Impacts of Cultural and Language on the Colombian population in New York City
Colombia is a republic situated on the north part of South America with a population of approximately more than 50 million habitants, making it the largest Spanish speaking country in South America and one of the largest in the American continent. Having gained its independence in 1810, Colombia’s modern history has been full of wars and violence that has caused a diaspora of Colombian immigrants throughout the worlds, the focus of this diaspora is the United States, more specifically, New York City. Since the 1950s when Colombia went through one of its most violent periods in recent history due to political violence, immigration grew constantly but grew to exponential levels after the 70s due to Drug Trafficking violence. One of the main hotspots of Colombian migration is in Jackson Heights. One of the streets, 82th St, in Jackson Heights is called “Calle Colombia”. However, as Colombian migration ramped up, the differences in culture and language has affected the Colombian communities various a degree as it has caused limitations on the class mobility for Colombian immigrants in New York, it has limited them with fewer opportunities due to the hostile environment that New York City, such environment has caused barriers in language and has pushed the Colombian Diaspora to branch into other areas of the United States.
To understand the limitations within the Colombian community in New York City, we must understand the numbers of such population. Colombians are the third largest group in New York City. With 5.2% making up the total of all Hispanic immigrants groups located in the city. [Chu 3] The population started to take a sharp decline. One of the factors in this trend is the difficulty to acquire a Job as a recently arrived immigrant. According to the accounts of Scarlette Freyrye [Freyre] “The language. It was very difficult for me to understand. What you learn and practice over there is not the same. I spoke English and people could understand me, but I always felt that I was saying something wrong. The other problem I found was the perception that people had at that time of us Latinos or people from outside the country. They thought I lived in a village. People don’t understand that we also live in a cosmopolitan city. That we have universities. That we have a bus system.” This isn’t just and isolated case, it is a very common issue within the Colombian community as well as the Latino communities in general. The prejudice towards immigrants in this country is due to the language and rhetoric that has negatively affected immigrants from getting better opportunities. For example, Freyre described how difficult it was to look for a job and she eventually elaborated that because of her language and prejudice towards her she had to start with odd jobs. Such prejudices such as “They thought I lived in a village” demonstrates how difficult it also is to adapt to the social constructs of American society as such prejudices will limit the ability of Colombians to adapt to the overall American way of life.
Language is deeply rooted in the ability to move in this country, something which has restrained the Colombian community in New York City. Let’s examine the reasons of why language is so critical, language can either brake or make the experience of immigrants in this city because of the City’s materialistic and competitive nature. It is critical to be in touch to how the city operates and while this is a city of many tongues, the city’s main tongue is its mother language which is English. Without English it is very difficult to make a comeback socially, economically or just move in the social class ladder. Despite this the English proficiency of the Colombian Community in New York is standing at a mere 66% [2015-2019 ACS 5-Year PUMS]. which in all fairness, it’s a significant statistic that Colombians in this city are able to move in the ladder much more significantly. However, I would like to explain this number a little bit more in detail. This statistic might not fully take into account other factors such as the sample size in which such statistic was obtained from. I decided to conduct a little bit of research by asking my father, who has lived here in the United States since 1979, and my sister, who arrived here since 2021 illegally into the country. Each of them depicted to me how in two different contexts it was very difficult to get a job here. My father for example mentioned how rampant was discrimination to those that didn’t know English and how not knowing English could prove very difficult to adapt to the U.S as you couldn’t really bridge to U.S Culture that well prompting my dad to barely speak any English to this day and still be very connected to the country’s roots and culture rather than the U.S Societal customs. In the other hand, we have my sister, who is much more eager to be part of US Society and has already embraced American Customs wonderfully as she already celebrates thanksgiving, Christmas (the American way), and even the 4th of July. Although, my sister still has her bone to pick with U.S Society as discrimination and difficulty for her to acquire a job is much more difficult due to the language barrier, which also forces her to still remain at a predominant Colombian/Latino social circle rather than embracing a more diverse social circle. This has also pushed her to remain low in the socioeconomic scale by working a minimum wage job, similar to my father in the Early 1980s. This demonstrates the barriers of language in two different contexts, a semi-rigid way to embrace American customs much more easily in modern times, while back in the 1980s a rigid way to embrace American customs was much more present.
At a more explicit level, the cultural and language barriers have caused the Colombian communities in New York City to become more niche and integral to each other, as well as other latino communities “In New York City men have a conservative linguistic behavior. This role reversal in the sociolinguistic behavior of Colombian men and women in NYC results in sociolinguistic patterns similar to those of other NYC Hispanics while different from those prevalent in Colombia. The overall tendencies found suggest that the effects of contact with other varieties of Spanish impact the Spanish of Colombians in NYC more strongly than the effects of contact with English.” [Orozco 123] Colombian communities have shown to have become more integral to each other in Niche areas such as Jackson Heights, to where there is one the largest concentration of Colombians in the City or have also spread to other areas of the United States such as in Miami or New Jersey. In New York City however, as that’s our focus, the difficulties with integrating to the American culture and language has caused a sort of integration with other communities of the Hispanic melting pot of New York City. It has affected their Spanish and language to be mixed with others as a result of cultural similarities and diffusion due to the difficulty to integrating to New York’s larger immigrant landscape as well as English World. This is further demonstrated by the decrease of the Colombian core population in New York City, according to the Colombian Civic Center president Amparo Gomez on an interview with Spectrum News [McGowan, 2019] “But Gómez, a community advocate, says many Colombians have left Queens for more affordable living in the suburbs and Pennsylvania. By the 2010 census, only about 94,000 Colombians lived in the city.” While we have discussed above that Colombians are more involved in the labor force, this hasn’t stopped such short decline in population, and one of the reason due to the constant shrink is due to how the language barrier and rhetoric has caused the nucleus of the Colombian population to shrink to other areas such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
In Conclusion, we have determined that the Colombian community has had a certain effect by the differences in culture and language of the U.S. It has affected their ability to adapt and as well to move in the social ladder in the U.S. My findings determine that the Colombian community in the United States has slowly begun to integrate in a more positive manner into the U.S as more Colombian immigrants has had the ability to be at a higher retention level in education in the City as well in the labor force. While these are improvements on the socio-economic status of the community. It still doesn’t reflect the overall negative trend in population declining. I have determined that this is due to the people in the primary niche of Jackson Heights moving to other parts of the country, thus continuing the Colombian Diaspora more deeply into the country. One of the reasons of this, is the improved quality of life and the already present population making it a more diffusible niche because of language. It is critical to point out that the language spoken in these niches, plus the better conditions, are due to the inability of the Colombian population in Jackson Heights to integrate into the English World of NYC and would prefer to stay in these niches because of cultural similarities instead of clashing with the U.S English world and other migrant groups.
Works Cited
Orozco, Rafael. Spanish in Colombia and New York City: Language Contact Meets Dialectal
Convergence. John Benjamins, 2018.
Chu, H. (2010). The Colombian Population of New York City 1990 — 2008. New York, NY:
Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
McGowan, Clodagh. “How Jackson Heights Earned the Nickname ‘Little Colombia’.” Spectrum
News NY1, Spectrum News, 7 Oct. 2019, www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2019/10/07/how-jackson-heights-earned-the-nickname–little-columbia.
City of New York. NYC’s Latinx Immigrant Population A Demographic Snapshot. City of New
York, 2019, pp. 4-27, www1.nyc.gov/assets/immigrants/downloads/pdf/Latinx-Appendix-Tables.pdf.
Freyre, Scarlett. 16 Aug. 2017. , www.nywomenimmigrants.org/colombian-immigrant-scarlett-
freyre/.
