ABSTRACT
Preliminaries on latinidad In the U.S. American context, latinidad as a concept for group cultural identity relying on geographical reference emerged in the 1970s. 1 Scholars have questioned the seeming transparency of the term latinidad , which obscures comprehension of the experiences of Latin@s/Hispanics in the United States. They have called attention to the complexities of migratory movements as well as the impasses generated by the casual handling of variants such as, to name a few, conquest, colonialism, race, sexuality, sex, phenotype, class, religion, legal status, nation, territory, language, age, disability, and so on in the conceptualization of latinidad . 2 Simultaneously, aware of the need “to be ever vigilant about the ways that Latino and Latina critics . . . participate in the re-inscription of the boundaries and power differentiations” (Aparicio and ChávezSilverman 11), other intellectuals underscore the need to engage with latinidad ’s “own ideological construction and sustenance” (16) with the aim of problematizing racism, ethnocentrism, classism, religious intolerance, and sexism inherent not only in mainstream Anglo culture but also in traditional Latin American and Latin@/Hispanic cultures. 3 These scholars believe that the complications attached to the question of cohesive latinidad or an unambiguous Latin@/ Hispanic identity can be better understood if linked to the unresolved debates about a unified Latin American identity. Deeply ingrained ideologies of race, gender, religion, sexuality, and limpieza de sangre (purity of blood), which largely can be traced back to the Iberian Peninsula before and around the time of the conquest, still linger and continue to have an impact on Latin American identities that in reality have been profoundly stratified, conflictive, and fractured since the formation of colonial societies in the region. 4
Charting monolithic latinidad South and North of the Rio Grande Referring to Simón Bolivar’s dream of a unified region, Marta Caminero-Santangelo suggests that “the possibility of transnational latinidad ” in opposition to European and U.S. American cultural dominance and political intervention has been “a debate that Latin American intellectuals have themselves waged since the 19th century” (Oboler, qtd. in Caminero-Santangelo 19). Likewise, empire-building agreements such as the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary “effectively constructed all of Latin America, from the point of view of
the United States at least, as a single entity” (18). United latinidad , thus, resonates with a tradition of oppositional resistance and attempts at Latin American solidarity in struggles against European domination as well as U.S. American intervention.
