of us say Nicaraguans and
Nicaraguan American,
A Peruvian American, 
A Mexican American,
most of us identify ourselves
that way.
>> María Peña:
That was one of the things
that I found striking
in the book, because it was
surprising to me to know that
Nixon was the one that
started courting the
Hispanic vote way back then.
And it's really interesting
because we're so diverse.
You talk about multiplicity and
like the complexity of the
Hispanic community, because
we're from everywhere and we're
now everywhere in the U.S.
And so being so distinct, yet
we find a way to forge unity.
I was wondering, why do
you think-- or to the American
public in general, why is it
important to understand the
largest minority in the U.S.
 At this point?
>> Marie Arana:
First of all, because we have
been invisible for so long.
Second of all, because we are
so productive.
This is the one thing that
absolutely thrilled me and
impressed me and inspired
me in writing this book.
There are as Maria has said,
237 people I talked to
at every level of society of,
the Latino world.
People from menial workers on
the street, construction people.
I would stop and talk to. People
who were grape pickers, who
started their lives as picking
peaches in California, who then
became one of the greatest 
neurosurgeons
we have in this country.
The importance of this
population, the story of the
advancement, the dedication,
the work ethic, all of that,
that is so lost, I think, in the
conversation, because people
think of us, first of all, as
being poor, as being a burden on
society. We are not a burden on
the society.
We are... without the GDP that
you mentioned.
I mean, we produced 
$3.5 trillion for the economy.
It is an astonishing
amount we have the greatest
percentage, the
greatest growth of small
businesses in this country is
in Latino hands.
This is an enormous,
productive engine for
this country. And it is, to me,
it has been an inspiration to
see how the the generations
move, because you can start as a
menial worker, but you can have
children who go to college, you
can have children,
grandchildren who become
professionals in their fields.
And you see this story all the
time.
It is a tremendously,
mobile population.
And I think that, what
inspires me most to write about
this book is the invisibility.
Why do we have to explain
ourselves all the time?
Why do we have to say we're
here? We count.
For a long time, I think it
has been the reason
why it... Getting 
people to vote.
Getting Latinos to vote was a
project because people felt,
well, nobody cares about me.
Nobody cares about my children.
Nobody cares about my life.
This is a tremendous
population that needs to be
invested in by this country and
appreciated by this country.
That's my whole reason for--
my whole mission right now.
And if I may say one 
more thing, to get
this in the schoolrooms,
because Latino school children
don't know the pride that they
could have, hearing,
Sandra Cisneros this
morning or just earlier talking
about her life and the shame
that she felt as a child, which
is heartbreaking because this
is a people who have
been here since before the
American Revolution.
The contributions have been
extraordinary.
School children need to know
their own history.
And I think this is my largest
project.
>> María Peña:
And I think that's an important
point to make, because that was
one of the questions that kept
coming up to me as I read the
book. We remain
invisible, little understood
despite the fact that we are by
2060, we're going to be
a third of the population.
One out of every three
Americans will be of Latino
origin. And so my question to
you would be, what role do
teachers and school districts
have or can have in making sure
that Latinos do not remain
invisible?
>> Marie Arana:
Well, the biggest issue here
is that we are part of the 
American story.
And if you don't know that as a
Latino and a lot of people don't
know that, certainly the
school children don't know that.
We have been, first of all, on
this territory, that is the
United States since, the 1500s
and before that, because our
Indigenous-- we have a lot of
Indigenous blood.
I have a great majority of my
of my DNA is Indigenous.
This is a population
that has been here for
millennia. And then you have,
of course, the Spanish
presence that was here from the
coming from Mexico, the
Spanish population came up in
what was at 1501. 1532 was
when, of course, Mexico was,
invaded really by Cortez.
And so the Mexican population
that began to come up was in...
It was 1601 was the,
expedition that came up
and was the first
 Spanish injection.
And a lot of those people who
came up and the population of
New Mexico, Arizona, for
instance, is filled with
generations that have been here
since that time.
Linda Chavez who worked, I write 
about her, who worked in
the Reagan White House, who was
the first Hispanic to to work in
the White House. She came from
a family that came up with
the expedition 1601. So this is
a presence that has
been here a very long time.
And it is, the--
The issue of
history that is not told in the
classrooms. For instance, the--
George Washington himself said
that he could not have won the
Revolutionary War had it not
been for the the Spaniards and
and the Spanish help that came
up the Mississippi River when
the English blockade had taken
over the coast and the, only
way that the ammunition could
come up for the Patriots, for
the rebels, was through
Spanish ships and Spanish hands.
Galveston is named after Galvez.
Bernardo de Galvez, who was the
Commander at the time in
Louisiana, who allowed this to
happen and was a huge help.
So starting from the 
American Revolution,
we have a history here. 
Latinos fought in
the Civil War, great heroics.
In fact, do you remember you
probably were taught
this in your history class.
"Damn the torpedoes, 
full speed ahead!,"
and who was that?
That was a Latino.
That was an Admiral who is
known, whose statue stands in
four blocks from the
 White House.
And you go and you see him
there, and you see his bust
in the Army Navy Club.
But nobody tells you that this
Admiral was Latino.
His father had fought in the
Revolutionary War.
So you have all of this history
and a huge military presence
of from then on, all the way
through the world wars, all the
way through the Vietnam
War, through the Korean War,
great heroics, really, by the
Latino population.
But this isn't 
learned in the classrooms.
>> María Peña:
And I also think there's also
individual responsibility.To 
reach out to your neighbors
to share your stories.
One-- you bring up a lot
of important issues in the book.
One of them being, that we
continue to be
underrepresented in a lot of 
segments of society.
There's no equity. And so of course 
you have a lot of individual
success stories and trailblazers.
But as a collective, there's
still a lot room to grow
and a lot, further to go.
What is it going to take for
Latinos to stop counting
the first.  The first this, the first
that. In a lot of our families,
we are the first this, the
first that.
But we also want to get to a
point where we no longer have a
need to talk about that.
So what do you think it's going
to take to go
beyond the trailblazer 
success story?
>> Marie Arana:
I think it's going to take a lot
first of all, political action.
There is no question about that.
The Joaquin Castro, who is
a representative from Texas, is
going around all the time
speaking to the
media corporations, to 
Hollywood, to book publishers,
to magazine publishers, to 
journalists  and saying why are
we not more present in 
this story?
And why aren't there more
Latinos on boards,
corporate boards of this
country?
Right now we are 1 to 2% on
boards of corporations in this
country, which is almost
ridiculous because you were
saying in the same breath, this
is the the fastest growing small
businesses in the country are
owned by Latinos, so that
it takes political power.
First of all, it takes 
a political power.
Where does that come from?
It comes from education.
It comes from being aware of
who the population is
and where it has gone.
You're right.
There's a lot of talk about,
 the first people to go
to the college, the first
people to get on a board, the
first Hispanic to be on the
editorial staff of the
Washington Post. I'm sure that
was same for you
in your journalistic career.
But they're there and
they're hap...
This is a population that is
little by little, year by year.
Obviously, if we've grown from
2.5 million to 65 million in my
lifetime, we are also going to
college, going to Ivy League
schools, becoming Doctors,
becoming people who you
hopefully will see more and
more in the media.
But that takes work and that
takes people being more aware of
the population and that takes
coming out of the invisibility
that I'm talking about.
>> María Peña:
So one quick question before we
move on to our section for Q&A,
because I know a lot of you
will have questions.
Unfortunately, we don't have a
lot of time for that.
But a quick question.
Immigrants like myself, 
like many in the room here,
have always had this
tension between assimilation
and maintaining cultural identity.
What is the case for 
U.S.-born Hispanics in terms
of the challenge of keeping that
cultural identity?
>> Marie Arana:
Huge challenge because there is
such a thing as cultural
attrition. It's not-- nothing new.
It happened to the 
German Americans. It happened
to the Irish Americans. It 
happens to the
Swedish Americans. We all blend
 eventually. With Latinos.
It's different because we are
an ethnicity that has every
racial mix in the book.
And I have done my DNA 
and I have every race of
man in me. I have Black African,
 I have Indigenous,
I have Asian, and I have
Caucasian.
We are the biggest mix.
We look like a variety unto
ourselves.
We are diversity, writ in large
just as a population.
So the attrition that comes
with a German American or a
Swedish American or a 
Danish American is not going
to be the same as for us, 
because there is a
racial component to our 
presence and a racial component,
frankly, to the way
that we're kept out.
And it's been not too
long ago that we were kept out
of intermarriage, that we were
kept out
of bar rooms, restaurants, etc.
there were signs just as, as
recently as the 60s when I
arrived that said, no
Mexicans, no dogs.
So that would, incline 
one to
not be associated with Latinos.
And I think  that's the
cultural attrition is one thing.
Another thing is that we're in
an ethnicity that most
intermarries. I mean, 
Pew Research
has done all of this 
incredible work.
I'm so grateful to them to,
 absolutely parse the
population.But we are the
population that most
intermarries which is to say,
what? That maybe in a
household,two parents don't
speak English or
don't speak Spanish. Excuse me.
And also you have to say
that you and I, Maria,
we were born abroad.
The great majority of Hispanics
were born here.
70% of Hispanics were born here.
So you have this population of
about 80% that speak English
fluently, and only a very small
percentage that,
don't speak it fluently or 
don't speak it at all.
You have a-- little by little
the generations fall off.
I have a daughter-in-law who is
Mexican, Mexican American, 100%,
whose family is one of those
who has been here since the
1600s. And she doesn't speak
Spanish.
And she's not teaching her
children Spanish.
So little by little, we we
become more,
Americanized. A lot of us
manage to...
And this is certainly true for
my daughter-in-law, managed to
keep hold of that culture even
though
the language may be fading.
>> María Peña:
So I'm going...We only have
ten minutes, unfortunately.
So I think that's going to give
us enough for maybe a couple of
questions unfortunately.
So you're welcome to come up
and ask Marie a question.
>> Hi there. Thank you so much
 for coming and talking to us.
Something that you mentioned
and that you did with your book
on Simón Bolívar, was to create
this massive cultural work
for the people who-- for the
Hispanics and everything who
live in the U.S. In English,
which is something that doesn't
really exist. Like,
for instance, like me,
I was born in Venezuela, and,
I grew up.
Simón Bolívar and all these
people and since I was born
there, I moved here when I was
14 or so.
But I had learned the history.
I had learned all these things.
But  like my cousins,
for instance, they were
sort of like, born here. And you
see that,
like I'm from there, but I
don't really know the history.
And then you sort of get that
sense of like they feel
weird about this sort of thing
and you sort of need this work
of, media and movies and
books in English or in Spanish.
But for these people who live
in the U.S., so I'm curious,
what advice would you give for
someone like me who just would
like to be part of that
creation of work for these
people in a new way that's not
necessarily like, victimized, and
it's sort of like, okay, here's
a history.
How do we actually go about it
and just sort of feel good and
but also be part of the U.S.?
>> Marie Arana:
Absolutely. Thank you so much
for that question. That's 
such an important question.
And so important that
you want to be part of that.
The  bringing...
the culture here and to make it
part of the American story.
It's part of the American story.
It is. The media doesn't tell us.
Hollywood certainly doesn't
tell us.
Just within the last, 
I think, five, maybe ten years,
we are beginning to
see Hispanics as we truly are.
Before we were villains, you
know, or we were the lazy ones
sitting under the cactus tree.
This work, which needs to be
done by Hispanics themselves,
Latinos like you
who are aware of the culture
before, who have an
appreciation for the
Simón Bolívars  of the world, who
 gave this hemisphere
so much of its history,
to bring it here and to
serve not only as teachers, but
as people who work in the media.
We don't have enough of you in
the media.
We don't have enough of you in
Hollywood.
We don't have enough of you in
the classroom.
We don't have enough of you
teaching Latino childrens like
the child that you used to be.
And I think that is a
huge project at hand, and it
needs to be undertaken by all
of us who
care about it. Thank you,
>> Thank you.
>> María Peña:
Thank you.
>> María Peña:
And please try to keep your
questions short, because we are
running out of time and they're
very strict up there.
So your question is next.
>> Hello. As the Hispanic
community is continuing to grow,
how beyond the language--
The language is such a huge
factor of preserving our culture
into the next generation.
What are other ways that you
would recommend that we preserve
our culture but also embrace
this--
Embracing our American
culture, but also our Latino
culture together for futures to
come.
>> Marie Arana:
I would say thank you for that
question.
That's a lovely question.
Our culture of
family, our culture-- our work ethic,
our culture of togetherness.
I mean, the food alone,
La comida, de veras,
the food, the music our sense of
 community, all of these things
that are so important to us and
that are something that
we can offer and that we give
to the larger population.
We are in so many ways a
spark that's yet to take flame.
And I wish more
than anything for that flame of
humility, courage, resilience,
work to really be spread into
the larger American sphere.
And I think that people like us
who care about these things, who
care about family, who care
about work, who care about
sticking to it and making a
better generations after us,
is a great contribution to this
country. And I think that we
need to keep it alive.
Thank you for the question.
>> Thank you.
>> María Peña:
You're next. You're probably the
last question.
I'm sorry. So we have? OK
>> I was very curious about how
your book looks into the impact
of social media and cultural
evolution.
Where I'm getting at is, I read
about something called the
migrant capsule effect, where a
migrant community comes to the
U.S. In a lot of
ways, that community, that
household, they maintain
like a snapshot of their culture
from the home country.
Now, for me, as a second
generation Mexicano, as a
millennial, I feel that there's
like this rapid pace of change
within even my own 
community.
And I'm curious how social
media has really catalyzed that.
Again as a millennial,
 I've been able to
connect with other Latinos and
other colleges and other states
and even in other countries.
Now, how-- what role is social
media playing in accelerating
that pace of change within our
culture?
>> Marie Arana:
It has been amazing. Thank you
for that question.
It has been an amazing effect
because, when I look
back at my father and my
mother's life, where they were
writing letters and it was
taking months and the
culture was so far away that
now it's immediate.
I mean, you can get on
WhatsApp, you can
call your family in Mexico, and
I can call my family in Lima,
and I and you can be in touch
in a way that you weren't
before. And you can
keep those connections.
And we do. I mean, we send
money back.
We keep the families
connections alive.
I think social media has been
an enormous effect on our being
able to preserve the culture in
the ways that
my parents generation could not.
So this is a very
important part of our culture,
and we have to develop that
even more.
>> Thank you.
>> María Peña:
Thank you. You're next.
>> Hi. This is my own theory, 
but I've read so many books,
like "Che" by John Anderson and 
a beautiful book, the...
"Cuba: An American History"
by Ana Ferrer
and the history of "The United 
States in Latin America"
>> María Peña:
We only have a few minutes so...
>> Yeah. Okay, so my thing is, 
I think some of the problem with
invisibility and people not
knowing Latinos is because our
people don't know the history 
of the U.S. In so many countries
and how much we've undermined
democracy in so many countries.
And so I think that's a part of
why it's been
harder for Latinos to adapt.
>> Marie Arana:
That's a very good point.
That is a very good point.
And I'll be very, very brief in
answering it.
The reason why we have had
this wave of immigration has in
many, many ways been connected
to the American hand in
Latin America. And I mean a hand
 that has not been
particularly contributing. It has.
(applause)
Thank you for that question.
(applause)
>> María Peña:
Yeah. So unfortunately, we are
going to have to wrap it up.
I want to give you the last
word.
But before I do that, I
strongly recommend that you buy
and read the book.
I think it should be required
reading in the classroom.
Last words for you, Marie, and
thank you for coming.
>> Marie Arana:
I just want to thank you also
for coming and for being and
being willing to listen to this
extraordinary story that we're
going to hear a lot more about.
So thank you.
(applause)
(upbeat music)