AMERICANS SAY I, AMERICANOS SAY YO (2001)

And Americanos from Brazil Eu, and the Américains, Je. And more Americans from everywhere, speaking Native American, European or even Asian languages, use a different word when they have to say, for instance, that they are the citizens of some country on the American Continent: I am Canadian; or, yo soy cubano. Also when they simply realize a new cultural fact, that they are Americans, though the word Americans can lead to another confusion. I am an American and yo soy americano, could mean a different thing in the times before the Free Trade Area for the Americas, but will necessarily mean the same thing in the near future, when the Continental union flows from the commercial treaty. Americans are Americanos, and Americanos are Americans; and both are one and the same with the holy American spirit --- though the multitude of American languages constitutes something larger than a trinity.

After such a statement, cries against Yankee Imperialism can be expected, claiming that, after all, this is what the Free Trade Area for the Americas was invented for, to make of all the inhabitants of the American Continent the subjects of the United States Empire. We have heard that song often, sung by a yo as well as by an I. But, since the Americanos existed before the Americans –the Spaniards came first-- what yo say is that I am as American as US Americans. And yo being me-- an Argentine from the American Continent writing in English-- at the same time yo and I, I agrego or yo add, that US Americans are not my subjects as well as I am not theirs, and that a new thing is happening while yo write and an I read. I and yo share an identity: I and yo are Americans.

We can say I, yo, eu or je, but in any language we will only assess one fact, that we are Americans, and that this Americanity is --through the tiny pretense of Free Trade-- the excuse to get finally together in a political, cultural and military association. As Europe did, America will. Behind the I or the yo, to mention only the two most widely spoken languages, what is hidden is not an imperialistic threat, but a common destiny.

How can individuals with different heritages build a common culture? The experience of Latinos in the United States and that particular new language—the Spanglish—as well as their mongrel new culture –half Yankee half Hispanic— shows that unexpected things can happen when the geopolitical border becomes only a thin line in the soul of real persons living in a real dual culture.

Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Cubans came across the border into the U.S. carrying within them the invisible contraband of the old Spanish American Empire. Language, habits, history and religion, all packed into mind and emotions. The memoir of old mother Spain brought into the kingdom of old mother Britannia and mingling amidst inequalities and sorrows. The marriage of the people sharing a border will be followed in the present decade by a larger, continental marriage, that will include a vast majority of the Hispanic countries. The last word about the history of the people on the American Continent has not been said, and a new common cultural adventure seems to be starting.

If the United States was the heir of the victorious Empire, the Hispanic countries were the heirs of the defeated one, dragging with it into the present the karma of failure, with the weight of one of the most remarkable and original cultures on the planet. When somebody says I, the I carries a history of success. When somebody says yo, the yo hurts and has to work hard to remember that Spain was an Empire long before the British, and to open in the mind a way to possible success. At the same time, the I has the obscure feeling that a long time ago the Spaniards were greater than the British, and the intimate fear that in every Spaniard breeds the germ of an enemy.

When I and yo quarrel, both imperialistic minds can tangle and get a general sense that between I and yo, there can possibly only be a battle, a winner and a loser. It doesn’t take long for them to assume that if the Latinos are allowed to speak Spanish in the United States, English will be condemned, or that if the children in Hispanic countries speak English, they will lose their national independence.

But when I and yo live in the same person, a doubled imperialism rises, with two descents, two heritages, two languages and two religions. Since the idea of being two in one, and precisely not a two made out of a giant and a dwarf, but a two made out of two giants, the I and the yo go mad and have hard time reacting, either as an I or as a yo. And when I and yo get together on the point of faith, even if I enjoys being a Buddhist and yo an Atheist, an emotional earthquake dissolves both the I and the yo, and memories go back --- in language to Latin, in history to the same European kings, and in religion, back to the old times of Christianity, before any partition. The I and the yo disappear, the person remaining just says “sum” and realizes that this is all what any American life is about. Sum here, in America. Sum sums, and adds, and many sum sums more people and a bigger American crowd, and any wedding between giants is allowed to be consummated and it is also admitted than a giant baby can be born, and cry the first primary cry, sum.

No I, no yo, just sum American, sum americano, sum from a Continent mirror of another Continent, sum from America as young mirror of Europe. To be an American means then to those from different European ancestors, to be the cultural sons and daughters from Europe --a mother older than Spain, France or Great Britain. To be named Americans refers to a common new motherland, where the Natives Americans and the Americans of any European, African or Asian descent close their past and open the future. A future in which America will be composed of thirty-five countries and will own a multilingual American culture, different from European, and also from African and Asian cultures, though including bits of them all, in an authentic seed of universality.

Americans say I, Americanos say yo, but not for long. We will hear us and nosotros more than often, and nos and nous, and many other things we don’t dare to dream, in the new American times to come.