After 500 years they still don't speak Spanish
Dunn provides an indepth look at a unique aspect of a larger dilemma facing the United States of America in the early Twenty-first century, namely, immigrants from Central American who are being brought to the country to work in specific industies, like the chicken processing factory in western North Carolina's Morganton a beautiful old town settled in the late colonial era nestled at the foot of the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unlike most of the nearly 12 million Central Americans who are in the USA illegally the Mayans from Gutamala are in Morganton legally. The unique aspect of their situation, however, is that after 500 years of Spanish influence in their native region of Central America, these descendants of the Ancient Mayans still don't speak Spanish.
Interestingly enough industry in this region has been dominated historically by manufacturing: furniture, garment, and textiles, all of which have worked intensively over the years to keep the local labor force from unionizing. Within a very short time after their arrival in Morganton to work in an industry that had formerly been the domaine of the descendants of the slaves of former plantations in the region, the Mayans work actions have established a unionzed labor force in the chicken processing industry to mandate imporovements in their work environment, and pay.
The impact upon the City of Morganton by these Mayan men has been profound, ranging from the sudden appearance of a large group of foreign born immigrants in a region of the country that basically hasn't seen the arrival of immingrants since a large group of Protestant Italians called Waldensians immigrated to the region in 1893 subsequently establishing nearby Valdese, North Carolina. Whereas the Waldensians are Europeans, the Maya's are descended from the ancient people who came to North America during the last ice age from northeast Asia. Beyond that, their culture is that of the ancestors, the Mayans, and not the culture of the Europeans who invaded Central America 500 years ago.
This is a compelling story, and Dunn has given the citizens of the United States a different aspect of immigration from Central America to consider. In the process, he has also highlighted the dilemma facing the families of the Morganton area who are descended from the early setlters to that region of Western North Carolina beginning in the mid-eighteenth century. Whereas these families came from different parts of Europe, like Scotland, England, Ireland, France, Germany, and The Netherlands, they had a common bond in Proestant Christianty. By 1900 when the Waldensians arrived from Italy, the area was more or less homogenous. One hundred years later, the Waldensians having associated their branch of Protestanism with the Presbyterian denomination had melted into local society as well.
Given the Mayans are mostly men, and have little preimmigration cultural imprints in common with the people of the Morganton area, other than breeding casually with less formal women in the region, it will be a long time before this third class of people, the descendants of the local plantations being the second, are fully intergrated into local society, if they ever are. America is known as the place of the melting pot, but that may well not be in USA's future, and Dunn's timely book gives evidence of what is really likely to happen on a much, much greater scale all over the country.Read full review
