America's Native Language Spanish? Latino's Influence on U.S. History, According to a Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto : US&Politics : Latin Post: Historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto's new book, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, was inspired when he was working the lecture circuit in 2007. The Notre Dame Professor was delivering a speech at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and following his oration an instructor from the academy shared his personal thoughts, stating that the U.S. should be welcoming to immigrants, and immediately followed that remark with the desolate statement, "people who come here must learn the native language."
To the Air Force instructor's surprise, Fernández-Armesto stated, "I quite agree... everyone should learn Spanish." Fernández-Armesto then went on to remind the audience and the instructor that the word "Colorado," itself, was a Spanish word. That was Fernández-Armesto's "eureka" moment, where he discovered that "that these nice, cultured, well-educated people had little understanding of the country's Hispanic past," and felt that it was his duty to inform them.
