McALLEN
— In downtown McAllen, loud Spanish pop music blares out of a
Melrose storefront where signs announce sales and bargains in
English. Melrose, a North Main Street store featuring
clothing for young women, requires all of its employees to
speak Spanish, said Theo Leos, a 28-year-old store
manager. “All of our workers are fluent in Spanish,” she
said. “It’s very rare we get a customer who doesn’t speak
Spanish.” Leos, who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, said
most people in the area speak Spanish, a fact well supported
by statistics recently released by the U.S. Census
Bureau. Seventy-four percent of McAllen’s 106,414 residents
speak Spanish at home, according to the Census. Numbers
released last week place McAllen as having the fifth-highest
percentage of Spanish speakers in the country. Information on
Spanish-speaking cities was compiled by the 2000 Census for
people ages 5 and older who live in a city larger than 100,000
population. Laredo, with 91 percent of its population
speaking Spanish, and Brownsville, with 87 percent, rank
higher than McAllen. Eight out of every 10 people in
Hidalgo County and Starr County speak Spanish, according to
the Census. In addition, 76 percent of McAllen’s population
spoke a language other than English at home. Nationwide, 55
percent of the population spoke a language other than English
at home. Of those people, a significant portion — 92 percent —
also spoke English with no difficulty. In a border
community, the ability to speak two languages is extremely
valuable, said Ramiro R. Reas, a professor of Latin American
literature and modern classic literature at The University of
Texas-Pan American in Edinburg. “We have a saying in
Spanish that a person who speaks two languages is, in reality,
worth two people,” Reas said. “He can coexist in two different
worlds.” Reas said many of his students are hired by large
corporations interested in expanding into Hispanic markets in
either the United States or Latin or Central America. The
social stigma that speaking Spanish had in the first half of
the 20th century no longer exists in areas like the Valley,
Reas said. “The generations from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s,
those people were penalized for speaking Spanish in school,”
Reas said. “Those days are long gone.” Bilingual residents
of McAllen have important economic ties to Mexico, said Mike
Allen, the president and chief executive officer of the
McAllen Economic Development Corporation. “McAllen is a
very cosmopolitan center for banking and commerce trade,”
Allen said. “So many people from Mexico do banking and
business here, Spanish is absolutely
essential.” Immigration of Mexican and Central American
citizens constantly revitalizes the border community and
language, Reas said. “For McAllen and the whole United
States, Spanish is here to stay and it’s not going to
disappear,” he said. “We have a constant immigration coming in
that brings with them things that reinforce our cultural
traits and our language.” ––—— Sarah Ovaska covers
courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can
reach her at (956) 683-4445.
