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Remarks at Reception in
Celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month |
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Secretary
Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
October 8,
2002
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 SECRETARY
POWELL:
Thank you very much. Thank you. Muchas gracias. Thank you very much. Thank you
so much. Thank you, thank you. Bienvenidos. It's good to have you all here at
the State Department this evening. Mi casa es su casa, so welcome and everybody.
I want to thank you, Moisés, for arranging everything this evening and for
serving as Master of Ceremonies, and I thank also Barbara Pope for her hard work
and Ambassador Hans Hertell for his participation here this evening.
Your excellencies, many distinguished ambassadors who are here,
as I look around the room, Members of Congress who are present, ladies and
gentlemen, I am very honored to have this opportunity to speak to you on the
occasion of Hispanic Heritage Month and our celebration. The contributions of
Hispanic Americans are woven deep into the fabric of American life -- in music,
in the military, in law and literature, in science and in sports, in every way
imaginable, and in my own life as well.
When I grew up in New York City, Hispanic. ¡Hola, hola! I took
care of that line
Anyhow, when I grew up in New York City, Hispanic culture was a
part of that melting pot that I lived in in the South Bronx section --
Caribbean, African American, Jewish, Polish -- all cultures coming together in
that one community. The kids on my block went by the name of Victor Ramirez,
Walter Schwartz, Manny Garcia, Melvin Klein, Tony Grabowski -- all of us mixed
together. And the rhythms that were part of my youth are still fresh in my mind
today. Tito Puente at the Hunts Point Palace.
I was saying to my staff earlier -- I was trying to pull out some
of the expressions from my youth, some of the games we played. Some of the
street games had Puerto Rican names, some had Polish names. We didn't know, and
I was trying to pull it out 50 years later what these names were. The only thing
I could remember from those South Bronx days were, "¡Cuidado, policía!". Now,
we weren't doing anything bad. We weren't doing anything too bad. It's
either we were playing stickball and breaking windows or we had the hydrants on
and the cops were coming to turn the hydrants off -- the way we cooled off in
those days.
But we are very proud of the contributions that Hispanics have
made to our national life and contributions they are making here within this
administration, whether it's Otto Reich doing a terrific job as our Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs or Lino Gutierrez who
recently left, having served ably as Otto's deputy; Roger Noriega, President
Bush's Representative to the Organization of American States. I don't know if
Roger is here this evening or not. There he is. Hola, Roger. Carlos Pascual
serves President Bush and the American people as Ambassador to Ukraine.
And we have also heard already from Hans Hertell, our fine
distinguished Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, and he's off doing great
work down there. He just reported to me something that I knew but I was pleased
to hear again, that he succeeded in concluding an important agreement with the
Dominican Republic on Article 98 of the International Criminal Court. So he's
not just down there fooling around; he's getting real work done for the American
people, and we thank you for that.
And so our record is good but it's not good enough. It's not good
enough right here in the State Department. We have to do much, much more to
include Hispanic Americans in our State Department family, and we are trying to
do more. We are working very hard on it. I had hoped that my good friend and my
buddy from New York City, Congressman José Serrano, would be here to join us
this afternoon. Congressman Serrano is responsible for the Serrano Scholars
Program which helps prepare Hispanic students for careers in international
relations.
I want this Department to look like America, because when it
looks like America it gives the best possible image to nations around the world;
it tells people around the world who are trapped in ethnic conflict, "Look what
you can do. Look what you can do if you use your diversity not as a source of
weakness, not as a means of conflict, but as a means of coming together. Look
what we did. We're not telling you to be like us. We're just showing you an
example of what is possible when you can take people from all over the world."
As I like to say, America is everybody and everybody is America, and we show it
here tonight and we show it if we respect all of our cultures.
And I want to let you know that it is a profound commitment on
the part of this Secretary of State and all the people who work in this
Department to bring more Hispanics into the Department, more African Americans
into the Department. Any time I can find some ethnicity out there that is
underrepresented in this Department, I want them represented, so we look like
the real America that we all know and love.
Our efforts are starting to pay off. We have had an increase of
100 percent in the number of Hispanic American candidates who passed the Foreign
Service written exam this past year. I am very pleased at that. So once you get
through that written exam, which is tough, then you get through the oral exam,
we will do everything we can to get you into our Foreign Service. So I'm hoping
that we're going to increase by at least 100 percent the number of Hispanic
Americans who are coming into the Foreign Service.
We are working hard to increase Hispanic American representation
in our Civil Service force as well. It's just a start, but it's a good start and
we're going to work on it.
The State Department must speak, as I said, in all of its many
voices and all of its many sounds, including the Miami Sound. How was that for
a transition? The beautiful Miami Sound that we all know so very well and we
love so much, pioneered by our guest of honor, Emilio Estefan.
Emilio is an American success story, as you heard Hans mention a
moment ago. A 13-year-old refugee from Cuba, not speaking a word of English,
like so many immigrants who came to this country, like my own parents and the
parents of so many in the room and so many in the room that came here with hopes
and a dream. He wanted to make music. He wanted to make music that combined the
best of his native Cuba with the sounds of his new country. By dint of his
talent and by dint of hard work, he has made his dream come true.
 As
an artist, Emilio has changed the way America thinks about music. In 1975, he
formed a group called the Miami Latin Boys, which mixed traditional Cuban music
with mainstream American pop. The result was a sound that Emilio has often
called a cross between rice, beans and hamburger. That group later changed its
name to the name that became famous around the world, the Miami Sound Machine.
And then he hired a young Cuban American singer, Gloria Fajardo, who later
married him and burst on the scene as Gloria Estefan, and the rest is history
and we all know it well.
As a producer, Emilio has promoted a generation of Hispanic
American singers, including John Secada, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin. As a
businessman, Emilio has built his dream into Estefan Enterprises, a network of
companies that Hans mentioned earlier -- music, restaurant and hotel management.
 But
I think perhaps his greatest contribution, which Hans also touched on and I'd
like to linger on for a moment, is as a philanthropist, as somebody who got so
much from this new land of his and ours that he felt an obligation to give back
in equal measure. He and Gloria together have given back in equal measure. The
Gloria Estefan Foundation promotes health, education and cultural development.
And as a patriotic American, Emilio assembled over a hundred Latin recording
artists, an orchestra and a children's record -- to record a children's record,
"El Ultimo Adios," The Last Goodbye, a song to honor and benefit the families of
the victims of September 11th.
I will remember meeting the family in 1992, right after Hurricane
Andrew hit Miami and South Florida. I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and we had launched our troops down to Florida to help with the effort, and I
went down to visit my second army commander who was down there, another buddy of
mine from the Bronx, a kid from the Virgin Islands, Lieutenant General Sam
Ebbesen -- just like me, just like Emilio, all part of this melting pot.
 And
I went down to see how my Virgin Islands buddy was handling this major problem
in South Florida. And there he was, and we were at a site where food was being
given out, and there was this short young woman wearing dungarees or something,
with just a blouse on, no makeup, no glamour, nothing to suggest that she was
one of the biggest stars in the country; because for that moment Gloria was just
another American, another Floridian, who had come in to help other Floridians,
somebody who also had come to love this country as her husband loves this
country, and was determined not only to give back in a big way with their
talent, but to give back also in a small and just as important a way by handing
out food to someone in need, and using the treasure and the talent that they
have to assist fellow Americans in need.
So we're so proud of Emilio and Gloria and members of their
family. Emilio has come a long way since he arrived on our shores as a
13-year-old. His journey is an inspiration. His life is a living reminder to the
Hispanic beat that is inside all of us, no matter where we came from.
And so it is now my distinct honor and pleasure to present to you
ladies and gentlemen this evening Mr. Emilio Estefan, Jr.
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October 14, 2002
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