"We're patriotic Americans because we're Mexicans"

Along the Texas-Mexico border, Latinos dress like George Washington and forge a new American identity.

By Gregory Rodriguez

Feb. 24, 2000 | LAREDO, Texas -- After George Washington's Birthday morphed into Presidents Day, the father of our country lost much of his iconic luster. Department stores that once hawked discounted goods in his name every Feb. 22 now celebrate Lincoln, too, and schoolchildren are likely to focus on all U.S. presidents this time of year rather than just the nation's first.

But in Laredo, Texas, a booming border town of 200,000 residents -- 95 percent of whom are Latino -- Washington's Birthday remains a huge holiday. Laredo just wrapped up the finale of the nation's oldest and largest Washington's Birthday observances, a 16-day ritual of partying and patriotism, pomp and populism, with events ranging from a popular parade and a jalapeņo-eating contest to a ritzy colonial ball and a straight-laced U.S.-Mexico bridge ceremony.

One highlight of the parade is a series of floats featuring the Martha Washington Society debutantes, wearing handmade colonial velvet and satin gowns that cost from $15,000 to $25,000. The society's founders were mostly Anglo women, but today's members and debutantes are mostly wealthy Latinas. Among the Laredo elite, intermarriage has been the rule rather than the exception, and Anglo newcomers still tend to assimilate into a bicultural, bilingual society.

Francisco Canseco, 50, was chosen to represent George Washington at festival events this year. The son of a prominent doctor from Monterrey, Mexico, the successful corporate attorney took the role to heart. "When I told the kids all about George Washington and why he was an American hero, I was speaking to [children named] Juan Garcia and Fernando Lopez. I told them that he held together the emerging United States, which included people of all backgrounds and origins."

Like other Laredoans, Canseco stresses his city's "Americaness." "We're as American as anywhere else, whether it's Pasadena, Calif.; Alexandria, Va.; or Bangor, Maine," he says. He grouses that the rest of America does not understand what is so obvious to him and other Laredoans -- that biculturalism is not synonymous with binationalism, and that Latinos can retain their love of Mexican culture while considering themselves fully American.

While artists, academics and CEOs of multinational corporations all have gleefully declared the dawn of the era of transnationalism and the end of borders, Mexican-Americans in the Texas border region reaffirm the presence of the international frontier on a daily basis. While immigration-restriction advocates fear that newcomers are undermining U.S. sovereignty and refusing to assimilate to American life, Mexican-Americans on the border prove otherwise. Laredo, which has had a Hispanic majority since its founding in 1755, also gives us a glimpse of what other rapidly Latinizing regions of the country may look like within a generation.

Laredoans are both economically dependent and culturally defined by the border. Indeed, this is one of the few border cities to benefit from the North American Free Trade Agreement, and it has done so with a vengeance. The unemployment rate, which was a tragic 15.3 percent in 1987 had fallen to 6.8 percent in 1999. The average wage also went up considerably in the 1990s. Last year, Laredo was named the second fastest growing city in the United States after Las Vegas.

Laredo's George Washington celebration was founded in 1898 by the Society of Red Men, a fraternal order made up largely of Anglo immigrants from the north. Although Laredo became an American city in 1848, in political and economic terms, the town continued to be culturally Mexican. American political and legal practices prevailed, but they were being conducted in Spanish. But in 1881, not one but two railroad lines were completed to connect the border town to the American interior. Consequently, the 1880s and '90s saw Anglo-American influence in Laredo reach an all-time high. In 1900, Laredo was fully 25 percent Anglo, the highest it has ever been .

By setting up this patriotic festival, the Red Men sought to bring an American-style holiday to a largely Mexican community. But the Washington celebration, which started as a method of acculturation, quickly evolved into something that reflected the unique bicultural blend of the border region.

By the 1920s, Washington's birthday organizers had instituted a Noche Mexicana, a night of Mexican music and food that quickly became a centerpiece of the celebration. By that time, Laredoans had become particularly proud and protective of their unique bicultural lifestyle. In 1925, an article in the Laredo Times noted that "one thing we may pride ourselves upon ... is the Mexican music that springs simultaneously from all sides when we celebrate a fiesta of any sort."

In fact, there have never been enough Anglos in Laredo to create the dual, competing cultures of towns like McAllen or Brownsville in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. When Anglo and European immigrants arrived in Laredo, they tended to marry Mexicans and became Mexicanized. Their children grew up speaking Spanish. "In Laredo, there has always been the process of Mexicanization and Americanization going on simultaneously," says Stan Green, a Laredo historian and professor at Laredo's Texas A&M International University.

Over the years, the celebration has maintained its border biculturalism. Libby Casso, this year's president of the Martha Washington Society, is an Anglo from Kentucky who came to Laredo by way of her college sweetheart and husband, Alfonso Casso Jr. She considers her three children Julia, Liz and Alfonso to be Hispanic. Her neighbor, Gloria Canseco, a past president of the Martha Washington Society and former head of the Webb County Heritage Foundation (and the wife of this year's George Washington), is cheerfully chauvinistic about Laredo's Latino cultural dominance. "We've always been among the dominant class. We were secure enough not to feel insulted whenever we visited places like McAllen, where they had signs saying "No Mexicans Allowed." Back in the 1940s, my mother used to giggle at their stupidity."

Next page: The Border Patrol rides in the parade, too