ABSTRACT
One fortuitous consequence of the experimentation with the several indicators of Mexican American identity was that a new grouping, Hispanics or Latinos, came into being; for not only Mexican Americans, but also many others spoke Spanish in their childhood and/or had a Spanish surname. Members of Congress and other elected officials generally have constituencies of several ethnic backgrounds, and even the few whose districts are solidly Mexican American would not find unanimous support for establishing special ties with Mexico. The Bureau of the Census intended to include illegal immigrants in the 1980 count, but whether an accurate count was possible no one knows. In the heterogeneous category of Hispanics, the immigrants from Cuba are at the other extreme from Puerto Ricans. As often as Hispanic/Latino spokesmen have demonstrated the diversity among the nationalities subsumed under that designation, most of them have also welcomed the greater political power derived from a larger sector of the American electorate.
