Reflection Latinx

Cross-Field Effects and Ethnic Classification: The Institutionalization of Hispanic Panethnicity, 1965 to 1990

Author(s): G. Cristina Mora

Source: American Sociological Review , April 2014, Vol. 79, No. 2 (April 2014), pp. 183- 210

Published by: American Sociological Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43187533

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Cross-Field Effects and Ethnic Classification: The Institutionalization of Hispanic Panethnicity, 1965 to 1990

American Sociological Review 2014, Vol. 79(2) 183-210 © American Sociological Association 2014 DOI: 10.1177/0003122413509813

http ://asr. sagepub. com

i)SAGE

G. Cristina Mora®

Abstract

Research on racial/ethnic categorization provides insight on how broad processes, such as migration trends or political shifts, precede the establishment of new categories, but does not detail the struggles and compromises that emerge between state and non-state actors. As a result, we know little about why new census categories are defined in certain ways or how they become legitimated. This article addresses this gap by using an organizational lens to reconstruct how the Hispanic category emerged in the United States. I demonstrate that categories can become institutionalized through a two-stage process as state actors and ethnic entrepreneurs (1) negotiate a classification's definition and (2) work together to popularize the category. I argue that cross-field effects undergird these stages - movements toward developing

a new category within state agencies are reinforced by similar classification efforts occurring among social movement groups and media firms, and vice versa. I identify three organizational mechanisms that sustained these effects in the Hispanic case: the development of boundary- spanning networks between state and non-state actors, the transposition of resources across fields, and the use of analogy and ambiguity as cognitive tools to describe and legitimate the new category. I discuss the theoretical merits of incorporating organizational analysis, especially the concept of cross-field effects, into the study of racial/ethnic classification.

Keywords

Hispanic/Latino, race, ethnicity, classification, organizations

As late as 1969, the U.S. Census Bureau clas- sified Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans, the nation's three largest Latin American groups at the time, as white, effectively lumping their information in with

data on Anglo Americans. A third-generation Mexican American, for example, would be classified in the same category as a person of Irish descent. By the mid-1980s, however, the

Bureau had instituted a new Hispanic category

that sorted persons of Latin American descent

into their own panethnic classification. With the new category, census officials could exam-

ine the differences between Hispanics, whites,

and blacks, and they could make predictions about the future growth of the newly labeled

Hispanic community. How did this shift occur? How did the Hispanic category emerge and become institutionalized? Answering

aUniversity of California-Berkeley

Corresponding Author: G. Cristina Mora, Department of Sociology, University of California-Berkeley, 410 Barrows Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 E-mail: [email protected]

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184 American Sociological Review 79(2)

these queries fills critical gaps in U.S. Hispanic/Latino history and provides an opportunity to advance our understanding of racial and ethnic classification.

Scholars have written much about how cen-

sus categories order social life (Rodriguez 2000; Starr 1987), but we still know little about

how racial and ethnic categories develop. Research shows how demographic processes (Hochschild and Powell 2008), social science trends (Nobles 2000), and political movements

(Schor 2005) influence when census officials will develop categories, yet we know little about why officials label and define classifica-

tions in certain ways. For example, some scholars have argued that during the 1970s, an

increase in Latin American migration (Hattam

2007) and the rise of Mexican American polit-

ical power (Fraga et. al 2009; Garcia 2003) contributed to the development of a Hispanic category, but no one has explained why the Census Bureau ultimately made it into a broad,

panethnic classification rather than a racial one

(see also Choldin 1986). Moreover, we know little about how cen-

sus agencies legitimate new classifications. Census categories are imperfect and often do not adequately reflect individual identities (Starr 1987). Because of these shortcomings, state officials are often accused of imposing artificial categories onto populations (Nobles 2000). Some scholars have suggested that the state responds to these accusations by attach-

ing categories to resources so as to make identifying with them more attractive (Skerry

2000), but the link between resources and categories remains unclear. In addition, we lack an understanding of the role that ethnic

organizations play in promoting and making new census categories seem meaningful (Kertzer and Arel 2002).

Drawing on archival and interview data, I reconstruct the Hispanic case in this article, providing a meso-level, organizational analy- sis that addresses unanswered issues in the

classification literature. I show that categories

such as "Hispanic" emerge from a two-stage process. First, state officials respond to politi-

cal pressure by negotiating a new classification

with ethnic leaders. Second, census officials

and ethnic leaders work together to popularize

and legitimate the new category. These two steps are undergirded by a series of "cross- field effects" (Schneiberg 2002, 2007; see also Minkoff 1995) that occur when census nego- tiations and changes within the Bureau gener-

ate resources that impel ethnic leaders to advance the new category in other fields. In turn, ethnic leaders' efforts help legitimate the Bureau's classification efforts. The result is a

set of dynamic, co-constitutive effects wherein

the move toward developing a classification in

the state arena sparks and accelerates the insti-

tutionalization of that category in the civic and

market arenas, and vice versa.

In effect, this article aims to show how the

tools of organizational analysis, especially the cross-field concept, help explain how new contemporary racial and ethnic categories develop. Put simply, the cross-field concept refers to how organizational change in field A

sparks concurrent, co-constitutive changes in

field B. At the same time, changes in field B lead to changes in A. Applying this concept to the issue of racial and ethnic classification redirects our attention to the meso level and

thus positions categorization as a relational process that unfolds across state and non-state

arenas. In the Hispanic case, the Bureau's development of Hispanic census data, which itself was a negotiated compromise between state officials and ethnic leaders, helped transform Mexican American social move-

ment and media organizations into Hispanic ones. The appearance of Hispanic political claims and media programs, in turn, helped legitimate the Bureau's claim that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and others composed a single community.

The cross-field effects that emerge in clas-

sification processes are not spontaneously generated. Rather, they are anchored by spe- cific organizational mechanisms. I argue that cross-field effects develop as census officials and ethnic leaders form boundary-spanning networks, transpose definitional frames and data across organizational fields, and learn to use ambiguity and analogy as narrative tools

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Mora 185 to describe and legitimate the new category. These practices enable state officials and eth- nic leaders to overcome their initial conflicts

and embark on cooperative projects. Over time a new field emerges in which state actors

and ethnic leaders forge new positions and relationships that reinforce each other's efforts

and help tie the new classification to collective

identity narratives. Indeed, by the late 1980s,

the Census Bureau's Hispanic data experts were working closely with newly labeled "Hispanic political leaders" and "Hispanic marketing analysts" to publicize information about the purported Hispanic community.

HISPANIC PANETHNICITY

Commentators have long suggested that the Hispanic census category emerged from a grassroots identity shift. As Latin American migration increased throughout the 1970s, so the story goes, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans began to iden- tify with one another (Ramos 2003, 2005). However, immigrant population growth by itself does not inevitably lead to panethnicity.

Neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago and New York became more diverse during the late 1970s, but the vast majority of Mexicans,

Cubans, and Puerto Ricans lived in separate ethnic enclaves (Bean and Tienda 1987; Padilla 1985) and developed distinct social and political identities (De La Garza 1992). Cubans, who primarily migrated to Florida as

a professional class, were wealthier and more educated than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans

(Portes and Bach 1985) and often considered themselves racially white (Oboler 1995; Torres 1999). Mexicans, who composed well over 60 percent of the Latin American dias- pora throughout the 1970s, were clustered primarily in the Southwest, where some developed a growing nationalist movement that promoted a "brown" racial category (Navarro 2005). By contrast, Puerto Ricans, who were U.S. citizens by birth and the sec- ond largest Latin American group in the United States at the time, were mainly clus- tered in the Northeast (Torres 1998).

Indeed, differences among the various Latin American ethnicities were so vast that

attempts to unite them in the early 1970s often

failed. For example, a prominent Spanish- speaking political unity conference held in 1971 disintegrated as Puerto Ricans accused Mexicans of trying to impose their agenda on

them, and both groups questioned whether they had anything in common with Cubans (Foley 1971; see also Rosenthal 1971). Dur- ing the same period, former census officials recall conducting focus groups on the East Coast and in the Southwest and finding that Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans did not

identify panethnically: "People didn't even know what Hispanic meant!" recalled one official.1 To be clear, it was not that all Latin

American immigrants felt absolutely no con- nection to a broader community; rather, they

had not yet coalesced into a national move- ment capable of mobilizing subgroups together under a panethnic category.2

RACIAL AND ETHNIC CLASSIFICATION Given the socioeconomic, political, and geo- graphic diversity of Latino subgroups, scholars have turned to the broader literature on racial

and ethnic classification to explain the rise of

the Hispanic census category in the United States. This literature begins from the premise

that census categories are historical constructs

that promote traits such as language, religion,

or even hair type as markers of group distinc-

tion (Barth 1969; Weber 1978). While they may become embraced over time, these cate- gories are nonetheless static representations of

collective identities and may not always be accepted by the individuals to whom they are

designed to refer (Jenkins 2007).

Studies on racial and ethnic categorization generally emphasize the role of either the state or entrepreneurs. Works that focus on the state argue that politicians, census offi- cials, and academics with ties to the state develop categories in response to broader political or social shifts. This literature con- tends that changes in political regimes, the

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186 American Sociological Review 79(2)

rise of certain scientific trends like eugenics,

and changing migration flows all motivate state actors to develop new categories (Kertzer

and Arel 2002; Rodriguez 2000). Hence, much research chalks up the creation of the Hispanic category to "statistical manipula- tions" of census officials (Gimenez 1992:10; see also Goldberg 1997; Idler 2007) and argues that Congress and the Census Bureau created the new category to keep better track

of the increased Latin American migration to

the United States (Hattam 2007). A second strand in the literature stresses

the importance of ethnic entrepreneurship and describes how civic and market actors become

involved in classification politics (Enloe 1986; Horowitz 2000). Eager to capitalize on new categories, ethnic entrepreneurs launch campaigns to seize on political opportunities and persuade state bureaucrats to officially recognize certain groups (Eriksen 2002; Wimmer 2008). The media can also exert an indirect influence on census practices. For example, newspapers in Canada once mounted a successful campaign to get listen- ers to write in a new "Canadian" ethnic cate-

gory on their census forms (Kertzer and Arel

2002). On the civic front, research on the United

States finds that minority group activists became engaged in census deliberations shortly after the onset of the African American

civil rights movement (Choldin 1986; Petersen

1987). The African American struggle created

a political opening and a model for minority groups to organize and make claims on the state (Skrentny 2002), including the Census Bureau. Garcia (2003) notes that Mexican American leaders capitalized on the momen- tum of the civil rights era by joining with congressional allies and pressuring the Bureau

to create a panethnic category that could jus- tify a broader Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban political coalition (Fraga et al. 2009).

While informative, each of these approaches on state, civic, and market actors focuses more on how macro-level events and

strategic campaigns affect classification shifts

and less on the processes through which the

categories themselves come to be defined. These studies suggest that categories are developed in private state meetings, or that ethnic entrepreneurs push the state to adopt already well-defined classifications. Over- looked is the possibility that categories might

arise from negotiations and from what Bourdieu (1985) calls classification strug- gles - conflicts and compromises inherent in any act of categorical definition - between state and non-state actors (see also Boltanski 1987).

Furthermore, the current literature on racial/ethnic classification has yet to explain how census officials promote and legitimate contemporary categories. Espiritu and Omi (2000) show how states might initially face pushback on a new classification that seems foreign or contrived. In response, state offi- cials might develop incentives to entice organ-

izations to accept a new category (Kertzer and

Arel 2002), or they might rely on ethnic entre-

preneurs, including political elites, to help promote a new category (Hirsch 1997). Yet despite this work, it is not clear how these links between the state and ethnic entrepre- neurs are formed, nor how these connections influence the way state agencies define and frame categories over time. A more dynamic,

meso-level framework is therefore necessary,

one that considers how relationships between state and non-state actors lead to the adoption

of certain categories.

ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS AND CROSS-FIELD EFFECTS This article employs the tools of organiza- tional analysis, particularly the cross-field effects concept, to help explain racial and ethnic classification. A key aspect of this approach involves positioning census bureaus within fields, that is, crowded landscapes composed of constituents, competitors, regu- lators, and others who affect an organization's

workings (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977). Within fields, census agen- cies - like other organizations - struggle to appear legitimate and maintain or elevate

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Mora 187 their status vis-à-vis other organizations (Fligstein and McAdam 2012). Moreover, exogenous shocks and endogenous shifts that alter relationships within fields can lead to momentous changes, such as adoption of a new category (Glyn and Lounsbury 2005; Greenwood and Hinings 1996). For example, faced with a sudden protest from minority groups in 1970, the Census Bureau estab- lished civic advisory groups composed of activists and their allies (Choldin 1986; Petersen 1987). These advisory groups not only helped the Bureau develop new classifi- cation and enumeration practices, but also helped the Bureau reestablish legitimacy in the wake of the protest.

Organizational changes stem not only from

developments within a field; they can also emerge from shifts in nearby fields (Sch- neiberg 2007; Schneiberg and Clemens 2006). As mentioned, cross-field effects occur when a

change in one organization sparks co- evolutionary changes in an organization outside

of its field (Schneiberg 2002; see also Minkoff

1995). Social movement organizations, for example, can create unsettled environments that affect the behavior of state or market agen-

cies (Clemens and Cook 1999; King and Soule 2007). In turn, a state or market agency's evo- lution can motivate social movements to restructure their own practices (Clemens 1997). In other words, changes within organi-

zations can have reverberating effects within

and across fields (Fligstein and McAdam 2012; Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury 2012).

I argue that these cross-field effects can undergird the development of new racial and ethnic categories. Specifically, moves within the state field to develop a new classification generate data and other resources that ethnic leaders draw on to advance similar classifica-

tion efforts in other fields. In turn, ethnic leaders' efforts help legitimate and reinforce state practices. In the Hispanic case, cross- field effects emerged across the state, social movement, and media fields. As activists and

media executives joined census advisory committees and took part in negotiations with the Bureau, they began to use Hispanic

census data and incorporate the notion of panethnicity into their own organizational practices. Over time, ethnic leaders' efforts reinforced the work of census officials by validating the practice of lumping Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans together into a single category.

Although the literature on organizations does not touch on the subject of classification

directly, three of its key insights - boundary-

spanning networks, transposition, and ambigu-

ity and analogy - can be applied to show how cross-field effects take hold. "Boundary- spanning networks" refers to the way that organizations, such as the Census Bureau, respond to external shocks by forging links outside of their field (Pfeffer 1973). They can

form advisory boards or reach out to consult-

ants, who in turn persuade the organization to

adopt new practices (Marchington and Vincent

2004). The resultant changes, however, repre-

sent a negotiation between the organization and

its consultant advisory board. Applying the notion of boundary-spanning to racial and eth-

nic categorization, I suggest that the state's decision to adopt a new category, like Hispanic,

reflects a negotiated compromise between bureaucrats and an outside network of advisors.

Whereas the boundary-spanning concept helps explain how state officials develop a new category, the transposition concept illu- minates how negotiations generate data and definitional frames that ethnic leaders can use

strategically. In brief, organizational scholars describe transposition as a process of taking resources and practices from one organization

and incorporating them into another (Djelic 1998; Schneiberg 2007). Transposition can happen across fields; for example, activist groups can incorporate policy frames used by

state agencies into their organizational reper-

toire (Clemens 1997), and market agencies can transpose definitional frames employed by social movement organizations (see Soule 2012). When transposition involving defini- tional frames occurs, organizational actors usually edit the borrowed frames to best suit their organizational goals (Sahlin and Wedlin 2008; see also Strang and Meyer 1993). The

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188 American Sociological Review 79(2)

Hispanic case shows that the transposition of census data and definitional frames was important for institutionalizing the category. Social movement and media leaders trans-

posed census data, incorporating it into their lobbying and marketing efforts, respectively.

In addition, ethnic leaders and state officials shared definitional frames and learned how to

make use of different frames for different audiences.

Finally, the organizations literature high- lights the role of ambiguity and analogy in the

definition and adoption of new categories. The

work on ambiguity primarily examines how "fuzzy" categories fare in comparison to more

well-bounded categories (Hannan, Polos, and Carroll 2007; see also Negro, Koçak, and Hsu 2010). A separate strand of research on anal- ogy examines how firms create links between

new and preexisting categories to make new classifications seem more familiar and accept-

able (Etzion and Ferraro 2010; Haveman, Rao, and Paruchuri 2007). Expanding on the implications of this work, I argue that ambigu-

ity and analogy are complementary cognitive tools supporting the development of new cat-

egories. Ambiguous categories provide flexi- bility, allowing organizations to frame classifications in ways that meet their organi-

zational needs. At the same time, analogies familiarize new categories that are not well defined, thus preventing the category from becoming irrelevant. In the Hispanic case, media executives, state officials, and activists defined panethnicity ambiguously by claiming

that Hispanics were united by a vague com- mon culture, but they also made analogous links between Hispanics and blacks, the sug- gestion being that Hispanics were also an underserved minority population.

Taken together, these mechanisms reveal how cross-field effects can lead to the devel-

opment and widespread adoption of a new racial/ethnic category. Boundary-spanning leads an organization like the Bureau to nego-

tiate with others and to develop a new cate- gory, which ethnic organizations might then transpose. As state and non-state organizations

forge links and develop common interests in a

new category, they develop the same analo- gies and ambiguous descriptions to help con- vey and legitimate the new classification to broader audiences.

The rest of this article applies these organ-

izational insights to the Hispanic case by drawing on information from several archives,

as well as interviews and media reports. Spe- cifically, the analysis is structured around three flagship organizations - the U.S. Cen- sus Bureau, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and Univision Communications Corporation - and shows how these firms adopted the idea of Hispanic panethnicity concurrently. There were certainly other state

and non-state organizations involved in the development of the category, but I focus on these because they were at the center of much

of the decision-making and because they serve as an entry to understanding how cross-

field effects evolved across the state, civic, and market fields. I examine the U.S. Census

Bureau because it is politically central to the collection of demographic data in the United States (Skerry 2000; Starr 1987) and features prominently in the racial classification litera-

ture. I focus on NCLR because it pioneered the notion of Hispanic panethnicity within the

social movement field. Other regional groups used the term "Spanish American" to describe

their constituency (Kaplowitz 2005; Marquez 1993), but NCLR was the first organization to

establish chapters in different regions and recruit a panethnic constituency. Finally, I focus on Univision Communications Corpo- ration, the nation's first Spanish-language tel-

evision network, because it was among the first organizations to develop the notion of a Hispanic consumer market (Rodriguez 1997).

ORGANIZATIONAL ADOPTION OF HISPANIC PANETHNICITY

Early Activism and Census Clashes

Prior to 1970, there were virtually no Hispanic

civic organizations.3 Civic groups did, how- ever, focus on distinct ethnicities or regions.

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Mora 189 Mexican American groups organized Mexican immigrants (Navarro 2005; Quiñones 1990), Puerto Rican organizations mobilized their communities in the Northeast (Melendez 2003; Torres 1998), and Cuban American political efforts were primarily based in Florida (Torres 1999). Thus, when a group of seasoned "Chicano" community leaders received a grant from the Ford Foundation in

1968, they set about creating a similarly spe-

cialized organization for channeling govern- ment grants and other resources to Mexican American communities in the Southwest: the NCLR.4

NCLR soon found that the civil rights struggles of African American organizations overshadowed their efforts. In a board meet-

ing, one founding member summed up this frustration:

Every time [Chicano protestors] walk out in

Albuquerque, we're clouted by something

happening in Selma or Montgomery. . . .

[Chícanos] are invisible to the eyes of pub-

lic officials in this country . . . every time we

have a legitimate set of complaints to present

to city hall, Watts is burning or Rochester is

burning and the federal [government] money [goes] to blacks.5

Others echoed this sentiment. The Commis-

sion on Civil Rights issued a report contend- ing that the high visibility of the African American civil rights movement had "signifi-

cantly overshadowed the advocacy efforts of 'Mexican Americans'" (Rowan 1968:2). And the Council on Foundations reported that whereas black civic groups had received more than 400 contributions from major founda- tions between 1960 and 1970, Mexican American groups had only received about 10 (Sierra 1983). African Americans had inspired Chicanos to mobilize and adopt a language of minority rights, but they also seemed to monopolize public attention and funding (Rendon 1971).

Under these conditions, NCLR decided to follow the lead of more established African

American organizations and developed a

policy and research analysis unit.6 This unit would create reports crafted to raise aware- ness in Washington about Mexican American issues. However, NCLR faced a major obsta- cle - it lacked census data. African American

activist groups could use census data on black employment, for example, to lobby for funds

for job training programs. Mexican American

activists, though, had difficulty adopting this

strategy because the Bureau categorized per- sons of Mexican descent mainly as "white," lumping them in with people of European descent. As a result, NCLR, aided by key congressional allies, joined with other Mexi- can American groups and began demanding that the Bureau separate out Mexican data from the larger Anglo dataset.7

While NCLR was pushing for more nuanced census data, the Bureau was embroiled

in a broader legitimacy crisis concerning minor-

ity undercounts on the 1970 census. Advocacy

groups had filed four lawsuits claiming that African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asians had been drastically undercounted in major cities.8 The issue received national press attention (Baker 1970; Burks 1972; Wall Street Journal 1971), and the Bureau began receiving criticism from Congress,9 big-city mayors,10 and minority advocacy groups across the country. In fact, one account

notes that by the end of 1970, the Bureau had

received more than 1,200 complaints from civic leaders (Baker 1970). The U.S. Com- mission on Civil Rights (1974:99) went so far as to call the Bureau's minority estimates, specifically of Spanish-speaking minorities, "disastrous."

Boundary-Spanning and Negotiations over the Hispanic Census Category

The Nixon administration took heed of the

unprecedented outcry over the undercounting

and replaced the census director, George Brown, with Vincent Barabba, a statistician and Republican Party loyalist (U.S. Census Bureau 1989). Barabba immediately began plans to create a Spanish Origin Advisory Committee (SOAC) and reached out to the

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190 American Sociological Review 79(2) Social Science Research Council in New York

for recommendations. The Council suggested Julian Samora, an NCLR founder and sociol- ogy professor at Notre Dame, who in turn suggested activists connected to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The Council also recommended that Barabba invite Puerto Rican activists who worked for

the City of New York, likely because New York's mayor had been a major critic of the 1970 census effort (Kihiss 1970). Finally, a Cuban American civic leader with ties to the

Spanish-language media in Miami was invited to sit on the committee.11

Barabba's actions raised suspicions among some academics. For most of the twentieth

century, Bureau chiefs had staffed advisory councils with some of the nation's foremost

statisticians and economists (Choldin 1986). Councils staffed by minority activists, some argued, allowed politics to interfere with sci-

ence (Petersen 1987). Despite the criticism, Barabba moved forward with the SOAC, believing these boundary-spanning networks were necessary to restore the Bureau's legiti- macy vis-à-vis Mexican American and Puerto Rican communities (U.S. Census Bureau 1989).

For their part, SOAC members were cer- tainly concerned about the undercount issue, but they also sought to influence the Bureau's

classification practices. The fact that the Bureau had primarily classified all Latin American ethnic groups as white meant that the majority of its published reports detailed

differences between black and white groups. Census officials had developed rubrics to record a person's nativity, such as "Spanish Surname" and "Spanish Origin," but they used them infrequently and only on sample surveys.12 As a result, tract-level decennial census data were useless for Mexican Ameri-

cans and Puerto Ricans, who sought to but- tress their claims with solid demographic evidence. The SOAC thus demanded that the

Bureau find a way to reclassify their groups.

Yet how precisely to classify a person's "Spanish Origin" proved difficult. In the aftermath of the 1930 census, when the

Bureau had used a "Mexican" racial designa- tion that drew criticism (Molina 2010) and produced high levels of respondent error, census officials instituted more objective measures for persons of Latin American descent (Buechley 1961; Winnie 1959). Over the next decades, the Bureau devised a list of Spanish surnames to count the Mexican population of the Southwest and developed a question on Spanish-language usage (Hernandez, Estrada, and Alvirez 1973). The Bureau reasoned that these additions, along with a few general write-in questions about ancestry, yielded the most statistically reliable

responses.13

SOAC members insisted, however, that there be opportunities to identify ethno- nationally on all census forms: for example, as Mexican American or Puerto Rican. Such classification would allow activists to make claims on behalf of their own communities.14

More important, SOAC lobbied for the inclu- sion of an umbrella term (the Bureau pre- ferred the label "Spanish Origin") that could gather ethnic groups together. This umbrella term would provide a catchall "other" cate- gory that included two important constituen-

cies: persons who might not identify with a Latin American country and people of mixed parentage. The first group was especially important for Mexican American activists because it could potentially include descend- ents of persons who had resided in the South-

west for generations but did not readily identify as Mexican or Mexican American, the so-called Spanish, Téjanos, and Hispanos. The second group was important to Puerto Rican and Cuban leaders because cities like

New York and Miami had high numbers of people with a mixed Cuban-Puerto Rican heritage.15

Although it had initially opposed changes to SOAC's approach, the Bureau relented after a series of studies found the ethno-

national subcategories to be reliable (see Her- nandez et al. 1973). Additionally, the Bureau supported the creation of an umbrella term16 because it would allow ethnic data to be aggregated, thus yielding a sample large

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Mora 191 enough to be commensurate with race data. Soon after determining that national subcate-

gories were in fact reliable, the Bureau imple-

mented a Spanish Origin question on its Current Population Surveys and drafted reports about black, white, and Spanish Ori- gin differences.

Nonetheless, the issue of whether people of

Spanish Origin were racially distinct from European Americans was not so easily resolved.

Bureau officials reasoned that most Mexicans,

Cubans, and Puerto Ricans were racially white,

although they acknowledged that some Puerto

Ricans were black.17 This reasoning seemed to âccord with the sentiments of select Mexican

American leaders who had historically lobbied the Bureau for a white Mexican racial classifi-

cation in the Southwest (Kaplowitz 2005). The logic also seemed to accord with how the first

wave of Cuban immigrants identified them- selves (Oboler 1995).

Mexican American and Puerto Rican members of the SOAC, however, contested the Bureau's view and lobbied for a racial

distinction between whites and persons of Latin American descent. Julian Samora, for

example, argued that several Mexicans had "Indian" features and thus simply could not be white.18 Another member suggested that the Bureau create a new "Brown" racial cat-

egory that would apply to Latin Americans.19

Later, when a census pretrial revealed that over a third of Spanish Origin respondents had written in their national origin under the

race question (there was no estimate provided of how many had skipped the question alto- gether), Mexican American and Puerto Rican SOAC members grew more adamant about the race issue. During one meeting in 1977, an SOAC member proclaimed angrily: "The Bureau is calling Spanish Origin people eth- nics while they are calling themselves a race ... in the minds of most Spanish people they

are a race and nationality."20 In effect, SOAC

members argued that persons of Latin Ameri-

can descent simply did not identify with the Bureau's white, black, or Asian racial catego- ries. Importantly, however, SOAC meeting minutes indicate that the few Cubans on the

SOAC were silent on the issue, perhaps because they were largely outnumbered by Mexican and Puerto Rican members.

The Bureau attempted to resolve the con- flict by hiring three anthropologists to study

the question of race and the Spanish Origin. Their reports came back inconclusive. "One study deemed [the Spanish Origin] a separate race, especially if you considered the Mexi- can Americans ... but two others found them

to be white, especially if you considered Cubans in Florida" noted a former census

employee during a later interview.21

The Bureau also tested a race question that included a Spanish Origin category in an Ari- zona pre-census trial. A former Bureau employee, Leobardo Estrada, recalled that the Bureau resisted making Spanish Origin a racial category because it feared the reaction of other minority leaders. Specifically, Estrada tells of a "paper-and-pencil-free" meeting soon after the pre-census trial in which Barabba worried that the number of

Native Americans had dropped significantly because they had checked Spanish Origin. As the meeting progressed, others speculated that this trend could occur in other cities, such

as New York, whose numerous Afro-Puerto

Ricans might check Spanish Origin instead of Black. Some even suggested that the number of Asians in California would drop if Filipi- nos decided to identify as Spanish Origin. These scenarios were troubling because the potential shrinking of minority groups could incur the wrath of their political leaders.22 Indeed, the question of whether the new His-

panic category would decrease the number of self-identified blacks was so contentious that

Barabba met with prominent African Ameri- can leaders to assure them the Bureau had

projected they would remain the nation's largest minority group (Boyarsky 1979).23

Estrada communicated the Bureau's con-

cern to SOAC. Perhaps to show solidarity with other African American groups, or because they knew it would be difficult to convince the Bureau otherwise, the more vocal SOAC members opted to stop pursuing the race issue further. Ultimately, the Spanish

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192 American Sociological Review 79(2)

Origin panethnic category, later renamed Spanish Origin/Hispanic after the Bureau decided that alternative terms like Raza and

Latino seemed less favorable,24 was included

as a distinct ethnic question separate from the

race question. It read:

Is the person of Spanish/Hispanic origin or descent?

No, (not Spanish/Hispanic)

Yes, Mexican, Mexican- Amer., Chicano

Yes, Puerto Rican

Yes, Cuban

Yes, Other Spanish/Hispanic

Technically, this distinct ethnic question was a statistical nightmare. Because most respondents preferred to answer questions affirmatively, census officials soon found that

several respondents not of Latin American descent answered "Yes" to the Hispanic/ Spanish Origin question. Most of these non- Hispanic respondents would check the Mexi- can American subcategory and cross out Mexican. The Bureau was especially alarmed when it found that a significantly large num-

ber of people in the central time zone selected

an experimental Central American subcate- gory it had included on certain forms.25

For all its potential for confusion, the sepa-

rate question nonetheless provided the Bureau

with flexibility. The Bureau could still group Latin American data with Anglo data and compare white racial trends across decades, thus maintaining historical comparability. Additionally, it could treat Latin American subgroup data as Hispanic data and compare it to newly established non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black data.

As the 1980 decennial census drew near, the Bureau planned to include a separate question for Hispanic/Spanish Origin replete with subcategories for ethno-national identifi-

cation. In effect, the new Hispanic classifica- tion emerged in large part as the Bureau responded to pressures from Mexican Ameri- can activists in the social movement field, and the final category materialized through

negotiations with activists on the SOAC. For the Bureau, the new Hispanic question repre- sented an opportunity to establish legitimacy vis-à-vis the Hispanic community after the discord and mistrust caused by the 1970 count. For activists, Hispanic census data would serve as a transposable resource they could eventually use in lobbying for resources to funnel to their communities.

TRANSPOSING THE HISPANIC CATEGORY TO THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT AND MEDIA FIELDS

As negotiations about the Hispanic category were taking place during the 1970s, activists and media executives involved in the process began adopting the idea of Hispanic panethnic-

ity and transforming their own organizations. In

this section, I reveal how census developments

led to changes in NCLR, a social movement organization, and in the primary Spanish- language media organization, Univision.

Hispanic Panethnicity and NCLR

The Bureau's new policies provided critical resources for NCLR and accelerated its tran-

sition into a Hispanic advocacy organization. NCLR had already established a policy analy- sis and research unit in the early 1970s, but this division lacked the data necessary to cre-

ate substantive reports on Mexican Americans.

By 1975, it had become apparent that the Bureau's Spanish Origin classification could help solve NCLR's data shortage. Although the new category grouped Mexican American information in with that of other groups, the

Bureau's new data still provided an opportu- nity for NCLR researchers to make claims on behalf of their minority community.26 By the

late 1970s, NCLR had begun incorporating excerpts from the Bureau's Spanish Origin population reports into its grant proposals and

policy reports and was citing them in con- gressional testimony. Specifically, NCLR drew analogies between the African American

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Mora 193 and Hispanic condition, arguing that Hispanic poverty, unemployment, and education levels were similar to those of blacks. By 1980, these data-based claims had proved success- ful as NCLR saw its funding increase dra- matically (Gantz McKay 1993).

Census data was an important element of the organization's transition, but other critical

factors also helped usher in a new panethnic identity. In 1974, NCLR moved its headquar- ters to Washington, DC, to have better access to state grant-making agencies and to bring the plight of Mexican Americans to the atten-

tion of federal agencies. NCLR officials soon found, however, that Washington discussions about racial inequality centered on black- white differences. Indeed, bureaucrats tended

to view Mexicans as a small, regional con- stituency that merited attention only at the state, and not necessarily the federal, level (U.S. House of Representatives 1975).

The Hispanic census category thus emerged

precisely when NCLR needed to make the case that its constituency was large and mer- ited consideration from both state and federal

governments. NCLR leaders quickly reasoned that by using the term Hispanic, they would be

able to classify Mexicans, and select others, as

part of a national minority group. Shortly after

the Bureau began producing the first reports

on the Spanish Origin/Hispanic category, NCLR leaders argued that Hispanics resided "throughout the nation" and that "Hispanic Americans" were a "national entity deserving of . . . national concern" (Yzaguirre 1978). NCLR soon broadened its reach to embrace

other groups. Shortly after reframing itself as

a Hispanic organization, NCLR courted East Coast Puerto Rican and Cuban organizations, offering them grants and resources in exchange

for becoming NCLR affiliates.27 In 1979, NCLR revised its bylaws to ensure that a minimum number of seats on the board were

reserved for those on the East Coast.28

Surprisingly, NCLR's efforts to court Puerto Rican and Cuban constituents never

generated much discord among the leader- ship. Indeed, 25 years of board meeting min- utes reveal only two instances where members

questioned whether embracing panethnicity would diminish the organization's ability to help Mexican Americans specifically. These objections, however, were never followed by resignations or protests. This lack of discord can be explained by the leadership's recogni- tion that panethnicity was intricately tied to NCLR's ability to make data-based claims and thereby obtain more federal resources for

Mexican Americans. For their part, Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans joined because NCLR affiliation translated to more resources

for their community service projects.29

In the process of becoming a Hispanic organization, NCLR softened its language and redefined its key organizational term, Raza. Consider, for comparison, a combative statement made in 1973 by a former NCLR president, who described La Raza as:

Chicanos [who carry] the imposed burden

of being acquired by conquest. The dead

hand of old conquerors still holds them in

the bony grip of hostile attitudes, ranging

from personal prejudice to institutionalized

racism. . . . They have been contained in the

bleakness of poverty, forced to live in the

blighted centers of urban deterioration and

to accept the shambles of an inferior educa-

tion system.30

By the late 1970s, NCLR had scrubbed its mission statement of all Chicano references

and adopted a new identity that was not defined by cultural or nationalist claims about

oppression and resistance. Rather, the evolv- ing NCLR embraced a more tempered dis- course that described Hispanics as an American minority.31 In a 1982 speech, the president of NCLR stated:

The Hispanic community has some very

clear goals ... we want an end to wage discrimination ... we want to reverse the

high incidence of substandard housing in

our community ... we want equal say in governance . . . but needs and goals are only

one side of the coin, the other side includes

what we are willing to give to the public.

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194 American Sociological Review 79(2)

What we can give [includes] our ability to

inject dollars into [the economy] . . . our

voting strength . . . our productivity . . . and

loyalty to our nation.32

In effect, NCLR exchanged the more nation-

alist language of Chicano oppression and exploitation for a softer discourse that empha-

sized Hispanic contributions to the nation, even

as it bemoaned the structural disadvantages Hispanics faced. Accordingly, NCLR created a new letterhead tagline to help eliminate doubt

about the organization's transformation. The tagline redefined Raza as a panethnic, rather than Chicano, term: "La Raza: The Hispanic People of the New World."33

By the late 1970s, NCLR had fully transi- tioned into a Hispanic organization, even helping the Bureau popularize the Hispanic category in preparation for the 1980 decen- nial census. Throughout 1979, NCLR staged town hall meetings in its communities and distributed Spanish-language pamphlets that introduced the Bureau's new Hispanic label.34 NCLR leaders and organizational affiliates also appeared on Spanish-language television stations across the country to explain the new

category to viewers.35

In short, NCLR's transition into a Hispanic

organization throughout the 1970s occurred in tandem with and in response to changes within the Bureau. New census data was cer-

tainly not the only factor helping the organi-

zation develop a Hispanic platform and portray its constituency as a national one, but

it did play a major role. The availability of census data allowed NCLR to create "His-

panic" reports, which then could be used to lobby and procure grant monies. Indeed, by the late 1980s, NCLR's research division had more than doubled its size, and a significantly

larger portion of the organization's agenda now focused on analyzing census data and writing reports (Gantz McKay 1993).

Hispanic Panethnicity and Univision

As they were working together to promote the

new category throughout the 1970s, both

NCLR and the Census Bureau developed connections with Spanish-language media executives, especially executives associated with Univision. These connections, as well as the availability of Hispanic census data, facil- itated Univision's transition from a Mexican

to a panethnic media firm. The story of Univision begins, however, in the 1960s.

In 1962, a group of Mexican and American producers with extensive ties to Mexican media executives established Univision in the

Southwest.36 Initially, Univision primarily broadcast Mexican sport shows, comedies, and soap operas to audiences in San Antonio and Los Angeles (Valenzuela 1985). To grow, however, Univision needed to attract adver-

tising accounts from large U.S. corporations. This presented the company with two dilem- mas: a regional stigma and a lack of demo- graphic data. Univision's concentration in the Southwest, where most Mexican immigrants lived, made it virtually invisible to U.S. advertising firms. Eduardo Caballero, a for- mer Univision executive, noted that at the

time, the big advertising agencies were all located in New York, and "if [advertisers] on Madison Avenue [New York City] couldn't turn on the television and see [Univision pro-

gramming] . . . then [it] didn't exist to them."37

To remedy this, Univision contacted New York-based, Spanish-language radio entrepre- neurs (who happened to be Cuban) and hired them to help build a small station in the New

York/New Jersey region.38 Additionally, Uni-

vision set about expanding nationally and created stations in Chicago, Miami, and Washington, DC.

The expansion suddenly provided Univi- sion with a new audience composed not only of Mexicans but also of Puerto Ricans and

Cubans. The network adapted by reframing itself as a national, panethnic organization. Whereas executives had earlier stressed that

Univision was focused on attracting viewers with a "Mexican cultural background" (Ross- man 1962), these executives now spoke increasingly about their national, Spanish- speaking audiences (see Rodriguez 1999; Sinclair 1999). Furthermore, the network

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Mora 195 began publishing trade ads arguing that Uni- vision "ha[d] the kind of programming and the credibility to attract Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Hispanics from every country . . . uniting young, getting richer Spanish USA" {Advertising Age 1981).

The second factor inhibiting Univision's growth was the lack of available demographic

data. Such data were important because although advertisers could examine the myr- iad census reports to draw conclusions about a given market, the Bureau's pre- 1 980 "white"

classification of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans,

and Cubans provided little demographic data on Univision's target audience. An early trade

article about Spanish-language media noted that whereas a Puerto Rican was counted as a

Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico, in the United

States this specifying information was lost: "When he reaches the [U.S.] mainland, [the Puerto Rican] vanishes, statistically speak- ing" {Sponsor 1962).

To help remedy the situation, Univision hired marketing agencies to gather employ- ment, income, and consumer information on

Spanish speakers in Univision markets (Guer- nica and Kasperuk 1982). In addition, Univi- sion focused its attention on lobbying for changes in the Census Bureau. Throughout the late 1970s, executives asked the Census Bureau to differentiate Spanish speakers from

whites {Sponsor 1962), 39 and executives attended several public meetings between the Bureau and the SO AC. 40 Univision even led a

coalition of Spanish-language broadcasters in a meeting with Barabba to "discuss the clas- sification and enumeration ... of the Spanish- Speaking population"41 on the 1980 census. Indeed, one former Univision executive would later recount that the rise of the His-

panic census data "changed everything ... it signified that we existed on a national level . . . [the classification] allowed the industry to

expand immensely."42 These connections between Univision and

the Bureau strengthened as the 1980 decen- nial census approached and the Bureau reached out to media executives to help publicize the new Hispanic category. Census

officials even hired Armando Rendon, the owner of a Univision affiliate station, as a consultant. Rendon, who was also a member of NCLR, advised the Bureau on how to build

a Spanish-language census publicity cam- paign. One of his major projects was a Univi- sion census telethon that aired just before the 1980 census count. Rendon recalls:

[The telethon] was an all-day, televised event, with [musical acts] for entertainment

. . . and [volunteers] manning the phones . . .

in case viewers had questions about census

forms. . . . Our main purpose was to publi-

cize the Hispanic [census] question and encourage enumeration. . . . We held up the

[1980] census form and the camera zoomed

in on the Hispanic question.43

Similarly to NCLR, Univision assisted the Bureau in large part because it could use the data to advance its organizational goals. Indeed, Univision incorporated Hispanic cen- sus data into its marketing manuals, which detailed the potential size of the network's market. Yet rather than using census data merely to describe the Hispanic population, Univision used census figures to frame His- panics as a distinct consumer group. A typical

marketing manual would begin with census figures about the burgeoning Hispanic/Spanish-

speaking population and then couple this information with arguments about Hispanic brand loyalty or Hispanics' commitment to family and, by extension, their affinity for household cleaning products (Guernica and Kasperuk 1982). Once media organizations could draw on the new census data for mar-

keting purposes, marketing in Spanish- language television increased significantly (Dávila 2001). Univision's sales increased by 60 percent between 1982 and 1983 (Segal and Sosal 1983).

By 1980, the Univision network had grown

nationally and begun devising plans for a U.S.-produced, Hispanic news and variety programming schedule that brought together

Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Latin American personalities. For example,

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196 American Sociological Review 79(2)

El Show de Cristina , a talk show hosted by a Cuban American, often featured Mexican and

Puerto Rican guests and focused on topics like raising second-generation Hispanic immigrants in the United States (Bergsman 1989). For news programming, Univision created a "generic Spanish" language manual that instructed newscasters to refrain from

using nation-specific colloquiums.44 In addi- tion, a dialect coach helped newscasters mask their accents and speak in what media execu- tives called a nondescript "Walter Cronkite Spanish" (de Uriate 1980).

By 1990, Univision had developed into a strong national network connecting audiences

across the country, but this growth came with

criticism. Disaffected viewers argued that Uni-

vision programming favored one group, usu- ally Mexicans or Cubans, over the rest (Fullerton 1980). Nonetheless, Univision could absorb these critiques because of its sheer mar-

ket dominance. In fact, a rival Spanish- language network did not emerge until 1989.

CRYSTALLIZING THE CATEGORY The Census Bureau, Univision, and NCLR had established several links with one another

by 1980. Figure 1 provides a brief timeline of

these links. These connections persisted even as the organizations underwent radical changes. For example, in 1985 Univision was sold to a U.S. corporation, Hallmark, which in turn faced criticism for being out of touch

with Hispanics. In response, the new Hallmark-led Univision created a Hispanic Advisory Council composed of former elected

officials and civic leaders, including people with ties to NCLR, who could advise the net-

work on programming and serve as a legiti- mating link to the Hispanic community.45

NCLR also benefited from its links to Uni-

vision. As resources from government agen- cies diminished in the early 1980s, NCLR turned its attention to corporations in hopes of

securing charitable contributions. Specifi- cally, NCLR hired Univision-affiliated con- sultants to provide it with contact information

for firms advertising on Univision.46 Media executives taught NCLR how to approach these firms by speaking about Hispanics as a valuable consumer base. Soon after hiring its first media consultant, NCLR sent out a fun- draising letter stating:

Everybody's talking about it . . . THE HISPANIC MARKET ... we urge you to [contribute to NCLR] and build good will

for your product or service. ... A commit-

ment on your part will yield results that will

create a new profit center for you.47

The message was clear: a contribution toward a Hispanic cause would translate into His- panic consumer dollars. NCLR had trans- posed the Hispanic consumer frame from the media field and used it to advance their organ-

izational goals by courting corporate donors. Univision also learned to use the frames

adopted by Hispanic activists. In its interac- tions with the Federal Communications Com-

mission (FCC), for example, Univision argued that Hispanic/Spanish-speaking audiences were an underserved minority group. Station managers often requested that their station licenses be renewed because Spanish speakers were an underserved population whose main source of broadcast news and entertainment

was Univision.48 Additionally, Univision peti-

tioned the FCC for regulatory exemptions in the late 1970s by arguing that the FCC's guidelines compromised the network's ability to provide programming to the underserved, minority, Spanish-speaking population.49

In summary, bureaucrats, media execu- tives, and activists not only formed links with

one another but also transposed and exploited one another's resources and frames. Specifi- cally, Univision transposed census data and incorporated it into their marketing manual, and it borrowed the "underrepresented minor-

ities" frame from Hispanic activist groups in its appeals to regulators. As for activists, they

edited select census data and incorporated them into NCLR policy reports while also learning to depict Hispanics as a consumer market.

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198 American Sociological Review 79(2)

ANALOGY AND AMBIGUITY AS COGNITIVE TOOLS

I have shown how the Hispanic category began to crystallize across various fields, but questions about how organizations communi- cated the notion of panethnicity to broader audiences still remain. For instance, how did stakeholders describe panethnicity so as to make it sound like a collective identity rather

than an artificial government category? By examining the cognitive tools that organiza- tions used to introduce the new concept, we begin to see an answer emerge. In short, orga-

nizations tried to make Hispanic panethnicity

seem less artificial by constructing analogies between panethnicity and race. This tactic was perhaps most evident in Census Bureau reports, which often explained demographic trends among Hispanics by comparing their characteristics to blacks, whites, and "other races" (Hollmann 1990). For example, a 1987 census report noted "the educational attain- ment of Hispanic persons was considerably lower than that for persons of White or Black

races" (Kominski 1988:1). Another report published in 1990 stated the following:

The Hispanic share of the total population,

and the share of all race groups except Whites, increased from July 1, 1980 to July

1, 1988. The proportion of Blacks grew from 11.8 percent in 1980 to 12.3 percent in

1988 . . . while the proportion Hispanic was

8.1 percent. (Hollmann 1990:9)

The Hispanic category had by then become firmly entrenched in census reports, which were used to highlight the characteristics of racial groups in the United States (see Bean and Tienda 1987).

NCLR constructed an analogy between Hispanics and blacks to reinforce the idea that

Hispanics were an underserved minority group in the United States. For example, NCLR reports emphasized that Hispanic edu- cation levels and poverty rates paralleled those of blacks; Hispanic neighborhoods, like black neighborhoods, lacked resources; and

the Hispanic unemployment rate, like the black rate, exceeded that of whites.50 This

analogy played particularly well with federal agencies, because bureaucrats perceived blacks as the nation's most significant and most underrepresented minority group (Skrentny 2002). Univision also endorsed the racial analogy in its discussions with the FCC, proposing that Spanish-language audi- ences were an underrepresented minority.

In effect, these analogies made Hispanic panethnicity seem like a racial classification and ultimately helped make the category feel

more familiar to people who had always iden-

tified along other lines. By depicting Hispan- ics as similar to blacks, Hispanics were able to position themselves as a distinct minority separate from whites. At the same time, how-

ever, the analogy revealed an important dif- ference between the two underserved minority

groups: Hispanics were like blacks but each belonged to a different racial category.

The racial analogy also undergirded the broader cross-field effects of the new cate-

gory. As previously noted, Univision con- vinced the FCC that it was a minority-serving

institution. The argument carried weight only

because civic leaders had already success- fully developed and used the racial frame to press for claims on behalf of an underserved,

Hispanic minority and because the Bureau had written reports comparing Hispanics' liv-

ing conditions to those of blacks and whites.

In addition to the race analogy, organiza- tions also relied on ambiguity to communi- cate the idea of panethnicity. Indeed, none of the organizations ever officially detailed pre-

cisely which ethnic subgroups were consid- ered Hispanic, nor did they clearly state what

made individuals Hispanic. The Bureau, for example, contended that those with Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or "Other Spanish" ori- gin were Hispanic, but the concept of "Other Spanish" origin was never defined.

This ambiguity resulted in a rather expan-

sive definition of panethnicity: most persons of Latin American descent, from the man or woman who had just fled Cuba to the fifth- generation Mexican American, could be

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Mora 199 classified as Hispanic. For example, the Bureau

included a footnote in its Current Population Survey (CPS) reports stating that persons were

"Spanish Origin" if they "self-identified as Hispanic, Spanish-Speaking, Spanish, Latino, or Latin American origin" (Hollmann 1990). The Bureau was even more vague elsewhere. Consider a 1985 census report in which the Bureau described "Hispanics" as a people who "trace [their] roots back five centuries . . . share

a common language . . . and a common herit- age from Spain" (Rendon 1985:1). In effect, this broad definition afforded the Bureau a

statistical group sizable enough to be com- pared to racial groups, while also easing ten- sions between activists and census officials

over who exactly was Hispanic. The Bureau's ambiguous and broad defini-

tion allowed NCLR and Univision to make

claims on behalf of a sizeable constituency. NCLR contended that Hispanics were a large minority group, perhaps even more numerous

than blacks,51 to strengthen their appeal to grant makers. In Univision's case, the ambi- guity allowed the network to group first- generation Hispanics, who were more likely to

speak Spanish and watch its programs, with second-plus Hispanic generations, who likely spoke less Spanish but whose higher incomes supported the network's claims of "Hispanic buying power" (Guernica and Kasperukl982).

Furthermore, NCLR and Univision created

generalized campaigns stressing Hispanic cultural commonalities. This emphasis on culture was effective because it could sub-

sume differences in class, generation, lan- guage ability, and citizenship status within a broader narrative about values and collective

identity. These Hispanic values and experi- ences, however, were never explicitly spelled out and were so vague they could have been applied to almost any collective. NCLR spoke about how Hispanics were family-oriented, hard working, and religious - qualities that, it

was argued, helped them overcome discrimi- nation and adversity.52 Similarly, Univision's Hispanic programs spoke vaguely about how language, the migration experience, and reli- gious values united its viewers (Dávila 2001; Rodriguez 1999).

This ambiguity was strategic and arose partly from resistance encountered by the organizations. Throughout the 1980s, critics contended that the Hispanic category was an artificial construct that unfairly homogenized

the unique differences among Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and others (see Gime- nez 1989, 1992). NCLR, Univision, and the Bureau attempted to protect themselves from

these criticisms by suggesting that Latin Americans shared a historical, communal tie

to Spain and a cultural bond through their common use of the Spanish language. Per- haps suspecting that resistance to the His- panic category was tied to national pride, the>

made it clear that panethnicity was comple- mentary to, rather than mutually exclusive with, national identity. These organizations' emphasized that the big three - Mexicans' Cubans, and Puerto Ricans - were distinct

subcomponents of the Hispanic community. For example, an NCLR article titled "Reflect- ing on Culture" stated:

The specific ethnic composition of [Mexican

Americans], Puerto Ricans and Cubans are

different . . . but they share a common

yearning for ethnic affirmation. Their folk

heroes and types are not the same, yet they

are comparable. Their artistic expression . . .

is varied yet similar. The next step is to make sure that the similarities overshadow

the differences, for only by cultivating a

spirit of community can the greatest cultural

aspirations of Hispanics find fulfillment in a

country in which they are a minority.53

NCLR also attempted to combat criticism by supporting ethnic-specific events, such as the Mexican Independence celebration in Los Angeles and the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York. For its part, Univision catered to national pride by tailoring its local, non- network programming. For example, a typical

weekday lineup in New York would include several hours of national, network program- ming replete with U.S.-based Hispanic shows, along with a few non-network hours of shows

imported from Puerto Rico (Rodriguez 1999). As New York became more diverse throughout

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200 American Sociological Review 79(2)

the 1990s, programming imported from the Dominican Republic and South America was added to Univision's local programming lineup.

Later, another objection to the Hispanic label arose. Some critics took to the press to argue that "Latino" was a better term than Hispanic because the latter seemed to exalt Spanish culture over Latin Americans' indig- enous and African roots (Bernal 1990; Los Angeles Times 1990). NCLR, Univision, and the Bureau responded to this criticism by simply combining the labels and speaking about the "Hispanic/Latino population." NCLR began using Latino as a synonym for Hispanic throughout its reports, and the Bureau eventually relabeled its census cate- gory Hispanic/Latino in 2000.

Aside from helping to blunt criticism, ambiguity ultimately allowed Hispanic organ- izations to maintain their networks with one

another. Stakeholders could transpose census data and cultural frames across fields and

engage in cooperative projects because they all abided by the same vague definition of panethnicity. Consider, hypothetically, if the

Census Bureau had defined Hispanics as per- sons who spoke Spanish. This classification would have created difficulties for NCLR

because many second- and third-generation Mexican Americans were not fluent Spanish speakers (Garcia 1989). Additionally, this nar-

row definition would have posed a problem for Univision because it was these second-

and third-generation Hispanics who wielded higher incomes and strengthened the claim of

Hispanic buying power. By not laying out the

specific, structural qualities that united or divided persons of Latin American descent, the discourse about who or what constituted

the Hispanic category could be supported by civic, state, and media agencies alike.

By 1990, activists, bureaucrats, and media executives had formed links with one another

and developed common tools for populariz- ing the notion of panethnicity. As these organ-

izations transposed census data and frames across fields, they also helped endorse and legitimate different understandings of paneth-

nicity. NCLR's efforts made the notion of a

Hispanic consumer available to emerging Hispanic civic groups, and Univision's efforts did the same for new media firms. A portrait

emerged of Hispanics as minorities, as con- sumers, and as individuals with specific, quantifiable attributes. Although seemingly contradictory, these various depictions of His-

panic panethnicity were nonetheless anchored

by a core, albeit ambiguous, message that Hispanics were ultimately Hispanic because they shared a profound cultural commonality.

DIFFUSION

This article is primarily concerned with the initial stages during which categories become defined and institutionalized across fields.

However, before I discuss the implications of the Hispanic case, it is important to mention how the cross-field effects I identified created

opportunities for other organizations and institutions to adopt the Hispanic category. Indeed, as activists, census officials, and media executives worked together to popular-

ize the Hispanic category, the idea of separat-

ing out Hispanic data quickly spread across state agencies. After consulting with activists

and the Census Bureau, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued Statistical Directive 15 in 1977, 54 which man-

dated that all federal data collection agencies institute a Hispanic category. Equally impor- tant, the notion of distinct Hispanic data spread to scientific sectors. For example, in the late 1970s and 1980s, prominent national surveys, such as the American National Electoral Study and the General Social Survey, instituted Hispanic panethnic mea- sures. Social science researchers also began using Hispanic census data and integrating the Hispanic label into their studies. Notable early works include Joan Moore and Harry Pachon's Hispanics in the United States (1985) and Frank Bean and Marta Tienda's seminal text The Hispanic Population of the United States (1987).

Other civic organizations, several of them with ties to NCLR, also adopted panethnic structures during the mid-1970s. Organizations

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Mora 201 that had initially focused on representing spe-

cific groups, like the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Mexican organization, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Edu- cation Fund, eventually developed a panethnic,

Hispanic component.55 As the Hispanic term became more popular, these organizations and others began filing lawsuits and claims, not on

behalf of particular ethnic groups, but more generally on behalf of Hispanics/Latinos.56 Moreover, organizations in proximate fields also embraced this panethnic turn during the

late 1970s and 1980s, including the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (est. 1979), the Committee for Hispanic Children and Families (est. 1982), and the National His- panic Bar Association (est. 1985).

Within the media field, Telemundo Com-

munications emerged in 1987 as a panethnic Hispanic network. The marketing field grew considerably as people in Univision left to establish marketing agencies, and advertisers paid more attention to the increasing numbers

of Hispanics (Dávila 2001). Additionally, media entrepreneurs with ties to Univision began establishing nationally circulating magazines such as Hispanic Business (est. 1979) and Hispanic Magazine (est. 1986) (Valdes 2002; Valdivia 2010).

Figure 2 charts the founding of listed His-

panic panethnic civic organizations alongside the establishment of listed panethnic maga- zines. To be sure, several variables account

for the establishment of civic organizations and magazines. Nonetheless, the parallel increases are striking. Future research might examine these trends further and analyze whether or how the ratio of ethnic to paneth-

nic publications and civic organizations changed over time.

It is important to note that major cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Miami became more diverse throughout the 1980s, and especially the 1990s, as more immigrants from Central America, the Dominican Repub- lic, and South America settled in the United

States, and as Mexican migration increased and spread to areas beyond the Southwest (Portes and Stepick 1994; Smith 2005). This trend likely buoyed the rise of local-level

panethnic organizations throughout the 1980s

and beyond (Ricourt and Danta 2002), although further research on the links between

demography and local-level panethnic organ- izing during this time period is needed. None-

theless, longer-standing national panethnic organizations, such as NCLR and Univision, could use these new demographic trends to further solidify their arguments about the emergence of a panethnic cultural identity among persons of Latin American descent.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS The period between 1965 and 1990 witnessed the rise of a Hispanic census category in the United States. Boundary-spanning links led to important negotiation and cooperation among the Census Bureau, activists, and media executives. These interactions, in turn,

sparked co-evolutionary changes. After gain- ing firsthand experience with census data and

procedures, NCLR was able to transpose and incorporate Hispanic panethnic census data into its own policy reports and set panethnic organizational goals. As organizations forged links and shared resources, they developed common tools for communicating the idea of Hispanic panethnicity. Over time, a new field of relationships and positions emerged. As state officials, social movement activists, and media firms became mutually invested in upholding the idea of a Hispanic category, they developed new institutional roles and cultural products. Activists began calling themselves experts on Hispanic politics and developed Hispanic political statements and policy agendas. Census officials became Hispanic data analysts and created reports on the Hispanic community. Media executives relabeled themselves as Hispanic marketing consultants and Hispanic media advisors. In their new roles, organizational actors cross- referenced one another's efforts, helping to legitimate the larger notion of Hispanic pan- ethnicity. To wit, Spanish-language news reports often included commentary from activists and census officials on, respectively,

Hispanic politics and Hispanic demographic

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202 American Sociological Review 79(2)

Figure 2. Hispanic Civic Organizations and Magazines, 1970 to 1990 Note: Civic organizations data collected from the Encyclopedia of Associations (1970 to 1990). Magazine data collected from the Standard Periodical Directory (1970 to 1990). Organizations were coded as panethnic if they used the terms Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish-speaking, or if they signaled more than one ethnic group in their description. I included all listed, nationally circulating Spanish- language magazines in this count, unless the periodical's description or title specifically mentioned a single ethnic group.

trends. Consequently, an interactive, socio- cultural structure emerged that was based not

on the efforts of individual organizations but

on a network of overlapping messages, cul- tural products, and roles.

The Hispanic case demonstrates the bene- fits of incorporating insights gleaned from organizational analysis into the literature on racial and ethnic classification. The literature

to date focuses on how macro processes influ-

ence when categories emerge, but it reveals little about how categories are negotiated or how they become popularized across social arenas. By contrast, an organizational analy- sis focus on fields and relationships helps break down the stages of institutionalization and makes explicit how interactive moments can shape how categories are defined and dif-

fused. Indeed, the organizational lens reveals that a first moment of conflict and negotiation

gives way to a second stage of cooperation as state and non-state actors work together to popularize a new classification. Additionally, the organizational approach reveals the spe- cific tools and tactics that state and non-state

actors use to frame and represent categories as collective identities.

Organizational insight prods scholars to rethink how the power to define categories

operates. This power is a variable force rather

than a stable property of either the state or ethnic entrepreneurs. To be sure, the state maintains much symbolic power insofar as it is able to conduct a census (Porter 1996), but an organizational approach suggests the state's ability to define categorical boundaries

fluctuates across historical periods. During moments of unrest, when social movements

aggressively question the state's taxonomies and thereby foment a crisis of legitimacy, the

state might have less power to impose its cat-

egorical definitions. Ethnic media and politi- cal entrepreneurs can then capitalize on political openings and gain a seat at the nego- tiating table.

Additionally, an organizational lens high- lights the interdependent nature of the state's

ability to popularize and promote categories. Traditionally, scholars have assumed that new

classifications are deemed legitimate and become popular simply because the state endorses them (Goldberg 1997; Starr 1987). This might be true in the long run, but contem-

porary states also have to deal with the critical

initial period after a new category is intro- duced to the wider public. The Hispanic case suggests that governments might rely on polit-

ical and media organizations to help them in

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Mora 203 this initial phase. Non-state organizations cre-

ate frames and narratives that depict catego- ries not simply as government constructs but

rather as salient collective identities. In doing

so, they obscure the tactical and bureaucratic origins of racial and ethnic categories, making

it seem as if these categories are natural reflec-

tions of deep-seated group identities.

Future comparative research might expand

on this case study by examining how the capacity to classify varies across historical settings. Do ethnic entrepreneurs only gain the ability to negotiate classifications in dem-

ocratic, post-civil rights settings? The answer

may not be straightforward. For example, research on colonial Ceylon and Malaysia found that state leaders reached out to ethnic

leaders to help develop census categories (Hirschman 1987; Rogers 2004). Moreover, work on the inter-war Soviet Union found

that census officials conferred extensively with local ethnic leaders as they developed ways of measuring and defining different ethnic group classifications (Hirsch 1997).

Further research might also develop organ- izational accounts of Asian and Native Amer-

ican panethnicity, comparing them to the Hispanic case to reveal whether boundary- spanning networks between state officials and

ethnic entrepreneurs exhibit generalizable patterns in the United States. Current research

on these groups notes that census officials, activists, and media executives forged links during the 1970s, but the broad framing of the

Native American and Asian accounts prevents scholars from tracing the effects these net- works had on the institutionalization of panethnic categories (see Cornell 1988; Espiritu 1992). Future comparative research on these cases might reveal, for example, that

census officials negotiated only with activist or media organizations of high status or with

connections to political elites. I have argued that organizational analysis

can help explain the Hispanic case and advance the literature on racial and ethnic

classification more generally, but my study also has implications for research on organiza-

tions. Specifically, the Hispanic case suggests

that analogy and ambiguity compose a com- plementary set of cognitive tools employed in

category construction. Scholars have written about ambiguity and analogy as separate and distinct characteristics of categories, yet the Hispanic case suggests that organizations wield both of these discursive strategies as complementary tools that can mask the short-

comings of a given classification.

On the one hand, organizations define cat-

egories ambiguously because it allows them to manipulate the definition of classifications

to advance certain goals. Indeed, the broad narrative about Hispanic culture allowed activists to develop specialized frames and to borrow and transpose frames from other fields. Activists could claim that Hispanics composed a disadvantaged minority when seeking funding from grant-making agencies.

At the same time, activists could borrow the frame of a Hispanic market from the media field and argue that Hispanics were an up- and-coming consumer group when address- ing corporate sponsors. These otherwise contradictory frames could hang together because state, media, and social movement organizations subscribed to the hazy notion that Hispanics shared a common culture.

On the other hand, stakeholders recog- nized that an overly ambiguous category risked becoming incomprehensible. If His- panics are united by a vague common culture,

who is to say that an Irishman who learns Spanish or acquires an appreciation for salsa music would not also be Hispanic? To lessen the confusion arising from an overly broad definition, organizations used analogies because they placed boundaries on ambigu- ous categories. By stating that Hispanics were

like blacks, for example, stakeholders sug- gested similarities between both categories and made the Hispanic classification seem more familiar. At the same time, the analogy

suggested a boundary; people who fell in the Hispanic category were like blacks, but they were not black themselves because they belonged to a distinct, Hispanic category.57

Further work on comparative racial and ethnic classification might attempt to discern

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204 American Sociological Review 79(2)

the different aspects of analogy and ambigu- ity to uncover whether these tools reveal general patterns about how categories are defined. For example, researchers might find that certain categorical analogies resonate well within the state field but not in the social

movement field, or they might discover that ambiguous narratives are reconfigured over time. Future research might also examine other rhetorical or conceptual tools that com-

plement ambiguity. Work on class categories, for example, suggests that organizations use ideal-types to help define and communicate new categories (Boltanski 1987).

Finally, the Hispanic case provides impor- tant insight into cross-field effects. This term is

generally used to show how organizational changes in one field can spark changes in another (Schneiberg 2007). Scholars have shown that cross-field effects can produce organizational changes and even usher in new organizational forms (see Soule 2012). I have shown that these effects can also lead to the

development of new fields, or new sociocul- tural meaning systems that bring together sym-

bols, positions, and organizations from across different social arenas. Future research might

further explore the issue of cross-field effects

by examining when they lead to short-term organizational changes and when they lead to more transformative changes - to the rise of new categories and plausibility structures, for

example. To speculate, cross-field effects might lead to the widespread institutionaliza-

tion of new categories only when political and

media organizations can both forge dense net- works with census officials. Further research

might also examine the conditions under which

cross-field effects yield only partially institu-

tionalized categories, like the middle-eastern classification in the United States, which do not become full census categories.

In summary, merging organizational insights

into analyses of racial and ethnic classification

can help answer critical, unanswered ques- tions about how categories emerge and how they become popularized across social arenas. By elucidating the meso-level conflicts, nego-

tiations, and forms of cooperation that emerge

during category construction, organizational analysis pushes race and ethnicity scholars to better define the stages and mechanics of racial and ethnic classification. In turn, cases of racial and ethnic classification can shed

light more generally on categorization pro- cesses and on the transformative implications of cross-field effects.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Edward Teiles, Marc Schneiberg,

Paul DiMaggio, Woody Powell, Miguel Centeno, Nicholas

Pedriana, Mara Loveman, David Stark, Heather Haveman,

King-To Yeung, Laura Lopez Sanders, Dina Okamoto, Cybelle Fox, Raka Ray, Irene Bloemraad, Gregoire Mallard, Claudia Sandoval, Jonathan Rosa, and Shannon

Gleeson for commenting on versions of this manuscript.

Notes

1 . Interview with Nampeo McKenney, Racial and Eth- nic Statistics Division of the U.S. Census Bureau,

May 16, 2012.

2. Indeed, messages about Latin American national unity had been around for some time. Independence leaders, such as Simon Bolivar, had advocated in

the early nineteenth century that Latin Americans

shared a common history and desire to shed them-

selves of Spanish imperialism (see Collier 1983).

Ironically, Spanish politicians would later argue

that Latin Americans had adopted Spanish customs

and values and were thus culturally connected to

Spain (Pike 1971).

3. During the late 1930s, the short-lived Congress of

Spanish Speaking People briefly attempted to orga-

nize Mexican Americans (Garcia 1989) and Cubans

(Acuna 2007). To my knowledge, aside from this no

other formal organizations operated panethnically

until the 1970s. Some organizations did describe

themselves as Hispanic, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), but they

did not actively pursue a panethnic structure (Mar-

quez 1993), or the term denoted a subpopulation of

Mexican Americans that emphasized a connection

to Spain (Navarro 2005).

4. Originally, the organization was named the South- west Council of La Raza. See "Council Said Pio-

neer in Self-Development," Agenda, Southwest Council of La Raza, Winter 1972, 1(6):6; records of the National Council of La Raza, Department of

Special Collections, Stanford University (hereafter

NCLR), RG6/S4/B23/F 1 0.

5. Quote by Herman Gallegos as stated in "History of the Southwest Council and the National Council

of La Raza." Board meeting minutes, April 22-24

1977; NCLR/RG1/S1/B1/F15.

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Mora 205 6. Board of Directors meeting minutes, April 1977;

NCLR/RG1/S1/B1/F15.

7. Southwest Council of La Raza, "Addendum to Progress Report," May 1969; NCLR/RG1/B1/F3.

8. Prieto v. S tans, 321 F. Supp. 420 (N.D. Cal. 1970);

Confederación de La Raza Unida et al. vs. George

H. Brown et al., 345 F. Supp. 909 (N.D. Cal. 1972);

Quon v. Stans, 309 F. Supp. 604 (N.D. Cal. 1970); West End Neighborhood Corp. v. Stans, 312 F. Supp. 1066 (D.D.C. 1970).

9. Mexican American activists' main allies were

Edward Roybal (D-CA) and Manael Lujan (D-NM).

Roybal would sponsor a bill in 1977, PL-94311, to ensure federal agencies collected Spanish Ori-

gin data. In an interview, Nampeo McKenney and

Arthur Cresce (employed at the Census Bureau Division of Racial and Ethnic Statistics throughout

the 1970s) contended that PL-9431 1 was developed

well after the Bureau had undergone much of their

negotiations with activists. Moreover, they argued

that the wording of PL-943 1 1 provided little direc-

tion as to how Spanish Origin would be measured and defined; these technical issues were still left to

the Bureau. Interview with McKenney and Cresce,

May 16, 2012.

10. Big-city mayors generally supported the broader

critiques of minority undercounts and chastised the

Bureau for undercounting its residents (see Chicago Tribune 1970; Kihiss 1970; for additional accounts

of criticisms from mayors in Ohio, Illinois, and

Washington, DC, see Baker 1970).

11. See "List of Participants at Meeting of Span- ish American Persons Regarding Preparation for

the 1980 Census," March 1, 1974; Records of the Bureau of the Census, Office of the Director,

Census Advisory Committees, Management Files

1960-1988, National Archives, Washington, DC (hereafter RBC) E.385/RG29/B3. The SOAC's name was later changed to the Census Advisory

Committee on the Spanish Origin Population. The

composition of the SOAC did shift over time, but

overall, it was largely composed of minority activ-

ists or community leaders with ties to academic or

government institutions.

12. The 1970 Spanish Origin question was a precursor

to the 1980 question and asked whether a respon-

dent belonged to one of five subcategories. The

measure came about due to pressure from Mexican American and Puerto Rican activists and their con-

gressional allies. However, the question was only

included on a sample basis and yielded few reports. The racial categories were White, Black, Amer. Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Part

Hawaiian, and Other (see U.S. Senate 1969).

13. Confederación de La Raza Unida vs. George H. Brown Harvey, "Deposition of Conrad Taeuber,"

Washington, DC, December 16, 1971; Harvey M. Choldin Collection, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (hereafter HMC) B 8.

14. Minutes of the Census Advisory Committee on the

Spanish Origin Population for the 1980 Census,

February 17-18, 1977, pg. 43; HMC/B 3.

15. See, for example, the exchange between Dr. Jose Hernandez, Edward Fernandez, and Luz Cuadrado.

Minutes of the Census Advisory Committee on the

Spanish Origin Population for the 1980 Census,

September 25-26, 1975, pgs. 9-13; HMC/B 3.

16. A Spanish Origin category would not be com- pletely new to the government. Prior to 1973, the

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commis- sion (EEOC) had sporadically used the category in

reference to Mexicans and Puerto Ricans (but not

necessarily for Cubans) (see Skrentny 2002). More-

over, Nixon and Congress had instated a short-lived

Cabinet Committee on Opportunities for Spanish

Speaking Persons in 1969 (Graham 1990).

17. Minutes of the Census Advisory Committee on the

Spanish Origin Population for the 1980 Census,

February 17-18, 1977, pg. 25; HMC/B 3.

18. Minutes of the Census Advisory Committee on the

Spanish Origin Population for the 1980 Census,

February 17-18, 1977, pg. 24; HMC/B 3.

19. Statement by Dr. Jose Hernandez. Minutes of the

Census Advisory Committee on the Spanish Origin

Population for the 1980 Census, February 17-18,

1977, pg. 23; HMC/B 3.

20. Statement by Harry Puente-Duany. Minutes of the

Census Advisory Committee on the Spanish Origin

Population for the 1980 Census, June 3, 1977, pg. 31; HMC/B 3.

2 1 . Interview with McKenney, May 1 6, 20 1 2.

22. Interview with Estrada, March 12, 2009.

23. For further insight into the NAACP's apprehension

about whether Hispanics would outnumber blacks, see Letter to Vincent Barabba from Althea Sim-

mons, NAACP, October 9, 1979, VBPC; Letter to

Althea Simmons from Vincent Barabba, Novem-

ber 8, 1979; Vincent Barabba, Personal Collection

(hereafter VBPC).

24. Throughout the mid- 1 970s, census officials also met

with government representatives to discuss labels.

The Bureau insisted on the Spanish Origin label,

but some felt it would have too much of a Span-

ish connotation. Other labels, like Ladino, Latino,

and Latin American, were suggested but were con-

sidered too foreign. The term Raza was thought to

sound too Mexican. The final outcome, Hispanic,

was decided by the OMB. The Bureau received per-

mission to keep Spanish Origin after it agreed to cre-

ate a hyphenated Hispanic/Spanish Origin category. Interview with Estrada, March 12, 2009.

25. Minutes of the Census Advisory Committee on the

Spanish Origin Population for the 1980 Census,

December 8, 1978, pg. 6; Harvey M HMC Papers HMC/B 3.

26. Theoretically, NCLR could have simply used the Mexican subcategory data, but there were several

problems - the main one being that the Bureau did

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206 American Sociological Review 79(2)

not tabulate subgroup data in an accessible manner.

At the time, activists had ready access to reports on

Spanish Origin data but less access to data about

individual groups. Interview with Dan Levine, for-

merly of the Census Bureau's Division of Ethnic

and Racial Statistics, February 9, 2012.

27. Meeting minutes of the Board of Directors, Febru- ary 1979; NCLR/RG1/S1/B10/F 2.

28. Board of Directors meeting minutes, November 1979; Records of NCLR/RG1/S1/B 3/F 5.

29. NCLR chose its affiliates carefully by selecting groups with primarily domestic agendas. It side-

stepped the more prominent groups focused on Puerto

Rican independence and Cuban politics, selecting

instead the smaller, less-funded groups who struggled

to find money for services like job-training programs

and English-language courses (see Sierra 1983).

30. "A Movement Is Born: National Emergence of La Raza," by Henry Santiestevan, Agenda Magazine,

1973, Summer; NCLR/RG6/S 4/B 24/F 6.

31. Board meeting minutes, Dearborn, Michigan, November 1979; NCLR/RG1/S1/B 10/F 2.

32. "Hispanic Corporate Partnerships: Some Observa-

tions and Examples." Speech delivered by Raul Yzaguirre to the first Corporate/Hispanic Partner-

ship Summit on October 23, 1982; NCLR/RG 6/S 2/B 11/F38.

33. Board of Directors, National Council of La Raza records, April 1978; NCLR/RG 1/S1/B2/F 4.

34. Minutes of the Census, ad hoc meeting with persons

of the Spanish community, Bureau of the Census, March 1, 1974; RBC E.385/RG 29/B 3.

35. Interview with Armando Rendon, U.S. Census Bureau Office of Public Relations, 1978 to 1987,

May 20, 2012.

36. Univision was originally established as Spanish International Broadcasting Corporation and later

renamed Spanish International Network/Spanish

International Communications Corporation.

37. Interview with Eduardo Caballero, Former Univi-

sion Vice President of Sales, November 14, 2007.

38. Ibid. 39. This was corroborated in my interview with Cabal-

lero, November 14, 2007. 40. Interview with Caballero, November 14, 2007. The

rosters for the SOAC public meetings show that

Univision personnel or affiliates were present in all

three public meetings.

41. National Association of Spanish Broadcasters News/Noticias, October 1979, Vol. 1 Issue 1; RBC E-443/RG29/ Bl.

42. Interview with Eduardo Caballero, November 14, 2007; see also Dávila 2001.

43 . Interview with Armando Rendon, May 30, 20 1 2.

44. Interview with Gustavo Godoy, May 4, 2008.

45. Board of Directors meeting, October 11, 1986; NCLR/RG 1/S 1/ B8/F 6 (see also Beale 1986).

46. "Endowment/Reserve Fund Report," February 19-21, 1981, Board of Directors meeting minutes; NCLR/RG l/S l/B 4/F 6.

47. Letter to Ms. Goldie Dietel, Vice President, The Equitable Life Insurance Society, May 12, 1980; NCLR Records RG 2/S1/B5/F5, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University.

48. Letter dated March 8, 1977, from Daniel Villan- ueva, KMEX 34 to Vincent J. Mullins, Secretary

of FCC; FCC "KMEX" Files, Federal Communi- cations Commission, Records Office, Washington,

DC (hereafter FCC).

49. See National Representation of TV Stations in National Spot Sales: Requests of Spanish Interna-

tional Network, FCC 78-628, 43 Fed. Reg. 45895; see also Mora 2011.

50. "Publications Guide"; NCLR/RG 2/S 1/B 11 .4/F 6.

51. Board of Directors meeting minutes, November 1979; NCLR, RG 1/S1/B3/F 5.

52. See articles in the "Proyecto Resolana" series, such

as Arturo Morales-Carrion, "Reflecting on Com-

mon Hispanic Roots," Agenda: A Journal of His-

panic Issues, March/ April 1980, pgs. 28-32; NCLR RG 6/S 4/B 25/ F 13.

53. Irizarry, Estelle. 1980. "Reflecting on Culture." Agenda: A Journal of Hispanic Issues July/ August,

pg. 38; NCLR/RG 6/S 4/B 25/F 15. 54. In an interview, Barabba commented that although

OMB and Congress examined the Hispanic catego-

rization issue, it was the Bureau that determined

the category's measures. He noted that the Bureau

was present at all OMB meetings and congressio-

nal hearings on the issue and stated that the "OMB

played more of a coordinating role than a deciding

one ... the politics went on mainly with [SOAC]

and the Bureau" (Barabba, interview, January 24,

2012). Although some have suggested that Statis- tical Directive 15 led the Bureau to consider the

Hispanic category (see Hattam 2007), in reality negotiations at the Bureau had long been underway.

55. Interview with Herman Badillo, former executive

Board Member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense

and Education Fund, March 25, 2010; see also Kaplowitz 2005; Marquez 1993.

56. A LexisNexis search reveals that between 1 970 and

1975, fewer than five lawsuits used panethnic labels

such as Hispanic, Latino, or simply Spanish-speak-

ing. Between 1975 and 1980, that number rose to six, and between 1980 and 1990, the number sky-

rocketed to 53, suggesting that Hispanic panethnic-

ity became institutionalized as a legal category over time.

57. Of course, analogies are imperfect and can create

dilemmas. By the 1990s, Univision and the Census

Bureau, for example, were accused of ignoring the

unique needs of Afro-Latinos (Dávila 2001; Rodri-

guez 2000).

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