Challenging Fronteras

Structuring Latina and Latino Lives in the U.S.

Mary Romero, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Vilma Ortiz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415916080
• eBook ISBN: 9781317958703
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Challenging Fronteras reflects an important new wave of research that moves beyond sweeping generalizations that treat Latinos as a monolithic cultural group. This anthology focuses on the diversity of Latino experiences by providing historical specificity and cutting-edge research that employs the conceptual and analytical tools of social science. Contributors, selected from leading researchers in Latino Studies, include Patricia Zavella, Suzanne Oboler, Alejandro Portes, Clara Rodriquez, Marta Tienda, Nestor Rodriquez, and others.

PART ONE

CONCEPTUALIZING THE LATINO EXPERIENCE

INTRODUCTION

Mary Romero

IN JUNE OF 1995, Judge Samuel Kiser decided in favor of a father’s “right” to prohibit the mother of his daughter from speaking Spanish to the child. The judge claimed that teaching the child to speak Spanish would condemn her to a future of servitude as a maid: “What are you trying to do? Make her a maid for the rest of her life?” Although the judge received considerable criticism from the Mexican American community, his statement exposed a number of important taken-for-granted beliefs about race, ethnicity, social class, and gender. In the first place, while seldom stated overtly, many Americans believe that patriarchal authority should be supported by the state. In the second place, the claim that Mexican women in Texas are hired as private household workers because they speak Spanish, implies that culture constrains the individual’s opportunities in the labor market. Claims of cultural determinism are consistent with the corollary view that assimilation is the path to upward social mobility. However, these commonly held beliefs do not explain two facts: bilingual and monolingual English-speaking Chicanas and Mexicanas dominate the occupation in Denver, Albuquerque, and other cities in the Southwest; English-speaking Latina immigrants in Los Angeles are able to negotiate higher wages than monolingual Spanish speakers, but are unable to find higher paying jobs outside of domestic service. The judge’s ruling demonstrates, but does not explain, why domestic service is perceived as “Mexican women’s work” in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona or “Latina’s work” in California. Cultural determinism does not explain the relegation of Latinas to domestic service any more than it does the fact that the occupation has traditionally been treated as Black women’s work in the South.

The central issue is this: Does a single variable—ethnicity, class, race, citizenship, or gender fully explain Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Cuban Americans, Mexican, or Salvadoran immigrants’ experiences in the labor market? Or more generally, is there an interrelationship of ethnicity, race, class, citizenship, and gender that explains the Latino experience in the U.S.?

In this section we examine conceptual frameworks that employ a structural perspective to explain the Latino experience. Theorists have debated how best to conceptualize the Latino experience: Is the process of integration of Latino immigrants similar to the assimilation of European immigrants? Or, do Latinos have more in common with African Americans? Is the Latino experience a racial experience? An ethnic experience? In either case, how can we understand class differences among the various Latino groups? Researchers have developed concepts and theories by analyzing employment and housing data in order to identify patterns of social mobility or discrimination. At the same time, Latinas and Latinos are engaged in the everyday life process of conceptualizing their experience. The ongoing development of social consciousness may contribute to the social construction of a “Latino” ethnic consciousness and identity, or to the development of a nationalistic identity that identifies an occupied homeland.

We have selected articles that analyze the experiences of two or more Latino groups from different conceptual frameworks. In the first article, “The Structuring of Hispanic Ethnicity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” Candace Nelson and Marta Tienda provide a thorough overview of theoretical frameworks employed in the analysis of ethnicity in the U.S. and critique their usefulness in explaining the historical experiences of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. They begin by reviewing dominate themes in the conceptual frameworks of racial and ethnic stratification, highlighting distinctions between explanations that attribute ethnic groups’ experiences to cultural factors or theories of social class. Applying William Yancey’s concept of emergent ethnicity, they point to how the distinct histories of each group shaped their economic and cultural integration into American society. They argue that these unique experiences translate “Hispanic origin to a symbolic ethnicity for some and a minority status for others.”

The second selection similarly argues for a historical perspective; however, unlike Nelson and Tienda, Suzanne Oboler does not employ the experiences of European immigrants as the point of reference in analyzing the experiences of Latinos. In her article, “‘So Far from God, So Close to the United States’: The Roots of Hispanic Homogenization,” Oboler’s historical overview draws attention to the social construction of race. Beginning with the history of Spain in Latin America, Oboler describes the establishment of a racial social order based on Spanish and Catholic colonial practices that discriminated against indigenous people and Blacks. However, unlike the rigid binary BlacklWhite racial order established in the United States, racial classification in Latin America was interrelated with social status and honor. After the Mexican-American War, Mexicans in the Southwest became defined as racially and socially inferior to Anglos. Oboler discusses the ways that domestic boundaries excluding African Americans and Native Americans also functioned to exclude Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans. Yet, unlike African Americans, Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans continue to be perceived and treated as foreign born. Oboler’s discussion of specific U.S. government policies demonstrates “the process of exclusion of people of Latin American descent from the American imagined community.” Her analysis of the racial construction of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in the U.S. identifies the limitations of assimilation policies while illustrating the racial construction of the “Hispanic other.”

The last article in this section, “The Invention of Ethnic Origins and the Negotiation of Latino Identity, 1969-1981,” Jorge KIor de Alva explores the ways that Chicanos and Puerto Ricans negotiated a regional identity during the early 1970s and invented a “nationalist ethnicity” which challenged the dominant “cultural narratives.” Selecting pre-Columbian icons as their origins, Mexica and Tainos were adopted as symbolic weapons against “Anglo” American society and represented their legitimate claim to “being a nation rather than an ethnic minority.” Politics of separatism, pluralism, and assimilation became closely linked with how Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Latino identity is negotiated. While debates over cultural nationalism and historical materialism are no longer as popular as they were in the ’70s, significant fragments of the debate remain on university campuses and in grass-root organizations. Nationalistic symbols of Aztlán and Borinquen remain strong in our communities and nationalism remains a controversial issue among college students and community activists. KIor de Alva’s analysis of levels of Latino identification highlights the constraints on the formation of a pan-ethnic identity, and points out the difficulties that, for example, immigrant and non-immigrant Mexicanos have in constructing a single identity.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Explain how Hispanic origin among Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans functions as a symbolic ethnicity for some and a minority status for others. Discuss the factors impacting the classification of other Latino groups.

2. Compare and contrast the racial order of Spanish and Catholic conquest in Latin America to that of Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the U.S.

3. Discuss the pros and cons of cultural nationalism as a conceptual framework for empowerment.

SUGGESTED READINGS:

Almaguer, Tomas. 1994. Racial Fault Lines. The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gutierrez, David G. 1995. Walls and Mirrors. Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Melendez, Edwin and Edgardo Melendez. (Ed.) 1993. Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives in Contemporary Puerto Rico. Boston: South End Press.

Montejano, David. 1987. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Oboler, Suzanne. 1995. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)Presentation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Rodriquez, Clara, E. 1989. Puerto Ricans. Born in the U.S.A. Boston: Unwin Hyman Press.

1

THE STRUCTURING OF HISPANIC ETHNICITY: HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES

Candace Nelson and Marta Tienda

A DOMINANT MYTH about the social and economic experiences of US. immigrants is that most groups confront similar opportunity structures and reception factors in the host society. Without regard for differences in the historical context of the migration, reception factors in the new society, or the migration process itself, ethnic groups are evaluated by how they fare in becoming American. Those who do not succeed socially or economically—the unmeltable ethnics—contribute towards the demise of the American “melting pot” as the dominant metaphor guiding our understanding of ethnic relations. Despite the plethora of alternative interpretations that have surfaced to explain the social significance of ethnicity and the persistence of racial and ethnic stratification in contemporary U.S. society, the melting pot metaphor has yet to be replaced.

One perspective of the persistence of racial and ethnic stratification maintains that ethnic bonds are promulgated as the natural extension of primordial ties. This view nurtures the idea that the disadvantaged, marginal position of certain ethnic and racial groups results from their cultural deficiencies which disappear as individuals assimilate into the dominant culture. At the opposite end of the spectrum, ethnic divisions are seen as mere reflections of class divisions. There exist several variants of the class interpretation of persisting ethnic differentiation, but the unifying theme is their focus on economic and social rather than cultural factors as determinants of ethnic inequality, and their emphasis on structural instead of individual explanatory factors.

The great diversity in the ethnic experience in the United States challenges both of these explanations and most that fall between them. Reducing ethnic stratification to a class phenomenon is reasonable only under the assumption that all members of an ethnic group are in the same class. Similarly, because ethnic identity and solidarity shift across groups and historical eras, it is equally inappropriate to deny the importance of social factors in molding ethnicity over time and place. By challenging widely held assumptions that high socio-economic standing goes hand in hand with assimilation to the dominant culture, examples of ethnic groups who combine high levels of economic success with strong expressions of ethnic identity present a trouble spot for theories of race and class (Hirschman, 1982).

The complexities involved in interpreting ethnicity are aptly demonstrated by the case of the U.S. Hispanic population. While their presence in the United States predates the emergence of the American nation, their numerical strength and national visibility resulting from a high birth rate coupled with continuing inflows of new immigrants presents a challenge for students of ethnic stratification. “Hispanic” as a label combines colonized natives and their offspring, foreigner and political refugees under one ethnic umbrella, but the coherence of this label is questionable on theoretical and historical grounds. Unlike the European immigrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the majority of Hispanics have not become structurally integrated into the broader society. And, in contrast to other white immigrants, use of Spanish has not disappeared among the second or third generations reared in the United States. Today Hispanic enclaves and the Spanish language thrive in diverse regions of the country, although there is evidence of linguistic acculturation among all Spanish-speaking national origin groups who have lived in the United States over a generation.

While common ancestral ties to Spain manifested in language, religion and various traditions suggest an underlying cultural c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One Conceptualizing the Latino Experience
• Part Two Immigration: Coming from the Americas
• Part Three Reconstructing Ethnic Identities
• Part Four Paid and Unpaid Work! Negotiaging Gender Relations
• Part Five Economic and Political Restructuring
• Index