Hispandering Is Not a Dirty Word
By Victor Landa, NewsTaco
We’ve come a long way from the days when politicians remembered the Latino community only around election time. In deep South Texas they threw parties on election day with beer and menudo, and filled buses with partyvoters and drove them to the polls. They called them Pachangas, the practice was known as Pachanga politics. Candidates would sweep into town, kiss an armful of babies, say how much they loved the Latin people, mangle a few words in Spanish and be on their way. We could mark time by a politician’s appearance in the barrios – like the coming of fall or a new moon it was “that time of the year.”
In those days Latinos were roughly 4 percent of the U.S. population and we lived in specific parts of the country. Political Pachangas were cost effective and logical from a candidate’s perspective. They followed the narrative of the day: Latinos are docile people, easily convinced with a promise and a beer.
It wasn’t pandering.
It was darker and more insulting than a mere pander.
But we’ve come up in the world, we’re now a whopping 16 percent of the population whole, and we live and vote in places where not too long ago brown voters couldn’t be imagined. Latinos now matter in the national political calculi.
Pachangas are no longer as effective or logical as they once were. What’s best these days, if you’re a politico, is the tried and true pander. These days the target of the polpander is immigration – the perceived low-hanging fruit of Latino politics. Toss-in the recent immigrant children crisis and the formula is hard to resist: Immigration + Children = Latino votes.
It’s become so blatant that it’s been given a name.
Hispandering. My favorite definition comes from the online Urban Dictionary:
Verb: to Hispander means to pander to Hispanics.
Noun: an Hispander is one who panders to Hispanics.
The term was created by Mickey Kraus (Slate Magazine), popularized by Linda Bentley (Sonoran News), and is currently practiced by many low-life politicians.
The word itself is not an insult, it’s more of a diagnosis – like an allergy that changes with the seasons. You can’t indict someone on a Hispanidering charge, but you can label the act. And it’s not allowed to be defensive if called a Hispanderer. It’s not a character flaw, the term is reserved for politics and that can be a flaw in itself.
It’s out of control
The problem is that the use of the word can run amok. To wit: a Buzzfeed post that quoted RNC spokeswoman Izzy Santa when she labeled Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley as an Hispanderer. Quickly, the DNC shot back. This from the Business Insider:
The Democratic National Committee accused their GOP counterparts of using “offensive” language after a Republican spokeswoman accused Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley of “Hispandering.”
We know where this is heading, and few of us want to ride shotgun on this trip. The politi-shpere dwellers have co-opted a perfectly good neologism and reduce it to fodder for a spat. It’s not their word to toss.
The use of the word Hispandering is reserved for the Hispanderees. It’s a label that Hispanderees use at their discretion. It comes from a long line of double-talk detection going back to the era of Pachanguismo. You have to earn the right to sling the word; you can’t use in the way a third-grader in a schoolyard would insult their best friend’s enemy.
A warning
Hispandering is real, and we know it when we see it. Because of this, it has a strange reflexive quality: Accusing someone of being a Hispanderer can be seen as Hispandering.
Politicians can take this as well-intentioned advise, don’t shoot the word too freely, you may be aiming at yourself.
Victor Landa is a Founder/Editor of NewsTaco. He ‘s a veteran journalist with more than 30 years of reporting and editorial writing experience in television, print and radio. Follow him @vlanda.
[Photo by United States Government Work/Flickr]
