HispanicBusiness

WASHINGTON -- From the moment Mexican President Vicente Fox arrived at the White House this week, the question was when, not if, President Bush would drop his drawl and adopt his guest's native language.

Speaking Spanish, after all, is the new in thing in Washington.

Just minutes into his welcoming speech, Bush quoted a Mexican proverb: "Quien tiene buen vecino tiene buen amigo," meaning, "He who has a good neighbor has a good friend."

Following Bush's lead, U.S. politicians on every level of government have begun learning Spanish so they too can ask for the votes of Hispanics, who at 34-million-plus are the nation's fastest-growing minority.

House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, a potential presidential contender against Bush in 2004, is taking Spanish lessons. A possible rival, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), already speaks Spanish and four other languages. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) took Spanish lessons last year to help candidates running in Hispanic areas.

Some Hispanic groups, while politely welcoming the overture, said words in any language mean far less than deeds.

"Our feeling is that [speaking Spanish] is a great, very visible way for politicians to recognize that they have more Latino constituents and they are trying to communicate with those constituents," said Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for the National Council of LaRaza, a Hispanic civil rights group. "But it's not enough. That's not as important as what kind of political positions these politicians have.

"Ultimately, it's what they're doing when they speak English that we worry about."

Immigration reform, education, health care, the minimum wage, and better working conditions for migrant workers all matter more to Hispanics, activists said.

Politicians' interest in Spanish is a matter of survival, especially as lawmakers look toward the 2002 House and Senate elections. The political landscape in many parts of the country has been changed drastically by the presence of Hispanics.

The 2000 presidential election, already historic for other reasons, also was a watershed event for Spanish-speaking politicians and voters, political analysts and Hispanic activists said. Bush and Democrat Al Gore made real efforts to run bilingual campaigns.

"In order for our party to be relevant, we better nominate somebody who understands the Hispanic vote and how to achieve it," Bush warned the GOP rank and file during his presidential campaign.

Bush, who has spoken Spanish since his youth, speaks the language poorly "but with great confidence," a Spanish-language news service once declared. Gore generally limited himself to a few rehearsed, often-mispronounced phrases he learned as the campaign progressed.

Still, both candidates appeared on news broadcasts on Spanish-language networks such as Univision and Telemundo and peppered their speeches with Spanish phrases.

Politicians and national political parties spent as much as $50 million, by some estimates, on advertisements on Spanish-language media last year, setting a new standard for future campaigns, activists said.

The Bush-Gore efforts were in sharp contrast to the 1996 contest in which Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan and, to a lesser extent, Republican nominee Bob Dole not only didn't reach out to Hispanics but made anti-immigrant rhetoric a theme of their campaigns.

Bush, whose first campaign for Texas governor in 1994 included Spanish-language radio ads, has routinely taken note of Latino influences on American culture, from music and literature to cuisine.

He is the first president to give his weekly national radio address in Spanish. His first foreign trip was to Mexico, his first European trip was to Spain, and Fox was the first foreign leader invited for a state visit. Even the updated White House Web site Bush helped launch recently includes Spanish translations.

The rising popularity of Spanish lessons among politicians, however, collides with the simmering political arguments over whether English should be the official language of the United States.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is in legal trouble because last March he allegedly spoke Spanish in a meeting with Latinos in violation of the state's English-only law.

In Wisconsin, a legislative page, James Wilson, quit recently after being warned not to speak Spanish on the job. An assembly spokeswoman said Wisconsin does not have an English-only law, but that Wilson, who has a doctorate in Spanish and French, had been rebuked because his co-workers suspected that he was talking about them when he was speaking Spanish. Wilson said he was only making weekend plans with another page.

Groups advocating English as the nation's official language are dismayed by the trend of politicians speaking another language.

"We think it is a serious mistake to abandon our nation's historic unity in the English language and … that is the direction [Bush] is taking us," said Bob Park, chairman of the English advocacy group ProEnglish.

Some Hispanic activists say they appreciate the effort Bush and others are making. And imperfect Spanish, activists said, is no more an impediment to the bond between Hispanics and their Spanish-speaking representatives than it was for the Germans who at the height of the Cold War heard President John F. Kennedy declare, "Ich bin ein Berliner," or, literally, "I am a doughnut."

But others say the trend could do more harm than good if words are not followed by action and interpreted only as more political pandering.

"It depends on what you accomplish," said Gabriela Lemus, director of policy and legislation for the League of United Latin American Citizens. "It could have the opposite effect."