[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 41 (Monday, October 14, 2002)]
[Pages 1736-1739]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at a Reception for Hispanic Heritage Month

October 9, 2002

    Bienvenidos. It is such an honor to have you all here to the Casa 
Blanca, la casa de todos que viven en esta pais. As the Surgeon General 
mentioned, I'm just a temporary resident--[laughter]--but es un gran 
honor para mi familia de vivir aqui.
    I want to thank you all for coming. Hispanic Heritage Month is an 
important month for our country, particularly now that we're at a time 
of war. You see, Hispanic Heritage Month talks to the great diversity of 
our country and the fact that our country is a strong country because of 
our diversity.
    And this particular month we welcome the influence of the Hispano in 
our country. We welcome the great values that our Hispanic Americans 
bring to America, the values of faith y familia. Part of our 
entrepreneurial spirit is made stronger by the Hispanics who live in 
America. We're really proud of this heritage. We appreciate the hard 
work. We appreciate the determination.
    I love the stories of our Surgeon General, the success stories of 
families who have sought a better day and have worked hard, and 
Americans have been able to reap the benefit of the greatest country in 
the face of the Earth. So welcome to the White House. It's an honor for 
me to welcome you here.
    Obviously, we're celebrating--one of the things we celebrate in 
Hispanic Heritage Month is the great talent of many Hispanos, and we saw 
some great talent today. And I want to thank Carlos Ponce for being the 
emcee. Carlos, I'm going to be watching the eBay auctions very 
carefully. [Laughter] Times get tough. [Laughter]
    I appreciate las Tejanas. I appreciate Jaci Velasquez y tambien 
Jennifer Pena. They're great talent. I'm proud to call them Texans. 
We've got some great talent in our State, and these are two of the best. 
And I really want to thank you all for coming. And make sure you tell 
everybody at home I might have changed addresses, but I haven't changed 
homes. [Laughter]
    And I also want to thank Gian Marco. Listen, if he's the first 
Peruvian here, we might as well have started with one of the best. 
[Laughter] And I'm honored you're here, Gian. Thank you for coming.
    I want to thank Johnny Delgado from the Baltimore Police Department 
for starting this, for reciting the Pledge. Johnny represents many of 
our Hispanic Americans who serve on the frontlines in the war against 
terror, our firefighters, our police officers, our EMS teams. And I'm so 
honored, Johnny, that you're here, and thanks for coming. On behalf of a 
grateful nation, I want to thank you and all the good folks who wear the 
uniform for the job you do.
    I want to thank Senator Orrin Hatch for coming. He's a great friend 
of--he's a good buddy. I'm glad he's here. I'm glad he's in the Senate. 
[Laughter] One of my jobs is to put together an administration that is 
talented, an administration here to serve the country, not themselves, 
an administration that reflects the diversity of our country. And I'm 
doing just that. Obviously, you met our new Surgeon General, Rich 
Carmona. Rich is a--he's a piece of work. [Laughter] He'll do a fabulous 
job in that incredibly important position.
    Gaddi Vasquez, who is Director of the Peace Corps, is here. Gaddi, 
thank you for coming. Hans Hertell is an Embajador de--to the Dominican 
Republic, is with us today. Hans is from Puerto Rico, a good friend of 
mine.
    There's another Ambassador here who's not an American, but 
nevertheless he is the Embajador de Mexico, our close friends, Mexico. I 
appreciate Ambassador Bremer for coming. I'm honored you're here.
    Mira, y tambien un otro amigo de mio. He is the Gobernador, the 
Governor of Tamulipas, Tomas Yarrington. I appreciate you coming, 
Gobernador. I don't know if this helps or hurts him, but he is a rising 
star in Mexican politics. [Laughter] I've known him, obviously when I 
was the Governor of Texas and now as the President. He's a good fellow, 
and I'm proud to call him friend.

[[Page 1737]]

    Rosario Marin is here with us. Rosario is the Treasurer of the 
United States. Hector Barreto is the Small Business Administrator. I 
appreciate you coming, Hector. Eduardo Aguirre, who is the head of the--
Vice Chairman of the Export-Import Bank. Eduardo, I'm glad you are here.
    Jose Fourquet, who is the United States Executive Director of the 
Inter-American Development Bank--Jose, thank you for coming. Where are 
you, Jose? Oh, there he is. These are people I've appointed. These are 
part of the diversity of our administration. I'm glad they're here so I 
can herald their--their accomplishment and their service to the country.
    Everybody has got to have a good lawyer--[laughter]--particularly 
me. Mi abogado es un Tejano, Al Gonzalez, my good friend.
    Our military is--the Hispanic population in our country has served 
disproportionately in our military. The Hispanic population steps up 
when the country says, we need service. And they do. They have 
throughout our history. Today we've got with us Major General Chris 
Cortez of the United States Marine Corps. I've got great confidence in 
our military. I've got confidence in our troops. I'll talk a little bit 
about that in a second. But General, thanks for coming.
    I appreciate my friend Emilio Estefan, who is the producer of this 
outfit. You want to talk about a cool guy. [Laughter]
    We happen to have Miss Universe with us today, from Panama. Thank 
you for coming, Miss Universe. And I see my friend Raul from Texas is 
sitting next to you. [Laughter] He's probably claiming he should have 
that seat because he's from Panama and a Texan. [Laughter] I suspect 
it's for other reasons, but nevertheless. [Laughter]
    As you probably know, as the Surgeon General mentioned, I'm a 
baseball fan. I love baseball. Some of the best years of my life were 
watching the mighty Rangers, and we've got a couple of mighty Rangers 
here with us. I saw one guy grow up from a 19-year-old kid, who's one of 
the greats of all time, and that's Pudge Rodriguez. I want to thank you 
for coming, Pudge.
    And my daughters used to love to come to the game, and they fell in 
love early in life with Rafael Palmeiro. [Laughter] And I want to thank 
you all for bringing your families. Yes, mira, thanks for coming, guys. 
I appreciate you. Hi, Lynn, how are you doing? Rosa.
    I want to thank Nomar Garciaparra from the Red Sox for coming. 
Nomar, thanks for being here. Nomar, when we had the first tee-ball game 
at the White House, was there. And one of the things we're trying to do 
is use our backyard to promote baseball. And we had these kids come, and 
Nomar was here to help kick that off. I'm so honored you came.
    I appreciate Octavio Dotel from the Houston Astros. Octavio, good to 
see you. Nelson Figueroa--donde esta Nelson? Nelson, thank you for 
coming.
    These are the current players. These guys are stars and potential 
Hall of Famers. But we're also really fortunate to have some Hall of 
Famers with us, people who've actually done what these players are 
doing.
    It is such an honor to have four Hall of Famers, starting with Rod 
Carew. Man, that guy could hit. I appreciate you coming, Rod. Tony 
Perez, Luis Aparicio, yes, y por fin, Juan Marichal--I'm really glad you 
all are here. You brighten my day. [Laughter] Thanks for coming.
    One of my jobs as well is to make sure our bench is strong. I've 
named a fantastic Hispanic American to the bench, a young guy named 
Miguel Estrada. I named him to one of the highest courts possible, to 
the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. It's an incredibly important 
appointment. He's well qualified. He is very smart. He came to our 
country from El Salvador, he couldn't speak English. He's now been 
picked, amongst all the candidates, to take on this highest of high 
positions in the bench. He's having trouble in the United States Senate.
    There are some Senators--certainly not Senator Hatch, who is one of 
his strongest advocates--there are Senators who are playing politics 
with this good man's nomination. There are Senators who would rather not 
give him the benefit of the doubt, Senators looking for a reason to 
defeat him, as opposed to looking for a reason to herald his 
intelligence, his capabilities, his talent. I strongly object to the way 
this man is going

[[Page 1738]]

to be treated in the Senate. I urge the Senate to confirm the nomination 
of Miguel Estrada.
    I talked about our military. The reason we're talking about our 
military these days is because we're at war, and we're at war for 
precisely the reason why we're here. We're at war because we love 
freedom. We love the fact that people are free in America, free to 
worship an Almighty any way you see fit, free to come to this country 
with a dream and realize the dream, free to express your opinion, free 
to--if you happen to be in the press, to write anything you want to 
write. That's freedom, and that's what we love. And it's hard to 
believe, but there's an enemy which hates freedom and hates us as a 
result of our embrace of freedom. And so therefore, we're at war. We're 
at war, and we're still at war. We're still at risk here in America. 
We're at risk because there's some enemies still lurking around out 
there.
    This is a different kind of war, as the General would tell you. In 
the old days, you could destroy the person's tanks or airplanes or ships 
and be making progress. But these people don't have tanks. They don't 
have ships. They hide in caves and send youngsters to their suicidal 
death.
    And see, so long as we embrace the diversity and freedom of our 
country, which we will always do, and so long as they're lurking out 
there, we're at war. But make no mistake, sin duda venceremos. There's 
no doubt about it.
    We will win because of what we love. We will win because we're 
determined and strong. We will win because we're a nation which holds 
values dear to our heart. And we refuse to be intimidated by anybody, at 
any place, at any time. We will win because we want to uphold our duty 
and obligation to leave America intact and free, so future generations 
of people, Hispanic or otherwise, can realize dreams, can succeed, can 
realize their God-given talents. That's what this is all about.
    And so I want to thank you for coming to honor this month, but I 
want to assure you that this great Nation will lead the world to be more 
free.
    And we've got some difficult tasks at hand. Not only, we must chase 
down the Al Qaida, one by one, which we continue to do to this very day, 
but we've also got to deal with threats that are real. And I gave a 
speech to the Nation the other day to discuss those threats in sober 
terms, to talk about the realities of the world in which we live.
    It used to be in this great country we had two oceans protecting us, 
and if somebody had a problem across the sea, we might help them or we 
might not. Today, these oceans--the fact that the oceans no longer 
protect us mean that the battleground is here. So this great country 
will be deliberate. We will rally other nations. We will give other 
people a chance to deal with Iraq, for example.
    The U.N., the United Nations now has a chance, Mr. Ambassador. As a 
member of the Security Council, I'm confident your nation will join us 
to--to send a clear message that this man must disarm before he hurts 
America or anybody else. And he has to make a choice. We're a patient 
nation. He's got a choice to make. His choice is, he must do what he 
said he was going to do. He said he wasn't going to have weapons of mass 
destruction. That's what we expect. We take a man for his word.
    But if he doesn't disarm and if the United Nations won't act, for 
the sake of our freedom, we will lead other countries that love freedom 
as much as we do and disarm him. We owe it to our children. We love 
peace in this country, and when we see threats to peace, we will deal 
with them in a deliberate, calm, logical, and, if need be, forceful way.
    And as we work to make America a more secure place and a safer 
place, we've got to make it a better place too. And that means making 
sure everybody gets a good education in our country--everybody.
    We passed a really good education bill. I want to share the spirit 
of the bill, because I believe it speaks to the month we're celebrating. 
It says that every child can learn. That's the first thing. See, it 
starts with the attitude that if--if there are low expectations, if 
perhaps a school district or people think that because a parent doesn't 
speak English as a first language, therefore a certain child may not be 
able to learn, we're going to challenge that.
    See, when you have low standards, you're liable to get bad results. 
That's what I have called the soft bigotry of low expectations.

[[Page 1739]]

We have challenged that soft bigotry. We say in this country, every 
child can learn--every child--not just some, not a select few, not those 
who may live in the nice suburban districts, but every child can learn.
    And then it says that in return for receiving Federal money, we want 
to know. You see, in return for receiving Federal money, we expect local 
districts and States to show us whether or not each child is learning.
    And when we find the fact that some children are not learning, we 
must correct problems early, before it's too late. Everybody counts in 
America. Each child matters in this country. To make sure we have a 
better America, no child--not one single child--needs be left behind.
    I believe this Nation is strong in its diversity. We love our 
freedom. It's an incredibly great nation. And out of the evil done to 
our country on September the 11th, 2001, will come incredible good. 
That's what you must know about our Nation. Out of the evil done to 
America can come some great good.
    If we stay tough and firm and strong, we can achieve peace. We can 
achieve peace for people here at home; we can achieve peace in the 
world. And by being--by loving your neighbor just like you'd like to be 
loved yourself, we can achieve a better tomorrow. We can work together 
to eradicate the pockets of hopelessness, loneliness, and despair. 
People can fight evil by doing some good, by putting your arm around a 
lost soul and saying, ``I love you. My fellow American, I love you.''
    There is no question in my mind, because of our strength, diversity, 
because of the values we hold, that we will be a stronger and more 
compassionate and better nation.
    I want to thank you all for coming to celebrate this important 
month. It is an honor for me to welcome you to the White House. I 
appreciate so very much your contributions to our country.
    May God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1:32 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to entertainers Carlos Ponce, Jaci 
Velasquez, Jennifer Pena, and Gian Marco; Juan Jose Bremer Martino, 
Mexican Ambassador to the United States; entertainer Emilio Estefan; and 
Miss Universe 2002 Justine Pasek. The Office of the Press Secretary also 
released a Spanish language transcript of these remarks.