Guest column: Poverty and language

By David Magallanes / Guest Columnist

I’ve lived around both English and Spanish all my life. I can’t help but feel that the Spanish language is much more conscious of poverty than is English. I believe that poverty is wired into “the language of the angels,” simply because poverty has been part and parcel of the landscape in Latin American and Spanish life for so long.

The poor will always be with us. Jesus himself said so. Gandhi said that poverty is the worst form of violence. Poverty is a stark reality in many parts of the world, much more so than what we experience here in the United States. But here, in one of the richest countries in the world, with a constitution that enshrines our right to pursue happiness (which includes prosperity), perhaps we have no good reason to “insist” that being poor is our individual destiny or fate.

In my particular awareness, Mexican Spanish is rife with dichos — that is, “sayings”— that refer to poverty and that impinge on our subconscious Latino minds in ways that are subtle, silent and dangerous to our ability to pursue prosperity — if that is our wish — particularly as Americans of Mexican or other Latin descent.  Just a couple of examples:

Dichosos son los pobres.

This “dicho” comes right out and says that the poor are “happy.” Which we can be assured is true in many cases, but it ignores the reality that many of the poor are probably miserable, unless they don’t know what they’re missing. But of course in this country, they do know what they’re missing. It’s all around them, either in the next town, or across town, or across the street. It’s always on television, it cannot be escaped. It’s a dangerous thought to pass on to our children, because it convinces them that in order to be happy, they must stay poor. And that to seek prosperity must surely lead to more misery than what they may be experiencing in the present.

Los ricos viven de sus millones y los pobres de sus ilusiones.

“The rich live by their millions (of dollars) and the poor by their illusions,” which seems to imply that there is no hope for the poor.  And that’s often true in other countries — but not in the U.S.A.  This country has produced many startling rags-to-riches scenarios because we have the infrastructure to allow that to happen. This saying also paints the rich as aloof and stingy, whereas the rich have contributed greatly to our welfare, though not always monetarily.  Straight off the web site1 for the Getty Center in Los Angeles, one of the most spectacular art museums in the world:

Admission to the Getty Center
Admission to the Getty Center and to all exhibitions is FREE—no tickets or reservations are required for general admission.

Free! This would not have been possible without the generosity of a very rich man, J. Paul Getty. There are countless other examples of how the rich have enriched our lives and our intellects. But so many of us, including those of us in the “middle class,” consider the rich to be conniving snakes, always willing and ready to take advantage of the rest of us, even if that means tricking us into giving them our dollars.

Which may be true in some isolated cases, but the rich can also be very generous. Is it wrong for us to aspire to become rich so that we, too, could infuse other people’s lives with something that is deeply meaningful to us as individuals?  So that we could provide more fully to our children, so that they in turn could teach their children to make the world a richer, more beautiful place?

So why this concern over “dichos” referring to poverty? There is no shame in poverty. The problem is that many of us choose, if not outright poverty, then perhaps mediocrity. The choice is not always conscious. It’s buried in our deepest thoughts, our most hidden contemplations; it pervades our very language and plants the seeds of poverty, or reinforces those that are already there. We may not even be aware. We often blame “circumstances” or “birth” for our poverty or mediocrity, but in this country those excuses don’t hold water. Not only do we have a system that encourages those from humble circumstances to excel; we also have access to some of the most powerful literature, written by some of the most enlightened authors, that teaches us to align our thoughts with prosperity — our birthright and our destiny, if we choose it.

1“The Getty Center Los Angeles,” http://www.getty.edu/visit/index.html (January 26, 2011).

— David Magallanes is the creator of his own enterprise, Real World Projects, a business primarily dedicated to building marketing business networks for the creation of affluence. In this pursuit, Real World Projects constructs distribution outlets for highly reputable products that offer a healthier life and a more vibrant lifestyle, as well as free training and guidance for those who wish to create their own similar enterprise. David may be available for speaking opportunities. To contact him and for more information, you are invited to visit and explore the Real World Projects web site at www.realworldprojects.info

Editor’s note: Please click on links on the right-hand side of the website to see previous guest columns by David Magallanes.