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“Strangers in a new culture see only what they know.”
– www.vanwalt.com
BOLIVIA/UNITED STATES BICULTURAL EXPERIENCE
(with AI generated images) 😱
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The story of immigration to the United States is well documented. From July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, 2.8 million people immigrated to the United States, according to the Census Bureau. This is a net increase in international migration, which is the change in residence across US borders. In 2024, the US government projected to issue 226,000 and at least 140,000 employment-based green cards.
A green card is an official permanent residence card issued as an identity document in the United States.
Voluntary Cultural Assimilation
Voluntary assimilation is often a result of pressure from the dominant culture. For example, immigrants may feel pressure to learn the dominant language to fit in. – Google (AI Overview)
Family photo. Daly City, CA.(1979)
The story of cultural assimilation is personal.
Memories surfacing from the past bring to mind the importance of accepting ourselves as transformative agents of change. Living with dreams and aspirations in a country where multiculturalism embraces political, economic, and social awareness, language acquisition becomes the determinant factor in the development of a bilingual identity.
Language acquisition requires an active engagement and interaction with humanity. Every human being is born with a genetic ability to produce sounds and link them to concepts as we culturally progress to understand our place in the world.
It is the collective ideal to seek knowledge through language. There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. According to Ethnologue: “…[languages] are living and dynamic, used by communities whose lives are shaped by our rapidly changing world. This is a fragile time: Roughly 44% of all languages are now endangered, often with fewer than 1000 users remaining.” Ethnologue 200 publishes a list of the largest languages in the world: “Over 88%of people use one of these languages as their native tongue, and many hundreds of millions more use them as second languages.”
I grew up in a compartmentalized world with stories told by religions and philosophies embracing cult-like bombastic personalities using spiritual seduction for financial profit.
Hunger and dire poverty were social ills witnessed every day without fail in the neighborhood where my family’s home stood in sharp contrast to a majority of single room dwellings of the working class, dependant on day-to-day economic subsistence.
“Bolivia’s economy in the 1950’s was characterized by severe underdevelopment, reliance on volatile tin exports, unequal land distribution, and significant inflation, leading to widespread social unrest culminating in the 1952 National Revolution.” -Google AI Overview
Club de Tenis in Calacoto Municipality in La Paz, Bolivia. Tennis Club, La Paz, Bolivia, circa 1952.
Social inequality marked the need for change. In 1952, the hardest of all political incursions manifested “The Bolivian National Revolution”:
“The 1952 Bolivian Revolution was a popular insurrection led by the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), overthrowing oligarchical system of governance composed of land owners, industrialists, and mine owners in order to establish a new form of government, closer to the ideals of a populist democracy. Key outcomes included nationalization of tin mines, universal suffrage extended to women and indigenous peoples, and significant land reform measures drafted into constitutional law. The revolution lasted for twelve years, transforming Bolivian society, incorporating marginalized groups and dismantling the power of the old elite.” Google AI Overview
Cerro Rico, Departamento de Potosí, Bolivia.
The mining industry brought Bolivia into global economics. Raw materials like silver, gold, tin, lithium and other rare earth elements: lanthanum, neodymium, cerium, scandium, atrium and europium transformed Bolivia into a mining boom dating back to when Bolivia was Simon Bolivar’s “hija predilecta”/ “favorite daughter”, last of the Republics freed from Spanish domination in 1825.
45,000 tonnes of silver was extracted during the Spanish Colonial period alone (1556-1783). To the present (2025), it is estimated 60,000 and 90,000 tonnes was extracted from Cerro Rico throughout history. “Why the uncertainty? The Spanish mining system was corrupt, and rampant theft, smuggling, and lost records make an exact figure impossible to determine.” www.rockngem.com.
Life Story
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