As we celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, I remember the Hispanic comedian who once joked that even in the month we are given to celebrate our heritage, we still have a border to cross. National Hispanic Heritage Month takes place from September 15 to October 15 of each year and this year I cannot think of a more appropriate theme to characterize this celebration than crossing borders. For Hispanics, this year has tried to cross borders, beginning with the fierce immigration debate generated by the government’s desire to stop the flow of illegal immigrants to the United States, mainly from countries south of our borders (all of Latin America, not just Mexico) as these immigrants cross the borders of this country by land, sea and air in search of a better life.

Hispanics cross borders from all directions to reach this wonderful land of opportunity and achieve a level of prosperity that we could not otherwise obtain in our home countries. Yet for some reason, we get the impression, real or imagined, that we are not wanted here. While it is very true that some would prefer a country without Hispanics (and other minorities, for that matter), the reality is that in a country as diverse as the United States, acceptance by Hispanics is probably more common than rejection. Assuming that’s true, why do we tend to feel unloved?

In my opinion, this feeling of isolation within the United States has much more to do with another border that many Hispanic immigrants choose not to cross once they have entered the country: the language border. While it is important to maintain our heritage and our culture, it is equally important to learn the language of this country. Although federal, state, and local governments attempt to serve the needs of the monolingual Hispanic immigrant population by providing translation for elections, court appearances, and other services in public offices, it is the duty and responsibility of Hispanics to make the effort to learn English and cross this border. that hinders the progress of monolingual Hispanics.

An Argentinean once told me that if you had to parachute from an airplane to a remote region of China, you would have to learn Chinese or starve, as the government is highly unlikely to provide you with a translation. In the United States, the government spends millions of dollars to provide translation services and translate documents, but by doing so, they can perpetuate the lack of English proficiency among Hispanic immigrants. What does it hurt to learn the language of the host nation? If anything, it will open up new financial and educational opportunities and help break down the cultural barriers that limited English proficiency presents.

In no way am I suggesting that Hispanic immigrants abandon their different cultures and become “gringos.” As a proud Puerto Rican, I don’t try to hide my ethnicity, but at the same time I realize that a constant and open display of my ethnic pride can sometimes be detrimental. It is important to strike a balance between our origin and who we are, to balance our origin and our character. Like all Latinos in this country, not only does my ethnicity define me, but it also defines my character, my abilities, and the other components of my personality.

As a group, Hispanics tend to constantly define ourselves solely by our point of origin, our common language, and our closely related cultures. It is a double-edged sword, because by accentuating our differences, we move further away from the necessary assimilation that will help us move forward. While it is very important to maintain our culture and remember where we come from, it is doubly important that we make the necessary changes in the way we value education and social mobility.

Instead of putting the blame for our problems on some unproven conspiracy theory that the mainstream is actively trying to stop Hispanics and hinder our progress, we must accept responsibility for our own failures and make the necessary changes to rectify the situation. . We are currently lagging behind the mainstream in education, in middle income, and we have a higher incidence of fatherless families and teenage pregnancies. How much of this can we really blame on white people and the system that runs this great nation?

I’m not saying that institutional racism and discrimination don’t exist, because they clearly do. But we have a responsibility to do our part to help minimize the effects of these evils. As they say in sports, “the best defense is a good offense.” If we are poorly educated, we must work harder to educate ourselves and compete with mainstream people, thus proving that we are on par with and just as capable of succeeding as our mainstream counterparts. If we lack English language skills or our accents make our communication attempts incomprehensible, we must work harder to improve our English language proficiency and minimize the accent so that we are understood.

The benefit to be gained from our improvement efforts is that, at the very least, people will see us more as equals, rather than as a group that falls short in areas that are essential to advancing and achieving individual and collective success. People in general have an irrational fear of the unknown and different, and exhibit a certain amount of indecision, particularly when it comes to cultural differences. We minimize these differences by improving and demonstrating our competence and competitiveness. Every individual improvement we make collectively moves us forward, and even if it didn’t, do individual improvements ever really hurt? Of course not.

Crossing the cultural border is not as difficult as it sounds, and it certainly doesn’t have to be at the expense of denying our heritage. I feel like one of the biggest problems we have as minorities is, as I said, that we tend to define ourselves by our race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Again, it is perfectly acceptable to define ourselves this way, but what is lost in this necessary celebration of diversity is the recognition of those traits and characteristics that link us to the mainstream. We spend so much time embracing what makes us different that it overshadows the things we have in common, the very things that bring us together. Part of the reason there is so much division in this country is because we refuse to define ourselves under a unifying umbrella, as an American race, so to speak. We prefer to define ourselves as several competing races, and the only time we really come together as the American people is on patriotic holidays (sometimes) and on tragic remembrance days like 9/11.

Again, in no way am I insisting that we stop identifying as Hispanic and stop celebrating our differences. I’m just suggesting that we work a little harder to assimilate as it is one of the things that will help us progress and move forward. It is about time that we accept not only our cultural differences, but also our close similarities. In doing so, we will cross the last great frontier that stops us, the frontier of division. Only then will we really begin to make great and rapid strides and move forward as a people.

Finally, we must focus our efforts on looking to a brighter future, rather than trying to reclaim a past that should be left behind. Case in point: In the immigration debates that haunted the political world earlier this year and curiously fizzled out once Congress came to a standstill, one of the arguments put forward by Hispanic immigrants was that western states and Southwest once belonged to Mexico, and that the wave of illegal immigration was a “reconquest” or a recovery of what was once theirs.

It is this kind of irrelevant and flawed logic that keeps us living in the past and turning our backs on a brighter future as we focus our futile efforts on unsuccessful claims. It is this kind of stupidity and ignorant thinking that holds us back as a people. By focusing on the past, we build a new frontier to cross, because we block our view of the future and create a mental frontier that becomes increasingly difficult to cross. We are constantly looking for some kind of compensation for past mistakes, instead of focusing our energy on improving ourselves and crossing those borders that will lead us to better futures. We will never move forward if we constantly look back.

As we enjoy the cultural festivities of this month of celebration, let us remember to cross those borders that hinder our progress, moving towards the brighter future that awaits us along the way.