The Minority Report

Part Two: The Latino Community

In a small Peruvian village, a woman stands behind a market stall selling potatoes. She watches people passing by and chats with those who stop to buy her goods.

Every so often, someone approaches accompanied by a dog. She eyes the pet and takes in the dog's condition. If the dog is male, she notices immediately whether or not he is neutered. If the dog is female, or she can't discern the sex, she asks if the dog is fixed. If the answer is no, she makes an offer: extra potatoes for those who promise to have their animals fixed. She creates her own contract: Not only will there be no more litters to deal with, but when someone brings back a note declaring their animal fixed, she will happily hand them extra kilos of potatoes.

Even in the face of poverty and cultural misunderstanding, there are those who care. Maru Vigo is one of them. A native of Lima, she helped organize a spay/neuter program and provided animal food in her home country. Now in Phoenix and working on humane issues in Hispanic neighborhoods, she knows how cultural issues can often create a divide between the Latino community and the animal protection movement.

For starters, people's relationships to dogs and cats in Central and South America have had a very different evolution from that of Europe and the United States. The concept of the "community dog" is at the heart of Latino custom. Few people would have a personal pet but all would interact with the dogs and cats who lived within the village. Animals who were prized were the working animals who could help a family survive economically. In poor villages, stray dogs were often fed by many but belonged to none.

While people from a northern Europe background might view the Latino and Hispanic attitude toward animals in their neighborhood as shirking responsibility, Vigo offers a different view.

"They truly, honestly believe that this is a stray dog. They say, 'Oh, no, he's not ours. He comes here every day, and we feed him. We give him some food and water. But we don't own him.' It's part of the folkloric image. The dog belongs to the town."

And a cultural tradition doesn't equal indifference.

"I have seen people who really, truly don't have much, but their animals are spayed or neutered" says Vigo. "Their animals have food, water, shelter, companionship, and time. So it's not the stereotypical idea of somebody extremely poor not paying attention to them."

To many in the humane world, the Latino community remains a tough nut to crack. The assumption is that pets are not valued in the culture, and they are leery of expending precious resources on spay/neuter campaigns and education in communities where they feel they can't really make a dent.

Vigo notes that animal welfare groups tend to focus on raising the status of animals - which may be precisely the wrong way to go.

As Latinos become more assimilated within American society, old attitudes such as the village dog are being replaced with the broader American values of "ownership." Rather than leaving pets to the streets, having one's own pet means having something of value.

But instead of capitalizing on this notion, the humane world is busy lobbying to replace the word "owner" with "guardian." This new kind of politically correct language may work well among white people, but it doesn't resonate the same way in the Hispanic community.

"They would say, 'No. It's my dog. I paid for him. I feed him,'" Vigo explains. "It's more productive there to encourage people to own pets and to take responsibility. To them, in terms of the law, animals are considered property, so if someone does something to your animal, they're damaging your property. That makes them protective of their pets. It's frustrating, but we need to take one step at a time, and it's better to have them take pride in ownership. It's better for the animals."

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