The campaign for Spanish language education in the “Colossus of the North,” 1914–1945

Abstract

This paper explores a period of advocacy on behalf of Spanish language education in the United States from 1914 to 1945. It interrogates claims made by policy actors about the centrality of Spanish language education to US geopolitical and economic interests in Latin America. I make two arguments: first, that realization of US economic and geopolitical interests across the hemisphere did not require significant capacity in the Spanish language among the US population; second, that linking Spanish language education to such interests contributed, paradoxically, to the closing of ideological and implementational space (Hornberger in Imagining multilingual schools: Languages in education and glocalization. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, UK, pp. 223–237, 2006) for second language education overall, Spanish included. To support these claims, I begin by situating this specific case of Spanish language education advocacy within the context of contemporary language education policy research. Second, as background, I describe this advocacy as it occurred between 1914 and 1945, including key policy actors and venues for their advocacy. At the heart of this paper is an analysis of three specific rationales that policy actors employed in their advocacy. Here, I assess those rationales against the historical development of US economic and geopolitical interests in Latin America. Finally, I rely on both empirical and interpretative analysis to assess these three rationales on their own terms, that is, the extent to which they led to expanded Spanish language education between the two world wars.