Expanding Latinidad

Latinas and Latinos/Hispanics constitute the largest and fastest-growing minority in the United States. Constructions of an "illegal" and "disorderly" latinidad are common in public discourse, but the difficulty in pigeonholing Latinos/Hispanics according to binary American racial categories and the allegedly low levels of race conflict in the otherwise politically and socioeconomically convoluted Latin American region have led some intellectuals to hail US latinidad as a revolutionary force that may change the way the United States talks and thinks about race. This volume engages with the idea of latinidad as a redemptive agent and proposes that liberatory latinidad, whether in the United States or Latin America, is not as inherently inclusive or democratic as some suggest. Deeply ingrained ideologies of race, religion, gender, sexuality, and limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) still linger and continue to have an impact on Latino/Hispanic as well as Latin American identities. Expanding Latinidad does not merely focus on the ambivalent impact of U.S. latinidad or Latin American mestizaje/mesti agem on race and ethnic relations; it also addresses how south-to-north migration on the American continent has had positive effects on the way people perceive themselves in their new environment. This collection of essays illustrates how an expanded latinidad, a "latinidad in the flesh," may hold great potential for reimagining the race and ethnic relations of the miscellaneous communities it embraces.