Latino Politics Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Latino politics refers to the political values, attitudes, and behaviors of the Latin American–origin populations in the United States. This includes how they engage U.S. political, economic, social, and cultural institutions, as well as how these institutions respond to Latinos.

Definition

Latinos (also known as Hispanics) are U.S. residents who have personal or ancestral ties to Latin America. They can descend from the indigenous peoples of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the American southwest as well as from arrivals to the Americas from across the globe, including Europeans, Africans, and Asians. However, the definition typically excludes individuals from non-Spanish-speaking nations, such as Brazil, and there is some debate about whether it should include individuals born in Spain. As this suggests, such categorizations are not always clear, consistent, or compelling.

Furthermore, Latinos include contemporary legal and unauthorized immigrants as well as the long-standing and historically rooted Mexican and Puerto Rican communities, which were incorporated into the United States in the nineteenth century as a result of American territorial expansion. The story becomes even more complex when relatively recent Latin American immigrants—such as Cubans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, and Colombians—are added to the picture.

Therefore, instead of a single Latino group, there are numerous national-origin groups, varying racial and ethnic self-identifications, different legal standings, a variety of expanding regional U.S. contexts, different pathways to incorporation into the polity, and varying receptions and treatments.

It is also important to note that Hispanic, the U.S. census term chosen in 1970 to identify these populations, is rejected by some individuals, activists, and scholars. They argue that Hispanic has conservative ideological implications and overlooks the presence of indigenous groups—although the word Latino poses its own difficulties. However, the Latino public at large uses a variety of panethnic (e.g., Latino, Hispanic) and national-origin group (e.g., Mexican American, Puerto Rican) identifiers, and Latino political organizations similarly use diverse terminology (e.g., Congressional Hispanic Caucus, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Council of La Raza, Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund).

What is most essential to any definition of Latino politics is that it is about politics in the United States. While this may extend to Latin America vis-à-vis foreign policy, migration, and transnationalism, it does not focus on the core issues confronting Latin American polities.

Growth Of Latinos In Political Science

Historically, the academy and political science in particular have shown little interest in Latino politics. The American Political Science Review (APSR) published its first article on what we now call Latinos in 1930, eighty-two years after the end of the United States–Mexico War (1848). More generally, political science has only recently engaged in the serious and sustained study of Latino politics.

This historic disinterest may reflect the fact that the Latino vote was electorally insignificant until the 1960s. Two exceptions were northern New Mexico and south Texas, locations that were not coincidentally the setting for the first two APSR Latino articles.

Another problem was a lack of Latino political scientists for much of the twentieth century. Few Latino scholars therefore were available to critique ill-informed research or to bring fresh perspectives reflective of Latino experiences to the discipline. This changed with the ferment of the 1960s as more Latinos (and non-Latinos) began to research Latino politics.

Before the 1960s, no article on Latino politics was written by a Latino scholar. By the 1990s, approximately half of such articles were written by Latinos, and this growing Latino authorship is evident in the highly ranked journals. In the big three journals, a single Latino authored the four Latino politics articles published before the 1990s. In the decade of the 1990s, by contrast, four of the seven articles in the big three had at least one Latino author.

The above also illustrates that Latino politics research is becoming more prominent in these journals. In addition, several interdisciplinary social science journals and respected but lower-tier political science journals have long served as important research outlets. The pattern is similar with book publishing: the relatively few monographs and edited volumes from the 1970s to 1990s are now joined by a growing number of new books by major presses.

Key Aspects

One of the key political science developments in the twentieth century was the behavioral revolution that began in the 1950s. One can argue that this made the study of Latino politics more difficult. As the discipline increasingly emphasized the analysis of large data sets, scholars were increasingly constrained to study topics for which data were available, and there were almost none on Latinos prior to the 1990s. The path breaking Chicano Survey (1979) was somewhat relevant to political research, but the Latino National Political Survey (1989–1990), the Pew Hispanic Center surveys, and the recently completed Latino National Survey provide today’s political scientists with political data of the highest quality. The availability of these recent surveys parallels the growth in the number of published Latino politics articles and tenured Latino political scientists.

In terms of content, the most researched topic is behavior (voting and participation), followed by public opinion and public policy (immigration was the main interest in the early decades of the field). In addition, the first pan ethnic reference does not appear in a political science article title until 1981, but by the 1990s, many of the articles examine Latinos or Hispanics more generally, as well as specific national origin groups.

This recent increase in publications notwithstanding, one challenge to the field is the distinctively complex character of the subject. This leads to a core question: In light of so much diversity, is the study of Latino politics even possible?

One response is that a sense of panethnicity may emerge over time through political elites, government terminology, Spanish language media, business marketing, and reactions against nativism. In addition, there are several potential components to a Latino-Hispanic research agenda. The first is a literature that better takes into account intra-Latino differences while not fractionalizing into narrow literatures on the various national-origin groups. Second, while the tendency in political science is to study phenomena nationally or at the highest level of aggregation, valuable opportunities to learn about Latinos exist at local levels. Third, more research should compare Latinos and non-Latinos. Fourth, it is essential to examine how immigrants affect Latino politics. Finally, the influence of unions, religious groups, and state institutions could usefully be studied through American political development approaches.

Bibliography:

De la Garza, Rodolfo, Louis DeSipio, F. Chris Garcia, John Garcia, and Angelo Falcon. Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics. Boulder, Colo.:Westview, 1992.
Espino, Rodolfo, David L. Leal, and Kenneth J. Meier, eds. Latino Politics: Identity, Mobilization, and Representation. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007.
Garcia, F. Chris, ed. Latinos and the Political System. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.
Pursuing Power. South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.
Garcia, F. Chris, and Gabriel Sanchez. Hispanics and the U.S. Political System: Moving into the Mainstream. New York: Prentice Hall, 2007.
Hero, Rodney. Latinos and the U.S. Political System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

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