The Riddle of Cantinflas: Essays on Hispanic Popular Culture, Revised and Expanded Edition

Civility and Latinos

120 My purpose in the following pages is to meditate on the concept of civility as it relates to the Latino minority in the United States. Before I start, I’d like to make a brief etymological reflection and also offer a general introductory comment. There is no equivalent for the noun civility in Spanish. A number of approximations are available: urbanidad, buena crianza, decoro, afabilidad, atención, and, in the proper context, educación, as in “Esa persona tiene buenaeducación.”Noneof thesewords—inEnglish,theycanbetranslated as“urbanity,”“well-bred,”“decorum,”“affability,”“attention,”and“education ”—have the connotation of civility, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a polite act or expression.” I found a Spanish dictionary that includes the cognate civilidad, but I’ve never heard it used. In fact, to me it sounds like Spanglish. Truly, the meaning in English of the word civility is roughly the equivalent of the Spanish word cortesía, which in English translates as “courtesy .” Hence, a question begs itself on us: is civility in English the same thingascourtesy?Merriam-Websterstatesthatcourtesyis“behaviormarked by polished manners.” It equates it with consideration, cooperation, and generosity. Anyway,bymentioningthefactthatSpanishhasnowordforcivilityI’m not implying, of course, that Hispanics (a term I use to refer to people anywhere in the Hispanic world, from the Iberian Peninsula to Latin America and the Caribbean Basin to the United States) aren’t civil. It does imply that the Hispanic understanding of civility is somewhat different. And therein lies the core of my argument. Nowtomygeneralintroductorycomment.Itisoftensaidthatnowadays CIVILIT Y AND L ATINOS CIVILIT Y AND L ATINOS 121 we live in rough-and-tumble times in which people no longer act civilly toward one another. Whenever one hears a statement such as this, it is pronounced with a dose of regret. Respect, courtesy, and politeness are passé. The collective mood now is insolent, vicious, cruel. This cutthroat attitude manifests itself in mainstream culture in multiple ways. The bombardment of media images we experience on a daily basis has as its most tangible consequence a numbing of the senses and a disregard for the well-being of others . One can sense this unkind (my twenty-year-old loves the word nasty) outlook in hip-hop music, say, gangsta rap, as well as in the plethora of reality shows on TV, like Jersey Shore, where civil law seems to have been replaced by another type of law: the law of the jungle. Judging from these examples, I’d say our current climate appears to be moreselfishthanatanytimeinthepast.ByselfishImeanlessmindful,more insensitive to the public good. According to this worldview, rudeness and cold-bloodedness are in fashion. A fashion that’s here to stay. Well, maybe so, but, in all honesty, whenever I hear these types of statements, my “antiwistfulness ” antennae go on alert. I’m suspicious of anything smelling of nostalgia. Nostalgia is what drives the vision that the past was always better than the present, which isn’t true. Were the olden days more civil than the present? It depends on what scale is used. Brusqueness is an essential part of human behavior. Steven Pinker might want us to believe that violence is on its way out, or at least on its way down, but to me that viewpoint seems fishy. Is the world more gentle today than during World War II? The movie Life Is Beautiful drew smiles when depicting the Holocaust, but that’sbecauseitwasanantidotetoreality.HowaboutVietnam?TheBalkan War? The genocide in Uganda? Guantánamo? Abu Ghraib? Does anyone think that Arabs might love Jews a little bit more sometime soon? Gentility and unfriendliness go hand in hand. Like darkness and light, one can’t exist without the other. Especially in the city. I mentioned the word urbanity. The urban landscape is synonymous with sophistication. The city is elegant, cultured. It is also mean-spirited, brutal. A few years ago, I read in the New York Times thatthewordzoohadlostitsmeaning.Itnolongerdescribedaparkinwhich living animals were kept in captivity. Instead, zoo was used to refer to cities . Ah, what a zoo! Clearly, urban centers have changed dramatically in the last century, as a result of a number of factors. One of these factors is overpopulation . There are far more people alive at present than ever before, and the majority are concentrated in cities. Many of these cities have insufficient food, plumbing, electricity, and transportation. They aren’t quite livable. 122 CIVILIT Y AND L ATINOS Another factor redesigning the contemporary city is...