Latino/as in the U.S.

Students enrolled in Andrea Lepage’s Spring Term course, Chicanx and U.S. Latinx Art and Muralism: From the Street to Staniar Gallery, interviewed artist Adriana Corral, whose exhibition “Unearthed: Desenterrado” was on display in Staniar Gallery. Here is a collaborative essay written by three of the students (Reid Ostrom ’19, James Ricks ’21, David Salchert ’19) and the professor, followed by an edited version of the interview. See essay and interview at: https://columns.wlu.edu/leaving-a-trace/.

A high school curriculum (see link) produced by Rockbridge County High School teachers Lauren WIlliamson and Sandra Hayslette accompanies the exhibition and catalogue. Click link for PDF version of High School appropriate curriculum: https://wlu.box.com/s/v03rfgl29wxst3dmvgzxpmhwh1annqvb

Contact Andrea Lepage (lepagea@wlu.edu) for a complementary copy of the 126-page bilingual Spanish-English exhibition catalogue featuring essays written by Clover Archer, Andrea Lepage, Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Denise Markonish, David Dorado Romo, and Cortney Lane Stell. The catalogue also features an oral history with former bracero, F. Serrano.

RESUMEN El boceto "El capitalismo como religión" de Walter Benjamin resurgió en el último tiempo a través de nuevas relecturas críticas como la de Hermann Herlinghaus y su análisis de las nuevas representaciones de la violencia en el arte latinoamericano contemporáneo. Pero el análisis de Herlinghaus deja sin alcanzar la dimensión religiosa y el peso gravitante que el concepto de la culpa/deuda (Schuld) tiene en la concepción benjaminiana. Es a partir de este vacío que nuestro trabajo se propone rastrear las representaciones poéticas de esta violencia en las sociedades capitalistas, en un corpus de poetas puertorriqueños emigrados a los Estados Unidos atendiendo a la profusa utilidad que esta formulación teórica benjaminiana entraña para el análisis de estas expresiones poéticas.

KEYWORDS Walter Benjamin Capitalism Religion Nuyorican poetry Violence

ABSTRACT Walter Benjamin's short sketch "Capitalism as Religion" re-emerged in recent times through new critical reinterpretations such as Hermann Herlinghaus' analysis of the new representations of violence in contemporary Latin American art. But Herlinghaus' analysis fails to adequately address the religious dimension and the influential weight that the concept of guilt/debt (Schuld) has in Benjamin's conception. It is from this vacuum that our work intends to trace the poetic representations of this violence in capitalist societies, within a corpus of Nuyorican poets, attending especially to the profuse utility that this Benjaminian theoretical formulation entails for the analysis of these unique poetic expressions.

In this ethnographic study of student discipline in California, I examine the spatial arrangements of the disproportionate discipline, surveillance, and banishment of Latino boys who were constructed as gang members from school and community spaces. Drawing on sociocultural geographical theories, I argue that negative discourses, and implicit bias, together with increased surveillance in school and public space(s), contributed to the= disproportionate discipline of Latino male students.

El artículo hace un recorrido general por el sector cultural en EE.UU. para introducirnos en su complejo entramado y plantear las perspectivas que el contexto norteamericano ofrece a los artistas procedentes de países hispanohablantes. En la primera parte describe de forma general algunos de los mecanismos, estructuras básicas y realidades sociales que diferencia el contexto estadounidense. En la segunda parte, y de una manera más concreta, el texto analiza el subsector de las artes visuales. El estudio finaliza con algunas reflexiones que de cara al futuro y en el ámbito de las relaciones culturales debemos considerar en la era de la globalización.

The article takes a general look through the Cultural Sector in the U.S. introducing us into its complex framework and establishing the perspectives that the North American setting offers artists coming from Spanish speaking countries. The first part generally describes some of the mechanisms, basic structures, and social realities that set the American context apart. In the second part, and in a more precise manner, the text analyzes the world of Visual Arts. The study ends with some observations that we should take into account in the era of globalization for the future and in the field of international cultural relations

There remains a paucity of research examining the support-seeking behaviors among Latino students specifically and adolescents of ethnic minority background more generally (Carlo & Guzman, 2009). While few investigations provide some evidence that Latino adolescents, especially those with a learning disability, are at greater risk to be socially isolated and overly self-reliant (Morrison, Laughlin, Smith, Ollansky, & Moore, 1992; Morrison, Laughlin, San Miguel, Smith, & Widaman, 1997), the literature is in need of updating. This exploratory study recruited 28 Latino male adolescents with and without a learning disability living in the Southwest region of the United States. Participants completed a social support choice questionnaire by selecting support options for managing various life stressors. Results from this study yielded contradictory results from previous explorations of Latino and learning disabilities support-seeking choices, with mostly no significant differences to report in terms of selecting among various social support network members.

The reflection is an invitation to consider how the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Sunday's readings (December 9, 2018), speak to the bitter experience of exile that many in the caravan are suffering; to the presence of God among those who the mighty least expect; and to the kind of friendship that should move us to accompany them.

This article discusses improvements made to the methodology of the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) point-in-time (PIT) homeless census. HUD’s PIT results are presented to Congress as official data for policy consideration. Yet, PIT methodology focuses on visible street homeless individuals and those in shelters while neglecting the “marginally housed” or less visible homeless who live in automobiles or temporarily stay with friends and extended family. Being a hidden population, the marginally housed has been a traditionally difficult population to study. We replicated HUD’s PIT count but additionally targeted the marginally housed to improve traditional methods of counting the homeless. We improve the PIT count in two ways: (1) by extensively training counters, and (2) by using the personal networks of hundreds of counters to seek out the marginally housed. Student researchers from a local university located 333 more homeless individuals than the local PIT, of which 153 were marginally housed. We do not claim this to be an exhaustive count of all the marginally housed in the region, but it is an initial step in developing methodologies to include this hidden population when calculating the total homeless population. This approach can also improve traditional homeless counts in other cities.

The chapter begins by examining major definitions of neoliberalism, noting that they cover some but not all of the relevant history of Mexican/Central American- United States migration. In particular, they lack historical depth and process. In this chapter, I take note of a long historical pattern in labour flows from Mexico and Central America to the United States that mixed guest workers, unauthorized workers, asylum seekers and others. This is a deeper and more comprehensive view of this relationship than the recent emphasis on illegality. Compared with open, formal capitalist relations of labour recruitment, these arrangements are best communicated with three phrases: alternative, subordinate, and racially stigmatized. They have existed side by side with several different periods of what have commonly been considered standard capitalist labour relations. They thus appear to deviate from standards at each moment in history, but in fact articulate with them.
In overview, then, I argue that unauthorized and guest-worker migrants from Mexico and Central America, and their employment in the United States, were reinforced by neoliberalism but were not a product of it. Rather, they existed before the rise of neoliberalism and contributed to its rise. I propose, based on this argument, that neoliberalism is best seen as an attack on labour bargaining power and societal redistribution mechanisms of the sort that have been called social democracy, Keynesianism and Fordism. In some instances, these attacks do have a free-market orientation, but in others they do not; equally, they do not necessarily occur in the historical period associated with neoliberalism. In the present case, these attacks utilize various arrangements of partially unfree labour that lurked as a pre-existing possibility in the historical relationship between the United States and Mexico. Drawing on the arguments of Gomberg-Muñoz (2012, 2017), what I will describe may best be understood as an unfree labour arrangement reflecting race or national origin. This unfree system has varied in significance over time, but it has coexisted with the dominant free labour regimes in US and Mexican capitalism since the 1880s. As such, racialized unfree labour is distinct from, but articulated with, several different capitalist regimes – the classically liberal, the Fordist, and the neoliberal. So, while it may appear deviant from the perspective of the dominant regime, it actually is part of the wider system.
      I have referred both to guest workers and to unauthorized workers, even though guest-worker programmes do not entail legal wrongdoing in terms of border entry, presence in the country or employment. However, guest workers and unauthorized workers should be considered together for two reasons. One is the patterned alternation between the two modes of migration in US–Mexican history. The other is that, like unauthorized workers, guest workers are not free labour, for they are bound to specific contracts and employers, and can be deported if they step outside those bounds. Indeed, unauthorized workers may be freer, as they can look for work without contractual limitations, although they are subject to arrest and deportation if the authorities find out about them. Comparable to guest workers are asylum applicants, who are in a legal limbo during the (often extended) adjudication of their applications, during which time they are authorized to work, but that authorization can easily be removed; this particularly applies to recently increasing Central American flows. In addition, recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals permits, other deferred enforcement statuses and temporary protected status have tentative legal status but are still constrained by the possibility of loss of residence and work rights and deportation from the country (see USCIS n.d.a, n.d.b). Hence, migrant legal wrongdoing arising from economic motivations is part of the analysis in this chapter, but it is secondary to the central theme of partially unfree labour (Gomberg-Muñoz 2012).
    This history informs us about the intersection of specific kinds of class exploitation with racial and national inequality, which together produce the social fiction ‘commodity Mexican’. That fiction is a unit of obtainable and disposable labour that is seen as less than fully human and as inferior to citizens, who are held to be White and to belong to the dominant society (Vélez-Ibáñez 1996: 70–87). It also helps to illuminate emerging patterns of the use of partially unfree labour, such as new waves of guest workers, prisoners and so forth, which may emerge as an important component of future capitalism in North America and elsewhere.

Course description and reading list, spring 2019, Swarthmore College. 

This course will focus on contemporary U.S. fiction published since 1990 or so.  The reading list will feature global perspectives on the U.S. as well as new understandings of the U.S.'s past and present.  Some authors are U.S. natives or now live here; many are immigrants or from immigrant families; and others, such as Adichie and Hamid, live and work in several nations. 

We'll explore these novels' formal inventiveness as well as their engagement with history, race, gender and sexuality, and a variety of other social issues, including multi-racial identities.  Another key theme will be the role that contemporary fiction may play in pushing the U.S. away from its white supremacist roots.  Three of the readings will use the genre of “historical fiction” to reinterpret U.S. history, but all the texts question and rewrite the possibilities of personal, family, and national/transnational narratives.  All also feature complex and compelling characters, both the heroes and their antagonists.

These books are compelling and transformative, both for their readers and for the future of the U.S.  They brilliantly embody what daring contemporary fiction can aspire to do.

In defiance of general trends in ethnic-minority broadcasting, U.S. Spanish-language radio enjoyed remarkably consistent growth from its beginnings in the 1920s to its commercial maturation in the 1960s and 1970s. To explain how this happened, this study situates broadcasting in Spanish within the context of foreign-language (or “ethnic”) radio. It then elucidates the factors behind its sustained increase in popularity and commercial viability over its first 50 years, along with the reasons why programming in other tongues diminished. Spanish-language radio’s early success owed not only to demography but also to Latin America’s proximity to the United States, circular flows of entertainers, mutual attitudes between Anglos and Hispanics, and the creative initiatives of Hispanic radio executives, brokers, and advertisers.

"[W]hat "latinidad" suggests is a Latin-American-heritage identity that crosses boundary lines among the various specific national-origin groups, and implies a panethnic group. It implies, in other words, that a "Latino" identity exists that binds these various groups together in some tangible, substantive ways" (Caminero-Santangelo, 2013: 14).

El término "Latinidad" es considerado como uno de los calificativos más polémicos dentro de los Estudios Latinos, dado que tradicionalmente se ha intentado definir la identidad de un colectivo de personas que si bien tienen en común una misma área geográfica, provienen de distintos países con sus propias peculiaridades culturales.
Aunque la gran mayoría de los países latinoamericanos comparten acontecimientos histórico-políticos parecidos (p. ej. la colonización española y las intervenciones estadounidenses) y ciertas semejanzas culturales, ha surgido en los últimos años la necesidad de reinterpretar la concepción de "Latinidad". El teórico literario Paul Allatson, por ejemplo, propone la pluralización "Latinidades" para hacerle justicia a la diversidad transcultural (2016: 130). Esta nueva acepción, además, se perfila como tendencia en la literatura hispanounidense actual, en la que la individualización del migrante pasa a primer plano.
Norte de Edmundo Paz Soldán es un buen ejemplo del replanteamiento de la narrativa hispanounidense al crear sujetos excepcionales (autistas, asesinos, inconformistas, etc.) que rompen con las convenciones sociohistóricas de ese subgénero narrativo. Con esta ponencia intentaremos mostrar la pluralidad de identidades latinas existentes en la novela de Paz Soldán que, a su vez, representan casos atípicos de asimilación cultural y que cuestionan los modelos tradicionales de "Latinidad".
Bibliografía: Allatson, Paul, "From "Latinidad" to "Latinid@des": Imagining the Twenty-First Century", en John Morán González (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Latina/o American Literature, Nueva York, Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 128-144; Caminero-Santangelo, Marta, "Latinidad", en Suzanne Bost y Frances R. Aparicio (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature, Londres, Routledge, 2013, pp. 13-24.