Transcript
John Phillip Santos
Writer/Producer
As your piece pointed out, there is a lot of pain in the experience of immigration and we share that with all the peoples of the world who have come to this nation. We are a global republic; we are becoming what Jose Vasconselos, the Mexican philosopher and political leader, called the "Raza Cosmica," the Cosmic Race. He thought of Mexicans being the cosmic race but in fact all of the Americas are emerging as a kind of global republic, so we have to testify to those histories to each other to prepare for the republic that we are becoming. We are coming out of a long history, as the Senator referenced, a history of racism, of discord, of struggles for justice, and we offer the world an important testimony to those struggles, but we are called upon now to deepen that struggle among ourselves. It is important to stress in the context of the challenges that immigration poses, that the politics of the border poses, to stress the deeper kinship that Latinos have for building a new sense of what it is to be American: that we bring all of our cultures, all of our religious values, all of our family values to create a new kind of republic spirit of being the United States and will be a really important part of the next 100 years.
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