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Anthropology Essay Outline

THE COLUMBIA HISTORY OF LATINOS IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1960

EDITED BY DAVID G. GUTIÉRREZ

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright © 2004 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Columbia history of Latinos in the United States since 1960 / edited by David G. Gutiérrez.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0–231–11808–2 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Hispanic Americans—History—20th century. 2. Hispanic Americans—History—21st century.

3. Hispanic Americans—Social conditions. 4. United States—Ethnic relations. I. Title: History

of Latinos in the United States since 1960. II. Gutiérrez, David (David Gregory)

E184.S75C644 2004

973'.0468—dc22

2004041310

Columbia University Press books are printed

on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Designed by Lisa Hamm

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii Preface ix

Introduction. Demography and the Shifting Boundaries of “Comm-

unity”: Reflections on “U.S. Latinos” and the Evolution of Latino Studies

DAVID G. GUTIÉRREZ 1

1. Globalization, Labor Migration, and the Demographic Revolution:

Ethnic Mexicans in the Late Twentieth Century

DAVID G. GUTIÉRREZ 43

2. Social Polarization and Colonized Labor: Puerto Ricans in the

United States, 1945–2000

KELVIN A. SANTIAGO-VALLES AND GLADYS M. JIMÉNEZ-MUÑOZ 87

3. Exiles, Immigrants, and Transnationals: The Cuban Communities

of the United States

MARÍA CRISTINA GARCÍA 146

4. Central American Immigrants: Diverse Populations,

Changing Communities

NORMA STOLTZ CHINCHILLA AND NORA HAMILTON 187

5. Transnational Ties and Incorporation: The Case of Dominicans

in the United States

PEGGY LEVITT 229

6. The Other “Other Hispanics”: South American–Origin Latinos

in the United States

MARILYN ESPITIA 257

7. Gender and the Latino Experience in Late-Twentieth-Century America

PIERRETTE HONDAGNEU-SOTELO 281

8. From Barrios to Barricades: Religion and Religiosity in Latino Life

ANTHONY M. STEVENS-ARROYO 303

9. U.S. Latino Expressive Cultures

FRANCES R. APARICIO 355

10. The Continuing Latino Quest for Full Membership and Equal

Citizenship: Legal Progress, Social Setbacks, and Political Promise

KEVIN R. JOHNSON 391

11. The Pressures of Perpetual Promise: Latinos and Politics, 1960–2003

LOUIS DESIPIO 421

List of Contributors 467 Index 471

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AS IS true with most anthologies, this collection of essays took more time to bring to press than I am sure any of its contributors had thought possible when they signed on to the project. I thank them all not only for their excel- lent contributions to the work but also for the patience, forbearance, and good will they showed the editor. James Warren at Columbia University Press was equally patient and encouraging, and I thank him for staying the course long enough to see the book come into being. I would also like to thank all the au- thors, as well as Roberto Alvarez, Bill Deverell, Jorge Mariscal, James Warren, and Michael Haskell for their excellent advice and editorial input, and Tony Grafton, Marc Rodríguez, Jennifer Houle, and the Shelby Cullom Davis Cen- ter for Historical Studies at Princeton for providing the financial support and rich intellectual environment that allowed me to complete work on the vol- ume in the 2002–3 academic year.

To the friends and colleagues who graciously invited me to take parts of this show on the road to share and debate some of the major ideas that inform the volume, I offer thanks. Tomás Almaguer at the University of Michigan; Steve Aron at UCLA, Roy Ritchie at the Huntington Library; Dean Frantisek Deak at the University of California, San Diego; Bill Deverell at the Division of Hu- manities and Social Sciences and the students in my immigration and ethnic- ity seminar at the California Institute of Technology; Susan Johnson, Camille Guerin-Gonzales, and Patricia Nelson Limerick at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Matt García and Peggy Pascoe at the University of Oregon; the site committee of the National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies (NACCS)—especially Greg Rodríguez and Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith—at the University of Arizona; Elliott Barkan and the Immigration and Ethnic Histo- ry Society; Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., Joe Glatthaar, John Mason Hart, Luis

Alvarez, and Raúl Ramos at the University of Houston; Becky Horn at the University of Utah; Christina Jiménez at the University of Colorado, Col- orado Springs; and Ramón A. Gutiérrez and the Department of Ethnic Stud- ies at the University of California, San Diego all provided the collegial space to air and debate many of the issues that are discussed in these pages. And fi- nally, to my nuclear and extended families—Mary Lillis Allen, Luis Alvarez, Steve and Lori Buchsbaum, Al and Susan Camarillo, Mort and Maureen Dar- row, Bill, Jennifer, and Helen Deverell, Susie Golden, Luis and Rebecca Muril- lo, Bill Perry, Pamela Radcliff, Raúl Ramos and Liz Chiao, and, as always, my compañero on the beaches and in the trenches, Stuart Swanson, my heartfelt gratitude for your warm hospitality, good criticism, and spiritual support over a particularly rough stretch. I owe each of you one, at least.

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PREFACE

AT THE end of the last century and in the first months of the new millennium, newspapers and news magazines in cities across the United States began re- porting a remarkable phenomenon. “Nevada Jumps 66.3% in 10 Years: A Tripling of the Number of Latinos Led the Increase” read one headline. “His- panics Drive State Growth” read another. “Census Reflects Large Gains for Latinos,” “Latinos Add State House Seats Nationwide,” proclaimed others. “Hispanics Reshape Culture of the South” and “North Carolina’s Trade in Foreign Farm Workers Draws Scrutiny” read two others. “Mexicans Change Face of U.S. Demographics” and “Racial, Ethnic Diversity Puts New Face on Middle America” proclaimed two more. And more recently, in a news release that was as stunning as it was understated, the Census Bureau quietly an- nounced that as of July 2001, the United State’s population of Hispanic origin or descent had surpassed the African American population as the nation’s largest aggregate “minority group.”1 Of course, one could cite literally hun- dreds more such headlines and taglines in the American mass media of the past five or six years, and, slowly but surely, it seems that the message has started to sink in. Print and broadcast media outlets may have been slow to pick up on a trend that has been building in momentum for many years, but it is clear that Americans are finally awakening to a demographic revolution that has transformed—and continues to change—U.S. society in ways that will powerfully influence the economic, political, and cultural life of the Unit- ed States for the foreseeable future.

The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960 is among the first major attempts to offer a comprehensive historical overview of the as- tonishing “Latinization” of the United States that has occurred over the past four decades.2 Bringing together the views of some of the foremost scholarly

interpreters of the recent history of Latinos in the United States, this collec- tion was designed from the outset to be a collaborative, interdisciplinary ef- fort to ponder, analyze, and provide context for these dramatic historical de- velopments. More specifically, our intent was to provide a broad overview of this era of explosive demographic and cultural change by developing essays that explore the recent histories of all the major national and regional Latino subpopulations and reflect on what these historical trends might mean for the future of both the United States and the other increasingly interconnected na- tions of the Western Hemisphere. Indeed, as the essays that follow amply demonstrate, while at one point it may have been considered feasible to ex- plore the histories of national populations in isolation from one another, all of the contributors to this volume highlight the deep transnational ties and in- terconnections that bind different peoples across national and regional lines. Thus, each of the chapters on Latino national subpopulations explores the ambiguous and shifting boundaries that so loosely define them both in the United States and in their countries of origin. In addition, the volume in- cludes five important thematic chapters addressing political and cultural themes that transcend national and intercultural boundaries while simultane- ously revealing some of the more salient sources of internal division among persons of Latin American descent or heritage. These chapters include explo- rations of Latino religion and religiosity; gender and changing gender systems; politics, political mobilization, and political organization; language, expres- sive culture, and cultural change; and Latinos and the law.

Contributors were selected from a broad spectrum of scholarly fields and intellectual perspectives, and represent broad expertise drawn both from tra- ditional, established fields of academic inquiry like history, sociology, law, and political science, as well as emergent, more explicitly politically contentious interdisciplinary areas of study such as gender studies, religious studies, cul- tural studies, ethnic studies, and comparative Latin American and Latino studies. Contributors were given wide latitude regarding the conceptual, methodological, and interpretive approaches they brought to their individual assignments. Indeed, my hope as compiler and editor was to bring together the work of scholars in different fields and in different stages of their careers in an effort to create a kind of dynamic tension between and among a variety of different perspectives and points of view and thus to reflect to the extent possible some of the tensions that so obviously characterize the social, cultur- al, and political life of Latinos in the United States today. In keeping with this approach, authors were asked to develop in basic outline the broad contours of the history of their topical areas of study but also to depart from historical convention where appropriate by engaging in informed speculation both

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about contemporary trends and likely trajectories for the future. Finally, all of the contributors to the Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960 were also strongly encouraged to frame their analyses and write in a style that would be engaging and accessible to both specialists and a broader read- ing audience. By giving all the authors or groups of authors free rein in fram- ing their studies while also encouraging them to refrain from using the tech- nical academic jargon typical of their respective disciplines, we hoped to produce a volume that provides cutting-edge interpretations of the broad contours of the recent history of Latinos in the United States and one that also provides readers with insight into the major areas of contention and debate in Latino scholarship in the early twenty-first century.

Thus, as should be clear, the tasks faced by the individual authors in con- ceptualizing and executing their individual assignments were not as neat and straightforward as they might at first glance appear. On the most fundamen- tal level, each contributor needed to address the challenge of analyzing popu- lations that have been, and continue to be, in the midst of tremendous social flux and transformation. For example, while each author was charged with the task of recounting the recent histories of populations that currently constitute the pan-Latino population of the United States, we all were cognizant of the many ways the extreme geographic mobility of these groups—both within the boundaries of the United States and across international frontiers—raises conceptual and analytical challenges of a kind usually not faced by scholars studying more sedentary populations. Hundreds of thousands of Latinos con- tinue to move between the United States and Latin America and otherwise maintain strong organic ties to their communities, and this combination of physical mobility and deep ties to places elsewhere in the Western Hemi- sphere represent unique and fundamental components of Latinos’ social real- ity. Consequently, as all of the chapters that follow demonstrate in some de- tail, it is impossible to situate Latinos’ experience within the historical tradition of a single nation-state, whether that nation-state is their country of origin or the United States of America. Of course, the persistence of transna- tional ties has always been a fact of Latinos’ lives in the United States (and, to a greater or lesser degree, of other migrant populations), but the dynamism of Latinos’ more recent history requires that interpreters employ regional and multinational perspectives in attempting to analyze these restless and con- stantly shifting populations-in-motion. Similarly, while each author was charged with developing an analysis temporally focused on the last four decades of the last century, each was forced to grapple in his or her own way with the long reach of American economic, political, and military imperialism in Latin America over a much longer stretch of time. Thus, although each

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contributor employed different points of analytical departure and emphasis, the historical legacies and contemporary specter of the United States’ ongoing colonial relationship with Latin America can be seen in each chapter.

On a related plane, it is equally important to emphasize from the outset the extent to which the history of racism in the United States and the troubled his- tory of United States–Latin American relations has colored and continues to influence scholarship on the subject under discussion. Each of us has been trained to aspire to professional standards of scholarly objectivity, but we all also recognize that the fields of Latin American and U.S.–Latino studies have always been arenas of intense intellectual and ideological contestation and de- bate around these and other areas of social hierarchy and social conflict. The essays that follow clearly reveal both the tensions inherent in these areas of in- quiry and the lack of consensus over conceptualization, theoretical framing, methodologies, and ultimate lines of interpretation that currently exists in the evolving field of Latino studies (an issue discussed in greater detail in the in- troduction that follows). Again, however, by juxtaposing our different frames of reference and lines of argumentation against one another, we hope both to help sharpen the ongoing academic debate about the recent history of Latinos in the United States and to provoke critical thinking and discussion about this rich and complex history among both academic and more general readers.

Most of the themes discussed in this preface are touched upon in chapter 1, which is my contribution to this collection. As both the largest Latino sub- population and the group with the longest continuous contact with American society, ethnic Mexicans have in many ways epitomized the Latino experience along the historical axes of both imperialism and neoliberalism. The first Mexican Americans were incorporated by imperial conquest—initially during the Anglo-American infiltration of Texas and other Mexican territories in the 1820s and 1830s and then as spoils of war during the Texas Revolution of 1836 and the 1846 to 1848 War of the North American Invasion (as it is known in Mexico to this day). Since the late nineteenth century, and increasingly over the course of the last century, Mexican American history has been character- ized by three major factors that have increasingly come to characterize other Latino populations in the United States: the steady penetration of U.S. eco- nomic interests into a neighboring Latin American nation; the growth of a multinational resident ethnic population within the boundaries of the United States caused both by natural increase and the extensive and ongoing incor- poration of foreign workers into the domestic economy; and the experience of racialization and discrimination in the United States by both native- and foreign-born components of that population. The abiding paradox of this troubled history is that although American economic and governing elites his- torically strove to maintain social, cultural, and economic distance between

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the ethnic Mexican minority (whether citizen, denizen, or alien) and the white Americans they considered to be their primary social constituents, U.S. poli- cies and practices over the course of nearly two centuries—and especially in the period since 1960—have encouraged the rapid growth of all subpopula- tions of ethnic Mexicans and the increasing de facto integration of the social, cultural, and economic systems of the United States and Mexico along a 2,000-mile border.

In their contribution, sociologists Kelvin Santiago-Valles and Gladys Jiménez-Muñoz argue along similar lines but focus more directly on the bald- ly colonial nature of the historical relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. Indeed, in their incisive and highly critical chapter, Santiago- Valles and Jiménez-Muñoz argue that the current colonial relationship be- tween the United States and Puerto Rico should not be viewed as some kind of anomaly but rather should be seen as the predictable result of a self- conscious hemispheric and global policy to which the government of the United States has adhered for nearly 200 years. They develop their argument further, however, by pointing out the complicated ways that American impe- rialism historically has entailed more than the economic subordination and racialization of subject peoples, although these have clearly been crucial com- ponents of that relationship. From their point of view, the process of colo- nization, in both its classic forms and in its current neoliberal manifestation, has always also fundamentally involved the conceptual reduction and femi- nization of Puerto Ricans (and, by extension, of other Latin Americans and U.S. Latinos). When viewed from this perspective, the persistence of drastic inequality both between Puerto Ricans and other American residents of the United States and between the United States and the rest of Latin America is neither an accident of history nor a “natural” anomaly of uneven develop- ment but a symptom of the ongoing elaboration of an international division of labor largely shaped and driven by U.S. interests. Skillfully weaving togeth- er close analysis of social, economic, and cultural factors that have con- tributed to these historical patterns on the island, in Puerto Rican communi- ties on the mainland, and in Latin America generally, the authors offer a provocative and ultimately compelling synthetic interpretation of some of the most persistent and vexing issues in hemispheric social science research.

In some ways, the historian María Cristina García’s analysis of the recent history of ethnic Cubans explores the obverse effects of the United States’ larger historical relationship with Latin America. Although García points out that turn-of-the-century Cuban migration to the United States and elsewhere was driven by the same economic and political forces that characterized the United States’ relationship to other nations in Latin America (particularly Mexico and the Central American countries), Cuba was not annexed in the

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same direct manner in which Puerto Rico was seized after the Spanish- American War. Nevertheless, as García demonstrates, the United States as- sumed “informal” control of Cuban affairs after the war and maintained that control for most of the next half century—thus helping to establish the trou- bled relationship that has existed between the two nations ever since. The con- stant meddling in the internal affairs of the Cuban government, the establish- ment of a permanent U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, and a long history of direct U.S. military interventions on the island since 1898 provide an indi- cation of just how firmly the United States either kept Cuba under its sway or otherwise closely monitored its internal affairs.

After Fidel Castro’s takeover 1959, this situation changed abruptly. As Gar- cía notes, whether Castro initially intended to strike an antagonistic posture with the United States remains an open question to this day, but as he con- solidated power on the island, thousands of anti-Castro Cubans either chose or were forced to depart Cuba for the United States. Thus began a very differ- ent kind of migration cycle. García carefully demonstrates how the predica- ment of the Cuban expatriates meshed well with the intensifying anticommu- nist American foreign policy of the time and thus paved the way for the very different treatment Cubans received as political refugees. Still, García docu- ments the difficulties of settlement and adjustment faced both by the initial groups of emigrants and those who came later. Although the special welcome extended to the first waves of Cubans in the form of relaxed immigration reg- ulations, job-training programs, and financial and educational assistance is well chronicled here, García skillfully illustrates just how heterogeneous the total influx has been, and just how complicated the circumstances surround- ing Cuban emigration and settlement—particularly for those who entered during and after the infamous Mariel influxes of the 1980s. Despite the recent sensation caused by the Elián González controversy, García is among a grow- ing number of scholars who emphasize the increasing class, cultural, “racial,” and political diversity of the ethnic Cuban population and who anticipate po- tentially surprising and unexpected developments in both Cuban American politics and the Cuban–American relationship in the twenty-first century.

Sociologist Norma Chinchilla and political scientist Nora Hamilton offer a sweeping chapter on the growth of the multinational Central American pop- ulation that echoes many of the themes explored in the previous chapters. Like the Cuban case, the mass movement of Central Americans to the United States since the 1970s and 1980s originated in the regional geopolitical turmoil that tore hundreds of thousands of people from their local communities and, eventually, from their homelands. Again, like the other contributors, Chin- chilla and Hamilton carefully trace the different ways the penetration into the region of U.S. economic and military interests in the late nineteenth century

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gradually pulled developing Central American nations into the North Ameri- can economic and political orbit. In a story that was repeated in nations around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean basin, the authors map the processes that led North American corporate interests to invest in a variety of enterprises ranging from cattle and oil to plantation export crops like coffee, bananas, and cotton. Of course, U.S. strategic interests in securing an intero- ceanic canal early in the twentieth century added to the United States’ grow- ing sense of proprietorship in the region.

In any case, the reorientation of the Central American regional economy toward export markets started a chain reaction of widespread social instabil- ity, displacement of rural and urban workers, and eventual population move- ment. As more and more arable land fell under the control of local oli- garchies (often representing a small, interlocking set of prominent families), the stage was set first for a massive wave of rural-to-urban internal migration and then, gradually, for increased rates of transnational migration. As with Mexico, the sporadic eruption of indigenous uprisings over the course of the twentieth century added to the flows of both economic migrants and politi- cal refugees. Up until the late 1960s, migration from Central America to the United States was moderate, but with the eruption of new waves of violence in the face of unrelenting displacement and repression—often aided and abetted by the actions of the U.S. government—the rate of migration north- ward exploded in the late 1970s and 1980s. As Chinchilla and Hamilton demonstrate, the bulk of the largest émigré populations from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua originated during this long period of regional instability and violence.

Given the broad diversity and recentness of the Central American migration, Chinchilla and Hamilton’s analysis raises some provocative questions about the future trajectory of this rapidly expanding pan-Latino population. While many, if not most, of the Central American migrants who originally entered the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s may well have planned on re- turning to their nations of origin, the persistence of economic and political in- stability in Central America and the broadening social networks the migrants have established in the North have created yet another constellation of vibrant Latino subcultures in the United States. Thus, while Central Americans main- tain strong and abiding transnational ties to their homelands—and through their remittances continue to contribute huge amounts of foreign capital to the economy of the region—their future increasingly appears to be tied to that of the United States. That their patterns of settlement have often increased ten- sions with already-established Latino populations adds another dimension of uncertainty. Thus, as with other Latino populations comprising significant numbers of low-skilled and indigenous workers, whether the future involves a

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process of gradual socioeconomic integration and upward mobility or, con- versely, will reveal yet another example of the “segmented assimilation” of Central Americans into a growing pan-American underclass remains very much an open question.

Sociologist Peggy Levitt’s discussion of the recent history of Dominicans in the United States adds other intriguing dimensions to the complex history of Latino migrants and settlers. As the opening paragraphs of her essay illustrate so dramatically, the deep transnational ties that have bound migrants from the island to receiving communities in the United States are fundamental components of life at both ends of the international circuit of migration. In- deed, due to the extension by the Dominican government of dual citizenship to its expatriate population, the republic’s second-largest concentration of voters now resides in New York City, and its last president, Leonel Fernández, spent most of his life in New York before winning the presidency in 1996. Levitt’s essay—and the larger body of research from which it builds—demon- strates that while Dominican migration is a relatively recent phenomenon, the historical combination of the island’s development under a series of autocrat- ic governments, the concentration of land ownership into the hands of a tiny local elite, and the domination of the republic’s economic affairs by the Unit- ed States all deeply influenced subsequent patterns of both permanent immi- gration and circular migration from the island to the United States.

Levitt’s work stands as a strong case study of how the forces of globalization and chronically uneven regional economic development in the hemisphere have simultaneously stimulated the mass migration of underemployed work- ers to places where they hope to find work while also fostering the mainte- nance of strong transnational ties among migrants. Indeed, as is the case for ethnic Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and perhaps some other Latino subpopula- tions, many Dominicans have come to see circular migration as a rational life strategy that fosters the development of organically linked Dominican com- munities in both nations. Building on her previous work and the work of other migration scholars, Levitt argues that as complex migrant networks linking the Dominican Republic to the United States have thickened over time, the continual circulation of people, goods, communication networks, and remittances have helped to join the two countries into a single transna- tional “social field.” Levitt is careful to point out that the existence of such common social fields does not imply that the Dominican Republic and the United States are somehow fading away as distinct national entities. Nor does she diminish the important development of what are now thriving and grow- ing permanent Dominican American communities in the northeastern Unit- ed States and elsewhere. However, by carefully exploring the many ways that the activities of Dominicans’ everyday lives now transcend national borders

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(whether those activities include travel, the sending of remittances, the main- tenance of intimate and engaged family ties, or voting in American, Domini- can, or both nation’s elections), Levitt’s analysis provide insight into the ways the forces of the global market continue to undermine discrete, bounded nation-states while greatly strengthening the many economic, social, cultural, and political ties that bind human beings across currently constituted nation- al borders. As she notes in the essay’s conclusion, “these widespread, endur- ing ties also challenge conventional understandings of the determinants of in- equality, civic engagement, and community development.” The dramatic example of Dominican Americans voting and standing for elective office in Dominican elections may well represent an extreme case of transnationalism at work, but the current situation may well also represent a harbinger of trends that will become much more commonplace in the Western Hemi- sphere and elsewhere in the world in the near future.

Marilyn Espitia’s chapter on the migration, settlement, and growth of South American peoples adds more layers of complexity and ambiguity to the recent history of Latino peoples in the United States. Although South Ameri- cans have been emigrating in small numbers to the United States since the days of the California Gold Rush, it is only recently that their numbers have begun to rise to significant levels. As Espitia notes, while the dynamics of South American migration, settlement, and adjustment are similar to those of other Latin American and U.S. Latino groups, clear differences exist as well. The most obvious and significant of these are the higher aggregate socioeco- nomic characteristics of the population of South American origin. Of course, broad status variations exist in the growing multinational South American population in the United States, but, generally speaking, most South Ameri- can immigrants enter the country with higher levels of education, job skills, and class standing than virtually all other Latin American subpopulations. (As a result, South Americans also tend to enter the United States through offi- cially sanctioned immigration channels and appear to have much lower rates of undocumented migration than do the other populations, especially Mexi- cans and Central Americans). Espitia argues that these distinct characteristics may well have important effects on the manner in which Latinos of South American origin or heritage eventually come to identify and situate them- selves vis-à-vis other residents of the United States. Whether they eventually choose to meld into mainstream structures of society or, as Espitia suggests, explore a new, cosmopolitan sense of latinidad is one of the most intriguing questions in contemporary Latino studies research.

Like Espitia’s contribution, sociologist Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo’s chap- ter, the first of this volume’s thematic essays, broadens the framework of analysis away from a single nationality or geographic group by exploring the

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theme of changing gender relationships among Latinos in the U.S. context. Like all other authors in the volume, Hondagneu-Sotelo argues that the con- struction and ongoing transformation of gendered relationships among Lati- nos cannot be considered in isolation. From her point of view, to even begin to comprehend the ways gendered systems change over time requires discus- sion not only of the dynamics of gender construction in the United States and in the “sending” nations of Latin America but also awareness of the many pro- found ways that global economic change and the emergence of international political movements—especially the rise of feminist critical thought since the 1960s—have together influenced socially constructed definitions of what is considered “feminine” and what is considered “masculine” in modern life. Given the way gender systems and gender roles have shifted and evolved over the past half century, the author cautions readers not to assume that sharp di- chotomies necessarily exist between “traditional” relationships in sending re- gions of Latin America and a more “modern” situation in the United States. Arguing instead that gender roles and sexual orientations are subject to con- stant contestation and negotiation between and among men and women, Hondagneu-Sotelo attempts to situate her analysis in the broadest possible historical and regional context. Still, building on her own extensive previous research in the area of migration and gender, Hondagneu-Sotelo suggests that the process of transnational migration itself often helps reconfigure gender re- lationships in significant ways, as women and men are often forced by cir- cumstances beyond their control to adjust and adapt to rapidly changing so- cial environments. From her standpoint, gauging “progress” in gender relationships is, therefore, an extremely complicated process involving assess- ment of a broad range of variables and gender, family, and sexual stereotypes (like the persistence of machismo and marianismo) in cultural settings in both Latin American nations and in the United States. In the end, however, Hondagneu-Sotelo cautiously suggests that gender roles in various Latino subpopulations in the United States have gradually become more flexible— and perhaps even more egalitarian—over time.

This sense of guarded optimism is also present in Anthony Stevens- Arroyo’s far-ranging essay on the recent history of Latino religion and reli- giosity in the United States. Like Hondagneu-Sotelo, Stevens-Arroyo, a pro- fessor of religious studies, grounds his analysis of changing patterns of Latino religious orientation and practice in social, cultural, and political trends that transcend national boundaries. Indeed, much like the other contributors, Stevens-Arroyo argues that it is impossible to separate Latino religious histo- ry and the deep religious beliefs held by so many Latinos from the political and intercultural currents that have otherwise shaped their lives so deeply since the 1960s. In this piece, Stevens-Arroyo argues that when combined with

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the politicization that occurred in the 1960s among Mexican Americans (pri- marily in the Southwest) and Puerto Ricans (primarily in the Northeast), the steady demographic growth of the pan-Latino population laid the founda- tions for a massive “resurgence” in Latino religiosity (importantly, he notes, among both Catholics and Protestants). He carefully traces the ways the reli- giously inspired cursillo movement inflected the campaigns of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers Union in the West and converged with Puerto Rican activism in the East to compel deep change in both the American Catholic Church and in many Protestant sects. The author argues that church institutions, officials, and laypeople have served as vital intermediaries (for both social integration and resistance) between established Latino communi- ties and newcomers from Latin America. Indeed, Stevens-Arroyo’s analysis of the origins and evolution of the Latino religious resurgence since the 1960s in some ways provides a powerful counterpoint to more pessimistic analyses in this volume by demonstrating the complicated ways that successful faith- based grassroots efforts have continued among Latinos even in the face of their systemic marginalization and outright repression. With the explosive growth of the Latino population since 1980, it seems certain that grassroots, ecumenical, faith-based political mobilizations based in religious practices ranging from traditional Catholicism to indigenous and Afro-Caribbean spir- itualism will continue to play important roles for U.S. Latinos and that they may well also provide the basis for building a stronger pan-ethnic solidarity among the various populations in the new century.

Frances R. Aparicio follows a similar tack in her exploration of the intricate- ly complicated terrain of Latino cultural production and expression in the United States. As with the book’s other contributors, Aparicio, director of the Latino and Latin American Studies program at the University of Illinois, Chicago, foregrounds the colonial context in which Latino cultural expression in the United States has unfolded. Within this colonial context, she argues, one must pay special attention to the role expressive culture plays as both enter- tainment and as a site in which identity is played out, empowered, and re- formed—sometimes in opposition to dominant norms and practices and sometimes in conjunction with them. Thus, in this subtle and penetrating analysis, Aparicio explores the ways different forms of Latino cultural expres- sion serve to mediate between conflicting social formations and traditions while also sometimes being appropriated, co-opted, and absorbed by U.S. cor- porate interests. And here Aparicio exposes the crux of the matter. Building on insights raised by other Latino cultural critics and developed in her own previ- ously published work and ongoing research, Aparicio carefully explicates the manner in which Latinos are locked in a continuous struggle to express them- selves in their own idioms, forge new identities, and maintain a distinctive

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sense of Latino or Latin American aesthetics in the face of the inexorable ho- mogenizing pressures of the U.S. consumerist juggernaut. The cultural ten- sions, modes of resistance, and syncretism that are expressed in Latino letters, music, art, and performance thus speak to the very essence of the Latino expe- rience in the United States. As Aparicio notes, these different modes of “Lati- no expressive cultures . . . exhibited the effects of the push and pull of the forces of mainstreaming, integration, and institutionalization, on the one hand, and new and continuous oppositional forces, on the other, that explored new forms of identity and urged resistance to assimilation.”

Many of these same tensions and ambivalence resonate throughout legal scholar Kevin Johnson’s essay on Latinos and U.S. law. In the increasingly ambiguous and potentially dangerous current political and legal environ- ment of the United States, the tortured historical relationship of Latinos to the U.S. system of law and jurisprudence has once again come into sharp re- lief. In this piece, Johnson explores the uneven history of Latinos’ interac- tions with three crucial and overlapping areas of American law: immigration and nationality law; civil-rights litigation and jurisprudence; and the long and contentious legal struggle to gain access to public education. While Johnson, a professor of law and associate dean at the University of Califor- nia, Davis, School of Law, acknowledges that the U.S. legal system has often proved a powerful ally in Latinos’ efforts in these areas, he emphasizes the manner in which nearly two centuries of discrimination continue to shape and color the Latino experience even after the civil-rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on close readings of relevant case law and legal his- tories, Johnson plots the checkered history of Latinos’ intimate involvement with U.S. immigration law and policy in the last half of the twentieth centu- ry. Johnson’s analysis in this area is consistent with that of other immigration scholars in pointing out that while the United States has asserted its sover- eign right to protect its borders, government agencies have long either looked the other way or actually cooperated with U.S. businesses as they actively re- cruited and employed huge numbers of both officially sanctioned and unau- thorized immigrant workers. Johnson explores the many implications of this profound contradiction in the areas of employment and naturalization and the potential social and political integration of Latinos into American socie- ty. In the arena of civil rights in the U.S. legal context, Johnson traces recent gains and setbacks in areas including search and seizure (an area that often involves “racial profiling” by law enforcement authorities), political asylum, and the increasingly contentious issue of language usage and rights, and he speculates on the extent to which the recent growth of the Latino population may help break the traditional formula that has long equated “civil rights” with white–black relations in the United States. In the final section of the

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chapter, Johnson explores the recent history of the Latino struggle to gain ac- cess to all levels of public education, beginning with a brief review of the mixed legacies of the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and ending with an analysis of the political challenges of bilingual education, the alarming resegregation of Latino students in the public schools since the 1980s, and the future of “affirmative action” in education and the workplace. With the recent Supreme Court rulings on the legality of such approaches (in the crucial “reverse discrimination” cases brought against the University of Michigan), this and the other general areas of Latino concern will remain es- pecially sensitive for the foreseeable future.

Political scientist Louis DeSipio concludes the volume with some important and insightful reflections both on the recent political history of Latinos in the United States and on what the future might hold for Latinos in American pol- itics. From the outset, DeSipio brings sharp focus to the issue of what the Chi- cano political scientist Rodolfo de la Garza in another context has called “el cuento de los números” (roughly, “the myth of the numbers”—or the myth that increasing population numbers automatically equal rising political power). Analyzing both population and voting data since the 1960 national elections, DeSipio argues that although the Latino population obviously has grown tremendously over that period, its political influence has not kept pace. More importantly, DeSipio goes further and questions whether dramatic pop- ulation increases will necessarily translate into increasing political clout in the near future. Carefully building his case from both historical and contempo- rary sources, DeSipio argues that the same structural forces that limit partici- pation in traditional American politics generally may well be even more in- fluential in the Latino example. It has long been recognized that age, socioeconomic status, education levels, language proficiency, and other basic social-structural characteristics strongly influence political participation (or nonparticipation) in American politics. As is noted in more detail in the in- troduction, with an extremely youthful demographic structure, comparably low aggregate levels of education and job skills, and a disproportionate share of the nation’s poor, the Latino population meets all the predictors for com- parably low levels of political engagement and activity. Add to this the glaring fact that at least 40 percent of the Latino population are noncitizens—and thus ineligible to vote—and the full dimensions of the obstacles Latinos face in achieving their full political potential become clear. Indeed, DeSipio goes so far as to note that in the cold calculus of winner-take-all American electoral politics, the apex of Latino political participation and efficacy may well have already occurred, during the Nixon–Kennedy campaign of 1960. His disquiet- ing assertions, contrary to common sense, that Latinos simply do not matter in most elections, provides much food for sober thought and reflection.

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This is not to say that there have not been recent signs of more positive movement. As DeSipio notes, with the extension of provisions of the Voting Rights Act to Latinos in 1975 (the act had been designed primarily to empow- er African Americans when first passed in 1965), Latinos have gradually seen increased representation in all levels of government. The recent debate held in New Mexico between Democratic Party presidential candidates provides fur- ther evidence of this. Moreover, population growth and increasing political sophistication have resulted in the emergence of powerful lobbies and political-education groups, such as the Southwest Voter Registration Project and the National Council of La Raza, and the establishment of important na- tional civil-rights advocates in the Mexican American Legal Defense and Ed- ucation Fund (MALDEF) and other similar organizations—and these trends probably will continue in the future. DeSipio also notes that at a less visible and yet in some ways more interesting level, the involvement of Latinos in faith-based organizations, the sporadic mobilizations of resident aliens (as oc- curred during the debate over California’s Proposition 187), and the recent spike in the unionization of certain sectors of the Latino workforce (for ex- ample, among laborers, dry wallers and other construction workers, hospital employees, janitors and other service workers, and a small minority of farm workers) at the very least provide intriguing glimpses of avenues for potential social and political empowerment in the future. In addition, on another level, the increasing level of remittances from Latin American expatriates, increas- ing numbers of dual nationals among Latino residents, and other strong forms of continuing connection between emigrants and their places of origin may be signs of the emergence of new, if still inchoate forms of political ori- entation, mobilization, and action among Latinos.3 Still, for the foreseeable future, as DeSipio and virtually all of the contributors to this volume have to some degree argued, the peculiar structural features of American politics en- sures that Latinos will remain much less influential in U.S. political life than their aggregate numbers would seem to suggest. Whether Latinos’ collective actions in the United States translates into a new era of empowerment, inte- gration, and participation—or results in a process of deepening social and po- litical destabilization in both the United States and Latin America—will sure- ly be one of the single most critical social and political questions of the twenty-first century.

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NOTES

1. See U.S. Census Bureau, “Census Bureau Releases Population Estimates by Age,

Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin,” United States Department of Commerce News, 21

January 2003.

2. In this preface and my other contributions to this volume, the term “Latino” (and,

in a few cases, “pan-Latino”) are rather arbitrarily used to describe all inhabitants

of the United States (of both genders) with at least one parent of Latin American

heritage or descent, regardless of formal citizenship or nationality status. For rea-

sons discussed in more detail in the introduction, one should not assume, howev-

er, that a consensus exists about the conceptualization and definition of the “Lati-

no” population. Similarly, although I am fully aware of pitfalls of sexism and

“heterocentrism” in academic discourse, in the interest of keeping the text clear of

the constant use of wordy or awkward constructions such as “Latina/os,” “Latinos

and Latinas,” “Latino/a men and women,” and the most recent neologism,

Latin@, I have chosen to use the masculine form of the noun, except when specif-

ically referring to women of Latin American origin or descent. In those cases, the

feminine Spanish term, “Latina,” is used. Each of the other authors in the volume

was asked to choose a consistent form for their treatment of ethnic, national, and

gendered labels. As I hope this preface makes clear, the umbrella term “Latino,”

like all markers of ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, and/or gender, has become

increasingly freighted and unwieldy in a period of accelerating economic global-

ization, transnational migration, and an ongoing academic debate over gendered

language in all contexts. For similar reasons, the term “Hispanic” is almost com-

pletely absent from this volume. This problematic term was appropriated for use

by the federal government in the 1970s as an easy way to impose an orderly,

bounded category onto a population that otherwise was profoundly diverse—and

whose putative members do not necessarily think of themselves in the same cor-

porate terms. The term has gained some popularity among people interested in

accepting the U.S. government’s logic, but few individuals of Latin American ori-

gin or heritage use the term as a primary self-referent, whereas most recognize

“Latino” as a loose and general marker for what is perceived as the larger linguis-

tic/historical/cultural community of greater Latin America. It is imperative to note,

however, that most Latinos continue to identify first with national origin (howev-

er distant that origin might be) and then with pan-ethnic designations such as

“Latino” or “Hispanic.” In addition, as discussed below, it is also important to note

that significant numbers of immigrants originating in Latin American nations tend

to self-identify as members of indigenous groups and thus have problematic rela-

tionships with dominant populations in their regions of origin. For illuminating

discussions of the social complexities and political implications of the ongoing de-

bate over nomenclature, ascription, and self-identity, see articles on the topic in the

special issue, “The Politics of Ethnic Construction: Hispanic, Chicano, Latino . . . ?”

in Latin American Perspectives 19, no. 4 (Fall 1992); Sharon M. Lee, “Racial Classifi-

cations in the U.S. Census, 1890–1990,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no. 1 (January

1993): 75–94; Suzanne Oboler, Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of

(Re)presentation in the United States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

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1995); and Clara E. Rodríguez, Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History

of Ethnicity in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2000). For

a broader, comparative discussion of these issues, see Melissa Nobles, Shades of Cit-

izenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, 2000).