New Books In Latino Studies

Ian Haney Lopez is the author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (Oxford UP 2014). He is the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and on the Executive Committee of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice. Lopez investigates the often hidden side of racism. He traces the political history of candidates for office using a set of coded phrases, allusions, and references to call attention to race, without ever uttering the word. In the post Brown v. Board era, Lopez argues, candidates learned a new language of strategic racism, substituting anti-government rhetoric for anti-black, anti-Latino, or anti-immigrant. In doing so, the dog whistle was heard as a much wider criticism of the social welfare state, and thus a direct attack not just on minorities, but on the middle class.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benjamin Marquez is the author of Democratizing Texas Politics: Race, Identity, and Mexican American Empowerment, 1945-2002 (University of Texas Press 2014). Marquez is professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Democratizing Texas Politics covers 50 years of Texas political history, but also the changing institutional power of parties, organizations, and groups in state politics. Marquez draws on a host of historical archives to reconstruct the alliances and conflicts between numerous Mexican American leaders in the state. He captures the personalities of this movement, but also the way the ideas of Mexican American political identity evolved over these 50 years.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Historically speaking, who you were depended on who your rulers were and the ethnic identity (including language, religion, and folkways) of “your” people. In the era of nation-states–that is, our era–these two characteristics have, for most people, been fused. Ethnic Germans live in Germany, ethnic Chinese live in China, ethnic Egyptians live in Egypt. The exceptions to this rule are two: ethnic minorities (e.g., Jews, Kurds, Uyghers, etc.) residing in nation-states and people who live in the shifting borderlands between nation-states. Omar Valerio-Jiménez‘s fascinating book River of Hope: Forging Identity and Nation in the Rio Grande Borderlands (Duke University Press, 2013) is about identity in one particularly interesting shifting borderland, that found in the Rio Grande region between New Spain/Mexico and the United States. Valerio-Jiménez shows that the people of the Rio Grande were, ethnically speaking, many: a variety of native Americans, Spanish soldiers and colonists,

Gilbert Mireles is the author of Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013). He is associate professor of sociology at Whitman College. Mireles applies theories from political sociology and organizational management to the question of how unions organize workers. He examined the effective and ineffective strategies of United Farm Workers (UFW) to organize berry farmers in California. The book’s close methods bring life to these organizations. Mireles’ focus on telling the story of El Comite, in particular, stands out in the book.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Americans talk a lot about the flow of Mexican immigrants across their southern border. To some that flow is seen as patently illegal and dangerous. To others it’s seen as unstoppable and essential for the functioning of the U.S. economy. Everyone agrees that something must be done about it though, in fact, little is ever done. It’s an American problem that seems to have no American solution. But, as Jose Angel Hernandez points out in his pathbreaking book Mexican American Colonization during the Nineteenth Century: A History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands(Cambridge University Press, 2012) , it’s not just an American problem: it’s also a Mexican one and always has been. In the wake of the Mexican American War (1846-48), the United States appropriated a huge chunk of what was Northern Mexico. This act of–what else can you call it?–naked imperialism left a lot of Mexican citizens stranded across the new border. The Mexican authorities might not have been able to get their ter

New Mexico is a cultural borderland, marked by the interaction of Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American peoples over the past four hundred years. The question of how to commemorate this history and promote the traditions that arose from it is the subject of ongoing discussing, disagreement, and activism. In Recognizing Heritage: the Politics of Multiculturalism in New Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), Thomas H. Guthrie examines the work of scholars, community activists, politicians, and federal officials at several sites in Northern New Mexico – work meant to preserve the region’s Indian and Hispanic heritage and the state’s “multicultural” character, exemplified by the 2008 creation of the Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area across the region. Recognizing Heritage offers a robust critique of the multicultural model at work in New Mexico. While Guthrie notes that both Anglo-Americans and Indian or Hispanic activists are well-meaning in their efforts to ma

Stella M. Rouse is the author of Latinos in the Legislative Process: Interests and Influence (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Rouse is assistant professor of political science at the University of Maryland and a research fellow at the Center for American Politics and Citizenship. Commentators lauded Latino voters in 2012, but it is Latino elected-officials that increasingly hold power at the national and state-levels. In 2009, 242 Latino served in state legislatures and 27 Latinos were in the House of Representatives. While these numbers are not proportionate to the size of the Latino population, they are record highs. Rouse links together this descriptive representation to the ways those Latino officials make policy and vote on issues important to Latinos, what she labels substantive representation. She finds that education, healthcare, and jobs were the top priorities for Latino legislators – immigration was named by only 8% of respondents. She concludes that “Immigration is important, but it

Michael Innis-Jimenez is the author of Steel Bario: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915-1940 (New York University Press, 2013). Innis-Jimenez is assistant professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama. His book explores the lives of Mexican newcomers to Chicago primarily during the Great Depression. He focuses much attention on how community organizations formed to integrate Mexicans into the economic and social life of the neighborhoods of South Chicago.  These hometown associations provided a variety of services to Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans. In addition to bringing to life various aspects of this community, the book is filled with incredible photographs, maps, and historical documents. The artwork ads to the richness of the story he tells. But the book also helps to recall an earlier time of immigration and the long struggle of Mexican Americans to be fully accepted into their new homes.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice

Ron Schmidt is the co-author (with Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh, Andrew L. Aoki, and Rodney Hero) of Newcomers, Outsiders, and Insiders: Immigrants and the American Racial Politics in the Early 21st Century (University of Michigan Press, 2013). Schmidt is professor of political science at California State University Long Beach. This is a big book that covers long and complex histories of numerous groups in the United States. The authors link the arrival and integration of Latino Americans and Asian Americans to evolving group identities and developing political institutions. They draw interesting comparisons between the legacies of the African American social movements of the Civil Rights era and immigrant protests in other ethnic communities. They conclude with a mixed assessment about where the US now stands in terms of immigrant politics. Gains have been made, but immigrants remain largely shut out of traditional forms of political representation and often lack entre into politics.Learn more about your ad choic

Shannon Gleeson is the author of Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston (Cornell University Press, 2012). Dr. Gleeson is assistant professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. San Jose, CA and Houston, TX are two of the country’s largest gateways for immigrants, and these cases used to explain how immigration policy is implemented at the local level. Gleeson unearths the varied ways political institutions and civic actors accommodate the large number of newcomers and enact worker rights laws. While deeply rooted in theories from sociology, the book’s success in mapping the political players and local politics makes it an important read for political scientists, particularly those interested in interest groups and civil society. Gleeson also draws in the role foreign consulates increasingly play in protecting the rights of migrants.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most people today think of war–or really violence of any sort–as for the most part useless. It’s better, we say, just to talk things out or perhaps buy our enemies off. And that usually works. But what if you lived in a culture where fighting was an important part of social status and earning a living? What if, say, you couldn’t get married unless you had gone to war? What if, say, you couldn’t feed your family without raiding your enemies? Such was the case with Chiricahua Apache of the Southwest. As Lance R. Blyth shows in his terrific book Chirichahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680-1880 (Nebraska UP, 2012), war was a necessary part of Chiricahua life, at least in the 17th and 18th centuries. They needed to fight the Spanish in Janos, and there was nothing the Spanish could really do to stop them, at least in the long term. Of course the Spanish–who were, it should be said, invaders–fought back. And so the two communities en

Racism is a process by which people are segregated and discriminated against based on their race, and race is defined as a set of physical characteristics which certain groups share. Or is it? In Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (Verso Books, 2012), Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields argue that racism does not come from race. In fact, racism is the very act of creating race, by transforming it from something an aggressor does, into something the target is. So-called physical characteristics are red herrings in the discourse, conveniently there to justify certain kinds of racism, but certainly not necessary for them (anti-Semitism being an example). In this highly original book, the Fields’ draw a fascinating parallel between our everyday concept of race and the outdated notion of witchcraft, two beliefs firmly held by the societies which birthed them, reproduced and recreated in daily life by what was, in their time, “evidence,” and both which are, quite plainly, false.

During a Presidential campaign when the ethnic background of many major national figures and immigration in general has weighed heavily on the debate, Wendy Roth‘s new book, Race Migration: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race (Stanford University Press, 2012), offers many insights. Roth, a sociologist by training and on the faculty at the University of British Columbia, delves into the complex conceptions of race, ethnicity, and nationality both in the US and also in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. She compares the ways people living in each of those countries with migrants to New York City according to how they conceptualize race. She finds that a process of structural assimilation into US institutions, particularly education in US colleges and universities, explains how certain migrants take on the more binary and American views of race. There are numerous implications from this book for the study of race and politics. It can help political scientists better understand the politica

I saw “The Decline of Western Civilization,” Penelope Spheeris’s film documenting the late seventies punk scene in Los Angeles, when it was first released in 1981/82. Performances by the “popular” bands like Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, X, and Fear were instantly memorable. I’ve seen the movie many times since, I’ve even shown it in some of the classes I teach. For me one of its more salient moments is the performance of “Gluttony,” by the Bags (called “The Alice Bag Band” in the movie), an homage to food over-indulgence. In Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, A Chicana Punk Story (Feral House, 2011), the singer of the Bags, Alice Bag, recounts her involvement in the very beginnings of punk rock in Los Angeles. Alicia (“Alice Douche Bag” is her punk name) tells of her upbringing in East L.A., growing up Chicana with an abusive father, and her obsessions with Elton John, Cosmo, and the academic study of philosophy. Mos

In Rock the Nation: Latin/o Identites and the Latin Rock Diaspora (Continuum, 2010), Roberto Avant-Mier challenges the traditional historical notion of rock and roll and rock being the result of the converging of white and African-American musics only. Instead, he argues, the history of rock is replete with Latin/o culture. Avant-Mier traces the Latin influence in rock back as far as any history of the rock will. Included in his story are the Mexico-based border radio stations listened to by many early blues, country and rock and roll artists, the zoot-suited pachuco culture popular among Latino/as in the 1940s and 1950s, the Latin/o influence on the classic garage rock of the 1960s, the birth of Mexican rock and its relation to Onda literature in the 1970s and eighties, the dearth of Latino/as in the global punk rock movement of the nineties and, finally, a discussion of Latin/o rock in the twenty-first century. Infused within Avant-Mier’s argument is the notion that Latin/o rock is much more than the

The 107th World Series is underway, with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers vying for the championship of Major League Baseball. The Cardinals’ star, Albert Pujols, has already entered the record books, joining Hall-of-Famers Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson as the only players ever to hit three home runs in one World Series game. This historic slugging performance follows that of Rangers outfielder Nelson Cruz, who broke a record earlier in the postseason by hitting six home runs in one playoff series. Pujols and Cruz share not only an ability to crush home runs. They are also both originally from the Dominican Republic. Of the 50 total players on the Cardinals’ and Rangers’ rosters, 14 are of Latino background, with seven of those coming from the Dominican Republic. Many of the biggest stars in American baseball today are originally from Latin America, players like Pujols and Cruz, top hitters Miguel Cabrera, and JoseBautista,and two of the game’s premier pitchers, Felix Herna

There was a time when “history” was the history of powerful people. Shakespeare captures this notion of history in the prologue to Henry V: O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then and for centuries afterward, princes were deemed the proper focus of the historical investigations. The history of history from about 1950 to the present has largely been one of “democratizing” that view of the past. Princes are still given their due, but now a host of previously invisible people are as well. In the hands of social historians, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, male and female, European and non-European have all been given a written history. Our guest today, Vicki Ruiz, is one of the pioneers in this effort. Her path-breaking From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (Oxford UP, 1998; Tenth Anniversary Edition, 2008) shed light on the lives of o