This incident makes me well understand the reluctance and fear of non-natives in this country to even try to speak English. Some time ago, I was teaching an English as a Second Language class, and some of my students shied away from speaking at all. They most likely believed their heavy foreign accents would unjustly subject them to ridicule and make them seem unintelligent. They might have feared their classmates would have the audacity to laugh at them even as some of those students also kept silent when it was their turn to speak.

To what extent, then, can she claim the language and specially to use it within the deep cultural context in which the word negrita lives? I don’t know that there’s a specific barometer here or even if there should be one. Likewise, Christina Aguilera has not actively distanced herself from her Latine roots, but that didn’t stop the criticism when she released a best-selling Spanish album even though she infamously doesn’t speak the language.

While many mainstream media outlets are trying to reach the sought-after, online-savvy 20-40-year-old Latino market, Huffingon Post Voces Editorial Director Gabriel Lerner believes he has found the key with his new site. Huffington Post Voces provides a service that doesn’t exist anywhere else, according to Lerner: a collection of information from diverse international and national sources, and a commitment to provide truth to readers in their native language.

Of the 60.6 million people who spoke a language other than English at home in 2011, almost two-thirds (37.6 million) spoke Spanish. This places the U.S. as the fifth-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world –not the second one, as it is usually said— after Mexico (117 million), Spain (47.2 million), Colombia (47 million) and Argentina (41 million). The information, taken from the American Community Survey, includes nation, states and metropolitan areas.