Photo: West Central Tribune
What’s wrong with this picture? Better yet, what’s right with this picture?
In a small city amid central Minnesota farmland, this year the local Cinco de Mayo event was postponed to May 17. That same day several surrounding towns celebrated Syttende Mai.
On Cinco de Mayo, May 5, many Hispanic Americans celebrate the Mexican Army’s victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. On May 17, many Americans of Norwegian heritage celebrate Syttende Mai, May 17, 1814, when Norway signed a constitution ending more than four centuries of Danish rule.
According to the Latino Community Organization of Willmar, MN, its Cinco de Mayo celebration was moved to a later weekend hoping for more participation. The event received donations from Hormel Foods and other local businesses.
While the May 17 duplication may seem ironic to some, it could be symbolic of how the community’s population has changed in recent decades. Perhaps in the future the Willmar will see another ethnic event, July 1, when its residents from Somalia celebrate the creation of the Somali Republic in 1960.
The cultural and ethnic diversity evident in many small cities in agricultural areas, belies all the fuss and bother going on now around issue of deporting immigrants. It overshadows their vital role in the community and local economy.
If all the Latinos and Somalis were to suddenly leave Willmar, its population would drop by about 31 percent (25 percent Latino and 6 percent Somali). The large turkey processing plant would have to close. Many people in hospitals and nursing homes would suffer from lack of care. Referring to Latinos, you would have a tough time finding someone to re-shingle the roof of your house, or an easy time if your car breaks down and you need help from passersby.
It was a different story back in 1987. Reporters and editors at the local daily newspaper, the West Central Tribune, followed the scent of news arising from tension in the community. Back then it was much more homogeneous – white, rural, conservative – even as the area’s Latino population had been present and growing since the 1950s.
Rumors and gossip circulating around town cast aspersions on Latinos. They brought crime, they were milking the social service system and welfare, they caused trouble in the schools, they looked and acted differently.
Five years into my position as managing editor at the newspaper, we were eager to launch some newsworthy crusade. We decided to write a series of news stories under tag ‘Hispanic Americans’. Topics included migrant workers, education, law enforcement, social services, churches, and family profiles.
With fact-based, objective reporting we demolished the false rumors and stereotypes. The news stories uncovered little or no evidence that migrants and immigrants were causing more crime or abusing welfare and social services. They revealed how much Latinos were contributing to the community.
Back then newspapers carried significant weight in a community. The news media’s “agenda-setting” role may have shaped community perceptions. Merchants understood that the immigrants and migrant workers needed to buy products and services just like everyone else.
They had jobs, worked hard, and were eager to buy homes, cars, clothing, appliances. Some could be a little rough around the edges of legal details, such as vehicle insurance and licensing, or lack of it – minor details that became smoothed over in time.
Today the community thrives with a diverse population engaged in all aspects of the local economy, government, education, and health care. While ethnic groups may not socialize much with those different, there is co-existence, cooperation, and respect. I would like to attribute some of that to the influence of the 1987 news stories.
Evidence for changing community beliefs and attitudes may be seen in the May 14, 2019 column by Tom Friedman in the New York Times: “President Trump, come to Willmar. This Minnesota town is a modern, successful American melting pot.” The column begins:
“In 1949 my aunt and uncle moved from Minneapolis to this town in west-central Minnesota, where they started a small steel distribution company. I visited them regularly for 50 years. About 40 years ago, my aunt whispered to me one day that she had been in her local grocery store and had heard someone … ‘speaking Spanish’.”
I remember them, the Rosenbaums. Friedman’s aunt was a volunteer at the state hospital. At the salvage yard where kids bought steel rods for pushcart axles, his uncle would drill holes in the ends for cotter pins at no charge.
The column details Friedman’s visit to Willmar where he met and interviewed local leaders about the community’s success in making diversity work. “What’s happening in Willmar tells you … why every town in America needs to get caught trying to make diversity work — or it will wither. It’s that simple.”
To recite from my previous note: That became a part of the setting and characters in my first novel, Good Ice. In researching that I found a book about the experience of migrant workers. And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, a 1971 novel by Tomás Rivera, tells the story of a young boy’s experiences as a Mexican American migrant farmworker.
Another book, The New Minnesotans – Stories of Immigrants and Refugees, in 2006 by former West Central Tribune reporter Gregg Aamot, tells about experiences of Somalis. A description of Mexicans in Minnesota by Dennis Nodín, published in 2005 the Minnesota Historical Society, reads: “Welcomed as migrant workers even as they were shunned for being different from the state’s dominant Northern European ethnic groups, Mexican Americans have grown deep roots in the state’s urban neighborhoods and rural towns.”
With agriculture and related industries as the primary economic activity, here is another perspective on the value of diversity: If hybrid vigor has transformed crop and livestock production, could we say the process is similar among ethnic groups? Separate ethnic groups and cultures that engage in positive ways with others become stronger and more productive.
This year, if Cinco de Mayo happened to be celebrated on Syttende Mai, no one seemed to mind, except for the weather that day. It may have been too cool with a few rain drops, but the colorful clothing, both Latino and Norwegian, seemed to warm things up.
