Hispanic Diversity

For this research paper, the groups that we will be educating on are Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Columbia Americans. In the United States there is a large Hispanic population. This essay will touch on several areas for each group; they will be the group’s political standpoint, linguistics, economics, social, and familial conventions and statuses. The purpose of this essay is to educate on the above mentioned groups and bring awareness of other ethnic groups other than our own.

For Mexican Americans in 2002 the primary language of Spanish at 51% of Mexican Americans used; however some are bilingual at 26% and the other 23% speak English (Schaefer, 2006). Concerning religion by 1960 90% are Catholic with only a 15% of them attending a Catholic school for their education (Engelkirk and Martin, 2009). This group is quite diverse; today there is about 25 million Mexican Americans or ¾ of the Hispanic population makes up the larges Hispanic group in the United States (Schaefer, 2006). Mexican Americans believe in family, their family unit is typically the strongest. There are Mexican Americans who are gifted with being affluent with large land holdings; the others are poor and living in poverty (Schaefer, 2006). In society today Mexican Americans are still seen differently by the local law enforcement, this creates anger, and hostility amongst the community. For the Mexican Americans, they have a large population of illegal immigrants; they work as cheap labor for industries like farming in the United States. Many of them travel in groups and move from farm to farm looking for work.

As for Puerto Ricans; 40% are bilingual, 39% are English dominant and finally 21% are Spanish dominant. This group is the second largest group in the Hispanic population. In 1940 88% of Puerto Ricans that lived in the United States resided in New York (Schaefer, 2006), however by census done in 2000 those numbers dropped to less than a third (Schaefer, 2006)....