“What if this is as good as it gets?”

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That’s the memorable line expertly delivered by Jack Nicholson that gives a 1997 romantic comedy its name. 

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In the film “As Good As It Gets,” Nicholson offers a brilliant turn as Melvin Udall, an obsessive-compulsive writer who gives new meaning to the phrase “socially awkward.” He aspires to have a romantic relationship with a waitress from a local diner, played by Helen Hunt. In one scene, Melvin steps out of a therapist’s office and, staring blankly at the other patients sitting in the waiting room, asks of no one in particular: “What if this is as good as it gets?” The room goes silent. 

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Right now, that’s one of the questions that nearly 70 million Latinos in the United States should ask ourselves. Has the Latino experiment in America run its course? Will we go backward from here? Is this really as good as it gets?

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Latinos, eh? I know that tribe well. Those are my people, mi gente. 

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About 60% of us are Mexican or Mexican American, and the other 40% can trace their roots to more than a dozen countries of origin (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Columbia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, etc.)Some of us think of ourselves as Latino. But just as many see us simply as Americans. We’re “joiners” who have mastered assimilation.

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The fiercest arguments we have are entre familia (within the family) and they often touch on identity. We register Democrat over Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin but we’re disillusioned with both parties. Many of us have left the Democrats because — after the party caved on immigration — we got tired of being stabbed in the back. But we haven’t become Republicans because, we imagine, it’s no fun being stabbed in the front either. We’re at least 10 communities in one, given that that we’re divided by: generation, class, skin color, gender, rural vs urban, political party, level of education, the state in which we live and a host of other factors. 

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I know all about Latinos. I’ve reported on them, written about them, spoken about them, and tried mightily to understand them for more than 37 years. That journey has yielded more than 5,000 columns/op-eds/editorials and produced as many as three million printed words. 

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If you go back and read some of those early columns from, say, 1989 to 1999, you’ll see that most of them radiated positivity. In my first decade on the job, I usually told the Latino story sunny side up. Granted, that wasn’t hard to do. With demographics being what they were, and what they were projected to be in the future, it was easy to think that as time went on, and our numbers continued to grow, our position in society would naturally improve. 

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But how would you keep track of something like that? There was a time when measuring that sort of progress might have been simple. Over time, however, it became more complicated. 

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Born in the early 1940’s, my Mexican American parents were members of the Silent Generation. By the time they were teenagers, they had already worked in the fields alongside their parents and done so long enough to know that they never wanted to do that again. For them, a “good” job was simply where you could work indoors with air conditioned, sheltered from the 110-degree heat of Central California. 

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For the next generation to come along---the Baby Boomers---a good job came with an impressive title. No longer content to just be in an office, they strived to be the boss. Superintendent. Captain. Director. Supervisor. Born from 1946 to 1964, Latino boomers wanted to run things, and they assumed that, if they ran them right, they would be acknowledged and rewarded. Maybe they’d get a raise and promotion.

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Members of Generation X, born from 1965 to 1980, liked the sound of the mantra that one “could do good, but also do well.” Coming of age amid the materialism of the 1980’s, but also at the tail end of the idealistic 1970’s, X’ers were pulled in two directions. In the 1987 movie Wall Street, fast-charging investor and corporate raider Gordon Gekko observed that “greed is good.”

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Born from 1981 to 1996, the pampered Millennial Generation wanted to be purer than Generation X. For a Latino cohort that got chauffeured around in minivans with stickers on the back windows that read: “Caution: Baby on Board” and whose cultural affirmation came from Dora the Explorer, success meant working at a job that they found meaningful or pushing a cause that would make the world better. 

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And finally, for the kids in Generation Z---the Zetas, born from 1997 to 2012---the whole idea of success seems to be shifting. They don’t want to work themselves to death like their parents, and so many of them are opting out of the rat race. They seem prepared to have less if they can enjoy life more. They’re prioritizing personal time and self-care over corporate careers, home ownership and a culture of hustle.

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The Zetas might be onto something. They think the game is rigged, and they point to the experience of their parents in Generation X who seem to have worked their whole lives---not to get ahead, as previous generations, but just to hold onto what they have. 

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In 2026, it sometimes feels like no matter what generation we’re talking about, America’s largest racial or ethnic group is trapped in the Dickensian era. To borrow a line from Charles Dickens’ classic 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, these days life for Latinos represents the best of times but also the worst of times. 

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It’s the best of times. Latinos are swing voters who elect U.S. presidents, in part because we’re a growing presence in battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. We account for 20% of the U.S. population, and we have a Gross Domestic Product of $4.4 trillion. If the Latino community were its own country, it would have the fourth largest GDP in the world — trailing Germany, China and the United States. We have made our mark in business, government, entertainment, fashion, sports, food, music and all of popular culture. 

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It’s the worst of times. There are bipartisan efforts---at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue---to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, build a wall, end asylum and ratchet up deportations. It’s open season on bilingualism, multiculturalism, affirmative action, and racial redistricting. A 2025 Axios/Ipsos survey found that nearly two-thirds of U.S. Latinos (65%) felt it was a “bad time” to be Latino in the United States. Fewer than half (44%) believed in the American Dream, and only 40% felt “a sense of belonging” in this country. 

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That’s how Latinos roll. We take one step forward and two steps back. We convince ourselves that we’re gaining power and deserve respect, and then another group comes along — usually Whites or Blacks — and reminds us just how powerless we really are by disrespecting us. We break barriers and create milestones and make history; then there’s a backlash and we wind up back at square one. 

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This can be discouraging, but it should not be surprising. Life doesn’t come with guarantees. We never signed a contract with our Tio Samuel stating that if we worked hard, served our country, conjured up big dreams, raised good kids, and contributed to society we could be assured that our children would one day have better lives than we did. Life doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t come with a safety net. 

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Besides, even if we had inked an agreement back when White people arrived---because, after all, we were here way before the Pilgrims landed in 1620---what difference would it have made? That sneaky ol’ gringo is notorious for not keeping his word — especially to people of color, who he tends to see as inferior.

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Exhibit A: The more than 300 treaties that the U.S. government had with Native American tribes, and every single one of them was broken. 

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And of course, who could forget the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? Uncle Sam broke that pact (which ended the U.S.-Mexican war in 1848) by refusing to honor the provisions that made clear the language rights, civil rights and land rights of Mexican Americans would be respected and protected. None of that happened. 

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At various points in the last 178 years or so, the outlook for Latinos has looked bright. But that might have been because we were contrasting it with the one thing that Latinos were most accustomed to: darkness.

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In this country, Latinos---regardless of country of origin---have a history of overcoming racism, discrimination, disenfranchisement, violence, exploitation, and oppression. But whether they came to this country or had the country sprout up around them because they refused to move, the trend lines for the Latino community have always been optimism, productivity, resilience, perseverance and success. 

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And what a complicated story it is. That’s one of the biggest reasons that the media doesn’t have faintest idea of how to tell it. That’s my other tribe, and it’s lousy at telling stories that are complex. It prefers tales that are simple, cut-and-dried and one-dimensional. 

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So it’s no wonder that some of the best stories get overlooked. Like the one about the middle-aged Mexican American woman I bumped into in Albuquerque about 25 years ago. I was in New Mexico for a speaking engagement, and I wound up having a drink in a hotel bar with a few of the organizers. The woman, clearly a bit out of sorts, confessed to feeling flummoxed. She was about 50 years old at the time, and she said that she had done everything right. She studied hard in high school and got into a good college. Then, she did well in college and went to graduate school. She worked hard in pursuit of the American Dream, as she defined it. And, as a professional, she had succeeded in building a comfortable life---and a life full of comforts. 

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It was clear from listening to her that the woman had spent the last few decades striving, competing, excelling and achieving. So imagine my surprise, and probably hers, too, when she told me: “You know, I guess, I just assumed that, by the time I got to this age, I’d look around and see a lot of progress. I just thought we’d be further along.” 

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I’ve never forgotten that woman’s final words to me: I just thought we’d be further along.

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Who did she think would be further along? She could have been talking about the individual or the collective. I knew exactly what she meant. She was talking about the collective. She was offering a comment on how Latinos as a whole were doing. And, from the tone of her voice, her opinion seemed to be that we are not doing well. 

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Latinos used to be known for their optimism; now, they’re more likely to see their cup as half empty.      

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The movie was not supposed to turn out this way. According to Latino leaders like former San Antonio Mayor and U.S. Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, the 1980’s was supposed be “The Decade of the Hispanic.” The idea was that, as the U.S. Latino population grew, so too would its power and influence. 

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Yet that assumption was all wrong. It didn’t take into account the possibility that the same glimpse of the future that inspired Latinos would terrify Whites and Blacks, and that many of the terrified would flock to a political candidate who promised to turn back time and make America…well, you know the rest. 

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As Latinos, we put a lot of stock in the idea that demographics were destiny. Now we know that a strong storm — whipped up by fear and racism — can “trump” destiny. 

                                                                                                                                                        
Ruben Navarrette — a regular contributor to LATINO Magazine — is a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate, writer of the Navarrette Nation newsletter at Substack, author of A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano, host of the podcast, Ruben In The Center and a popular speaker on the lecture circuit.