7 APRIL 11-17, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | A little over two centuries ago, much of the land that would become Colorado was claimed by Spain. But since the Mexican- American War ended with the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, moving the territory into the United States, it has never been a requirement for anyone in charge of this place to speak Spanish. Even so, many of the state’s top elected offi cials use the language in public — fre- quently and confi dently. Mayor Mike John- ston says that speaking Spanish is “the most useful skill I have.” “For any leader, whether you’re an elected leader or a business leader, there’s a huge part of your neighbors, your client base, your constituents, who are going to be Spanish speakers,” Johnston says. “It seems like a net advantage to be able to talk to them directly.” After all, about a third of Denver’s resi- dents, over 200,000 people, identify as Latino, as do nearly a quarter of the state’s population — 1.3 million people. “Colorado” is a Spanish word — it means “colored red” — and place names like Pueblo, Mesa Verde, La Junta, Limon, Buena Vista, Alamosa, Salida, Las Animas, Arvada, Alma and Al- ameda are all Spanish. “There are many Coloradans who never even studied Spanish who speak dozens of words in Spanish, sometimes without even realizing it, because it’s entered our Colorado common language,” says Governor Jared Polis. “In Colorado, Spanish is a very widely spoken language.” Ken Salazar, who was a U.S. senator from Colorado, served as the Secretary of the Interior and is now the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, comes from the San Luis Valley, where a unique dialect of Spanish is found; he’s part of the fi fth generation of a family that settled there in the 1800s. “There are ar- eas of our state where storefronts, businesses are in Spanish predominantly,” Polis says. Multi-generational Spanish speakers like Salazar are “just a small minority of the Spanish-speaking population of Colorado,” Polis adds. “Most of the Spanish-speaking population are of recent, fi rst- or second- generation Mexican heritage, and now, increasingly, Central and South American heritage.” Dual-immersion schools, where stu- dents are a mix of Spanish and English native speakers who continued on page 8 JAY VOLLMAR
