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Eddie "El Piolin" Sotelo does not look like a revolutionary threat to America. He is short, stocky, with neat dark hair and a broad smile. His nickname means simply "Tweety Bird" in Spanish. Until 18 months ago, Sotelo was virtually unknown. Though more than a million listeners tuned into his radio show, most Americans were blissfully unaware of his championing of the rights of illegal immigrants - simply because he did it in Spanish.
Then, one day, he publicised protests against a draft law to classify undocumented migrants as felons. Sotelo urged his Hispanic listeners to take to the streets. They answered his call in their millions.
In Los Angeles, 400,000 marchers streamed through downtown. A similar number jammed Chicago. In dozens of cities millions of people were suddenly protesting against a law few other Americans even knew about. And El Piolin was at the front of the marchers. "More than two million marched. And I am proud that we were peaceful," he says.
The demonstrators left a stunned America asking one question: who are these people? The answer, it seems, is simple: they are America's future.
The United States is in the grip of a demographic change the like of which has not been seen since the 19th century. A mass immigration is taking place that dwarfs the flow of Irish, Germans, Jews and Italians that, 100 years ago, saw America rise to a superpower. It is a movement of Hispanic immigrants - legal and illegal - and the explosive growth of their descendants.
In 1950 there were just four million Spanish-speaking Americans, and the word Hispanic had not even been coined. Now there are 44 million and they have surpassed blacks as the country's largest minority. By 2050 there will be 103 million Hispanics - a quarter of all Americans.
That change has had a huge impact on what it means to be American. From politics to the economy, sport and the arts, the US is changing. Spanish is becoming the nation's second language. Their spending power is nearly US$1 trillion ($1.275 trillion), which, if Hispanic America were a separate country, would give it the ninth largest economy on earth.
"What is happening now is one of the most important moments in American history," says Professor Ruben Rumbaut, a sociologist at the University of California. This is a second American revolution.
Every immigrant has a story. Rodolfo Acevedo left Argentina in 1990 for the same reason most other migrants come to America: opportunity. "Argentina had just gone through hyperinflation. It was a chance to get a better life," he says.
Acevedo wanted to be an architect. On arrival in Florida the only job he could get was at a restaurant. But as the diner was popular with architects, he brought in his drawings.
Eventually he got an entry-level job and by 2002 was a partner. Last August he took up American citizenship.
Acevedo took a legal route, following a relative already living in the US. Many follow Acevedo's path of taking any job and working their way up. They see America as classless, a place where hard work brings just rewards.
But there is another side of the Hispanic wave - the illegal immigrants, who probably measure about 12 million. These are the "wetbacks" who cross the border from Mexico, risking their lives. These are the people whose bodies are found in the desert and who are at the bottom of America's low-wage economy. They harbour the same dreams as Acevedo - and some have similar success.
AMAZINGLY, Sotelo is one of their number. He entered the US illegally on a forged green card. Now he is a famous DJ. No wonder so many answered his call. "I am one of them," Sotelo says. "I am just like my listeners."
But the Hispanic revolution is not simply a story of migrants. If immigration stopped tomorrow, the growth of the Hispanic population would continue apace. Hispanic America is younger than the rest of America and it has more children. The average non-Hispanic family has 1.8 children; for Hispanics it is 2.8. About 15 per cent of non-Hispanics are over 65, but the figure for Hispanics is just 5 per cent. "Stopping immigration would not change a thing," says Nestor Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Houston.
The impact of the revolution is being felt across American society. In many areas it is possible to get by entirely in Spanish. A staggering 28 million Americans now speak Spanish at home. (The next largest non-English language is Chinese, with just two million speakers.) This has created a vibrant Spanish-language market in America. The country's top 500 companies spend more than US$5 billion on Spanish advertising each year. "It is a critical mass," says Cristina Benitez, author of Latinization: How Latino Culture is Transforming the US. Benitez advises large companies how to deal with these changes. But the changes have had a personal impact too. As a child she remembers cringing at her Hispanic name in school. "I used to have to spell my name for people. Now I don't have to do that," she says.
The most Hispanic parts of the US - California, Texas, Arizona - sit next to the Spanish-speaking world, but cities such as New York and Chicago now have huge Hispanic populations too. Perhaps the most surprising outpost of the Hispanic revolution is the Deep South. The region has been defined by black and white racial conflict, yet now a third group has arrived, and the results have been shocking. The conventional wisdom holds that blacks and Hispanics would probably seek common ground, as both are ethnic minorities. Yet the two groups are clashing over access to healthcare, benefits and school places.
Most surprising of all have been surveys showing that southern blacks and whites feel far closer to each other than either does to Hispanics. "This new population is blurring the racial divide. Black and white southerners feel they know each other and they don't know these other people,' says Paula McClain, a professor at Duke University and one of the few academics doing research in the area.
It is not just a cultural transformation - a political earthquake is brewing.Whichever party captures the Hispanic vote will capture the White House and it is a battle the Republicans are beginning to lose. The reason is simple: immigration. In 2000, the Republicans and Democrats almost split the Hispanic vote. But as a national backlash against illegal immigration has swept white America, the Republican party has been carried along by its grass roots. Earlier this year Bush attempted to pass an immigration law that would have allowed millions of illegals a path to citizenship. It was destroyed by a Republican rebellion that devastated the party's chances of winning the Hispanic vote. America's 44 million Hispanics have the potential to wield enormous power, yet 60 per cent of them do not vote: either they are too young or ineligible, or afraid of government. But that is changing. Political activists are out urging the community to go to the polls. And El Piolin has turned his attentions to the cause, using his radio show to emphasise the importance of the vote. That, he believes, is the true cutting edge of the Hispanic revolution. "At the next election they are going to find out: we know how to vote," he laughs.
But for every wave of change there is always a backlash. The fight against the Hispanic revolution is gathering momentum in small towns across America. None is more on the frontline than the seemingly sleepy Illinois village of Carpentersville, one of a string of towns founded by Irish and Polish immigrants, which thrived on trade and factories, and have now hit harder times.
Like scores of other towns across America, Carpentersville has drawn up laws promoting English-only rules and is cracking down on companies that hire illegals and fining landlords who rent rooms to them.
Much of the distress over immigration is based on a simple fear of difference.
"They come here to work but make no effort to integrate," says Edwin Rubenstein, an economics consultant and commentator on anti-immigration issues. "When other immigrants arrived they had to break their bonds and commit themselves to the US for better or worse."
Yet the fears of "nativists" seem to have been blown out of all proportion. In interview after interview, Hispanic Americans show that - as with those other waves of Italians, Irish and Jews - the power of assimilation is strong.
Take George Torres. He grew up the son of Cuban immigrants in south Florida and loved sport. But he eschewed traditional Hispanic games like soccer. Instead, his childhood played out in the shadow of the Miami Dolphins' American football stadium. Now he is a director of the club.
"Many Hispanics embrace [American] football as a form of cultural assimilation. There is no football in Colombia or Mexico. It is an American tradition and they want to be at the heart of it," Torres says.
Academic studies have shown that Spanish is only spreading so fast because of new immigrants. Among Hispanics born and bred in America, it almost always dies out. When Professor Ruben Rumbaut's Cuban-born father spoke English, his strong accent marked him out as "other". Yet Rumbaut himself became an academic . And Rumbaut's 10-year-old son? "When I speak to him in Spanish, he answers in English."
- Observer
