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美英报刊阅读教程Lesson2课文
Lesson 2 Who Are America?s Hispanics ?
The answers may surpri you
By Michael Barone
1. As you walk around the Cisco Brothers, furniture factory in South Central Los Angeles, you?d hardly guess that Francisco Pinedo is the boss. Short and slight[1], wearing jeans and speaking rapid-fire[2] Spanish to his workers, he ems younger than his 35 years. Pinedo came to the United States in 1976 from Jalisco, Mexico, a 13-year-old boy who spoke no English. He dropped out of the 1 1th grade to work for a furniture manufacturer to support his family. Later he and his wife, Alba, borrowed everything they could to buy a one-bedroom, no-windows hou for $36,000.
2. Today the Pinedos own Cisco Brothers which employs 115 and last year sold more than $9 million worth o f furniture to stores around the world. “Being American offers you almost
gre红宝书every opportunity,” says Pinedo, who speaks English fluently and has applied for U.S. citizenship.
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pickout3. His is one of the success stories written by what the Census Bureau[3] calls Hispanics: people of Latin American or Spanish origin. Whether recent immigrants or descendants of people who lived in the Southwest before the Pilgrims[4] came to America, they are all members of one of this country?s most important ethnic groups—and one of the least understood. Consider the facts:
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4. The Census Bureau estimates that there are 28 million Hispanics in the United states today, ap?proximately one in ten of us. That number is projected to reach 53 million in the year 2020, or one in six Americans. Most of that growth will not be becau of immigration, legal or illegal, but will come from the natural increa among Hispanics already here.
5. Like Fransisco Pinedo, most Hispanics come from humble backgrounds —many from unthinkable poverty. But the large majority are not poor or on welfare. Indeed, Hispanic m
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a higher labor-force participation rate than the national average.
6. Some Hispanics speak only Spanish —but the overwhelming majority growing up in the United States e English as their primary language.
7. In recent years the public spotlight on America?s Hispanics has often focud on drug crime, urban poverty and illegal immigration. But beyond the publicized problems are millions of ordinary, and many extraordinary, people. Who are they — and what will be their impact on the nation?s future?
8. The Ninth of 12 Children, Danny Villanueva grew up in California and Arizona border towns. His father was a minister and a supporter of Cesar Chavez?s United Farm Workers. His diminutive[5] mother insisted that her sons rai themlves through athletics. After every game, win or lo, she would ask, “Did you give it all you had?[6]“
9. Villanueva was, by his own description, “short, fat and slow—but nobody outworked m
e.” He became the kicker for the Los Angeles Rams[7], then helped found the Spanish-language Univision television network[8]. Today he is head of the nation?s first Hispanic investment fund1849年
[9], its high-ri offices overlooking the mansions of Beverly Hills[10].
10. Family ti es, like the strong partnership between Villanueva? s parents that gave him a future, re?main important to today? s young Hispanics. Many of the men working in Francisco Pinedo? s factory, for instance, are about the same age as the characters on TV?s “Seinfeld” or “Friends.” [11] But instead of hanging out[12] with contemporaries, most are married with children.
11. According to the most recent statistics, 37 percent of Hispanic houholds are compod of two parents raising minor[13] children—as compared with 25 percent of non-Hispanic Americans. Divorce is significantly less common among Hispanics than among non-Hispanics.
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12. Sleepless in El Paso. As a boy, Cesar Viramontes crosd the Mexican border to El Paso, Texas, knowing no English. He dropped out of high school to work in a laundry. Then he and his wife saved enough money to buy a laundromat[14] When the fashion for prewashed[15] jeans started, the Viramontes family got into the business. Closing the laundromat at , they? d t the machines spinning with jeans from local manufacturers. Then they? d clean out the blue water and lint[16] before customers arrived at All for 15 cents a pair.
谢东萤13. When did they rest? “We didn?t,” says Cesar Viramonters. “You can sleep when you?re 60.” Today the family owns International Garment Processors, which employs more than 750 workers at two large plants just outside El Paso. The company process 50,000 garments a day for Levi Strauss[17] and other makers, and gross [18] more than $30 million a year.
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