04-03-2025
English-only is not the future of the US. Blingualism and multiculturalism are.
On March 1, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States to promote social unity and cohesion.
'To promote unity, cultivate a shared American culture for all citizens, ensure consistency in government operations, and create a pathway to civic engagement, it is in America's best interest for the Federal Government to designate one – and only one – official language.'
As a U.S. citizen born in the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico, I am a product of what you might call official bilingualism.
Following the Spanish-American War, in 1902, the official language of the island was declared to be both English and Spanish.
This was the law of the land during my childhood and adolescence. After I left Puerto Rico, the designation was revoked briefly in 1991 in favor of a Spanish-only law, only to be reinstated two years later by the Law of the Official Languages of the Government of Puerto Rico.
My grandfather, Luis A. Ferré, the founder of the pro-Statehood Party, and the third elected governor of Puerto Rico, instilled in me his faith in the bilingual future of the island.
He wrote, 'That is how I see the future of Puerto Rico … A Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico with perfect command of English. A Puerto Rico abundant in tradition and cultural values inherited from Spain, but perfectly identified with the democratic ideals and the national objectives of the Nation of our citizenship.'
My mother, Rosario Ferré, a writer, and a furiously independent thinker, instilled in me a similar faith about the vital promise of bilingualism.
In a New York Times guest opinion column from 1998, she wrote, 'As a Puerto Rican writer, I constantly face the problem of identity. When I travel to the States I feel as Latina as Chita Rivera. But in Latin America, I feel more American than John Wayne. To be Puerto Rican is to be a hybrid. Our two halves are inseparable: we cannot give up either without feeling maimed.'
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She added, 'bilingualism and multiculturalism are vital aspects of American society.'
For my grandfather and my mother, bilingualism was the way to social unity and cohesion, despite accusations of assimilation and of betrayal of a Puerto Rican national identity by their Spanish-only critics.
I've lived on the mainland of the U.S. for 45 years. And over that time, bilingualism has been one of the lynchpins of my life.
I speak English at home, and I write my personal journal in Spanish.
I speak both languages with my colleagues at work, with my students in class, and with the workers around town.
My bilingualism has made me open to the old and emerging versions of both languages all around me.
The official bilingualism of Puerto Rico, the law of the land since before my birth, has been my path to civic engagement and to becoming a contributing member of society in the United States and in Tennessee.
If division and disengagement are the problems, bilingualism or better yet multilingualism might be the answer.
Benigno Trigo is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities, Spanish and Portuguese College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Trump's English-only executive order defies U.S. history | Opinion
