AUGUST 9, 2011

Marketers demonstrate what metrics to use and how listening affects business

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Social media and digital marketing have allowed marketers to listen to more of what customers are saying about their brands and those of their competitors. As a result, listening and engaging online with consumers are now parts of many marketers’ online strategies, and there are many ways to measure these initiatives to track success.

A June 2011 study commissioned by Dell from Forrester Consulting found that marketers from different industries look at various key performance indicators (KPIs) when measuring the success of their listening and engagement initiatives.

One of the more popular KPIs was number of impressions/reach, which was cited by 42% of respondents from the high-tech industry. Additionally, 57% of those in media, entertainment or leisure industries used the number of social network fan “likes,” and 46% of those at utility and banking services companies analyzed customer satisfaction scores.

Additionally, many areas within a corporation can benefit from listening to and engaging customers. Respondents said that market strategy (74%), web-interactive marketing (74%), brand management (72%), public relations (64%), product marketing (63%) and market research (53%) were all corporate functions that had created strategies based on information from listening and engagement initiatives.

No matter what metrics and KPIs marketers used to track listening and engagement initiatives, many were seeing success. Sixty-three percent of respondents told Dell and Forrester Consulting they had seen a positive effect from such initiatives on brand awareness, while 57% said the same about brand sentiment, and 50% about overall business success.

Listening to customers is not a new strategy, but consumers and brands are connecting more intimately via online channels. Companies must take the right steps to track and measure these initiatives, which will lead to continued improvements in this area—and in the business overall.

While pondering what to write about this month, I noticed my wife searching the Web for back-to-school items the kids needed – new backpacks, pencil sharpeners, new shoes, erasers in the shape of pandas, and so forth.

If you search Google for “kids backpacks”, you’ll see a “Nearby Stores” link displayed just below the image/shopping results, the most prominent section of the SERP.

If you sell kids backpacks, you’ll probably want to rank well for queries for it year-round, but back-to-school time is probably when it really pays to rank well for the term. In this case, you’d want to make sure that your inventory is available in Google Shopping so that you can show up in the Nearby Stores SERP.

As you are considering your SEO efforts, you should be thinking about the seasonality of your business as well as how it effects how your local customers use search.

For seasonal and locally focused SEO campaigns consider the following tips.

1.  Plan Ahead

If you want to rank for a seasonal keyword like “back to school sale” in your city, you’ll probably want to try to rank for the query ahead of time. While putting up a great piece of content and getting links at the time of the event can work, as people are more likely to link to something that’s current, I have found it’s more reliable to get your content indexed and linked way ahead of time.

During the actual time you want to have the best rankings, you can also add additional content that targets variations of the keyword and links back to the original page you are trying to rank. This can both bolster the original page as well provide an additional URL that can rank.

2.  Understand The Time Window

Planning for your New Years Eve party usually starts around December 1st. So if you’re a restaurant, you’ll want to rank for “New Years Eve menu” well before New Years Eve comes around.

3.  Understand The SERPs For Your Keyword

While Google and Bing update their various SERP displays regularly, having a handle on the different SERP inventory available for your target keyword is a good idea.

If Google is showing a lot of images, then you know you need to work on image optimization. If there are Shopping results as in the backpack example, you know you need to get your inventory in Google Shopping.

For event-based keywords like “Black Friday Shopping”, Google often shows relevant News links above the organic results around the time of the event. For the News results, consider writing an article on “Black Friday Shopping” for your local newspaper.

Often times, SERPs with News results also show blog results, so this would be an indication that you might want to add some content about the event to your blog. If it’s a hot term, update your blog regularly throughout the day, as Google will often update these links with the latest content.

4.  Create An Editorial Calendar

One of the challenges (and opportunities) with the Web is that it forces businesses to start thinking like publishers. But businesses should already know when their hot seasons are.

They also should know the types of products people will be looking for and the types of questions they will be asking search engines. Map out the seasons that effect you in a editorial calendar spreadsheet and start figuring out where your areas of SEO opportunity are going to be over the next year.

To help you get started, I have created a Local SEO Seasonal Calendar that shows some of the major events for the year, complete with relevant local business categories/keywords for those events and the window of time for each.

And remember, with local SEO, ’tis always the season.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Entries

• SEO For Seasonal Promotions
• Tracking Seasonal Search Behavior
• Last Minute Holiday SEO Tactics
• 10 Last-Minute SEO Tips For Holiday Shopping Season
• Using Predictive Modeling In Seasonal Search Campaigns

By Andrew Redfern @ 9th August 2011 8:30 am

There are innumerable ways to improve a page’s Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. Whether improving the quality and keyword density of your page’s text content, developing a strong network of useful links from other popular sites or any number of other tried and tested techniques, the name of the game is forcing search engines to take notice of your site and rank it highly within search results for the searches that you want to be a part of.

It can be pretty daunting to try and addressing each of these rules and recommendations from the outset, which is why this article is designed to help you lay a solid foundation from which to develop your SEO strategies throughout the life of the page. The pointers referenced in this passage are the fundamentals of SEO and the starting point for anybody who wants their site to ascend the rankings.

The bottom line in SEO is this: Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

Text is an absolute necessity because search engines operate using functions nicknamed spiders or crawlers which trawl the worldwide web instantaneously to find information that is relevant to the terms of a user’s search, but spiders/crawlers are only capable of reading text.

For this reason, a website with the most stunning imagery and design is likely to feature less prominently in a natural search list than one with quality, keyword rich text.

In many ways, links, popularity and reputation go hand in hand. The more popular your site, the higher it will appear in the rankings as search engines will perceive it to be a valuable resource on the given subject matter.

The popularity of another site can have a positive effect on your ranking too, if you are able to secure a link within that site to your own. The strength and quality of links to and from your site, all contribute to your position within search listings.

But just as exterior forces can have a positive influence on your ranking, the opposite can also occur. If you share a server with a blacklisted IP address or known spammer, you will suffer a much lower ranking as a result. This could diminish the effect of any hard work you carry out producing strong, keyword rich text and to the same degree a site with less text content but very strong authoritative links may fare better.

Observe the four cornerstones of SEO and you are likely to reap the benefits. There is no magic wand for SEO, just a set of principles. But if you are faithful to them, you are likely to benefit from a much higher ranking and, in turn, a great deal more clicks.

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Other Related Stories That May Be Of Interest:

1. Using Keyword Links is Vital for On-Page SEO
2. SEO Proof Your Internal Links
3. SEO Content that Pleases Both Humans and Spiders
4. Quality Over Quantity: Link Building for SEO
5. How to Get Your New Site Spidered for SEO
6. Avoid Stuffing Keywords Into Content for Great SEO
7. Your URL File Extension Won’t Affect Your SEO
8. Increase Your Site’s SEO Success with Inbound Links
9. Google Makes Changes to Search Engine Algorithm, How Will This Affect Your Business?
10. Create a Blog to Improve SEO on Your Site

Andres Oppenheimer Daily Herald | Posted: Sunday, August 7, 2011 12:00 am

 

While much has been written about the fact that Latin America’s rapidly growing economies are largely immune to U.S. financial woes, President Obama’s deal with Congress to avoid a U.S. debt default will have a negative impact throughout the region.

Granted, the consequences would have been much worse if the U.S. government had failed to reach an agreement — even a bad one, as the one it reached.

Still, the U.S. debt agreement, scheduled to cut the U.S. budget deficit by at least $2.1 trillion over the next 10 years and allow a 12-member commission decide on additional deficit reduction measures by Nov. 23, is likely to slow down the already timid U.S. economic recovery, and affect all countries in the region to some degree.

Osvaldo Kacef, head of the Santiago, Chile-based United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean economic development area, told me that the U.S. debt agreement will hurt Latin America in the short run, because the expected U.S. economic slowdown will reduce U.S. imports and reduce the flow of U.S. tourists to the region.

“The most immediate impact will be felt in those countries that have the most intense trade with the United States, such as Mexico and Central America,” Kacef said. “Caribbean countries that depend heavily on U.S. tourism will also be affected.”

South America’s commodity exporters, including oil-rich Venezuela and Ecuador, metal exporters such as Chile and Peru, and agricultural exporters such as Brazil and Argentina, will be hurt indirectly. The expected U.S. slowdown will affect China, the biggest buyer of their goods, he explained.

Eduardo Borensztein, a South America economist analyst with the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank, agrees that a U.S. economic slowdown will hurt Latin America, but cautioned that it shouldn’t be an alarming trend.

Other economists fear that U.S. congressional budget cutters will sooner or later get their hands on U.S. foreign aid, hurting small Central American and Caribbean countries that rely on U.S. assistance.

Among the most optimist economists I talked to was Alberto Bernal, from Bulltick. He says not even a slowdown in the U.S. economic recovery would affect South America’s commodity exporters, as long as it’s just that, and not a new U.S. recession.

“If U.S. growth slows down from the 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent this year, as we expect, it will have a minimal impact on Latin America’s economic growth, with the exception of Mexico,” Bernal said. “But if there is a U.S. recession, it would be a different story.”

Before this week’s U.S. debt accord, most economists had projected an average economic growth of 4.5 percent for Latin America this year, including 7 percent growth for Argentina and Uruguay, 6.7 percent for Chile and Peru and 4.5 percent for Brazil and Mexico.

At the time of this writing Wednesday evening, no international financial institution had adjusted growth projections for the region.

My opinion: In the medium term, I’m reasonably optimistic about the U.S. prospects. Unlike in Europe, there is a certain social consensus in America that the country needs to tighten its belt. While in several European countries people take to the streets to protest against budget cuts, in the United States the loudest protesters are those who want bigger budget cuts.

Also, compared with China, there is a relative transparency that will keep the dollar as the world currency of last resort for the foreseeable future. And I’m mildly hopeful that economists are right when they say that there is a 70 percent chance that the coming U.S. economic slowdown will be just that, and not a new recession.

But in the short run, I’m afraid that the U.S. debt deal, coupled with Europe’s financial chaos, will cut the wings of the U.S. economic recovery. At the insistence of Tea Party fundamentalists, the U.S. budget deal cuts too much too soon, rather than spreading the pain over a longer period.

Unless Obama wins the next round and gets some tax increases that could keep the recovery afloat, it will hurt the U.S. recovery, and Latin America as well.

• Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald.

 

Copyright 2011 Daily Herald. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

The Bakersfield Californian

| Saturday, Aug 06 2011 10:01 PM

Last Updated Saturday, Aug 06 2011 10:01 PM

Trying to pinpoint the cause of Kern County’s notoriously high teen birthrate isn’t easy. Some blame high rates of poverty or low educational attainment, while others point to pop culture, risky behavior or parents who are unwilling to discuss the birds and the bees.

But one glaring statistic can’t be ignored. While nationwide, three out of 10 teen girls will become pregnant, for Hispanic teens, the chances are a full 50 percent. More than half of Hispanic women have their first child before the age of 20. And in Kern County, Hispanics are the fastest growing segment of the population: Between 2000 and 2010, the local Hispanic population grew 63 percent, according to U.S. census figures.

That’s not to blame our teen pregnancy problem solely on one ethnicity. Birthrates among Hispanic teens have come down in recent years — though not as quickly as other population groups. And local teen birthrates for whites, blacks and other ethnicities are also higher than the statewide and national averages. But seriously addressing teen pregnancy in Kern County merits taking a closer look at the factors in play in the fastest-growing segment of our population.

We’ve all got a significant monetary incentive to do so. Between 2004 and 2005, a slight drop in the California teen birthrate meant that 1,419 fewer teens gave birth, saving California taxpayers more than $44 million. At the time of the study, Hispanics accounted for 72 percent of all teen births in California.

“I think our efforts are going to have to be more targeted to specific communities and populations,” said Bill Phelps, chief of programs for Clinica Sierra Vista, which provides services to teen mothers and contracts with school districts to provide sex education courses. “The message we’re giving is not being heard by everyone. If you’re newly immigrated here and new to the language, and your cultural norm is to have a family in your teens, (our message) may be falling on deaf ears.”

Recent research that has begun to focus more on Hispanics has found that one explanation for their stubbornly high teen birthrates may have to do with the failure of traditional prevention messages to connect with the community.

Standard prevention messages often characterize teen pregnancy as destructive behavior that can jeopardize future ambitions. But in many Latino cultures, motherhood is valued at any age, a deep-rooted standard that creates a conflicting message for Latina teens.

Consequently, “a lot of teen pregnancy messages have been seen in the Latino community as anti-family, anti-baby, anti-child messages,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

Messages directed at Hispanics should avoid portraying babies as life-destroyers, Albert said. Instead, they should emphasize that “it’s not a question about loving babies, it’s about timing and experiences,” Albert said.

While cultural influences do impact Latina teen birthrates, teen childbearing is largely a socioeconomic problem, according to a UC San Francisco report, published in March, that broke down Hispanic childbearing factors in California.

The study noted that “lack of hope for educational and career opportunities” was common among the adolescent Hispanics interviewed. Foreign-born Hispanics in particular indicated that while they wanted to go to college, they perceived that their inability to obtain state and federal aid would make it virtually impossible.

Silvia Henriquez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, wrote in the Huffington Post in 2009 that socioeconomic obstacles are even more basic than that.

“For many Latinas, the top barriers to birth control usage are … transportation, lack of health insurance or cash for health services, confusing and intimidating immigration regulations for households with a combination of citizens and non-citizens, and lack of guidance about available services. When teen pregnancy prevention programs and messages ignore these obstacles, Latinas become distanced from sex education efforts.”

Kern County’s rural nature likely compounds some of these challenges, said Phelps of Clinica Sierra Vista. While there may be a clinic that provides free birth control in Arvin, a teen may be worried about who will see her going there — an aunt, a mom, a neighbor? A Bakersfield clinic might be an option, but that requires locating a ride or finding money for bus fare, and an hour on the bus each way.

In Los Angeles County, a Latina with similar circumstances could take a bus to another neighborhood 10 minutes away and visit a clinic there, Phelps said. That may explain why teen birthrates among Hispanics are lower in Los Angeles than in Kern, even though its Hispanic population is larger.

Over the next two years, Clinica Sierra Vista will retool some of its teen pregnancy prevention programs and will focus greater efforts in Arvin and Lamont, where the population is almost entirely Latino. Phelps hopes that will inform some better strategies for preventing teen pregnancy among Latinas.

But reaching parents is also key. Albert, of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, said his organization’s research consistently shows that Hispanic teens cite parents as more influential in their decisions than peers, pop culture or partners. Yet other studies show that Hispanic parents are likely not to discuss sex with their children.

“I think the message … to all parents, and Latino parents, too, is you really do have a role to play here,” said Albert. “People are talking to your kids about sex, on TV, the Internet, at school. Are you going to be part of that conversation or not?”

If Kern County, consistently at the bottom of every teen-birth survey, is to ever make headway on this difficult and self-perpetuating problem, it’s a conversation we’ll have to resume with new urgency.

Stacey Shepard is The Californian’s associate editorial page editor. Email her at sshepard@bakersfield.com.

 

Jessica Alba gets all kinds of flack for not being Latina enough. But just so you know, she’s totally considered moving to a Spanish-speaking country so that she may improve her Latinaness:

“I’ve definitely considered moving to a Spanish-speaking country for a little while. Even if it’s just a month or tow. Because I think at the end of the day that’s how you really learn.”

She’s considered it, OK? She’s probably not going to do it, but she definitely considered it.

Check out pictures of Jessica Alba in the August issue of Latina magazine here.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — The Hispanic Access Foundation has announced it will continue its partnership with H&R Block, the world’s largest tax services provider, to launch the next phase of its campaign “Preparate Para Un Futuro Mejor” (Prepare Yourself for a Better Future) to educate Spanish-speaking taxpayers about tax issues affecting where they live, work and congregate. The effort kicked-off August 8 and will focus on Hispanics in the Miami metropolitan area.

HAF and H&R Block will work with faith and community leaders throughout the Miami metropolitan area to discuss tax topics, promote informational seminars called Tax Talks, and participate in community events.

“Hispanics, particularly those with limited English proficiency, need access to quality information in their language and to bilingual tax experts to help build their understanding about taxes,” said Maite Arce, executive director of HAF. “With bilingual offices throughout the Miami metropolitan area, H&R Block is an ideal partner to help this population.”

The program’s goal is to increase Hispanics’ knowledge of the key elements that are critical to understand and consider when filing a tax return. These elements include the benefits of establishing an accurate tax history in the U.S. and how a tax return is an important tool when building a financial plan.

“Hispanics have a unique set of issues they deal with when it comes to taxes that are confusing and easy to overlook,” Arce said. “Through tax education we can help position them for greater long-term financial success.”

For more information about the local events, call us toll-free at 1-800-206-9096 or visit http://hispanicaccess.org/events .

About Hispanic Access FoundationHispanic Access Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that works to promote responsible citizenship, educational attainment, and active engagement in the improvement of the health, environment, and financial well-being of Hispanic families throughout the United States. Working with and through our strategic partnerships with faith and community organizations, we are dedicated to providing greater access to vital information and community resources to the U.S. Hispanic population to improve their health and quality of life. For more information visit www.hispanicaccess.org .

About H&R BlockH&R Block Inc. /quotes/zigman/219890/quotes/nls/hrb HRB -7.22% is one of the world’s largest tax services providers, having prepared more than 575 million tax returns worldwide since 1955. In fiscal 2011, H&R Block had annual revenues of $3.8 billion and prepared more than 24.5 million tax returns worldwide, utilizing more than 100,000 highly trained tax professionals. The Company provides tax return preparation services in person, through H&R Block At Home(TM) online and desktop software products, and through other channels. The Company is also one of the leading providers of business services through RSM McGladrey. For more information, visit our Online Press Center at www.hrblock.com .

Contact: Dinah de SarachoPhone: 301-412-4044E-mail: Dinah@hispanicaccess.org

SOURCE Hispanic Access Foundation

Copyright (C) 2011 PR Newswire. All rights reserved  

Study shows Mexican immigration has declined for the first time since 1970s

Ryan Pelham/STAFF

Julio Perez, owner of the grocery store and sandwich shop Julio’s, stacks sections of Cuban bread into a bag for storage on Wednesday.

BY PALLAVI AGARWAL

Highlands Today

Published: August 8, 2011

Updated: 08/08/2011 08:47 am

SEBRING – Getting this year’s oranges picked almost came down to the wire for Barben Fruit Co. Inc.

Fewer laborers, almost 25 percent less than previous years, were here for this citrus harvest season, and some even left in the middle of picking season to go elsewhere, said John Barben.

Barben got his fruit picked, but it took much longer.

The citrus grower partly blames the anti-migrant sentiment for driving away agricultural laborers to other jobs in perhaps, cooler places.

A Pew Hispanic Center study released recently shows that for the first time since the 1970s, Mexican immigration has sharply declined.

The lack of jobs here, combined with increased border security, has slowed the flow of new arrivals. Births accounted for 63 percent of the 11.4-million-person increase during the past decade, as Mexican women had more children than other women, including other Latinas, the study concludes.

Augustina Anaya, whose family owns the Anaya Produce Stand in Avon Park, also has seen sharply fewer Mexicans buying tomatilloes and jalapenos peppers from her this year.

“There has been a decline of Mexicans coming here,” she said.

She’s heard there are more getting deported.

“Six to 10 years ago, they would not deport you unless you got into trouble or had a felony,” she said. Now, it appears all undocumented workers who get caught get sent home, she said.

The decline and or shortage of agricultural laborers, many of whom are of Mexican descent, is not just having a potential impact on Highlands County’s agriculture.

It’s slowly changing the face of the Hispanic population in Highlands County.

When Julio Perez came to Highlands County in 1989, most of the Hispanics he encountered then were Mexicans.

The Hispanic wave had not hit the county like it would about 10 years later.

Highlands County was still a sleepy part of Central Florida. The 1990 U.S. Census had the county population at 68,500, about a third less of what it is now.

Perez, who bought Julio’s from a Cuban woman who probably introduced the Cuban sandwich to the county, then started to see the change.

Puerto Ricans like him started to filter in and settle here. Then the South Florida Cubans started moving here.

Today, the composition of Hispanics in Highlands County has become more diversified even as their numbers steadily grow. In 2000, 12.1 percent of the county classified themselves as Hispanic, according to the Census numbers. Ten years later, that figure has grown to 17.4 percent.

At 8.2 percent or 8,147 people, Mexicans still comprise the largest bloc of Hispanics in the county, but in places like Sebring, their numbers are neck-in-neck with Puerto Ricans, the second largest Hispanic group in the county with 5,160 local residents.

Cubans come third with 1,711 living here, according to the 2010 Census numbers.

Highlands County’s Hispanic population is somewhat at odds with Florida’s.

While Mexicans comprise 75 percent of the country’s Hispanics, Puerto Ricans and Cubans generally outnumber the Mexican population in the state.

It appears Highlands County is moving more in line with the Latino population statewide although some places in Highlands County still have big pockets of local Mexicans.

The largest concentration of Mexicans is in Lake Placid, where 39 percent of its 2,223 residents describe themselves as Mexicans. Avon Park follows second where 17 percentage or 1,481 residents classified themselves as Mexicans, according to the 2010 Census numbers.

The subtle shift in the Latino population is happening statewide although in different ways.

In 2000, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans accounted for about 5.3 percent of the state’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, putting them on equal footing with Cubans, who made up 5.2 percent.

A decade later, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans are 7.8 percent of the state’s residents, eclipsing the 6.4 percent that Cubans account for. And many of those new residents — more than 365,000 of them — are Puerto Ricans.

In Orange County, Puerto Ricans now account for 13 percent of the population and a quarter of the total population growth since 2000, according to the Census bureau. In Osceola County, the increase has been even more notable. Almost 44 percent of the population growth has come from Puerto Ricans, who now account for more than a quarter of the county’s total population.

The political implications of the shift could reflect in the polling booths.

Puerto Ricans can vote while only naturalized Mexicans have that right.

Puerto Ricans and Mexicans tend to lean Democratic while Cubans, especially the older generation, have been considered a solid Republican base.

Humberto Ramirez, chairman of the Highlands County chapter of the Democratic Party, agrees.

But no matter where the Latino population leans politically and despite their growing numbers, Hispanics have a poor voter turnout in Highlands County, he said, and he wants to change it.

A Hispanic himself, Ramirez said the local chapter is aggressively seeking to register more Hispanic voters.

One option they are reminding voters is to send in mail-in ballots since they are more convenient, he said.

“We are trying to register as many people,” he said.

Kevin Roderick • August 7 2011 10:49 PM

The Los Angeles Times stylebook adopted Latino over Hispanic in 1995, or even earlier. A recent update seeks to clarify the usage and the reason behind it.

 

Assistant Managing Editor Henry Fuhrmann summarized the rule in a note to copy editors: “So, to be clear: Latino should be used in nearly all contexts; the exceptions, as described in the revised entry, must truly be exceptional.”

We are all Americans. Lest we forget, use of the term, “American,” is not exclusive to citizens of the United States of America. And yet, somehow we do forget that. How we think of borders, and language, circumscribes our view of nationality.  

The U.S. Census projects that very soon (2050) the population of the United States will be “majority-minority.” What will cause this shift is the increase in a demographic group called “Latinos” or “Hispanics,” when it is combined with our African-American, Asian-American and Native-American populations.  

As a child who grew up on Gerber baby and food and remembers the little white kid on those jars, I had to smile at this ABC news item a few days ago.  

Even Gerber has recognized that no longer is that child an appropriate symbol for our nation’s babies.

Twenty years ago, there was the “Gerber Baby” and it was a white child.
Today’s Gerber commercials, on the other hand, feature not one baby, but dozens of faces from all different races…. For the first time ever, non-white Americans, Latino, African-American, and Asian American outnumber white children. “The idea where we had a white, middle-class population that we talked about in the 1950s and 1960s, that’s disappearing,” said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institute.

The new generation is still in the cradle, but as the infants grow up America will start to look very different. Already, the trend lines are becoming clearer: Older Americans are whiter. Younger Americans are more non-white. Most of the change is being driven by a surging Latino population with a much higher birth rate than any other ethnic group. It is further bolstered by legal immigration.

A closer look at the numbers is revealing.

Latino demographics

As of 2010, Hispanics accounted for 16.3% of the national population, or around 50.5 million people. The Hispanic growth rate over the April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2007 period was 28.7% — about four times the rate of the nation’s total population (at 7.2%). The growth rate from July 1, 2005 to July 1, 2006 alone was 3.4% — about three and a half times the rate of the nation’s total population (at 1.0%). The projected Hispanic population of the United States for July 1, 2050 is 132.8 million people, or 30.2% of the nation’s total projected population on that date.

Beyond looking at the numbers, and the nice neat packages that demographers and other social scientists use to predict trends, a more qualitative approach is called for when discussing this “Latino” or “Hispanic” population in more depth, because we err if we begin to accept those big boxes as monolithic, or mono-cultural.  

It is too easy to slip into a mind-set of assuming that we are talking about one group, and then making political decisions based on a faulty framework. Right now, the focus of the right wing—and much of the left—has been solely on immigration and subsets of that debate, like the Dream-Act.  An underlying (and often overt) current in the plaints of the right is a nativism that is racist. There is a rejection of the “Americanness” of a huge segment of our populace, and a desire to push back against a tide of “brown” that will change the face of “Our America.” For example, I am not included as part of that  ”our” even though some of my ancestors have been here since the 1600’s, and others way before then.  

Headlines about Latinos blare “immigration reform,” “border disputes and crossings.” The words, “illegal” and “alien,” get thrown into the nativist mix, with “Mexican” as the all-inclusive subtext, presenting a skewed portrait of one of the most diverse populations in the US melting, or un-melted, pot.

Contrary to this stereotype, many people who may or may not speak Spanish as a home language or who may have genealogical roots in countries originally colonized by Spain, folks with Hispanic surnames didn’t always come here recently. And of those who recent arrivals, many have roots in the Caribbean, Central or South America—not just Mexico.  

The language debate gets thrown into the nativist mix as well. “They need to learn English…”—as if Spanish has no deep roots in U.S. soil. The geography of the U.S. and its history belies a solely British source for either language or place names here in “The New World.”  That history too often is ignored.

The oldest city of European founding in the U.S. is not Jamestown but Saint Augustine, Florida.  Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United States.

Menéndez landed with Spaniards and 500 black slaves. Missionaries and soldiers initiated alliances or battles with local indigenous groups, intermarriage occurred quite early and Spanish was the language of the resulting “criollo” population.

Look at our state’s names—clearly much of the West and parts of the East are derived from Spanish.

Origin of State names
California: From a book, Las Sergas de Esplandián, by Garcia Ordóñez de Montalvo, c. 1500
Colorado: From the Spanish, “ruddy” or “red”
Florida: From the Spanish, Pascua Florida, meaning “feast of flowers” (Easter)
Montana : From the Spanish, “mountain”
Nevada: From the Spanish, “snowcapped”
New Mexico: From Mexico, “place of Mexitli,” an Aztec god or leader

Add Puerto Rico (Spanish for rich port) as the birthplace, or ethnicity of over 8.3 million U.S. citizens.  

The 2010 U.S. Census counted 3.7 million people living in Puerto Rico. This was down from 3.8 million in 2000. By contrast, in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, the population of Hispanics of Puerto Rican origin increased from 3.4 million in 2000 to 4.6 million in 2010, surpassing Puerto Rico’s Hispanic population.

Many of our citizens for whom Spanish is a first or second language never crossed borders—the borders crossed them, as the smaller United States expanded its territory westward and acquired colonies.

In order to address our political future, we must first have a better understanding of what and who we are talking about when we use these frames, because to make blanket decisions based on an incomplete and faulty analysis will severely compromise our ability to organize and to form coalitions to make progressive change possible.

So in the weeks and months ahead, I’ll be writing a series of articles on the varied cultures that make up this patchwork quilt called “Latinos,” in the hope that it will inform not only our understanding, but will provide a more nuanced approach to the discussion of  issues and policies concerning these groups.

One of the more flagrant missteps in the press centered on our most prominent Latino political figure, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Two years ago, when Ms. Sotomayor was nominated for SCOTUS, an article was published, Sotomayor Cartoon In The Oklahoman Comes Under Fire about an editorial cartoon by Chip Bok, published in The Oklahoman and other papers.

Titled “Fiesta Time at the Confirmation Hearing,” it depicted Sotomayor strung up as a piñata and President Obama wearing a sombrero surrounded by a herd of angry bat- or gun-wielding elephants. The article cites an outcry from feminists, about Sotomayor being portrayed as a punching bag. But this critique, though valid, missed the most problematic symbolic references.

The debate made its way here to Daily Kos in a diary, and the wrongness of the imagery resonated on any number of levels. I commented about it at the time: Why a sombrero on President Obama? Why a piñata strung up as in a lynching?  

We tend to associate lynching primarily with the ugly history of terrorizing African Americans, but it is also closely historically related to Mexican-Americans (see incidents like The Porvenir Massacre, 1918).

The lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest has long been overlooked in American history. This may be because most historical records categorized Mexican, Chinese, and Native American lynching victims as white. Statistics of reported lynching in the United States indicate that, between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 persons were lynched, of whom 1,293 were white and 3,437 were black. The actual known amount of Mexicans lynched is unknown. It is estimated that at least 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928 (this is a conservative estimate due to lack of records in many reported lynchings ). Mexicans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic is second only to that of the African American community during that period, which suffered an average of 37.1 per 100,000 population. Between 1848 to 1879, Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population. These lynchings cannot be excused as merely “frontier justice”—of the 597 total victims, only 64 were lynched in areas which lacked a formal judicial system.

It’s improbable the cartoonist had that history in mind when he penned his work. Most likely, it was simply a case of all Hispanics being the same—who cares if Puerto Ricans are American citizens, with ancestry from a Caribbean culture, culturally and historically different from Mexican-Americans? “Those people” (insert racist epithet of choice) are all the same. And foreign. Read “not us” as “not U.S.”

Sotomayor is a native of the U.S., born in the Bronx. Yes, her parents are U.S. citizens too, born in Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans don’t wear Mexican sombreros (the traditional hat of the Puerto Rican agricultural worker or “jibaro” is a “pava” made of dried palm leaves). Pinatas are part of Mexican culture as well, even though nowadays  at kiddie parties all Americans use them.

In the media, and in many minds, symbols, images and stereotypes are mixed and matched with total disregard for anthropology or history.

And the question arises: Who cares what hat was used?

I do.

Who wants to deny that stereotyping and bigotry in images shape and form our view of the Latinos among us?

I don’t and won’t.

We persist in using lazy demographic sociology-speak, lumping any and all persons who fit the socially constructed ethnic category of Hispanic/Latino into one data set. After we stuff all Latinos into one box, we then have the omnipresent box of “race” to consider. “Ethnicity” and “race” are a quandary, and the U.S. Census Bureau cannot be depended upon to accurately tabulate these data due to shifting categories and collection methodologies over time. Many persons of Mexican ancestry in some of our earlier census records were simply dropped into the “mulatto” category.  

Socially-constructed “race” in the U.S. varies from “race” in the Caribbean or South and Central America. We wobble back and forth between thinking of “Hispanics” as a race, labeled as “white” or as a default as “brown.” Rarely is the border crossed into “black,” even though when talking about genealogical descent or culture, when dealing with certain populations who are part of the Latino category, African ancestry in both phenotype and culture can be discerned. A look at this is proffered in the recent series produced by Professor Henry Louis Gates for PBS, Black in Latin America.  

Self-definition is called into question too. The box one fits one’s self into may depend on racial power relationships and hierarchies here, or in the home country. Very few (about 2%) of “Hispanics” checked the “black or Negro” box in the 2010 census, nor did many select “Native American.” America encompasses the entire hemisphere, and though U.S. citizens refer to themselves as “American” as if they have a patent on it, everyone in “the Americas” can lay claim to its usage. The category of Hispanic masks indigenous ancestry and even language assumptions. When U.S. southern borders were locked into their current configurations, how many people on one side became “Mexicans” while those north of the line remained “Indians?”

I did data analysis for a research study of migrant workers on Long Island in New York, where intervention materials were developed for women attending pre-natal clinics. All materials were in Spanish.  And many of the women didn’t understand them at all, since they were not fluent in Spanish even though they hailed from Mexico. The project directors had to find bi-and-tri lingual mixteco and náhuatl speakers to assist in conducting qualitative interviews.

If we are going to deal with the shifting populations in the U.S., where the Democratic Party fits into serving the needs of and representing this mélange of constituencies all neatly boxed into a package, we really need to begin to unpack that big box and examine the smaller subsets. We need to be cognizant of more than immigration as an issue and to be aware of how shifting patterns of settlement can tip the balance in certain states where we don’t normally assume that Latino voices either exist or are of importance.

Where does the demographic data lead us?  

The inevitable conclusion is that the population of the United States, as we know it, is going through a major change. No wonder there is push-back and a loud outcry from those who want their idealized, ahistorical country “back.” This outrage is reflected in an uptick in nativist legislation. Those of us on the left need to be just as aware of the pitfalls of adopting any and all rhetoric or assumptions that underlie this last gasp of a mythical “white” America. We need to learn more about the diverse nature of Latino communities (with a decided emphasis on the plural).

Pa’lante Siempre Pa’lante—in other words—we are always moving forward.