ABSTRACT
Latinofuturism in fiction and popular media reveals the presence of Latinxs in imagined future-spaces. Borrowing heavily from the related concept of Afrofuturism, Latinofuturism is a growing but nascent area of creativity concerning Latinxs. Latinofuturism merges two historically marginalized domains of American culture: creative works by and about Latinxs, and genre fiction. The crucial role Latinxs play in agribusiness and other labor-intensive industries that require skilled and unskilled labor. Peter Rivera’s Sleep Dealer imagines a near-future when the United States (US) has militarized the US–Mexico border with drones and remote-controlled automatic weapons, effectively keeping Latinxs out of the country. Worse, a lack of Latinxs in speculative fiction seems to indicate the very sort of invisibility mentioned, the sort of invisibility that occurs when the efforts of Latinxs in areas of society where they are needed but not necessarily seen. If Latinxs are kept from speculative fiction, it indicates that they are already unseen in the present.
