A Banner Day on the Mall
For Most Marchers, Stars and Stripes Speak Loudest About Loyalties

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
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."

For the marchers -- documented and undocumented, citizen and temporary worker -- carrying the stars and stripes was a way to symbolize an appeal to the rights and privileges of that flag.

Both of the callers made points that underscore the elusive potency of flags.

"What happens when you leave a country, and you leave it because of various negative reasons, then your nostalgia for the country becomes cultural," says Joseph Palacios, an associate professor of sociology at Georgetown University. "It morphs from the political to the cultural."

A Latin American who waves the flag of his nation of origin is celebrating his cultural identity, not his political allegiance, Palacios says. That's what has happened to the Irish flag on St. Patrick's Day and the Italian flag on Columbus Day. Those banners are folk expressions, as feel-good and non-controversial as ethnic food and costumes.

But in the midst of a heated national debate over immigration, carrying the flag of a Hispanic country of origin could be perceived as showing a lack of sufficient loyalty and gratitude, even if the bearer simply intends to make a cultural claim.

For the new wave of immigrants, going through the mental effort of selecting a banner and having reasons for it can be part of the process of acquiring political self-awareness.

"Each time, they have to think through what they are carrying, what they are wearing, how they are comporting themselves; each of those is an element of becoming politically aware and conscious of their role as citizen activists," Palacios says. "Whether they are here legally or not, they are functioning as citizens."

Most of the marchers who carried the flags of Mexico, El Salvador and other countries yesterday seemed to be under 25. Similarly, many of the protesters in California who waved the Mexican flag were students. In one case, they reportedly placed the American flag upside down and subordinate to a Mexican flag.

Young immigrants in a new land feel a deeper need to make an assertion of cultural pride, and they enlist the flag in this gesture, said Luis Cardona, a youth violence prevention coordinator for Montgomery County who took yesterday off to march with his 8-year-old son, Anthony.

" La cultura cura: culture cures," Cardona said. "Culture provides a protective factor for these kids. . . . A number of young people mentioned to me this was an issue of asserting their identity in a multicultural society, embracing themselves in a positive light."

But sometimes the choice is hard to make. Scores of people on the Mall paired their American flag with the flag of another country. Or groups of marchers would be sure to include one flag of national origin among a full complement of U.S. flags. Or many would wear T-shirts and sweat shirts announcing the land of their birth while waving the flag of the land of their hopes.

Javier Rocha, 20, a construction worker from Baltimore by way of Mexico, wore a big American flag as a cape and a Mexican flag as a head wrap. Maria Magdalena Reyes, 48, a custodian at an animal hospital who was born in Honduras and lives in Arlington, carried two flags, the baby blue of her old country and the red, white and blue of her new one.

Are such people indecisive, trafficking in mixed messages? They don't think so.

"The two together are one flag," Reyes explains.

Rocha's friend Juan Moreno, 23, whose cape was a Mexican flag, said the national flags represent the diversity of the Latino community, while the American flag shows that many cultures and political histories are uniting under an adopted standard.

Flags have this power.

"There's a lot of this that's happening in this current political moment, where instead of saying am I one or the other, am I speaking English or Spanish, what's happening is I'm doing both," says William Leap, chairman of the anthropology department at American University. "I am able to be both, my loyalties can be to both, and it doesn't qualify my commitment to my new nation or my heritage."