Beware of the bottom feeders of the profession.

Dear colleagues:

I was contacted by one of my friends not long ago; a colleague interpreter who wanted to share with me an all too familiar story about certain individuals that for years, I have referred to as the bottom feeders of the profession. I had heard similar stories, I am sure that you have heard them as well, and in fact, to illustrate the point, and because this is business, during my own professional career I have encountered some examples of these creatures here and there. It is not my intention to offend anybody, I just want to underline the contrast between these individuals and a good, responsible professional interpreter who understands that this is a business. I will describe the specimen in a moment, but to clearly explain the unique characteristics of these despicable beings, please let me share my friend’s story first:

“Once upon a time there was a penny-pincher language agency that had an event where some of the participants did not speak the native language, so the agency needed to hire interpreters. At the same time that the agency was learning the details of the event, a very good, hard working, and kind interpreter who was loved by her colleagues, admired by her peers, and sought after by her clients, was sitting in front of her computer invoicing some nefarious clients who just could not pay their bills on time because of religious reasons; you see: they were worshippers of the verb procrastination. While she wrestled with the idea of suing them or not, her phone rang. It was the penny-pincher agency. They asked her if she would be willing to provide her interpretation services for the event they just had booked that same morning. They explained that the event would be in a different town, and they offered to pay the same fee the good interpreter was paid on the last time they had retained her services. The good interpreter checked her agenda and noticed that she was available on the requested dates, and since the event that was described to her sounded pretty much like the one she had done for the penny-pincher agency before, she agreed to the same fee plus travel expenses. It was all good, friendly and civilized, so the penny-pincher agency asked the good interpreter for a referral for the second interpreter who would share the booth with the good interpreter. Because the good interpreter did not know the schedule of any other interpreter, she provided three names and contact information of colleagues she had worked with in the past and felt like she could recommend as good professional interpreters who would provide an excellent service. The penny-pincher agency thanked the good interpreter and hung up.

Two days later, while the good interpreter was at her attorney’s office waiting to talk to him about suing some of the members of the procrastination cult, she got a phone call from the penny-pincher agency. She was told that the interpreters she had suggested had been contacted but that they were too expensive. They told her that instead of the colleagues she had recommended they had found this other individual who was willing to work for a much lower fee. The penny-pincher agency said that they would rather hire this person, but they wanted to know first if the good interpreter knew the individual and if this was a person she would feel comfortable with. When the good interpreter heard the name of the less-expensive individual she almost fell to the ground. They were asking her to work with pariah-interpreter, a person who was well-known for charging very little and delivering even less. The good interpreter immediately explained her concerns; she informed the penny-pincher agency that pariah-interpreter was not a conference interpreter; that people like pariah-interpreter puffed-up their credentials by including community interpreting as conference work in their resume. The good interpreter even explained that interpreting at a church meeting or a community center with a microphone on top of a table with no booth, no power point, no presenters or speakers, was an honorable job, but it was light-years away from being conference interpreting. She even conveyed to penny-pincher agency how pariah-interpreter was regarded as a terrible professional by all reputable interpreters, and how she would always work with mediocre people in order to avoid scrutiny by real professional interpreters. The good interpreter even provided the names of other good reliable colleagues who lived in the town where the event was to take place explaining to penny-pincher agency that this way they could save money on travel costs and still get top-quality interpretation. She even brought up the fact that pariah-interpreter would have to travel to the place of the event because she lived in a different state. Penny-pincher agency thanked the good interpreter and hung up. A week later the good interpreter was notified by email that her services for that event were no longer needed. That was it.

Good interpreter was not happy about the whole thing, but after all, a seasoned experienced professional that she was, she knew that these things happen when you get pariah-interpreter and penny-pincher agency together in the same project. Fortunately for her, it turned out that she was retained for another assignment that actually paid better and was on a more interesting subject matter. Because the world of language services is so small and so well-communicated, it wasn’t long before the good interpreter found out that penny-pincher agency had hired pariah-interpreter and one of her peers: earthworm-interpreter to do the job; that they had paid for the services of both of this “exceptional” individuals less than the fee they were going to pay for the good interpreter, and that despite the complaints and bad reviews by the people who attended the event and required of interpretation services, penny-pincher agency was happy with the services of pariah-interpreter and earthworm-interpreter because they met the requirement of having two interpreters in the booth, and sooner or later those attending the events would have to get used to the “natural” limitations of the interpreters who “after all are humans.” So goes the story dear friends and colleagues: penny-pincher agency lived happily and richer but not ever after, only until a conference organizer sued them for hiring the lowest of the low professionals, and took them to the cleaners.   The good interpreter continues to work for a professional fee, takes care of her clients, and she now refuses to waste her valuable time trying to convince the likes of penny-pincher agency that you cannot get wine from a rock. Oh, and pariah-interpreter, earthworm-interpreter and the rest of their clan continue to live happily ever after, as long as your definition of happiness includes working for peanuts, being ignored by all real professional interpreters, and having an empty bank account. The end.”

Of course my friend did not tell me the story this way, but I wanted to have some fun with these despicable characters. These are the bottom feeders in my book. I have discussed them and mentioned them many times in this blog and during my lectures, workshops and presentations; many of you know that they forever have a special place on my “Ten worst” lists, and those of you who know me in person know how I try to interact with them as little as possible.

Let’s make it very clear that I am against working for peanuts, I oppose lowering fees for the sake of getting the client; but I am also a teacher and a colleague, and as many of you know, I spend hours with new and reluctant colleagues trying to explain to them the economics of the profession and the adverse effects of working for rock bottom fees. I would never classify one of these colleagues as a bottom feeder unless he or she earns the title.

I am sure that as you read the story above, you immediately identified the bottom feeders in your environment and made a mental list. That is great. I encourage you to do so, but first look with objectivity at each individual, and then make your decision. It is a detailed process but it is one we all need to do, and we must do it without any emotional consideration. This is a business-related exercise.

Find your pariah-interpreters and translators and ice them. Do not work with them; do not invite them to any professional activities. Remember: They would take any opportunity to associate with you even if it is to have a photo-op or a name association that they will be able to exploit later on. You do not need them; they are not your competition. They do not play in the same league that you do. Their clients are not, and will never be, your clients. You don’t look for a brand new Ferrari in a junk yard. Leave the junk yard to them. If you ignore them they will not hurt you professionally, and hopefully you will soon forget them, but if out of pity or misunderstood “compassion” you continue to look for them, their fame and reputation will stain your name. Beware of the bottom feeders.

I now invite you to share your ideas as to how to shield yourself from these hazardous individuals, and please abstain from comments defending these individuals. This forum will not give them a voice.

Questions of a court interpreting student. Part 1.

Dear colleagues:

I received a message from one of my students of court interpreting in Mexico City. With the new oral trial system that is now being implemented in Mexico there will be many opportunities for interpreters to find assignments in court settings, so she is considering becoming a court interpreter when she finishes college.

She researched the matter, and as she was getting deeper into the world of court interpreting she decided to contact me with some of her doubts. Because her questions were very good, I thought about responding through the blog so that others, in Mexico and elsewhere, with the same or similar concerns could learn a little more about this area of the profession. I asked her if this was an acceptable way to answer her questions, and after she said yes, I wrote down my answers. As I was responding to the questions I realized that this would be a lengthy post so I decided to divide it in two parts. This is part 1; part 2 will be posted in two weeks. I now invite you to read the first half of my answers to her questions.

•  How useful is it to have experience as a conference interpreter if you want to become a court interpreter? Isn’t it more advantageous to have a community interpreting background? Please mention the advantages and disadvantages or each.

All interpreting experience is useful to become a court interpreter, just like to become an interpreter in any other specialty; Specifically, having experience as conference interpreter helps you as a court interpreter because it teaches you how to get ready for an assignment: how to research, develop glossaries, study the subject matter, and organize your time. It also gives you the advantage of a broader vocabulary. Community interpreting helps the new court interpreter to get used to work under less-than-ideal conditions such as noise, bad acoustics and speakers who use a lower register. With that said, new court interpreters have to be careful as these other disciplines can also hurt the rendition if the interpreter is careless. Conference interpreters do not interpret the obvious or the repetitious; they also leave out utterances and noises by the speaker. They strive to deliver an understandable rendition at a pleasant pace and tone. Court interpreters must interpret everything, and in order to do this, it is often required to go at a considerably faster pace than a conference interpreter. Community interpreters tend to help the speaker in order to achieve better communication between the parties. Court interpreters cannot do this; they must limit their work to the interpretation of what has been said by the speaker without any help from the interpreter. Of course, these differences stem from the basic principle that unlike conference and community interpreting where the main goal is to achieve communication and understanding between two parties who do not share a common language, court interpreting main goal is also to assess the credibility of the foreign language speaker in order to assign legal responsibility for a certain action or omission.

•  Precision versus Style. Which criteria should we follow when working in court?

Court interpreting is a unique discipline because it requires that the rendition by the interpreter include everything accurately. This does not mean that the court interpreter has to interpret word by word. That would be nonsensical in another language. He requirement is that no concept, no element, no piece of information can be excluded from the rendition. Accuracy is essential to court interpreting. When an interpreter working in a non-legal environment omits some information this can be corrected in different ways: through an explanation by the interpreter himself during a “silent moment” as soon as the opportunity arises; by a reference to the event’s program, and even with a public announcement during or after the session. Because court interpretation is done for the benefit of those judging a case: judge and jury, the interpreter must give them all the elements, all the evidence, all the information presented during the hearing. Another recipient of the court interpreter’s rendition is the defendant who has the constitutional right to actively participate in his/her defense. For these reasons the rendition must be accurate and complete. Court interpreting separates itself from other genres of interpretation when it includes style as part of that precision. In court interpreting style is understood as the way a statement is delivered by the speaker; it includes register and emotions. Therefore, as part of this complete and accurate rendition, an interpreter must select and use a manner of speech, vocabulary, and delivery style that matches that of the foreign language speaker. On a given day, the same interpreter will interpret for a gang member, a scientist, and an attorney; all three will use different terminology and vocabulary, they will all have a different delivery, and they will speak a language correlated to their level of education and personal background. Without turning the rendition into a mockery of the orator, the interpreter must convey the entire message, not just the spoken words, but also the way they are spoken. As we can see then, precision and style are paramount in court interpreting, but they are both understood and observed under the professional duty to produce a complete and accurate rendition.

•  What would you recommend to those of us who don’t live in the United States and want to acquire a wide range of language terms that may be presented in courts, from specialized legal and technical terminology to street slang?

The first thing a person who lives abroad needs to do is to determine where she wants to work as a court interpreter, if you plan to work within your own country’s legal system then the focus of your content should be inside your country. On the other hand, if you plan to work in your country and in the United States, or if you want to take the federal court interpreter certification exam in the U.S. even if you are going to live somewhere else, then you have to manage two parallel tracks: For the United States legal terminology and slang you need to study. Read legal and paralegal books; I do not mean law school text books (although I do not discourage you from doing it if you want) study basic law like the one students of pre-law or paralegal studies use in the United States, read legal novels because they use enough legal terms to make it worth. Watch a few TV legal dramas, and watch and listen to plenty of real life court proceedings in the United States. You can watch True TV (formerly known as Court TV) and HLN (Headline News Network) from just about any country in the world. They carry real court hearings during the day. There are also several radio stations and online stations that broadcast the sound of court proceedings during the day. Many judiciaries at the state-level in the United States have transcripts and recordings (audio and video) available on their websites, and even the official website of the U.S. Supreme Court offers audio recordings that you can listen to. Of course I would also get a good legal dictionary like Black’s.

Within your country I would do the same; for Mexico specifically, I would watch the “Canal Judicial” go to the website of the Suprema Corte, and physically attend some trials and motions hearings at the courthouses that already hold oral proceedings (The State of Mexico is a possibility near Mexico City) I would also get a hold of a good legal dictionary like the Diccionario Jurídico de la UNAM.

Finally, for technical, scientific, and other terms I suggest you start your own library and study these topics first at the basic entry level, and then at a deeper stage depending on the assignments you get. There are dictionaries for slang and regional expressions in both English and Spanish, and there are novels, movies, TV shows and even soaps (narconovelas) that can help you enhance your word bank.

• As translation/interpretation students attending college outside the United States can we be considered as full-time students for joining organizations such as NAJIT and paying student fees?

All professional organizations have their own rules and criteria for admission. Most of them include as one of their goals the fostering of new professionals and to do so they offer special status or benefits to those who at the time are not able to generate an income because of their studies. Specifically, the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators in the United States (NAJIT) has five membership categories: active, associate, organizational, corporate, and student. Their website indicates that a student member shall be any person engaged in full-time studies as defined by the Membership Committee. I do not know what the Committee’s definition is, but it seems to me that a full-time student of interpretation is the same anywhere in the world and therefore, perhaps on a case-by-case basis, the organization should be able to confirm what I just said. After all, the rationale behind having lower membership fees for the students is that they cannot afford the higher fee because they are studying all the time and therefore they are not making any money, and if like I mentioned, one of the objectives of a professional organization is the advancement of the newcomers to the profession, it should always include the fostering of new interpreters and translators. I suggest you contact the organization directly and express these factors that I brought up in this paragraph.

•  In my opinion, being a court interpreter may be somehow dangerous because you could have access to confidential information and you deal with people convicted or at least charged with a crime. Are there any protection programs, like the witness protection program, available for interpreters?

It is true that court interpreters are privy to confidential information. It is true that they are subject to ethical and professional rules of confidentiality, and it is also true that when working for an attorney, they are covered by the client-attorney privilege. This means that while there is a lot of pressure for a court interpreter to divulge confidential or even privileged information, there are plenty of legal protections that make it easier for the interpreter to refuse to share this data. It is also true that most court interpreters could end up interpreting for a convicted felon: murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, gang members, and child molesters are some of the court interpreter clients, and there is a certain risk that goes with the profession; even civil cases and in particular family court cases can be dangerous; however, there are plenty of protections such as the security at the courthouses and detention centers, the marshals and deputies in the courtrooms, and the interpreter’s own common sense. The court interpreter is trained to deal with these individuals; they are taught not to socialize with the defendants, they are instructed to follow all directions by the detention center guards, and many other patterns of conduct. I personally make sure I remove any type of ID before interacting with a criminal defendant or their family members so they never know my full name, where I work or live, and any other personal information that badges or identification cards contain. It is dangerous but at least in the United States it does not get to the point of requiring a protection program. In the case of Mexico, the final legislation that will address court interpreting in detail is still pending, and some of the issues that are presently being considered are precisely those related to the identity and safety of the interpreters and translators.

I hope these answers helped you on your quest to become a court interpreter, and I hope they helped others in Mexico and elsewhere, including the United States, who are considering this profession. I also invite all of you to share with the rest of us any other suggestions or input you may have on any of the first five questions. I would love to hear from students, new interpreters, veterans of the profession; anybody who may be interested in helping the next generation to get there. Finally, I remind you that the rest of my student questions will be answered on part 2 of this posting two weeks from today.

The biggest change in English-Spanish court interpreting ever.

Dear colleagues:

With the new National Code of Criminal Procedure (Código Nacional de Procedimientos Penales) just enacted in Mexico this past March 2014, the country with the largest Spanish speaking population in the world took one of the most dramatic steps on the implementation of their new oral legal proceedings. As many of you know, for the past few years Mexico has been moving towards a new judicial system that resembles the adversarial procedure followed by Common Law countries, and distancing itself from the more formalistic written inquisitorial system that comes from the Roman/French legal tradition. There have been constitutional amendments, training programs for judges and attorneys, and they are currently in the middle of an important legislative overhaul to match all legal precepts to the new process. These changes have brought two significant changes to our profession as court interpreters in both, Mexico and the United States. The first one is the obvious greater need for court interpreters as the new system will require services that the old written procedural rules did not. The second fundamental change, and the one that will impact the profession in the United States more than anything in the past, is the creation of new terminology and vocabulary by the Mexican legislator that will mirror very closely the criminal (and later the civil) procedure followed by the United States. In other words, for the first time ever, we will have a catalog of legal terms in Spanish that will be the law of the land in a country with close to 115 million Spanish speakers. Add to this reality the fact that Mexican society has an intense interaction with American society, and that most of the Spanish speakers in the United States are Mexican, and you get a combination of trade, crime, cultural exchanges, and family matters in Spanish that involve the two largest Spanish speaking countries in the world.

For the Mexican court interpreter, living in Mexico or in the United States, this will translate in a tremendous workload increase on the Mexican side of the border; for the Spanish language court interpreters who work in the United States (with the exception of some areas of the country where non-Mexican Spanish, particularly from Central America and the Caribbean, is broadly spoken) this means the emerging of a new culture where people who recently moved from Mexico to the U.S., Mexican citizens who live in the United States but get their news from the Mexican media, and their relatives who continue to reside in Mexico, will need and demand an accurate interpretation employing the official legal terminology in the Mexican legislation. Many of you work, as I do, with Mexican attorneys, and you know how they are always looking for interpreters and translators who can work with Mexican legal terms instead of “homemade” terminology generated out of necessity when there was no adversarial legal system in any Spanish speaking country. My friends, I suggest that there will be an even greater need for Spanish interpreters as the involvement of Mexican attorneys and Law Firms increase and their lawyers retain the services of court interpreters who know Mexican legal Spanish. By the way, the same comments apply to those court interpreters with knowledge of legal terminology from other Spanish speaking countries where the oral system is being implemented; Chile and Costa Rica are pioneers of this change. I emphasize the Mexican changes because they are the most recent and impact a much larger number of people. At this time the big question on the table for us as interpreters, particularly those who live in the United States, will be: how do we react to this irreversible change? I know I will embrace it, learn the new terminology, and apply it to my work. I hope most of you will do the same.

To those colleagues who might say that there is already a terminology used by many interpreters in the United States, and that it is the Spanish speaker who needs to realize this fact and get used to this current vocabulary, I ask you to consider two factors: (1) the language used by many court interpreters in the United States has been helpful and even useful in its attempt to provide an equivalent term that non-English speakers could understand. It was a great accomplishment in times when there were no official sources in the Spanish-speaking countries; but it is not official and in many instances it uses non-legal or lay terms that are not catalogued in any legislation; and (2) Mexican attorneys want to understand what the interpreter says and at the same time they want to devote their attention and energy to the legal problems of the case, they do not want to spend their energy trying to understand the vocabulary the interpreter is using and they never heard before; in other words: from the interpreter’s perspective adapting to the change is also a business decision.

On May 16 I will take some of the first steps by offering a preconference workshop during the NAJIT Annual Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Those who join me will be exposed to the most recent legislative changes by the Mexican government, will hear of the policies that Mexico is adopting to forge ahead with the adversarial system, and will see first-hand how these oral proceedings are conducted over there. I invite you to please share your thoughts on this huge change, and to tell us how you plan to adjust to it; or, if you do not think that you have to change anything you are doing right now, please do not just say that you will continue to do the same, instead, I invite you to explain why you will not adjust to these changes, and how they will not impact the place where you work as a court interpreter.

Is Cinco de Mayo an American holiday?

Dear colleagues:

Cinco de Mayo (May 5^th.) is perhaps the biggest mystery of the American holiday calendar. It is an enigma for almost everyone in the United States: Native citizens with no Mexican background wonder why, as a nation, we celebrate another country’s holiday; Hispanic-Americans are puzzled by the significance of the date; Mexicans living in the United States can hardly believe that American society commemorates a date of their national calendar that is practically non-existent in Mexico; and the rest of the world, people who live outside the United States and non-Mexican Hispanics who live in the United States, find the festivities on this date quite strange.

Historically, on May 5, 1862 the Mexican army faced the French Imperial army of Napoleon III. The French had disembarked in Veracruz harbor along with the British and Spanish almost a year earlier. Their purpose was to collect heavy debts owed by the Mexican government to these three nations after Mexican President Benito Juarez declared a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for two years. Mexico had incurred in those debts during a Civil War motivated in part by the expropriation of all church assets ordered by Juarez. Eventually Mexico negotiated with France and Spain and they withdrew, but Napoleon III decided to take advantage of the American Civil War and take this opportunity to establish an empire that would look after the interests of France. The French move was seen favorably by the Confederate army as Napoleon III supported the existence of a slave state.

On May 5 the French army approached the city of Puebla which was defended by the Mexican armed forces under the command of General Ignacio Zaragoza. The Mexicans resisted the attack from the forts of Loreto and Guadalupe. After a bloody battle against the better-trained French soldiers, the Mexican army, aided by the machete-armed northern Puebla Zacapoaxtla Indians, prevailed. The Mexican victory was shorted-lived as the French army regrouped and returned a year later when they took over Puebla and eventually Mexico City, establishing the Mexican Empire under Emperor Maximilian I from the Austrian House of Habsburg-Lorraine.

Although President Benito Juarez encouraged the observance of the May 5^th. battle as a national holiday, the event is not part of the official holiday calendar. Only the State of Puebla (and parts of the neighboring State of Veracruz) observes this date as a local official holiday. On May 5, the rest of the Mexican society goes about their daily lives as on any other day. It is understandable that Mexico does not celebrate this date as a big holiday; it is not their independence day (Mexico’s Independence Day is September 16), the stories that spread right after the May 5^th. battle describing how a handful of Mexican soldiers and Zacapoaxtla Indians had defeated a much larger well-equipped French army were quickly discredited by the truth of what happened: in reality the French had an army that was six-thousand strong, while the Mexicans had a four-thousand men army; hardly a handful battling an imperial army; but more importantly: The Mexicans won the battle but lost the war. Moreover, it was not until April 2, 1867 that Mexico recovered the city of Puebla in a decisive battle that eventually defeated Maximilian’s empire. This was the real victorious battle of Puebla; unfortunately for Mexican history, on April 2 the victorious army that beat the French was led by General Porfirio Díaz who later became a hated political figure because of his hold on the Mexican presidency for 32 years (inexplicably, or perhaps due to a manipulated “official history,” to this day Mexicans still consider him as the great dictator despite the fact that he was followed by a dictatorship that was twice as long: The 70 years of the PRI government)

Now, let’s get back to the United States in 1862, specifically California where there was a large first and second generation Mexican population. Keep in mind that until 1848 when California and other western territories became part of the United States by the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, officially entitled “Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic”, they were part of Mexico; their citizens had fought against Spain during the Mexican War of Independence only three decades before, and many of them became victims of discrimination, embezzlement, and forced labor by their fellow Anglo-American citizens. Most of these individuals did not speak English, were Catholic, and almost all of them were against slavery. In other words, it was in their best interest to see the Confederate army defeated in the American Civil War. Therefore, as Hayes-Bautista, a UCLA professor of medicine describes during an interview about his book: “El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition” that when he was researching for his book, he reviewed the Spanish language newspapers of California and Oregon from the 1880s, he noticed that the American Civil War and Cinco de Mayo Battle were intertwined: “…I’m seeing now in the minds of the Spanish-reading public in California that they were basically looking at one war with two fronts, one against the Confederacy in the east, and the other against the French in the south… In Mexico today, Cinco de Mayo means that the Mexican army defeated the French army,” he continued. “…In California and Oregon, the news was interpreted as finally that the army of freedom and democracy won a big one against the army of slavery and elitism; and the fact that those two armies had to meet in Mexico was immaterial because they were fighting for the same issues…” (Hayes-Bautista interview with CNN) In early spring 1862 the Union army was unable to move against the Confederates, so this victory in Puebla was a welcomed sign by these Hispanics. Another significant aspect of the Cinco de Mayo battle is that the commander of the Mexican armed forces in Puebla, General Ignacio Zaragoza, was born on March 24, 1829 in a town by the name of Bahía del Espíritu Santo. The town’s name was later changed to Goliad, and it is located in Texas. That is right: The hero of the Cinco de Mayo battle was a Texan! At the time of his birth the town was in Mexico where it was part of the State of Coahuila y las Tejas, but by the time of the battle, its name was Goliad, a name given by the Texans as an anagram of the hero of the Mexican Independence: Hidalgo, omitting the silent “H”

The Mexican population in the United States identified with Zaragoza, he was one of them who had to leave Mexico and come to Texas if he wanted to visit his hometown. The Cinco de Mayo victory was then memorialized by a network of Hispanic groups in California, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona called “juntas patrióticas mejicanas.” (Mexican Patriotic Assemblies). While they celebrated the Cinco de Mayo victory every year with parades and other festivities, Mexico continued to be at war with France for another five years. Eventually, the meaning of the holiday changed over time becoming the mythical story of David versus Goliath, and later embodying the U.S.-Mexico unity during World War II and the Chicano Power movement of the 1960s.

On recent times this date has been adopted by business people all over the United States and many parts of the world and transformed into a festival, the second largest in the United States just behind St. Patrick’s Day, where people eat Mexican-American food and drink Mexican beer and tequila. Although most Mexicans and Mexican-Americans do not know the history of Cinco de Mayo, despite the fact that many of them do not even know why they get together, have parades and listen to Mexican music on that day, they all seem to share the feeling that this is a uniquely American celebration that has extended to all Hispanics in the United States, Mexican or not, natives and foreigners, and even non-Hispanics; because every year for one day, all Americans celebrate Hispanic food, culture and traditions with pride. It has even reached the White House where President George W. Bush, a former border-state governor with Mexican-American family members, who also speaks Spanish, started a tradition of inviting Hispanics to the White House for this celebration. Because of the increasing importance and participation of Hispanics in America’s mainstream, President Barack Obama has continued the celebration, and it looks like it is here to stay, because after all, Cinco de Mayo is not a Mexican holiday, it is an American celebration. I invite you to please share your thoughts about this unique celebration and its significance in the history and culture of the United States.