SAN FRANCISCO – Tomasa Bulux speaks Spanish to her children, maintains an altar at home representing her Mayan culture’s view of the world and meets once a week with Mayan immigrants who speak her indigenous Quiche tongue.
At the same time, she’s becoming a part of the diverse, cosmopolitan city she lives in. Her Guatemalan dishes share space on the table with experiments in cooking Thai or Arabic food. She’s fluent in English and socializes with her European-American husband’s English-speaking family as much as with other Hispanics.
Bulux (BOO-loox), 42, an immigrant from Guatemala, is hardly alone.
An Associated Press-Univision poll shows that a significant percentage of Hispanics believe it is important to hold on to their unique identity even as they work to blend into American society. That dual view of their cultural space—a strong sense of heritage and a desire to embrace the United States as their home—challenges perceptions that a growing Hispanic population poses a destabilizing threat to national unity.
“It is part of life to adapt,” Bulux says. “But our identity is already within us—you can’t isolate it, suppress it, substitute it for another.”
The poll, also sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, shows that two-thirds of all Hispanics surveyed say it is important to maintain their distinct cultures. At the same time, 54 percent say it is important to assimilate into American society.
All told, about four in 10 hold both views—a seeming contradiction that reflects the daily balancing act that many immigrants and ethnic groups perform to retain their identity in a diverse, though still Anglo-Protestant-dominant, culture.
