CHAPTER ONE
Introduction: Latinos and US Politics

Objectives

• Understand the definitions of agency and structure
• Understand what it means for race to be a social construction
• Understand the historical meaning and privileges that have been attached to whiteness in the United States
• Understand how Latinos fit (or not) into the US racial structure
• Understand the political, social, and economic implications of how Latinos were categorized racially
• Understand the effect US foreign and economic policy has on Latin American countries, on Latinos’ decisions to migrate, and on their treatment upon arrival

Latinos, Immigration, and Politics

Scholars studying Latinos in the United States focus a great deal on issues of immigration and of political participation. Interestingly, both these issues most often are conceptualized as individual acts. Immigration is seen as a personal decision made by an individual or family, with little consideration of the macroeconomic context that influences that decision. Similarly, political engagement is most often discussed as (by and large) an individual choice. Individuals choose to vote, contact their elected officials, or run for political office. If they do not do so, it is because of a lack of interest rather than because of any sort of larger, structural constraint.

Yet the fact of the matter is that none of us, as individuals, can act with complete freedom, or with agency – defined as “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.”1 In other words, agency is about how much we, as individuals, can accomplish on our own, about our ability to determine, by ourselves, the direction of our lives. Yet there are also institutional structures that may impede our ability to exercise that agency – to do exactly what we want, when we want it, and the way we want it. On the most basic level, there are rules and laws which limit our freedom of action. But, more importantly, there are also other kinds of institutional structures, social, political, or economic, which may constrain an individual’s ability to act. Those structures include, but are not limited to, the employment and the housing markets; the legal system, including immigration rules; the political system; the educational system; and so on. How these structures operate within an individual’s life varies over time and by geographic location. They are not static, yet they are not always easy to change either. Thus structures have an important impact on an individual’s ability to change their life for the better.

In this book I will explore the migration processes and political activity of the population of Latin American origin in the United States, placing an emphasis on the interaction between agency and structure. For example, during the Central American solidarity movement, the US government refused to characterize Central American migrants as political refugees, despite the violence and political upheaval that existed in their home countries. These migrants were able to exercise agency in deciding to leave their homelands, yet were structurally constrained by the US government when they attempted to regularize their migration status in the United States. Yet, as we will see in chapter 7, in coalition with other migrants and political organizations, they mobilized to change the US government’s position and were partly successful, thus changing the institutional structure which future Central American migrants would face when arriving in the United States.

The Central American case is a good example of the interplay between agency and structure and of why it is important. When considering political activity and engagement, particularly that of minority groups, we must realize that there is a historical background and an institutional context which frame an individual’s decision-making process. In order to decide to act politically, an individual must feel empowered to do so and must feel that her action can make a difference. If that person comes from a community or group which, historically, has not had much influence in the political system, it is less likely that she will feel that that is the best way to spend her time; or it is more likely that she will choose non-traditional forms of engagement (like protesting) in order to express her political views. Thus individuals do not make their political decisions in a vacuum.

The purpose of this book is to show the reader the historical and institutional context within which to situate US Latino political engagement. Understanding that context will help the reader also to understand why Latinos make the political decisions they do and what structural factors influence these choices. Only to look at one or the other is to miss an important part of the story.

Defining Latino: What’s in a Name?

This text examines the history, migration, and politics of different groups of Latin American origin living in the United States. To begin with, it is important to consider what these groups should be called. The title of my book uses the word “Latino,” which is meant to describe all individuals, foreign and US-born, who have ancestry in any of the Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America.2 The term “Hispanic” was adopted by the US government during the 1970s and has the same definition as “Latino.” Scholars like Nicolas DeGenova and Ana Ramos-Zayos argue these pan-ethnic identifiers were designed by the US government to erase the particular histories of Latin American groups in the United States, such as Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.3 In contrast, “Chicano” is meant to describe, specifically, individuals of Mexican origin in the United States. This term came directly out of the political organizing within the Mexican American community in the US southwest during the 1960s; hence its usage often presumes a certain political consciousness, in addition to being a national-origin identifier. “Boricua” is a term used to describe Puerto Ricans in the United States (it comes from the name of an indigenous group native to the island), and “Nuyorican,” more specifically, is sometimes used to denote individuals of Puerto Rican origin living in New York City. “Quisqueya/o” is sometimes used to describe Dominicans (it is the indigenous word for the island of Española). Thus there are many terms which are used to describe individuals of Latin American origin; some of them are national-origin-specific, others spring directly from the political mobilization of the community or from the desire of group members to come up with new terms to describe themselves. For the sake of simplicity, this text uses the term “Latino” to refer to groups of Latin American origin generally, and national-origin-specific terms to describe the experiences of individuals from particular countries. But it is important to note that these labels can be politically or personally important. Many Latinos choose to use different words to describe their identities – terms that are grounded in their particular historical, personal, and political experiences.

Latinos’ “Ethnicity” and “Race”

The fact that this book focuses on the experiences of Latinos in the United States also implies that Latinos constitute a social group, one that should be the focus of the present study. But what does it mean for something to be a social group? Political theorist Iris Young described a social group as “a collective of persons differentiated from others by cultural forms, practices, special needs or capacities, structure of power, or privilege.”4 According to Young, what makes a collection of people into a group is “less some set of attributes its members share than the relation in which they stand to others.” In other words, defining Latinos as a social group does not mean that we need to assume that all Latinos are the same, share the same experiences, or have the same goals or aspirations. We will see in the next chapters that this is not the case. Latino national-origin groups have had very different experiences in the United States. They arrived at different points in American history, migrated for very different reasons, settled in different geographic settings, and have been treated in disparate ways by the US government. There are important experiential differences within Latino national-origin groups as well; these are due to geographic location, class status, nativity, generation, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors. Despite this heterogeneity, what is similar about the experiences of all US Latinos is where they were placed in the US racial hierarchy and how that placement has affected their social, political, and economic opportunities.

Given their differences of experience and background, if Latinos are a social group, are they a racial group or an ethnic one? The distinction between these two characterizations has been the source of ongoing debates among scholars – debates which will not be resolved here. The term “race” presupposes a common biological or genealogical ancestry among people. “Ethnicity” places more of an emphasis on culture than on common genetic traits. In an attempt to bring together both concepts, Michael Omi and Howard Winant define...