Online Term Paper on History of Latinos in America
In what is considered the first comprehensive history of Latinos in America, Harvest of Empire, by Juan Gonzalez, a journalist born in Puerto Rico and raised in New, York City, chronicles each wave of Hispanic immigrants to the United States and explains who they are, why they came here, and how they are changing the country. Using intimate family histories, including his own, Gonzalez, a columnist with the Daily News, elaborates on why it’s a mistake to lump all Latinos together; when, despite sharing the same language, their histories and viewpoints are often radically different. We excerpt from the Introduction.
In an effort to make sense of the Latino mosaic in North America, Harvest of Empire surveys the epic history of Hispanic immigration by focusing on the largest communities: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Colombians, and Central Americans. Effectively combining personal interviews with an expert knowledge of the literature, Juan González, a columnist for the New York Daily News, argues trenchantly that Hispanic immigration is largely a product of American political and economic penetration of Latin America. Thus, this massive immigration is seen as the “harvest of empire.” An ambitious work, the volume is sketchy at times. The author’s treatment of Mexican Americans, for example, fails to incorporate many of the most recent important works on the subject, especially those that focus on women. The weaknesses, however, are relatively minor and do little to detract from this fine interpretive volume. González is the first student to stress the crucial link between Latino immigrants in the United States and American policies in their homelands. Moreover, his book performs a valuable service because, as he rightly asserts, many Latinos who are well versed in the history of their own national group know little about other Hispanic communities, and Harvest of Empire helps to fill the void.
The Puerto Rican-born journalist is at his best when examining the complex relationship between his island homeland and the American mainland. Although his passionate criticisms of United States foreign policy in Latin America will alienate some readers, serious students of Latin American history will be inclined to sympathize with González’s anti-Yankee perspective. In fact, prodded by corporate interests, the United States did turn the Caribbean into an American lake in the twentieth century, often through force of arms. Moreover, it is undeniable that immigration has been a consequence, albeit largely unintended, of economic exploitation. This cause/effect relationship is still in evidence today. An excellent example—though one that the author fails to adequately explore—is the exodus to the United States in recent years of large numbers of Indian immigrants from southern Mexico, where village economies have weakened as a result of competition caused by American corporations, as well as other factors.
A question that González treats superficially is the subject of a timely work by a fellow New York Puerto Rican, Clara Rodríguez, a Professor of Sociology at Fordham University who has written extensively on Latinos in general and Puerto Ricans more specifically. Changing Race examines the question of Latino racial identity: how the different Hispanic national groups define themselves and how they are defined by outsiders, in particular by the United States government. Based primarily on personal interviews and a painstaking examination of census data, this monograph is divided into three sections. The first part, “The Fluidity of Race,” illustrates that while mainstream United States society defines race almost exclusively as a biological category, rigid and unchanging, Hispanics retain a Latin American perception of race as constantly regulated through relationships and situational contexts. The second part, “Historical Constructions,” surveys the history of racial categorizing in the United States through an analysis of official census records. The last part, “Race and the Census,” traces the difficulties and contradictions of the racial classification structure used by the United States census bureau during the past twenty years.
Although it displays evidence of careful scholarship and focuses on a topic of immense interest among minority scholars today, that is, ethnic identity, Changing Race is somewhat disappointing. True, Rodríguez does make a convincing argument that Latino self-identity is fluid and constantly changing. She succeeds, too, in clarifying the myriad difficulties United States government agencies have encountered in reflecting the diversity of the disparate Latino communities in this country. Unfortunately, her study lacks a clear focus. Her introduction promises to pursue a variety of objectives, but in the end she is unable to deliver satisfactorily on any of them given the space limitations imposed by this thin volume. Moreover, several of her key interpretations remain problematic. For example, Rodr/guez concludes that the reason that more than 43 percent of Latinos opted for “other race” when asked to indicate their racial identity in the 1990 census—the other possible choices were “white,” “black,” “Asian or Pacific Islander,” and “American Indian” — was because they rejected the notion of race based largely on skin color. In fact, the overwhelming majority of these respondents may well have accepted a genetic definition of race, but being people of mixed racial background (mestizos) they naturally opted for “other race” by default.
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