O. Ricardo Pimentel, editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, didn’t know his real last name until he was eight years old.
That was because his parents were “illegals” — undocumented immigrants — from Mexico; and his father was using a cousin’s “green card” illegally until he could get official authorization for the family to remain and become U.S. citizens under its real name.
This was one of the ways the Pimentels and thousands of other families from Latin American countries experienced the uncertainties and trials of being immigrants to the United States. And it is a major characteristic that these people have in common with Jews and virtually every other American family.
Pimentel made this point as featured speaker at the first “brown bag forum” of the Latino Jewish Alliance, a two-year old project of the American Jewish Committee-Milwaukee Chapter and a number of local Latino individuals.
“We’re all immigrants to this country,” Pimentel told a group of about 12 that met Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Continuing Education downtown.
And like all earlier immigrant groups, including Jews, today’s Latino immigrants are encountering unjustified fear and suspicion from descendants of past immigrants, Pimentel said, hearing such statements as “‘They’ are not assimilating, ‘they’ are changing (meaning ruining) our culture, ‘they’ are refusing to learn English.”
“To hear some tell it, you’d think it was an effortless assimilation” for Jewish, Irish, Polish, German, Italian immigrants who came before, Pimentel said. In fact, “It was not easy for any of us,” but ultimately it succeeded.
Jews and Latinos, Pimentel said, “can draw on their common experience to find common ground.” But they also should find it in their common humanity, the truth that “if any of us suffer, we all suffer” and that “we do have destinies tied to one another.”
Pimentel’s comments sparked a wide-ranging discussion from the group, which included at least two Jewish immigrants from Latin American countries.
One of them, Cynthia Herber, wife of Rabbi Jacob Herber of Congregation Beth Israel and a native of Mexico, said among the traits that most disturbs her about U.S. culture is how “it seems everything revolves around race.” She mentioned how she filled out an immigration form and “immediately they ask you what race you are.”
The other, Marina Maller Huck, membership director at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center and originally from Argentina, contended that it may be somewhat easier for Latino immigrants to maintain ties to their cultures than for most Jews, since Central and South American countries remain, but the old European Jewish culture no longer exists.
A connection with Israel, she added, “is not the same. Israel is of the present and future, not the past.”
Harriet Schachter McKinney, executive director of Milwaukee’s AJC chapter, co–hosted the event with Jose Vasquez, diversity initiatives specialist at the University of Wisconsin Extension.
McKinney said afterward that the Latino Jewish Alliance was born of the realization that the Latino community “is a growing population group in the country and it is a group with whom our relationships ought to be stronger.”
A small group discussion like the one Tuesday can be “a powerful way for us to learn about each other” and “discuss issues of mutual concern” in the process of “figuring out how we can be allies to each other.”
McKinney said that three more such forums are planned for the third Tuesday of each of the next three months. People who are interested in learning more or in attending should call the Milwaukee AJC, 414-291-2140.
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