US Now Has Most Spanish Speakers Outside Mexico Agence France-Presse
go to original June 16, 2013

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine made history last week by giving a speech to the chamber entirely in Spanish - Highlights (Senator Tim Kaine)

There was a time when Latino immigrants in the United States hushed up their Spanish, trying to blend in. Now you hear it all over, as Latinos flex their growing political and media muscle.

Indeed, the trilled R’s and staccato bursts of the language of Quixote liven up city streets from coast to coast, and even in the halls of power in Washington.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine made history last week by giving a speech to the chamber entirely in Spanish.

He did so while defending an historic immigration bill that would create a path to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented aliens, mostly Latinos.

That gesture was rich in symbolism, said Pilar Marrero, author of a book on Latinos in the US and a journalist for La Opinion, a Spanish-language paper in Los Angeles.

“It is a way of establishing that it is OK to have more than one language spoken in this country and spoken in the corridors of power,” Marrero told AFP.

Latinos are now the largest minority in the United States at 52 million people, 50 percent more than a decade ago, according to the Pew Research Hispanic Center.

Read the rest at The Raw Story

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