A Banner Day on the Mall
For Most Marchers, Stars and Stripes Speak Loudest About Loyalties
Complimentary colors: Armando Garzia holds up Xiomara Villegas, both from El Salvador.
(By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)
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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
The flag-waving immigrant is as familiar a presence in this land of immigrants as pizza, tacos and green beer.
But, which flag? The red, white and blue? Or those other colors, familiar and foreign at the same time: the blue and white of El Salvador, perhaps; or the green, white and red of Mexico; the green, white and orange of Ireland; or the red, white and green of Italy.
After Sept. 11, 2001, American flags went up overnight outside immigrant-owned businesses, to show patriotism -- and also just in case the terror-inspired dark angel of xenophobia stalked the neighborhood. But during the wave of demonstrations for immigrant rights over the past month, flags of Latin American countries were unfurled along with the Stars and Stripes, giving critics of the movement something extra to challenge.
On the Mall yesterday, most of the hundreds of thousands of Hispanics who rallied for immigrant rights had gotten the memo from organizers. Which flag to carry? The correct answer, they were told: the Star-Spangled Banner. American flags outnumbered rivals by thousands to one. CASA of Maryland, one of the organizing groups, had ordered nearly 11,000 U.S. flags (from a supplier in El Salvador).
"I feel like we are here, we're going to be here and we might as well get used to the enjoyment [that any American would have] carrying the American flag," said Walter Rivas, 32, who came from El Salvador half his lifetime ago and was walking with the stars and stripes on a pole over his shoulder.
The power of a flag is a mojo not to be messed with, and, in an immigrant nation, the decision of whether and which one to carry is fraught with implications.
One morning last week on WLZL (99.1 FM), a Spanish-language music station known as El Zol, morning DJ Pedro Biaggi threw open the question to listeners: Which flag shall we carry at the march?
Opinions were mixed. One man called in and said, "Why should I carry the flag of a country where, if I had stayed, I would have died of hunger?"
He didn't identify the land of such misery from which he emigrated, and he acknowledged that things aren't perfect in the United States, but added: "Here we can earn money." He promised to march with an American flag.
But another caller pointed out that Italian Americans, Dutch Americans and others show the flags of their old countries without anyone complaining. Why not Hispanics?
Biaggi, from Puerto Rico, and Doris Depaz, an organizer with CASA from El Salvador, tried to explain the logic of going all-American for this march. "Being proud of the United States doesn't take away from where you're from," Biaggi said.
"We want to make ourselves welcome," Depaz said. "We want to be under the laws of this country. . . . We want to be sheltered under the flag of this country."
