The objective of this paper is to trace the actual demand on enrolments over time, as much as the history of wavering public and academic sentiment towards teaching and speaking Spanish in this country during the last century. Secondarily, we examine the question of the value of mother tongue fluency or the acquisition, mastery and usage of the Spanish language in today's international marketplace. Using a qualitative review of current research, we provide some approximations of economic and marketing quantitative determinations of "value" of the language.