September 11, 1998
One hundred and eighty eight years ago our forefathers joined in a fierce struggle throughout the American continent to free themselves from the oppressive and oftentimes brutal rule of the Spanish Empire. They took their inspiration from the French enlightenment and the American Revolution to overthrow the British rule. As participants with the American revolutionaries, the soldiers, sailors, and marines of the Latin American based Spanish Armada, as well as our ancestors who had settled and developed what is now the United States learned and savored the fervor which burned within the colonist soul and hearts. They fought against the oppressive control of King George's forces, who denied them freedom, liberty, justice and the right to live their lives without fear of retribution.
Freedom, liberty, and justice, it seems should have be won over 188 years ago for most Latinos. However, even in there own independent countries many of our contemporaries still live under the brutal grip of tyrants of the left and right. Many still do not know what it is to live without fear of their own government or have the right to live in peace. We the Latinos/Hispano who live in the United States, the cradle of democracy, it would seem, should be enjoying the basic rights enshrined within our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We, who fought in every war the U.S. has had, to protect and preserve these guarantees, are still as deprived of those basic human, social, political and economic rights as our brethren living in the North, Middle, and South American cities and towns.
We live in a supposedly republican form of government that guarantees a democratic form of representation in the political arena within the states and the nation capitol. Yet neither major political party represents our interests and the minor parties are incapable of assuring our freedom, our rights, or of seeing that our basic human, social, political or economic rights are respected. By every indicator, we, the Latino-Hispano are excluded of all the means to achieve liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness.
Whether we are Mexican, Colombian, Brazilian, Cuban, Salvadorian, Nicaraguan, Costa Rican, Venezuelan, Puerto Rican, Peruvian, Argentinean, Chilean, Panamanian, Guatemalan, Ecuadorian, Bolivian, and Uruguayan, we still have not won our INDEPENDENCE or our rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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