It's Your Turn in the Sun

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In Washington, B.C., leaders of 120 Spanish-speaking organizations call for a White House conference on Hispanic Americans. Among the demands they want aired: greater emphasis on bilingual education; bigger immigration quotas; more federal civil service jobs.

In Sacramento, California's Governor Jerry Brown drops in on a Mexican-American convention. "You're the leading minority in the Southwest," Brown tells the crowd. "It's your turn in the sun and I want to be part of it."

In Miami, Carlos Arboleya, president of the area's Barnett Banks (assets: $315 million), surveys the local Cuban-American community and confidently declares: "History will write Miami's future in Spanish and English."

That extraordinary vessel, the American melting pot, is bubbling once again. The source of ferment: American residents of Spanish origin, whose official numbers have increased by 14.3% in the past five years alone. Now the country's fastest growing minority, they are bidding to become an increasingly influential one.

Hispanic Americans are learning how to organize and how to win a hearing. Jimmy Carter has taken note of these stirrings; he proclaimed one week last month to be National Hispanic Heritage Week and sent tape-recorded greetings in his unpolished Spanish to Hispanic communities across the land. First Lady Rosalynn Carter underlined those saludos by appearing at a Washington fund raiser for Congress's five-member Hispanic Caucus.

The Hispanic presence has been a palpable one in U.S. life for centuries. But broad awareness of its scope and potential did not really dawn until the 1960s, with the unionizing struggles of Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers and the spread of Hispanic populations. Today, migratory bands of Hispanics are picking apples in Washington and Oregon, helping with the harvest in the Midwest, tending vegetable and fruit crops in California's fertile valleys. Hispanics are also flooding virtually every important U.S. city in search of better jobs, creating latino enclaves from the crowded barrios of East Los Angeles and Spanish Harlem to the manicured suburbs of Bade County, Fla.

The Hispanics' very numbers guarantee that they will play an increasingly important role in shaping the nation's politics and policies. Just as black power was a reality of the 1960s, so the quest for latino power may well become a political watchword of the decade ahead. Predicts Raul Yzaguirre, director of the National Council of La Raza (The Race), an umbrella group of Hispanic-American organizations: "The 1980s will be the decade of the Hispanics."