He says the cultural transformation spurred by an influx of Mexicans “wouldn’t be the end of the world for America as a society, but it would be the end of American society as it has been.”

Huntington proposes a revision to the “melting pot” metaphor that has long been used to describe the assimilation of immigrant communities.

“It’s more useful to think in terms of tomato soup. The base of the tomato soup is the aboriginal Anglo-Protestant culture,” Huntington says.

He says the influx of immigrants is “like adding onions and croutons and parsley and spices to tomato soup, all of which make it much richer and more interesting.”

‘JOSE, CAN YOU SEE?’

Huntington says Mexican immigrants have staked a territorial claim to the American Southwest—which Mexico controlled prior to 1848—in what he characterizes as a “reconquista,” or re-conquest.

“They view it—legitimately—as their turf, in some sense,” Huntington says.

In the most controversial portion of his article, Huntington—citing observations of Texas entrepreneur Lionel Sosa—highlights what he says are debilitating traits prevalent among Hispanic immigrants: “mistrust of people outside the family, lack of initiative, self-reliance, and ambition; little use of education; and acceptance of poverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heaven.”

In the Foreign Policy article—headlined “Jose, Can You See?”—Huntington casts doubt on the notion that Mexicans will follow the path of upward mobility traced by earlier immigrant groups.

“There is no Americano dream,” Huntington writes. “There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican-Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.”

But scholars vigorously dispute Huntington’s argument that the American dream is inextricably linked to Anglo-Protestant ethics.

“There’s a difference between Anglo-Protestant principles and the American dream,” says Kresge Professor of Marketing Rohit Deshpande. “Latinos have made it in America, and they’ve done it their own way...You can speak Spanish at home and watch novelas on Univision, and be in fluent in English and very successful at work.”

“It is true that our country was founded and dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, many of whom were literate, democratically inclined on good days, and adept at making money,” Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs John H. Coatsworth wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson.

“But many of their customs and beliefs were truly horrifying—witch burning, slavery and segregation, killing off Native Americans and stealing their lands. They had no clothes sense, couldn’t dance to save—or lose—their souls, and never ate garlic,” Coatsworth says.

CLASH OF GENERATIONS