Latino Crossings : Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship

Despite being combined in census data, there are divisions between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in the United States. This study examines how constructions of Latino self and otherness interact with America's white/black racial consciousness.

Despite being lumped together by census data, there are deep divisions between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans living in the United States. Mexicans see Puerto Ricans as deceptive, disagreeable, nervous, rude, violent, and dangerous, while Puerto Ricans see Mexicans as submissive, gullible, naive, and folksy. The distinctly different styles of Spanish each group speaks reinforces racialized class differences. Despite these antagonistic divisions, these two groups do show some form of Latinidad, or a shared sense of Latin American identity. Latino Crossings examines how these constructions of Latino self and otherness interact with America''s dominant white/black racial consciousness. Latino Crossings is a striking piece of scholarship that transcends the usually rigid boundary between Chicano/Mexican and Puerto Rican studies.