ABSTRACT
Successful desegregation requires more than a series of progressive legal decisions, as critical race theory has argued. Equitable race relations, in fact, have proven elusive both in the United States and in Latin America. Although the historical specifics and resulting public attitudes and practices regarding racial difference vary, both continents have one experience in common: Failure. Structural racism, implicit bias, and white privilege dominate the discussion of contemporary critical race theorists. Beyond race, however, lies the incommensurable difference of gender, an Otherness that historically cuts across privileged and marginalized groups alike. Like children's literature in the United States, works published for Spanish-speaking children in Central and South America before the 1960s revolutionary decade seemed blissfully unaware of the clear sexist tone and subtexts of both the content and illustrations of many of their favorite texts.
