ABSTRACT
When Woody Guthrie penned the original version of Th is Land is Your Land in the 1940s, he did not have in mind a nation peopled with Latinos, nor probably with any other group of color. Utilizing the ideology of Manifest Destiny, the mythical Anglo Saxon Protestant pioneers claimed lands from East to West, regardless of any historic claims held by indigenous, formerly enslaved, colonized or otherwise conquered peoples present since the fi rst explorers touched land in the 1500s. Th e relationship of the United States of the 21st century to Latinos is one that can no longer ignore history. Th e centuries-old mestizo population refreshed with recent immigration has proven resilient despite a pendulum swing between welcome and rejection from the formal government authorities and informal voice of the White majority. Suro (2006) captures it well, “the true character of the Hispanic people can only become clear if you hold these two ideas in focus at the same time: a population of newcomers and a population with a long history in this country” (p. xi). Attempts over the last 200 years to exterminate, push back (over the Rio Grande), disenfranchise, dispossess, and dehumanize Latinos has proven futile. Th e United States has not been able to hold back the swelling of the Brown tide (Rodriguez, 2001). Th e present discourse on illegal immigration oft en is laced with sociocultural prejudices that taint the prospects for a formal and lucid policy covenant that works with the ideas coming from those across multiple sites of the ideological axis. And yet, despite these histrionic, extralegal, and legal eff orts to rid the country of immigrants, work ethic, resilience, robust fertility rates, and the strong cultural strength of la familia sustains their presence and continued arrival. Th ey work amidst the pulling back of resources and the racialized critique of their right to self authoring. Th ere is still an omnipresent dedication to a pluralistic vision of the American tomorrow. From the northwest tip of Oregon, to the red clay hamlets of Georgia and the rocky hills of New England, Latinos are present both geographically and historically as a force to be reckoned with.
