From ‘A Clash of Civilizations’ to ‘Internal Colonialism’

In his essay ‘The Hispanic Challenge’, Samuel Huntington argues that the persistent flow of Latino (and especially Mexican) immigrants into the USA threatens to divide the USA into ‘two peoples, two cultures and two languages’. Most critics have dismissed the essay by focusing on the data Huntington presents so polemically, and on his rigid conception of ‘Anglo-Protestant culture’. And yet very few have analyzed it by looking closely at the theoretical tradition that Huntington’s work both stands in and furthers. Thus, the main objective of this commentary is to reveal that Huntington is working from within the conflict model of cultural pluralism, and especially its internal-colonialist type.