Hispanic Nation

Download or read book Hispanic Nation written by Geoffrey E. Fox and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new ethnic identity is being constructed in the United States: the Hispanic nation. Overcoming age-old racial, regional, and political differences, Americans of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Spanish-language origins are beginning to imagine themselves as a single ethnic community - which by the turn of the century may become the United States' largest and most influential minority. Only in recent years have great numbers of Hispanics begun to consider themselves as related within a single culture. Hispanics are redefining their own images and agendas, shaping a population, and paving wider pathways to power. In the process, they are changing both themselves and the culture, government, and urban habits of the communities around them. In this ground-breaking book, Geoffrey Fox shows how and why Hispanics are changing the United States. Based on interviews, observations, and extensive research, Hispanic Nation examines why such diverse people are imagining themselves as one; the politics of turning a statistical fiction into a social reality; the impact of the Spanish-language media on Hispanics' self-images; ethnic consciousness and political movements (Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement, the Young Lords and La Raza Unida, Puerto Rican and Mexican encounters in the Midwest); controversies surrounding "high" and popular Hispanic/Latino art, music, and literature; and the institutionalization of the movement everywhere - from local school boards to the U.S. Congress.

Download or read book Speaking of Spain written by Antonio Feros and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Momentous changes swept Spain in the fifteenth century. A royal marriage united Castile and Aragon, its two largest kingdoms. The last Muslim emirate on the Iberian Peninsula fell to Spanish Catholic armies. And conquests in the Americas were turning Spain into a great empire. Yet few in this period of flourishing Spanish power could define “Spain” concretely, or say with any confidence who were Spaniards and who were not. Speaking of Spain offers an analysis of the cultural and political forces that transformed Spain’s diverse peoples and polities into a unified nation. Antonio Feros traces evolving ideas of Spanish nationhood and Spanishness in the discourses of educated elites, who debated whether the union of Spain’s kingdoms created a single fatherland (patria) or whether Spain remained a dynastic monarchy comprised of separate nations. If a unified Spain was emerging, was it a pluralistic nation, or did “Spain” represent the imposition of the dominant Castilian culture over the rest? The presence of large communities of individuals with Muslim and Jewish ancestors and the colonization of the New World brought issues of race to the fore as well. A nascent civic concept of Spanish identity clashed with a racialist understanding that Spaniards were necessarily of pure blood and “white,” unlike converted Jews and Muslims, Amerindians, and Africans. Gradually Spaniards settled the most intractable of these disputes. By the time the liberal Constitution of Cádiz (1812) was ratified, consensus held that almost all people born in Spain’s territories, whatever their ethnicity, were Spanish.

Download or read book Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2006-02-23 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given current demographic trends, nearly one in five U.S. residents will be of Hispanic origin by 2025. This major demographic shift and its implications for both the United States and the growing Hispanic population make Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies a most timely book. This report from the National Research Council describes how Hispanics are transforming the country as they disperse geographically. It considers their roles in schools, in the labor market, in the health care system, and in U.S. politics. The book looks carefully at the diverse populations encompassed by the term "Hispanic," representing immigrants and their children and grandchildren from nearly two dozen Spanish-speaking countries. It describes the trajectory of the younger generations and established residents, and it projects long-term trends in population aging, social disparities, and social mobility that have shaped and will shape the Hispanic experience.

Download or read book Hispanics and the Future of America written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2006-02-23 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hispanics and the Future of America presents details of the complex story of a population that varies in many dimensions, including national origin, immigration status, and generation. The papers in this volume draw on a wide variety of data sources to describe the contours of this population, from the perspectives of history, demography, geography, education, family, employment, economic well-being, health, and political engagement. They provide a rich source of information for researchers, policy makers, and others who want to better understand the fast-growing and diverse population that we call "Hispanic." The current period is a critical one for getting a better understanding of how Hispanics are being shaped by the U.S. experience. This will, in turn, affect the United States and the contours of the Hispanic future remain uncertain. The uncertainties include such issues as whether Hispanics, especially immigrants, improve their educational attainment and fluency in English and thereby improve their economic position; whether growing numbers of foreign-born Hispanics become citizens and achieve empowerment at the ballot box and through elected office; whether impending health problems are successfully averted; and whether Hispanics' geographic dispersal accelerates their spatial and social integration. The papers in this volume provide invaluable information to explore these issues.

Download or read book Translation Nation written by Héctor Tobar and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-04-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the smash hit Deep Down Dark, a definitive tour of the Spanish-speaking United States—a parallel nation, 35 million strong, that is changing the very notion of what it means to be an American in unprecedented and unexpected ways. Tobar begins on familiar terrain, in his native Los Angeles, with his family's story, along with that of two brothers of Mexican origin with very different interpretations of Americanismo, or American identity as seen through a Latin American lens—one headed for U.S. citizenship and the other for the wrong side of the law and the south side of the border. But this is just a jumping-off point. Soon we are in Dalton, Georgia, the most Spanish-speaking town in the Deep South, and in Rupert, Idaho, where the most popular radio DJ is known as "El Chupacabras." By the end of the book, we have traveled from the geographical extremes into the heartland, exploring the familiar complexities of Cuban Miami and the brand-new ones of a busy Omaha INS station. Sophisticated, provocative, and deeply human, Translation Nation uncovers the ways that Hispanic Americans are forging new identities, redefining the experience of the American immigrant, and reinventing the American community. It is a book that rises, brilliantly, to meet one of the most profound shifts in American identity.

Download or read book Our Hispanic Roots written by Carlos B. Vega and published by Publishamerica Incorporated. This book was released on 2007-02-01 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hispanic contribution to the making of the United States has been blatantly glossed over by most historians for the past three hundred years, despite the gallant effort of a handful of them who sought to do justice and set the record straight. This misrepresentation of the historical facts has rendered a whole nation to become oblivious to its true beginnings and formation, crippling its character and jeopardizing its future. This book, based on established and undisputed historical records, is a new attempt to bring out the whole truth, to make us realize how this nation really came into being. The making of present-day United States did not begin in 1607, nor was it confined to thirteen unsettled colonies barely occupying a minute portion of a vast continent. We need to set the historical clock back and then forward, from 1513 on through well past 1776, and give due credit to Spain and other Hispanic countries, such as Mexico, for laying down many of the foundations that made us what we are today. We need also to be proud of our Hispanic heritage, and trumpet it with equal fervor and appreciation as we do it with other less deserving ones. It is only then that we would be able to define our character both as a nation and as a people.

Download or read book Latino America written by Matt Barreto and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sometime in April 2014, somewhere in a hospital in California, a Latino child tipped the demographic scales as Latinos displaced non-Hispanic whites as the largest racial/ethnic group in the state. So, one-hundred-sixty-six years after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought the Mexican province of Alta California into the United States, Latinos once again became the largest population in the state. Surprised? Texas will make the same transition sometime before 2020. When that happens, America's two most populous states, carrying the largest number of Electoral College votes, will be Latino. New Mexico is already there. New York, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada are shifting rapidly. Latino populations since 2000 have doubled in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and South Dakota. The US is undergoing a substantial and irreversible shift in its identity. So, too, are the Latinos who make up these populations. Matt Barreto and Gary M. Segura are the country's preeminent experts in the shape, disposition, and mood of Latino America. They show the extent to which Latinos have already transformed the US politically and socially, and how Latino Americans are the most buoyant and dynamic ethnic and racial group, often in quite counterintuitive ways. Latinos' optimism, strength of family, belief in the constructive role of government, and resilience have the imminent potential to reshape the political and partisan landscape for a generation and drive the outcome of elections as soon as 2016.