Anthropology essay final

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'1

The Latino Threat CONSTRUCTING IMMIGRANTS, CITIZENS,

AND THE NATION

Leo R. Chavez

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

INTRODUCTION

IN APRIL 2005, volunteers of the Minuteman Project began arriving in Tomb-

stone, Arizona. Mostly men, they came in their trucks, with binoculars and

even guns, ready to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border and to hunt "illegal aliens" attempting to cross the border. Their goal was to focus attention on the federal

government's inability, or lack of desire, to control the flow of unauthorized

border crossers. For about two weeks the Minutemen patrolled the border in

an effort to deter primarily Mexican illegal immigration. With them came the

media, en masse, to record the event and convey it to the world. The media

spectacle in the Arizona desert made the Minuteman Project a household

name. The Minutemen used the media attention to define more sharply the

distinction between "citizens" and "aliens;' to influence public discourse 'on im-

migration, and to push the U.S. House of Representatives to pass draconian

immigration reform proposals, which it did in December of 2005 (HR 4437).

A year later, in the spring of 2006, immigrants and their supporters took

to the streets to demonstrate their opposition to the proposed immigration

legislation (HR 4437). In Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York, Chicago, Atlanta,

and many cities across the nation, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million t'·-

or more, men, women, and children marched, waved flags, carried signs, sang

songs, and made speeches (Figure I.l). But news photographs and television

videos could not depict the magnitude of what had occurred. l

Why did these events capture the nation's attention? Clearly, they were

public performances that had meaning for those who participated in them

and the millions who witnessed them through the media. This book grew

1

2 INTRODUCTION

Figure 1.1. "Convergence at City Hall," by Gina Ferrazi, Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2006, Copyright 2006, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted with permission.

out of my attempt to unpack the meanings of these events. Rather than view-

ing the Minuteman Project and the immigrant marches in isolation, I began

to see them as connected, as part of a larger set of concerns over immigra-

tion, particularly from Mexico and other parts of Latin America; the meaning

of citizenship; and the power of media spectacles in contemporary life, The

Latino Threat Narrative provides the raw material that weaves these concerns

together. The Latino Threat Narrative posits that Latinos are not like previous im-

migrant groups, who ultimately became part of the nation. According to the

assumptions and taken-for-granted "truths" inherent in this narrative, Latinos

are unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming part of the national

community. Rather, they are part of an invading force from south of the border

that is bent on reconquering land that was formerly theirs (the U.S. Southwest)

and destroying the American way of life. Although Mexicans are often the focus

of the Latino Threat Narrative, public discourse, as I elaborate in Chapter 1,

often includes immigration from Latin America in general, as well as U.S.-born

Americans of Latin American descent. Thus, the broader and more inclusive

Latino is used throughout this book while recognizing that Latinos actually

INTRODUCTION 3

vary greatly in terms of their historical backgrounds and success in integrating into u.s. social and economic life.

The contemporary Latino Threat Narrative has its antecedents in U.S.

history: the German language threat, the Catholic threat, the Chinese and

Japanese immigration threats, and the southern and eastern European threat.

In their day, each discourse of threat targeted particular immigrant groups

and their children. Each was pervasive and defined "truths" about the threats

posed by immigrants that, in hindsight, were unjustified or never materialized

in the long run of history. And each of these discourses generated actions,

such as alarmist newspaper stories (the media of the day), anti-immigrant

riots, restrictive immigration laws, forced internments, and acrimonious pub-

lic debates over government policies. In this sense, the Latino Threat Narrative

is part of a grand tradition of alarmist discourse about immigrants and their perceived negative impacts on society.2

However, the Latino Threat Narrative recognizes that Latinos are different

from past immigrants and other ethnic groups in America today. Latinos have been in what is now the United States since the late sixteenth and early seven-

teenth centuries, actually predating the English colonies. Since the Mexican-

American War, immigration from Mexico and other Latin countries has waxed

and waned, building in the early twentieth century, diminishing in the 1930s,

and building again the post-1965 years. These migrations paralleled those of

other immigrant groups. But Mexicans in particular have been represented as

the quintessential "illegal aliens:' which distinguishes them from other immi-

grant groups. Their social identity has been plagued by the mark of illegality, . . which in much public discourse means that they are criminals and thus illegiti-

mate members of society undeserving of social benefits, including citizenship.

Latinos are an alleged threat because of this history and social identity, which

supposedly make their integration difficult and imbue them, particularly Mexi-

cans, with a desire to remain socially apart as they prepare for a reconquest of the U.S. Southwest.

The Latino Threat Narrative is pervasive even when not explicitly men-

tioned. It is the cultural dark matter filling space with taken-for-granted

"truths" in debates over immigration on radio and TV talk shows, in news-

paper editorials, and on Internet blogs. Unquestioned motives and'behavior

attributed to Latino immigrants and their children permeate discussions over

amnesty for undocumented immigrants, employer sanctions, driver's licenses,

prenatal care, education for the children of immigrants, citizenship for "anchor

4 INTRODUCTION

babies" CU.S.-born children with undocumented immigrant parents), and even

organ transplants for immigrants. Although some aspect of the Latino Threat

Narrative can be found in almost any discussion of immigration in contempo-

rary public discourse, what I attempt here is a more systematic elaboration of

this narrative. I will also attempt to contest the basic tenets of this narrative, an aspiration for a cultural critic admittedly not unlike Don Quixote's attacking

windmills.3

In addition, I want to connect the Latino Threat Narrative to what I see as

the contemporary crisis in the meaning of citizenship. The Minuteman Proj-

ect's activities in Arizona in 2005 were about more than drawing attention to

the perils of an uncontrolled border and unauthorized immigration. The Min-

utemen were also decrying what they perceived as the dilution of the rights

and privileges of u.s. citizenship because of massive immigration. The Latino threat is profoundly implicated in the second theme of this book, the contested

terrain of citizenship in a world where national borders are increasinglyperme-

able. What citizenship means in this changing landscape is not clear. But what is

certain is that a legalistic definition of citizenship is not enough. Other mean-

ings of citizenship-economic, social, cultural, and even emotional-are being

presented in debates, marches, and public discourse focused on immigrants,

their children, and the nation. "Citizen" and "noncitizen" are concepts used to imagine and define com-

munity membership. According to Benedict Anderson, members of modern

nations cannot possibly know all their fellow members, and yet "in the minds

of each lives the image of their communion .... It is imagined as a community,

because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail

in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship."4

Anderson eloquently argued the importance of print media in the construc-

tion of "imagined communities" and subjectivities that laid the foundation for

nationalism and modernity.s In a similar vein, Jtirgen Habermas argued that

the public sphere relies on the circulation of print commodities.6 I extend this

thinking to the image-producing industries in order to explore how the media·

help construct the imagined community through representations of both in-

clusion and exclusion.7

Both the Latino Threat Narrative and struggles over the meaning of citi-

zenship pervade media-infused spectacles where immigration or immigrants .,

are the topic. Broadly speaking, events or public performances that receive

an inordinate volume of media attention and public opinion become media

INTRODUCTION 5

spectacles.8 It is difficult to escape media coverage and the incessant "talk"

about immigration.9 Border surveillance, reproduction, fertility levels, fears of

immigrant invasions and reconquests, amnesty programs, economic impacts,

organ transplants, and the alleged inability to assimilate Latino immigrants and

their offspring are all fodder for media attention.

Immigration-related media spectacles force us to reconsider what we mean

by spectacle. Spectacle comes to us from Middle English and is an Anglo-French term with roots in the Latin spectaculum, derived from spectare, to watch, and

specere, to look. In other words, a spectacle is something watched or looked at. It is the object of the viewer's gaze. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

includes. this sense of the word in its definition but adds more connotations: a

spectacle is "something exhibited to view as unusual, notable, or entertaining;

especially an eye-catching or dramatic public display" or "an object of curi-

osity or contempCIO These definitions of spectacle may capture, to a certain extent, what occurred in the immigration marches and other immigration-

related events considered here. However, these events push us to think about

the meaning of spectacles in society and how they help construct subjective

understandings of "citizens" and "noncitizens."

When immigration-related events or issues receive extensive media focus

and become media shows, there is more going on than merely relating the

news. As Guy Debord observed, in modern technological societies, life has be-

come "an immense accumulation of spectacles" and "all that once was directly

lived has become mere representation."Il The images we constantly consume

not only inform us of life around us but also help construct our understand-

ing of events, people, and places in our world. 12 In short, media spectacles are

productive acts that construct knowledge about subjects in our world. This is

particularly the case for how we internalize who we are as a people. How we,

as a nation of diverse people, derive our understanding of who to include in

our imagined community of fellow citizens is a product of many things, not

the least of which is what we glean from the media.13 Debates over iJ.nmigra-

tion, citizenship, and national belonging are informed by the events we witness

through the media's representation of immigrant spectacles, whether they are

promoting concern for the plight of immigrants or anti-immigration events.

How newcomers imagine themselves and are imagined by the larger society

in relation to the nation is mediated through the representations of immigrants'

lives in media coverage. Media spectacles transform immigrants' lives into vir-

tuallives, which are typically devoid of the nuances and subtleties of real lived

6 INTRODUCTION

lives (see Chapter 1) .14 It is in this sense that the media spectacle transforms a

"worldview"-that is, a taken-for-granted understanding of the world-into

an objective force, one that is taken as "truth:'IS In their coverage of immigra-

tion events, the media give voice to commentators, pundits, informed sources,

and man-on-the-street observers who often invoke one or more of the myriad

truths in the Latino Threat Narrative to support arguments and justify actions.

In this way, media spectacles objectify Latinos. Through objectification (the

process of turning a person into a thing) people are dehumanized, and once

that is accomplished, it is easier to lack empathy for those objects and to pass

policies and laws to govern their behavior, limit their social integration, and ob-

struct their economic mobility. Portraying Latinos as objects or things makes it

easier to see immigrant marchers as a chaotic mass rather than as people strug-

gling to be recognized as contributing members of us. society (Chapter 7), or Latinas represented in advertisements as beer bottles, literally things, rather

than human beings (Chapter 3). Through its coverage of events, the media produce knowledge about, and

help construct, those considered legitimate members of society as well as those viewed as less legitimate, marginalized, and stigmatized Others.16 Thus media

spectacles-such as those that occurred around the organ transplants for non-

citizens, Minuteman Project activities, and immigrant marches examined in the chapters that follow-help define what it means to be a "citizen," a task

that can be undertaken only by also defining its contrasting concepts: "alien;'

"illegal alien;' "foreigner;' and "immigrant:' Where do Latinos stand in relation

to these concepts? AreLatino immigrants worthy of the rights and benefits of

citizenship if they are supposedly unwilling to integrate into US. society? Are

Latinos who were born in the United States suspect as citizens because of the

disloyalty to the nation implied by the Latino Threat Narrative? The very act

of asking such a question casts US.-born Latinos as "alien-citizens;' perpetual

foreigners despite their birthright. 17 Before proceeding, we need to clarify the context within which the Latino

Threat Narrative gains tremendous currency and which has provoked a crisis

over the meaning of citizenship. Adding to this necessary contextualization is

a brief overview of recent legislation to control immigration. Debates over im-

migration reform provide ample opportunities for the Latino Threat Narrative to become invoked. In addition, immigration reform legislation is an exercise .~.

in inclusion and exclusion when it comes to defining who is legitimately able to

join the community of citizens.

INTRODUCTION 7

IMMIGRATION AND THE NATION

The number of immigrants to the United States has been growing steadily

since 1960 (Figure 1.2). The proportion of foreign-born in the US. in 2005 was

12.4 percent, which is approaching the historic high of 14.7 percent foreign-

born in 1910, during the peak years of immigration during the early twenti-

eth century. IS Estimates of undocumented immigrants currently living in the

country range from 10 to 12 million, with most coming from Mexico (57 per-

cent) and other Latin American countries (23 percent).19 These trends have led

to public concerns over immigration and legislative proposals to reform the

nation's immigration laws.20

TheUS. Congress seems to be on a ten-year cycle for taking up major immi-

gration reform legislation. After passage of the monumental 1965 immigration

law, President Jimmy Carter, in the 1970s, floated the possibility of an amnesty

for undocumented immigrants and sanctions for employers who hired undoc-

umented workers, neither of which gained much political ground at the time.21

Almost a decade later, Congress passed, and President Ronald Reagan signed

into law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). The major

provisions were sanctions for employers who hired undocumented immi-

grants and an amnesty program for over a million undocumented immigrants.

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o 1=1·,11·,·11> II'" II nil II., "II II II' II" II ·11 II II Ii' 11.11 1820s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 1900s lOs 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 2000

Figure 1.2. Immigration to the United States by decade, 1820-2000. SOURCE: 2004 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (Department of Homeland Security, 2006).

8 INTRODUCTION

Although touted as legislation to end undocumented immigration, IRCA was

relatively ineffective.

The Immigration Act of 1990 made some adjustments to immigration law,

such as increasing from 500,000 to 700,000 the number of legal immigrants

allowed into the United States each year. It also created a lottery program for

visas to help lure immigrants from countries that had not been part of recent

immigration flows, especially countries in Europe. But major immigration re-

form came six years later.

In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and

Immigrant Responsibility Act. This law toughened the requirements for un-

documented immigrants to adjust their status to that of a legal immigrant

and streamlined the judicial process by turning deportation decisions over

to an immigration court, thus reducing the levels of judicial review open

to immigrants. It also streamlined the deportation of criminals and wid-

ened the range of deportable offenses. Among the changes to the nation's

immigration law included in this act was a provision making immigrants'

sponsors responsible for public benefits used by immigrants. This provision,

according to Sarita Mohanty et al., "created confusion about eligibility and

appeared to lead even eligible immigrants to believe that they should avoid

public programs!'22

It should be noted that Congress also passed welfare reform in 1996 that

also targeted immigrants. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity

Reconciliation Act of 1996 ended the federal government's sixty-one-year com-

mitment to provide cash assistance to every eligible poor family with children.23

This law was expected to save the government $54 billion over the following six

years, with nearly half of those savings, or $24 billion, to come from restrict-

ing legal immigrants' use of food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and

aid for low-income elderly, the blind, and the disabled. Legal immigrants were

barred from using Medicaid for five years after their entry.24 Undocumented

immigrants, who already were denied virtually all federal assistance, continued

to be barred from assistance except for short-term disaster relief and emer-

gency medical care. Benefits, however, were soon restored to some at-risk pop-

ulations, especially the elderly.25

On December 15,2005, the House of Representatives passed HR 4437, the

Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act.26 The ~

bill represented yet another expression of the "get tough" attitude toward un-

documented immigration.27 Among its many provisions were more border

INTRODUCTION 9

fences and surveillance technology, increased detention provisions, employer

verification of employees' work eligibility, and increases in the penalties for

knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants. Moreover, it would have made

living in the country as an undocumented immigrant a felony, thus removing

any hope of becoming a legal immigrant. The bill also broadened the nation's

immigrant-smuggling law so that people who assisted or shielded illegal im-

migrants living in the country would be subject to prosecution. Offenders, who

, might include priests, nurses, social workers, or doctors, could face up to five

years in prison, and authorities would be allowed to seize some of their assets.

The House's bill was clearly an exercise of exclusion, whereas the immigrant

marches i,t generated were public displays of a desire for inclusion. The U.S. Senate, in May 2006, passed its own version of immigration reform

that included a guest worker program for immigrants and a legalization pro-

gram, a "path to citizenship:' for some undocumented immigrants. Importantly,

many of the draconian measures in the House bill mayor may not become part

of a final version of immigration reform promulgated under the George W.

Bush administration, but the willingness of the House of Representatives to

pass such measures sent a clear message to undocumented immigrants about their stigmatized status in the United States.28

Through the media, politicians desiring to restrict immigration have been

able to represent undocumented immigrants as undeserving criminals and pos-

sible terrorists. Sometimes it seems that the spectacle surrounding immigration

reform is more important than enacting new laws. For example, rather than

arriving at a compromise bill on immigration, the House of Represen'tatives

sponsored more than twenty public meetings throughout the nation to discriss

immigration reform, in what one newspaper editorial called the "endless sum-

mer" of 2006.29 After that round of immigration reform failed to result in a new

law, Congress, with President Bush's support, again took up immigration in May 2007, where it met a similar fate. 3D

Immigration reform laws and the politics surrounding reform proposals

frame the public discourse over immigration. If the decibel levels in the debate

are sometimes high, it is because the stakes are too. Who we let into the nation

as immigrants and allow to become citizens defines who we are as a people.

Conversely, looking at who we ban from entry, or for whom we create 6bstacles

to integration into society and to membership in the community of citizens,

also reveals how we imagine ourselves as a nation-that is, as a group of people with intertwined destinies despite our differences.

:10 INTRODUCTION

CONCEPTUALIZING CITIZENS AND NONCITIZENS

The Latino Threat Narrative, immigration patterns, and the contemporary cri-

sis over the meaning of citizenship are a triple helix of mutual influences.31

However, what is meant by citizen-who is eligible for citizenship, and who

qualifies for the rights and benefits of citizenship-has always been a matter

of contention, at least in U.S. historyY Consider the types of questions sur-

rounding citizenship that were debated early in this nation's history: All men

may be created equal, but are they equally eligible for citizenship?33 Should

only white males with property have the privileges of citizenship? What about

women, slaves (three-fifths of a person for enumeration purposes), and Na-

tive Americans? Not all immigrants were deemed eligible for citizenship. Asians

were ineligible during much of the twentieth century.34 Historically, the poor,

unmarried single women, whose morality was thus questionable, and the sick

and infirm were deniable as immigrants and thus also ineligible for citizen- ship.35 The legacies of these issues continue to be found in contemporary im-

migration policies.

The intertwined logics of race and national hierarchies based on theories of

social evolution framed struggles over definitions of citizenship and immigrant

desirability during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 36 Although

race continues in importance, the crisis over citizenship in to day's world has

moved to a different register, one complicated by globalization-a term that re-

fers to how the world and its people are increasingly becoming integrated into

one giant capitalist system. The spread of world capitalism also carries with it a

spread of Western-often American-culture. Anyone who travels notices how

common American fast-food restaurants have become in the world, a process

sometimes referred to as the McDonaldization of the society.37 But globaliza-

tion is more than the movement of capital and the search for cheap labor. It is

also about the movement of people, ideas, material culture, and commodities

(e.g., movies, music, "traditional" Chinese medicine), and a whole host of flows

unmoored from fixed nation-states.38

Globalization has led to questions about the rights and privileges of citizen-

ship and whether citizenship extends beyond the limits of the nation-state.39

Indeed, the proliferation of types of citizenships now under consideration is an

indication of the current crisis surrounding the meaning of citizenship. Some

argue that there are "economic citizens;' who through their labor contribute

to the well-being of society.40 Others argue for transnational citizenship, post-

national citizenship, transmigrant citizenship, transborder citizenship, and

INTRODUCTION :1:1

flexible citizenship, each of which recognizes that migrants often maintain lives

that extend across the borders of nation-statesY Then there are "denizens,"

legal residents of a country who are not naturalized citizens but enjoy some

economic and political rightsY Victoria Bernal observes that an "emotional

citizenship" emerges through the use of the Internet by the widely dispersed

Eritrean refugees. 43 Others point to social inequalities that create a segmented

citizenship, as some members of society are more valued than others, who

often become stigmatized.44 Some also argue that immigrants and minorities

are engaged in a struggle for cultural citizenship, reflecting their claims for in- clusion in society.45

Whilt, then, do we mean by citizenship? As a key concept in American cul- ture, citizenship can, and does, have many meanings.46 It can range from the

notion of being a "good citizen;' implying responsible membership in a so-

cial group, to strict legal definitions of rights and privileges. Incorporating im-

migrants into society entails a transformation from "other" to "us:' However,

becoming part of the "us," or to be included as part of the "we," as in "we the

people;' is a contested process partly because it is not clear what this process

entailsY Meanings of such seemingly concrete and objective terms as "citizen"

and "citizenship" fluctuate over time and place. And immigration always com-

plicates the notion of citizenship.48 Should immigrants and their children be

included as citizens? Under what conditions should they be included in the

national body? How we answer these questions depends on the way we perceive

immigrants, which in turn is often based on what we know of them through

their "virtual" lives, which are constructed through media representations.49

The problem is that real lives of immigrants and their children may not! cor-

respond to their media-constructed virtual lives, as Chapter 2 suggests.

In a thorough review of the literature, Linda Bosniak found that there are

four distinct understandings of citizenship: as legal status; as rights; as political activity; and as a form of collective identity and sentiment. 50 It is from the last of

these definitions of citizenship that issues of cultural citizenship emerge. These

four elements of citizenship find their analogues in the public debates and

events focused on immigration, whether the actors are immigrants themselves

or those posturing for restrictive immigration policies and greater surveillance

of borders. Through the interplay of these four elements in daily dis'course, the

media, and governmental policies, we construct and define "citizens" in con-

trast to "noncitizen" subjects, as well as put pressure on society to broaden the

definition of citizenship (the immigrants' and their supporters' agenda).

12 INTRODUCTION

Citizenship as legal Status Simply put, for many, citizenship is about legal recognition. In this sense, citi-

zenship refers to formal membership in an organized political community. 51

But, as Bosniak observes, problems arise over defining who is entitled to ac-

quire citizenship, and deciding where to draw the line between citizens and

"aliens" when it comes to allocating rights and privileges (voting, education,

health care, driver's licenses, etc.).52 For the millions of undocumented im-

migrants in the United States, as well as other countries, the lack of a formal

legal status becomes a salient factor in this framing of citizenship. 53 Moreover,

collapsing a lack of legal status with criminality adds another justification

for denying undocumented immigrants legal recognition or amnesty, which

would, the argument goes, be tantamount to rewarding criminals with a path

to citizenship.

Citizenship as Rights For many, especially anti-immigration groups such as the Minuteman Proj-

ect, citizenship is also about rights, privileges, and responsibilities. What dis-

tinguishes citizens from aliens are precisely the rights and privileges reserved

for citizens. However, immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, also

have rights in many nations, including the United States, where the Consti-

tution speaks of "persons;' not citizens, when describing inalienable rights. 54

Consequently, immigrants have enjoyed rights to juridical due process, fair

labor standards and practices, education, emergency medical care, and more. 55

Complicating this issue further are claims to basic human rights or rights based

on universal or extranational agreements, such as the United Nations' Universal

Declaration of Human Rights. 56

Rights accorded to immigrants put pressure on the concept of citizenship,

extending it beyond a narrow legal definition to include economic and cul-

tural rights as part of the conceptualization of citizenship.57 However, since

rights are part of a process of defining citizens and aliens, affording rights to

immigrants can reflect, for some, a dilution of citizenship, reducing its value

in a calculus of privileges. 58 Not surprisingly, anti-immigrant discourse and

actions are often framed around rights and privileges-that is, reducing the

rights and privileges afforded to immigrants, an idea that has found its place

in immigration policy. For example, the 1996 immigration law made it more

difficult to become a legal resident, broadened the criteria for deportation even

for permanent legal residents,59 and lessened opportunities for due process in

INTRODUCTION 13

deportation cases. The 1996 welfare law removed immigrants from eligibil-

ity for many social services. In addition, there are persistent calls to deny un-

documented children access to public education, to deny citizenship to the

U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, and to deny public housing

and medical care to undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants

are refused driver's licenses in many states. In effect, these policies redefine

the value of citizenship by reducing the rights and privileges accorded to im-

migrants. The controversy over organ transplants for immigrants, especially

those illegally in the country, is particularly revealing of the battle over citizen-

ship rights and privileges and is examined in Chapter 5.

Citizenship· as Political Activity

Regarding citizenship as political activity is common among political theorists

going back to Aristotle, and its meaning in this sense refers to "active engage-

ment in the life of the political community:'60 But what is the meaning of "com-

munity?" Is the political activity of citizens possible only within the confines

of the nation-state? Or has globalization produced new forms of citizenship to

include political organizations and activities that traverse national boundar-

ies? It is here that pressures to expand notions of citizenship come into play,

with new forms of global citizenship and transnational citizenship becoming

part of political discourse. 61 As the sites of citizenship expand, there has been a

rejection of the state as the only site of citizen participation and a move toward

a more pluralistic view of citizenship located in the groups and communi-

ties where people live.62 As Bosniak noted, these alternative sites of citizenship t'

practices have increasingly been considered as part of "civil society."63 This neyv

conception of citizenship provides an opening for immigrant practices of citi-

zenship. Immigrants, even the undocumented, engage in political coalitions,

movements, mobilizations, and other practices that would constitute political

citizenship in their communities.64

Nina Glick Schiller has argued that this opening up of citizenship has led

scholars to distinguish between political citizenship and social citizenship.65

Claims of social citizenship occur through social practice rather than law,

"when people make claims to belong to a state through collectively organiz-

ing to protect themselves against discrimination, or receive rights and penefits

from a state, or make contributions to the development of a state and the life

of people within it."66 Citizenship as social practice is different from a more

cultural or identity-based approach to citizenship.

:1.4 INTRODUCTION

Citizenship as Identity/Solidarity

Understanding citizenship as based in identity and solidarity recognizes that

subjective experiences color how people understand the concept of citizenship.

The practices of natives and immigrants alike produce citizen-subjects who

have affective ties of identification and solidarity with social groups maintained

through direct contact or merely imagined as communities.67 Feelings of citi-

zenship, belonging, and social integration can extend from the very local to the

transnational. Such sentiments are not entirely determined by legal definitions

of citizenship or by the borders of nation-states.6s As Susan Coutin has noted,

feelings of belonging arise despite the "legal nonexistence" of undocumented

immigrants.69 In other words, to feel part of a community is determined not

solely by immigration status but also by sentiments influenced by social rela-

tionships and cultural beliefs and practices.70

It is within this sense of citizenship that claims for cultural citizenship be-

come grounded in experiences and subject-making.?! Flores and Benmayor

define cultural citizenship as the result of a broad range of activities that dis-

advantaged groups use to claim space and rights in society.72 More specifically,

Rosaldo and Flores define cultural citizenship as "the right to be different with

respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compro-

mising one's right to belong:'73 The immigrant marches during the spring of

2006 were instances of claims for cultural citizenship. Immigrants, if only for a

brief time, claimed the "town square" as a place for their public performances

of civic participation and cultural citizenship.74

However, Rosaldo and Flores's definition of cultural citizenship, as claim-

ing the right to be different, may not be enough.75 Feelings of belonging and

desire for inclusion in the social body exist in a dialectical relationship with the

larger society and the state, which mayor may not find such claims for cultural

citizenship convincing. In this sense, cultural citizenship as subject-making is

not a unilateral act, as Ong argues when she refers to it "as a dual process of self-

making and being made within webs of power linked to the nation-state and

civil society." She adds, "Becoming a citizen depends on how one is constituted

as a subject who exercises or submits to power relations."76

Ong's emphasis on the nation-state's role in defining cultural citizens builds

on Michel Foucault's observations on governmentality.77 Foucault argues that

subjects are created through the modern regimes and practices of governance,

such as inscription, inspection, registration, statistics, and, in this case, restric-

tions on immigration and citizenship.78 For Ong, the nation-state, through a

INTRODUCTION :1.5

process of individuation, constructs people in specific ways as citizens, so that

one can speak of citizen taxpayers, consumers, and welfare dependents.79 The practices of governance also define the noncitizen. so

In addition to the state, civil society also plays a role in disciplining immi- grants with proper normative behavior and constructing their identity. SI For

example, the many groups organized around the politics of restricting immi-

gration are constantly engaged in individuating different types of immigrants

,from citizens, defining citizenship, and limiting immigrants' claims to cultural

citizenship.s2 A way to challenge citizenship claims is through discourse that

calls into question a group's loyalty to the nation, danger to the nation, and

legitimate ,claims to membership in the nation. The Latino Threat Narrative is such a discourse.

As this discussion suggests, citizen and citizenship have various meanings

that move us away from overreliance on legalistic definitions. Citizenship as

social participation and as subjective understandings of cultural identity also

must be taken into account when trying to understand notions of belonging

in today's world. The objective here is to explore these questions in various

sites where issues of immigration and citizenship have become contested ter-

rain. Of interest are such seemingly disparate subjects as the Minutemen in

Arizona, immigrant marches, Latina reproduction, and organ transplants. All

of these subjects raise serious debate over who is a legitimate member of soci-

ety and deserving of the rights and privileges of citizenship. Importantly, the

Latino Threat Narrative pervades these sites of contestation over belonging to the nation. I

OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS

Part 1 examines the development, over the last forty years or so, of a set of

taken-for-granted assumptions or "truths" about Latin American, mainly Mexi-

can, immigrants and their offspring. This first part takes an admittedly empiri-

cal approach because sometimes critiquing discourse is not enough; at ,times

counterevidence must be brought to bear on the truth claims being put fotward

in the Latino Threat Narrative. However, I pursue this cultural criticism, know-

ing that it is difficult to destroy myths that have developed over a long time and

in some respects go back to the nineteenth century.S3 Such myths have 6rganic-

like lives of their own.S4 Once given birth, they grow and take on ever more

elaborate and refined characteristics until they are able to stand on their own as taken-for-granted "truths:'

:1.6 INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 focuses on how popular discourse and the media represent Lati-

nos as an invading force that is conspiring, in Quebec-like fashion, to reconquer

the u.s. Southwest. Moreover, Latinos, according to this discourse, are unable, or unwilling, to learn English and generally integrate into U.S. society. These

representations constitute the "virtual" lives of immigrants and their imagined

threats to the nation. The Latino Threat Narrative underlies much of the public

debate over immigration and immigration policy, as well as the struggle over

citizenship examined in subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 moves to a different register, one that interrogates the veracity

of various premises of the Latino Threat Narrative. According to the narrative,

Mexicans (and other Latin American immigrants are often lumped with Mexi-

cans here) are unable or unwilling to integrate into U.S. society, preferring to

remain linguistically and socially isolated, and, in the narrative's more sinister

renditions, they and their offspring are part of a conspiracy to take over the

southwestern United States. I examine these issues, using data on immigrants

and the children of immigrants in Orange County, California.

Chapter 3 looks at reproduction and fertility as sites of political debate over

the nation and citizenship. In the Latino Threat Narrative, Latina fertility is

represented as a threat to the nation, and Latinas and their children are a key

component of the reconquest hypothesis. Issues range from population explo-

sions to birthright citizenship, but at the core of the politics of reproduction are

representations of the "hot" Latina and her "out-of-control" fertility. Latinas

are represented as locked into a cultural tradition and Catholic religious doc-

trine that renders them slaves to childbearing. Through such representations,

Latinas are integrated into a stratified system in which their reproduction is

feared rather than valued. Their very bodies symbolize key aspects of the Latino

Threat Narrative. Not surprisingly, the politics of reproduction does not stop

at Latinas' bodies but also focuses on their children. For example, so-called

anchor babies, those born to undocumented mothers, have been recipients of

heated political rhetoric and policy proposals that would further burden their

already abject and difficult lives. Chapter 4 reconsiders Latina fertility and reproduction though the lens of

empirical findings from two research projects in Orange County, California.

Although it may be impossible to refute deeply held beliefs, Latina reproduc-

tive behavior and fertility levels do change in response to new historical con-

texts and life circumstances and across generations in the United States. Latina

sexuality and reproduction are not out of controL Latinas have, on average,

INTRODUCTION :1.7

fewer children over time in the United States within the first generation, and

the trend continues across generations.

Part 2 focuses on media-infused spectacles surrounding organ transplants

for undocumented immigrants, Minutemen along the Arizona-Mexico border,

and immigrant marches. These cases became spectacles because of the pub-

lic performances of the actors involved and because of the large volume of

media attention and public opinion they generated.8s Each case was the topic

,of myriad news stories on radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and the

Internet. Pundits in each of these media explored the politics of these events,

sometimes in reasoned debate but more often as pandering to anti-immigrant

sentiment.,Evident in these cases is the way in which the Latino Threat Narra-

tive informs struggles over the meaning of citizenship-that is, who is a legiti-

mate member of society and thus deserving of the privileges of citizenship.

Foucault's ideas about biopolitics, surveillance, discipline, and govern-

mentality-that is, the techniques for the control of the conduct of popula-

tions-frame the analysis of events in these chapters.86 Immigrants internalize

a subject status as a result of the pervasive Latino Threat Narrative, media rep-

resentations of their lives, debates over their inclusion or exclusion from the

community of citizens, and government policies targeted at them. Immigrants

and their families also resist the pervasive negative representations of their lives.

At the same time, the targeting of immigrants allows citizens to reaffirm their

own subject status vis-a.-vis the immigrant Other.

Chapter 5 examines organ transplants as a site of biopolitics over citizen-

ship and its privileges. The body of the nation and the body of the citizen merge

metaphorically and literally when considering organ transplantation. The par-

ticular case of Jesica Santillan, the unfortunate recipient of a "bungled trans-

plant;' reveals the way in which undocumented immigrants, in particular, raise

intense debate over who constitute legitimate recipients of "citizen organs."87

Characterizing "illegal alien bodies" as undeserving of citizen organs actually

increases the biovalue of immigrant bodies, in that this disciplinary disc,ourse

ensures a net flow of organs from immigrants to citizen bodies.

Chapter 6 takes a critical look at the Minuteman Project's surveillance in the

Arizona desert in the spring of 2005. Emerging out of nowhere, the Minuteman

Project quickly captured the imagination of those who believed that immigra-

tion was a problem and that illegal Mexican immigration in particular had to

be stopped. The Minutemen created a media spectacle on the Arizona-Mexico

border as a way to both reaffirm the privileges of citizenship and influence

:1.8 INTRODUCTION

policy makers to enhance border surveillance and promote anti-immigration

reform. The taken-for-granted truths of the Latino Threat Narrative developed

in Chapter 1 form the backdrop for the Minuteman Project's activities.

Finally, Chapter 7 explores the cultural and political significance of the

large marches and demonstrations by immigrants and their supporters in the

spring of 2006. The marches were a response to the House of Representatives

bill 4437, especially the provisions that would have made felons of all undocu-

mented immigrants in the country. In addition, however, the marches were

also about something much grander, the immigrants' laying claim to social

and cultural citizenship and to respect, even for those lacking authorization

to be in the country. Marginal groups in a society can use spectacles as a way

of defining citizenship from the bottom up because it is through such public

events that citizenship is performed and constructed. 88 What we find is that

organized public events are not restricted to the strong and powerful; though

perhaps more difficult for those without resources, the weak also can perform

citizenship through public spectacles.89 Through acts such as the immigrant

marches, citizenship is performed and becomes part of an identity represented

to the larger society.90 When immigrants marched en masse they performed

the role of citizen-subjects, but citizens of a particular sensibility: the economi-

cally contributing, entrepreneurial, government services-avoiding neoliberal

citizen-subject.

CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE

THE EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, heightened a public discourse on the dan-

gers the United States faces in the contemporary world. President George W.

Bush developed a general strategy for the national security of the United States

while critics focused on the dangers inherent in forging an empire in the mod- ern world.! Americans seemed willing to allow the constitutional rights of

foreigners and immigrants to be diminished so long as those of citizens ap-

peared to remain intact, a dangerous bargain at best.2 But if there has been

one constant in both pre- and post-9111 public discourse on national security,

it has been the alleged threat to the nation posed by Mexican and other Latin

America immigration and the growing number of Americans of Mexican de-

scent in the United States. The themes in this discourse have been so consistent

over the last forty years that they could be said to be independent of the current

fear of international terrorism. However, the events of 9/11 "raised the stakes"

and added a new and urgent argument for confronting all perceived threats to

national security, both old and new.

The Latino threat, though old, still has currency in the new, post -9/11 world.

Consider Samuel P. Huntington's views expressed in an article in the~arch­

April 2004 issue of Foreign Policy. Huntington compared Latinos, especially

Mexicans, with earlier waves of European immigrants and found that "unlike

past immigrant groups, Mexicans and other Latinos have not assimilated into

mainstream U.S. culture, forming instead their own political and 1llguistic

enclaves-from Los Angeles to Miami-and rejecting the Anglo-Protestant

values that built the American dream!'3 He also made these assertions: "Demo-

21

22 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

graphically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista (re-conquest) of the South-

west United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway"; "In this new era,

the single most immediate and most serious challenge to America's traditional

identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin

America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of those immigrants

compared to black and white American natives."4

Huntington's statements are all the more remarkable given the historical

context in which they were made. At the time, the United States was waging

war in Iraq, deeply involved in the war on terrorism in Mghanistan, and still

searching for Osama bin Laden and AI Qaeda operatives worldwide. And yet

amidst all these crises, Huntington singled out Latin American, particularly

Mexican, immigration as America's most serious challenge. But this threat did

not suddenly surface after 9/11; Huntington had raised the alarm a year before

the attack on the World Trade Center. In 2000, Huntington wrote in the Ameri-

can Enterprise: "The invasion of over 1 million Mexican civilians is a compa-

rable threat [as 1 million Mexican soldiers] to American societal security, and

Americans should react against it with comparable vigor. Mexican immigra-

tion looms as a unique and disturbing challenge to our cultural integrity, our

national identity, and potentially to our future as a country."s

Rather than discarding Huntington's rhetorical excesses as bombastic hy-

perbole, we are better served by attempting to clarify the social and histori-

cal context of such pronouncements. How did Mexican immigration, the

Mexican-origin population, and Latin American immigration in general come

to be perceived as a national security threat in popular discourse? Such ideas do

not develop in a vacuum. They emerge from a history of ideas, laws, narratives,

myths, and knowledge production in social sciences, sciences, the media, and

the arts. In other words, they exist within a "discourse;' a formation or cluster

of ideas, images, and practices that construct knowledge of, ways of talking

about, and forms of conduct associated with a particular topic, social activ-

ity, or institutional site in society.6 As Stuart Hall has noted, "These discursive

formations, as they are known, define what is and is not appropriate in our

formulation of, and our practices in relation to, a particular subject or site of

social activity; what knowledge is considered useful, relevant and 'true' in that

context; and what sorts of persons or 'subjects' embody its characteristics!'7

Mexico, Mexican immigrants, and the U.S.-born of Mexican origin are the

core foci of the Latino Threat Narrative, but the threat is often generalized to

all Latin American immigrants and at times to all Latinos in the United States.

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 23

In the discursive history of Mexican immigration, specific themes of threat

emerge, become elaborated, and are often repeated until they attain the ring

of truth. This is a story with a number of interwoven plot lines, or narrative

themes: the construction of "illegal aliens" as criminals, the Quebec model, the

Mexican invasion and reconquista (reconquest) of the United States, an unwill-

ingness to learn English and integrate into U.S. society, out -of-control fertility,

and threats to national security. An examination of these themes provides the

necessary context for understanding the debates over citizenship and immi-

grants' rights in the United States that are discussed in the following chapters.

CONSTRUCTING THE "ILLEGAL ALIEN"

Restrictions on immigration and citizenship have always been about how we

imagine who we are as a people and who we wish to include as part of the na-

tion, whether this is explicitly recognized or not. Underscoring this observa- tion is Mae Ngai's authoritative history, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the

Making of Modern America, which concentrates on the early twentieth century

but illuminates much that is being debated in the early twenty-first century.

The immigration reforms of the 1920s created major restrictions in the flow of

immigrants, in the process producing hierarchies of people and nationalities.

Western and northern Europeans were the desired immigrants, and their move-

ment hither was the goal of the national origins quotas. Southern and eastern

Europeans, Asians, Africans, Mexicans, and other Latin Americans were less de-

sirable, even when demand for their labor made their immigration necessary.

The 1920s also witnessed a profound new importance placed on the territorial

imperative of national borders, which coincided with new techniques of surveil-

lance, the creation of the Border Patrol, and immigrant health examinations.

Out of this new order of border control emerged the "illegal aliens," those who

bypassed border controls and found ways to enter the country. The large-scale

restrictions of the 1924 immigration law "generated illegal immigration and in-

troduced that problem into the internal spaces of the nation!' As Ngai aLgues,

"Immigration restriction produced the illegal alien as a new legal and po·litical

subject, whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and

a legal impossibility-a subject barred from citizenship and without rights."8

Mexican immigrants quiCkly became associated with the term "illegalalien!'

According to Ngai, "As numerical restriction assumed primacy in immigration

policy, its enforcement aspects-inspection procedures, deportation, the Border

Patrol, criminal prosecution, and irregular categories of immigration-created

24 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

many thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants."9 However, it was ironic that

Mexicans became so closely identified with the term illega~ since they were not

subject to numerical quotas and they were defined as "white;' unlike Asians, and

thus were not excluded as racially ineligible for citizenship. The "whiteness" of

Mexicans was a legal definition that was a by-product of Mexico's signing of the

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the U.S.-Mexican War. Mexicans liv-

ing in what was now u.S. territory were allowed to become U.S. citizens, a privi-

lege reserved for "white" immigrants at the time. Despite such legal definitions,

Mexicans were still considered "not-white" in the public imagination.!O Italian

immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had a similar

problem. Their racial designation was ambiguous in that they were viewed as

undesirable and inferior to earlier waves of northern and western European

immigrants, yet Italian "whiteness" in contrast to African, Asian, and Mexican

Americans was never in doubt. ll

Asians and Mexicans became legally racialized ethnic groups.!2 I use racial-

ized here to indicate that these are not genetic-based categories of race but,

rather, labels that are socially and culturally constructed based on perceived

innate or biological differences and imbued with meanings about relative social

worth.!} Asian immigrants were denied a pathway to citizenship, and Mexicans

were associated with illegal alien status and subjected to Jim Crow segregation

throughout the U.S. Southwest. Legally racialized because of their national ori-

gin, Mexican and Asian immigrants found themselves cast as permanently for-

eign and faced obstacles to their integration into the nation.!4 For example, in

1925, David Starr Jordan, past chancellor of Stanford University and an ardent

eugenicist commented that "the Mexican peon, who for the most part can never

be fit for citizenship ... is giving our stock a far worse dilution than ever came

from Europe:'!S As a result, these racial formations produced "alien citizens"-

"Asian Americans and Mexican Americans born in the United States with for-

mal U.S. citizenship but who remained alien in the eyes of the nation."!6

Such perceptions complicated debates over legalization programs for un-

documented immigrants at the time. Some believed that undocumented im-

migrants should be allowed to legalize their status, while others wanted them

deported. Not surprisingly, therefore, legalization programs in the early twen-

tieth century were applied unevenly, reflecting hierarchies of nationality and

race. At that time, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, pri-

marily from Europe, were allowed to adjust their status to that of legal immi-

grants and eventually citizens. Americans viewed as unjust the deportation of

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 25

ordinary immigrants with homes and families in the United States. Deporta-

tion was justifiable for criminals, but not for otherwise law-abiding immigrants

who had established roots in the country. This reasoning, however, did not

apply to Mexicans, who also desired to adjust their status. They were subject

to a different logic that began with the premise of criminality because of their

illegal entry into the nation. As Ngai observed, "By contrast [to European un-

documented immigrants], walking (or wading) across the border emerged as

the quintessential act of illegal immigration, the outermost point in a relativist

ordering of illegal immigration."!7 The current opposition to allowing undocu-

mented immigrants to become legal immigrants (the "pathway to citizenship")

begins with the same association of illegal entry with criminality, and Mexicans

are still the prototypical "illegal aliens."!8

Also prevalent in the early twentieth century was the belief that providing

immigrants with rights, even the equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth

Amendment, diminished the value of citizenship.!9 This belief still has currency

in contemporary debates over allowing undocumented immigrants access to

driver's licenses and publicly funded education, medical care, and housing.2o To

some, such rights and privileges appear as rewards for illegal entry. Rather than

rewarding "illegals;' public opinion often declares that they should be punished

and removed from the country. Thus, for some, universal access to these rights

and privileges blurs the line between citizen and noncitizen and thus cheapens

citizenship.

The historical lesson is that "illegality" is socially, culturally, and politically

constructed.2! As people move across ever porous national boundaries, their

status is determined by policies in those nation-states, not by some essential

quality inherent in the migrant's genetic code or personal philosophy on life.

Policy makers, using Foucauldian techniques of governmentality, construct

classifications to further bureaucratic control of populations, including, and

perhaps most especially, migrants.22 Being an unauthorized migrant, an "ille-

gal;' is a status conferred by the state, and it then becomes written upon :the

bodies of the migrants themselves because illegality is both produced and ex-

perienced. But illegality itself is a status resulting from political decisions made

by governmental representatives who could just as well have decided to allow

migrants to enter under the sanction oflaw, as legal immigrants, legal workers,

or legal guest workers. The migrants themselves are the same people, whether

deemed legal or illegal by their receptive states. What marks the illegal is the

receiving state's unwillingness to recognize the conditions that create a demand

26 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

for labor, most notably falling fertility rates, aging populations, and values that

imbue certain jobs as "immigrant jobs." As a result, a legal fiction emerges, one

that recognizes that x number of migrant laborers will be attracted to most of

the industrialized nations but also recognizes that politicians will respond to the fears of immigration among their constituents by allowing in far fewer legal

immigrants/workers than the actual flow.23 The surplus could have been al-

lowed to enter legally, but instead the "illegal" entrant is constructed. The total

flow, the x number of in-migrants, continues, albeit under these constructed

categories of legal and illegal migration. What follows is an examination of the

condition of illegality, not so much in the actual lives of "illegal aliens" but in

the representations of that condition in public discourse.

INVASION, RECONQUEST, AND THE QUEBEC MODEl

Since its formation in the 1920s, the idea that Mexican undocumented im-

migrants are "criminals" has continued in public discourse, but in the 1970s

a new trope was added: Mexicans immigration as an invasion of the United

States.24 Over time, the invasion theme evolved, with the elaboration of the no-

tions of a Mexican reconquest of the U.S. Southwest and what I call the Quebec model. In the Quebec model, the Quebecois independence movement among

French-spealdng Canadians is held up as the example of the threat posed by

Spanish-speaking Mexican immigrants and their descendants, who suppos-

edly maintain linguistic and socially separate lives from the rest of U.S. society.

These themes are repeated so often that they become a taken-for-granted set of

assumptions about the inability and unwillingness of Mexican immigrants and

their children, extending for generations, to become part of society. Hunting-

ton's observations, above, are among the latest renditions of these assumptions,

but as we will see, they build upon a long history of such assertions about the threat of Mexican immigration, Mexican Americans, and Latinos in generaL

As legal immigration began to increase after 1965, public anxiety over un-

documented immigration was also increasing. Although it was difficult to es- timate the actual numbers of unauthorized immigrants in the United States

in the 1960s and 1970s, Leonard Chapman, then-commissioner of the Immi-

gration and Naturalization Service (INS), publicly announced that alarmingly

high numbers. (as many as ten to fifteen million or more) of "illegal aliens" were

"flooding" into the country at the time.25

The media's display of such large numbers carries meanings apart from

their mathematical references. Because it is difficult to assess the accuracy

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 27

of such numbers and what they mean-for example, their relative impact in

a nation as large as the United States-such numbers become images. They

jump off the page or the television to the reader or viewer, but these numeri-

cal images are flat, in that they lack the depth of understanding that comes

with historical context, economic explanations, and social science elaboration.

Consequently, numbers such as these invoke simplified responses-low/high,

good/bad, affirmative/alarmist, assurance/fear-depending upon the prevail-

ing sentiment toward immigration. An assured response to such purportedly large numbers might be that the nation's economy is doing so well that it is at-

tracting and absorbing many eager new workers. However, in this case, at that

time, the media's display of these numbers underscored beliefs that there were

"too many" undocumented immigrants. Thus, even though these numbers

turned out to be exaggerated, the authority of their source-the INS-meant

that they entered public discourse as a symbol of alarm.26

For example, the December 1974 cover of the American Legion Magazine

depicted the United States being overrun by "illegal aliens" (Figure 1.1). Most

of the cartoon people in the image are Mexicans storming, en masse, across

the U.S.-Mexico border, brealdng down a sign that reads, "USA BORDER" and

Figure 1..1. Cover of the American Legion Magazine, December 1974.

Illustration by James Flora. © Jim Flora Art LLC. Used by permission.

28 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

another one reading, "KEEP OUT:' Other immigrants are landing by boats along

the east coast, flying in and swimming from the Caribbean, parachuting across

the Canadian border, and all of them are converging upon, and inundating, the

nation's institutions, most notably welfare, education, housing, jobs, and medi-

cal aid. Such images were to become more frequent on the nation's magazines

over the next three decades, contributing to an increasingly alarmist discourse

on Mexican immigrationY

The Quebec model first surfaced, ever so subtly; on the cover of the Decem-

ber 13, 1976, issue US. News and World Report, which featured the headline

"Crisis Across the Borders: Meaning to US:' The cover illustration was a map

of North America with two arrows, both beginning in the United States, one

pointing to Mexico and one pointing to Canada. The crisis in Mexico was the

potential for increased migration to the United States. The problem in Canada

was Quebec, where many French-speaking residents were pushing for greater

sovereignty and even separation from the English-speaking provinces. The

Quebec movement was, perhaps, particular to the Canadian context, especially

the effect of the 1967 Canadian law about bilingualism and biculturalism put

into place by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau.28 The particularities of the

Canadian context undermine the comparison with Mexican immigration's im-

plications for the United States, but, as we will see, the Quebec independence

movement came to serve as a metaphor, or civic lesson, for the threat of na-

tional division inherent in the "Mexican problem:'

The invasion theme continued to be represented on the nation's magazines

for the next three decades. The April 25, 1977, issue of US. News and World

Report featured the cover headline: "Border Crisis: Illegal Aliens Out of Con-

trol?" The specific "out of control" behavior was clarified in the accompanying

article as Mexican immigrants' use of welfare and medical services, displacing

citizens from jobs, and turning to crime, all of which threatened the economic

security of the nation. The article also referred to Mexican immigrants as "in-

vaders" and asserted that the "US. has lost control of its borders" (p. 33).

On January 29, 1979, the same magazine published yet another cover on

the "invasion," with the headline "Illegal Aliens: Invasion Out of Control?" The

magazine notes that "up to 12 million" undocumented immigrants might have

been in the United States at the time and that by the year 2025 they could ac-

count for 10 percent of the population. The negative implications of undocu-

mented immigration raised by the magazine included displacing US. citizens

from jobs, use of welfare, and crime. But even more important was the internal

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 29

threat posed by the children of immigrants, an idea that is central to the recon-

quest theme and Quebec model. Labor secretary Ray Marshall was quoted as

saying that illegal immigration "sows the seeds of a bitter civil-rights struggle

in the 1990s by the children of today'sillegal aliens" (p. 41). The magazine

story asserted that the threat was magnified because "the traditions of Mexican

Americans remain undiluted, refreshed daily by an influx of illegal immigrants

from the mother country" (p. 42). "Undiluted traditions" was another way of

saying that Mexican Americans did not assimilate into American society and

culture. They remained separate and apart-so separate and apart, in fact, that

there was no mixture, no dilution. Characterizing Mexican Americans as for-

eigners who remain foreign (undiluted) gave added urgency to the invasion

metaphor of the article and the cover.

The 1980s witnessed continued repetition of the invasion theme and an elab-

oration of the Quebec model. US. News and World Reports issue of March 9,

1981, featured an illustrated map of the North American continent, including

Mexico. The United States was the focal point of the map, and the stars and

stripes of the US. flag covered it. To the north was Canada, with the image of a

Mountie holding the Canadian flag and a French Canadian holding the Quebec

flag in one hand and raising his other hand in a defiant, closed-fisted gesture to-

ward the Mountie. To the south was Mexico, where a line of men emerged from

the mountains and walked single file toward California. The man in front had

his left foot ready to step on the red and white of California, at about San Diego.

The headline read, "Our Troubled Neighbors-Dangers for US." The Quebec

"problem," the magazine made clear, was a model for what was prophesized to

become the Mexican "problem," a reconquest of the United States.

The reconquest theme was reiterated in the early 1980s. Time's June 13,

1983, issue featured an article on Los Angeles titled "The New Ellis Island:'

Time warned its readers that "Los Angeles is being invaded" (p. 18); that "the

statistical evidence of the immigrant tide is stark" (p. 19); and that there was

a "staggering influx of foreign settlers" (p. 20). Immigration, according to the

magazine, had caused dramatic changes in the ethnic composition of Los' An-

geles. But Time singled out Mexicans, who, because the Southwest was once

part of Mexico, arrived "feeling as much like a migrant as an immigrant, not an

illegal alien but a reconquistador;' or reconqueror (p. 24).

The now fully elaborated triple threat of invasion, reconquest, and a Quebec-

like separatist movement soon took on even greater currency in public discourse.

US. News and World Reports cover on March 7, 1983, announced: "Invasion

30 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

from Mexico: It Just Keeps Growing:' And in the April 1, 1985, edition of the

New Republic, House majority leader Jim Wright worried about "a Balkaniza-

tion of American society into little subcultures" (p. 25). In that same issue, Rich-

ard Lamm, the ex-governor of Colorado, feared that immigration would result

in "a vast cultural separatism" and that the children of Latino immigrants would

not grow up as loyal Americans but might instead lead "secessionist" riots in the

Southwest to "express their outrage at this country" (p. 25).

The reconquest and separatist inclinations of Mexican immigrants and their

offspring were also the theme of the August 19, 1985, cover of u.s. News and World Report, which announced: "The Disappearing Border: Will the Mexican

Migration Create a New Nation?" The accompanying article, titled "The Disap-

pearing Border;' stated the "reconquest" theme as if it were a fact, with little

need of supporting empirical evidence:

Now sounds the march of new conquistadors in the American Southwest. The

heirs of Cortes and Coronado are rising again in the land their forebears took

from the Indians and lost to the Americans. By might of numbers and strength

of culture, Hispanics are changing the politics, economy and language in the

U.S. states that border Mexico. Their movement is, despite its quiet and largely

peaceful nature, both an invasion and a revolt. At the vanguard are those born

here, whose roots are generations deep, who long endured Anglo dominance

and rule and who are ascending within the U.S. system to take power they

consider their birthright. Behind them comes an unstoppable mass-their

kin from below the border who also claim ancestral homelands in the South-

west, which was the northern half of Mexico until the U.S. took it away in the

mid-lSOOs. Like conquistadors of centuries past, they come in quest of fabled

cities of gold. America's riches are pulling people all along the continent's His-

panic horn on a great migration to the place they call El Norte. (p. 30)

Importantly, in the U.S. News and World Report narrative of invasion and re-

conquest, it was not just recent Mexican immigrants who posed a threat but

even those Americans who were descended from the first Spanish-speaking

explorers of the Southwest. Not even four hundred years of living in the South-

west, and over 150 years of that period as U.S. citizens, reduced the threat posed

by Latinos (note the quote's reference to Hispanics, not Mexican Americans)

in the Southwest. Apparently, according to this argument, they had remained

socially and linguistically separate, biding their time for a "revolt" and takeover.

In other words, the conspiracy for the reconquest of the Southwest had been

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 31.

in operation for generations and spanned centuries. That so far-fetched and

unsupported a scenario could be seriously presented in a national magazine

attests to how deep the taken-for-granted assumptions about invasion and re-

conquest had, by this point, entered into public discourse. No critical perspec-

tive on the assumption of difference was put forward here, a difference so great

and incommensurable that the people so designated were not even subject to

the normal expectations of social and cultural change.29 It was as if Mexican

Am'ericans and other Latinos existed in an ahistorical space apart from the life

that took place all around them. They were cast as "alien-citizens;' perpetual

foreigners with divided allegiances despite being U.S. citizens by birth, even

after many generations.30 Such notions became an acceptable part of public

discourse even among otherwise learned scholars.

Indeed, during the 1990s, the Mexican invasion and reconquest were at the

heart of a veritable publishing industry that emerged, playing on the public's

fears of immigration. Among the many books on the topic that have appeared

since the early 1990s are Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr:s Disuniting of America; Peter

Brimelow's Alien Nation; Georgie Anne Geyer's Americans No More; Patrick J.

Buchanan's Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions

Imperil Our Country and Civilization; Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia: A State

of Becoming; Samuel Huntington's Who We Are: The Challenges to America's Na-

tional Identity, Tom Tancredo's In Mortal Danger, Jim Gilchrist and Jerome R.

Corsi's The Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders; and Patrick

Buchanan's second book on the topic, State of Emergency: The Third World Inva-

sion and Conquest of America. These works often explicitly refer to the Mexidn

invasion, the Quebec model, and the Mexican reconquest of the U.S. Southwest.

Schlesinger's Disuniting of America was an important contribution to the - .

literature on the threat of immigration to the nation. Here was the archetypi-

cal Harvard liberal intellectual raising the alarm about the social separatism

caused by bilingual education, the cult of ethnicity promoted by multicultur-

alists, and the disintegrative effects that would occur if immigrants and their

offspring did not assimilate. He also cited the example of Canada (the Quebec

model) and its inability to make a federal multiethnic state work. Schlesinger's

observations were not entirely novel, but they carried great weight and his ideas

were echoed in the writings of many other authors, including those mentioned

below. He was also the first of three prominent professors, the others being

Samuel Huntington and David Kennedy, who warned of the disuniting poten-

tial of Latin American immigrants, especially from Mexico.

32 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

In 1994 Patrick Buchanan, a nationally recognized conservative politician,

expressed his deep concern that a Quebec-like threat loomed large in Ameri-

ca's future. In an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times, Buchanan reasoned

that sometime in the near future the majority of Americans would trace their

roots not to Europe but to Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and

the Pacific islands.3! He thus asked: What would it mean for ''America'' if, for example, South Texas and Southern California became almost exclusively

Latino? He provided the following answer: "Each will have tens of millions of people whose linguistic, historic and cultural roots are in Mexico;' and thus,

"like Eastern Ukraine, where 10 million Russian-speaking 'Ukrainians' now

look impatiently to Moscow, not Kiev, as their cultural capital, America could

see, in a decade, demands for Quebec-like status for Southern California."32 For

Buchanan, Latino immigrants and their children posed the risk of a separatist

movement, which would very likely seek to take over U.S. territory and return

it to Mexico's control.

In Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow argued that Hispanics were particularly

troublesome, going so far as to claim that they were "symptomatic of the Amer-

ican Anti-Idea;' an idea that is neither defined nor clarified.33 But Brimelow

leaves no doubt what he means: "Symptomatic of the American Anti-Idea is the

emergence of a strange anti-nation inside the U.S.-the so-called 'Hispanics.'"

The growth of an anti-nation inside the nation is a way of retelling the threat

characterized by the Quebec model. In this case, in addition to Hispanic popu-

lation growth, Brimelow asserted that the various groups of people lumped

together as "Hispanics" had, in effect, an artificial identity because of their dif-

ferences. But because U.S. government agencies treated them as a homogenous

"protected class" and encouraged bilingualism and the teaching of Spanish,

Hispanics were now much less encouraged to assimilate to American culture.

"In effect;' Brimelow noted, "Spanish-speakers are still being encouraged to as- similate. But not to America:'34

In Americans No More, Georgie Anne Geyer argued that excessive immi-

gration, especially unauthorized immigration, and the rights accorded immi-

grants were diluting the meaning of U.S. citizenship. Mexicans, in particular

posed a threat to California, and thus the nation, because their "high" birth

rates were changing the demographic and political landscape. Geyer worried

that "illegal aliens, with no commitment to the country and no respect for its

common principles;' were forming "their own political power groups to chal-

lenge the old citizens' America:'35 In her version of events, reconquest through

,

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 33

reproduction would lead to disastrous demographic and political changes: "By

the end of the 20th century, America itself had changed-it was in danger of

drifting toward becoming a Third World nation, and crucially important parts

of it, like once-glorious California, were actually moving backwards in time

and backwards in development!'36

In November 1996 the eminent Stanford historian David M. Kennedy wrote

in the Atlantic Monthly about the Quebec model and "the Reconquista:'37 De-

spite the seeming interdependence between Mexico and the United States, Ken-

nedy argued that Mexican immigration did not follow the pattern of pluralism

supposedly exhibited by European immigrants. Mexicans were from a single

cultural, linguistic, religious, and national source, and they concentrated in one

geographical region, the Southwest. The United States, according to Kennedy,

had had no experience comparable to this regional concentration of Mexican

Americans. According to Kennedy, the possibilities of this trend were that Mex-

ican Americans could, if they chose to do so, "preserve their distinctive culture

indefinitely":

They can challenge the existing cultural, political, legal, commercial, and edu-

cational systems to change fundamentally not only the language but also the

very institutions in which they do business .... In the process, Americans

could be pitched into a soul-searching redefinition of fundamental ideas such

as the meaning of citizenship and national identity .... If we seek historical

guidance, the closest example we have at hand is in the diagonally opposite

corner of the North American continent, in Quebec. The possibility l?oms,

that in the next generation or so we will see a kind of Chicano Quebec take

shape in the American Southwest, as a group emerges with strong cultural co-

hesiveness and sufficient economic and political strength to insist on changes

in the overall society's ways of organizing itself and conducting its affairs. 38

By using the word "Chicano;' Kennedy was expanding the threat to include

U.S.-born Mexican Americans, who, in this scenario, would maintain, a dis-

tinctive culture and language "indefinitely:' The heretical idea that U.S.-born

Chicanos were steeped in U.S. culture and spoke English was not a part of the

scenario, otherwise where would be the threat? Kennedy simply assumed that

U.S.-born Chicanos had so little social, cultural, political, or economic capital

in U.S. society that they would want to form a separate country. Otherwise,

if these "truths" were not self-evident, proof of a reconquest conspiracy and proof of Latino unwillingness to integrate socially and culturally would have to

34 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

be provided in no uncertain detail. But because these taken-for-granted truths

were self-evident, merely invoking the Quebec example served as ample evi-

dence that a certifiable Latino threat existed.

It must be noted that not all public discourse on immigration was alarmist,

especially during the latter half of the 1990s, which experienced an economic

boom. With low unemployment rates and significant job growth, suddenly

immigrant labor was in demand. It was as if Ross Perot's warning of a "giant

sucking sound" finally took place, except the jobs created were in the United

States and not in Mexico, as he predicted would occur as a result of the North

American Free Trade Agreement of 1994. So many undocumented workers

were drawn to jobs in the United States that about S.S million were estimated to

be there in 2000 and 10.3 million in 2004.39 Moreover, the expanding economy

created a hyperdemand for immigrant labor that pulled Mexican immigrants to

ever more "exotic" locations in the Midwest and the southeastern United States,

including North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Georgia.40 It

was also perhaps due to economic expansion and the need for immigrant labor

that alarmist public discourse was superseded, if only for a few years, by more

moderate views on immigration. George Will, in Newsweek, argued that today's

immigrants, including Mexicans, were no different from Italians and other ear-

lier waves of immigrantsY The AFL-CIO suddenly changed its policy to one

that favored legalizing and unionizing undocumented immigrantsY Federal

Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan noted that immigrants were good for the

economy.43 And George W. Bush, shortly after assuming the presidency in 2001,

put forward an ambitious immigration reform plan that would have legalized

Mexican undocumented immigrants and created a new guest worker program

for Mexican workers.44 Negative reactions to Bush's proposals dredged up the

reconquest theme, as evidenced by a cartoon of the U.S. president with Mexi-

co's president, Vicente Fox (Figure. 1.2).

Time magazine's June 11,2001, cover image illustrated just how subtly the

idea of reconquest, or a Mexican takeover of the United States, could be evoked

(Figure 1.3). Here were two smiling Latino children dressed like American chil-

dren anywhere might be dressed. Although the image the children might have

evoked a sense of pleasantness, the text raised an alarm about Mexican immigra-

tion: "Welcome to Amexica: The border is vanishing before our eyes, creating a

new world for all of us:' Because the term Amexica, made up by blending parts of

the words America and Mexico, was framed by the "vanishing border" statement,

it was Mexico that was intruding on America, slowly taking it over or obliterating

Greetings from Aztlanland jt!~z

Figure 1.2. Cartoon of George W. Bush and Mexican president Vicente Fox, in response to Bush's immigration reform proposals,

by Rick Tuma. Courtesy of CNSN ews.com.

Figure 1.3. Cover of Time, June 11,2001. © 2007 Time Inc. Reprinted courtesy of the editors of Time Magazine.

36 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

it. Colors were used to reinforce the message; the letters are in red, white, and

blue, except the C, which is in green, a key color of the Mexican flag. Suddenly the

rather pleasant-looking children were revealed as part of a reconquest of Amer-

ica, which was occurring because the "vanishing border" was letting them, and

others like them, into the country, thereby creating a "new world;'

POST-9j1.1. AMERICA

In the wake of the tragedy of September 11,2001, the U.S.-Mexico border be-

came associated with a new threat, the gateway through which possible terrorists

might enter.45 On January 25, 2002, President Bush released a statement from

the White House, Securing America's Borders Fact Sheet: Border Security: "Amer-

ica requires a border management system that keeps pace with expanding trade

while protecting the United States and its territories from threats of terrorist at-

tack, illegal immigration, illegal drugs, and other contraband;' Time magazine's cover for September 20, 2004, showed the U.S. flag being torn apart by two light

brown hands. The text stated: "Special Investigation-America's Border: Even

after 9/11, it's outrageously easy to sneak in;' In this image, the flag represented

both the fabric of the nation, which was being torn apart, and the border be-

tween safety and terrorists trying to enter the country. The implicit message was

that this shredding of the nation's border and the flag must be stopped.

The new threat of terrorism resulted in calls for controlling the border as a

means of improving homeland security. As Mark Krikorian, executive director

of the Center for Immigration Studies, put it: "Blocking the enemy's ability to

enter our country must be a central objective of homeland security;'46 That

none of the terrorists involved in the 9/11 carnage crossed the U.S.-Mexico bor-

der illegally was beside the point. Post-9/11 concerns with "the terrorist threat"

and national security resulted in greatly increased funding for border surveil-

lance and control, including passage of a bill to build a seven-hundred-mile

fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Despite the added urgency of the new ter-

rorist threat, the old triple threat posed by Mexican immigration has continued

to playa key role in public discourse on immigration after 9/1l.

Not long after 9/11, Patrick Buchanan's book The Death of the West was

published. The book's subtitle laid bare the author's perspective: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization.

In a chapter titled "La Reconquista;' Buchanan continued arguments he had

published in the Los Angeles Times almost a decade earlier. Not only was the

Mexican population in the United States growing rapidly, but there was also

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 37

the problem of assimilation: "Mexicans not only come from another culture,

but millions are of another race. History and experience teach us that differ-

ent races are far more difficult to assimilate" (p. 125). So this "Mexican race"

had difficulty assimilating for reasons that were biological, what Buchanan per-

ceived as their inherent difference. This racial problem was different from a

supposed lack of desire to assimilate, which was cultural. But Buchanan added

this to the mix as well:

Unlike the immigrants of old ... [m)illions of [Mexicans) have no desire

to learn English or to become citizens. America is not their home; Mexico

is; and they wish to remain proud Mexicans. They have come here to work.

Rather than assimilate, they create Little Tijuanas in U.S. cities .... With their

own radio and TV stations, newspapers, films, and magazines, the Mexican

Americans are creating an Hispanic culture separate and apart from Ameri-

ca's larger culture. They are becoming a nation within a nation. (pp. 125-26)

Notice how quickly and easily Buchanan's focus on immigrants had expanded

to include their children, and even later generations of Mexican Americans,

who were creating a separate culture and nation. A few pages later, Buchanan

put forward the Quebec model as the "predictable" future of California: ''Amer-

ica's largest state is on its way to becoming a predominantly Third World state.

No one knows how this will play out, but California could become another

Quebec, with demands for formal recognition of its separate and unique His-

panic culture and identity" (p. 140).

Victor Davis Hanson published Mexifornia: A State of Becoming in 1003.

Hanson, a fifth-generation Californian from a farming family, lamented for

times gone by, for the good old days when "the offspring of Selma's immigrant

farmers learned English, they intermarried, and within a generation they knew

nothing of the old country and little of the old language":

Now Selma is an edge city on the freeway of somewhere near twenty thou;;and

anonymous souls, and is expanding at an unclenched pace, almost eptirely

because of massive and mostly illegal immigration from a single country:

Mexico .... I was deeply attached to the old town, now vanished. It was by

no means perfect, but it was a society of laws and customs, not a frontier

town like the current one, in which thousands reside illegally, have no law-

ful documentation, and assume that Selma must adapt to their ways, not the

reverse. (p. 2 )

38 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

Hanson found that in America today schools were not interested in assimilating

immigrants and their children. He deplored the "identity politics" of Chicano

studies programs. He believed that the children of Mexican immigrants lacked

an interest in becoming part of u.s. society, which led to their dropping out of school, becoming gang members, and causing problems. Compounding the

situation, as Hansen saw it, was that Mexican immigrant families adhered to a

culture that stressed having many children.

Both Hanson and Buchanan pointed to the cultural politics of Chicano

studies programs and professors and to the student organization MEChA (Mo-

vimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), a college student organization, for

perpetuating an ideology that claims the U.S. Southwest as Aztlcin, the mythical

homeland of the Aztecs. This so-called ideology of Aztlan became fused with

the Quebec model in public discourse surrounding the 2003 race for governor

of California. Cruz Bustamante, the lieutenant governor, ran against actor Ar-

nold Schwarzenegger and Schwarzenegger won. One of the key issues raised

about Bustamante was his participation in MEChA when he was an under-

graduate studentY Opponents characterized MEChA, and thus Bustamante

by association, as an organization that advocated the Chicano takeover of the

American Southwest because it was once Aztlan and thus rightfully theirs.48

An image that appeared on the September 5-11, 2003, cover of the OC Weekly,

published in California's Orange County, satirically represented Bustamante

as an Aztec warrior, a representation the magazine was critiquing, not advo-

cating. The illustration had Bustamante wearing an eagle headdress complete

with large feathers and large Aztec earplugs, as he stared off into space. The

text read: "Fear of a Brown Planet: Cruz Bustamante Rises, Conservatives Freak

oue' Thus, Cruz Bustamante, despite his protestations, had become an Aztec

warrior, a separatist, a member of the "Brown Klan;' and a militant intent on

"reconquering" the American Southwest.

BusinessWeek's March 15, 2004, issue raised the possibility that a separate

Hispanic nation might emerge within the United States. The bold headline on

the issue's cover visibly shouted "Hispanic Nation;' followed by "Hispanics are

an immigrant group like no other. Their huge numbers are changing old ideas

about assiinilation. Is America ready?" (Figure 1.4). Also included OIl the cover

was a photograph of a Latino family that stood in ironic opposition to the cover's

text; the family's dress suggested that they were solidly middle class and the cap-

tion noted that they lived in Cicero, Illinois, outside the traditional areas of con-

centration for the Latino population-California, Texas, Florida, and New York.

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 39

Hispanics are an immigran t croup like no other. Their lluo-e Dum bel'S m-e chan~ng old:'jdeas about assimilation. Is Ametica ready? fYfEliUAHG!l:O'NiP'58l

Figure :1..4. Cover of March 15, 2004, edition of BusinessWeek. Reprinted by permission. Copyright 2004 by The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Despite this visual incongruity, the cover's text represented the Latino pop-

ulation as unique in contrast to other immigrant groups, who did not form

separate independent nations in the United States and for whom assimilation

was, supposedly, a smooth and linear process. Assimilation for other immi-

grant groups, historically and today, has been set up as a banner example of the

"old ideas about assimilation." We can only assume that the Hispanics that were'

the subject of BusinessWeek's 2004 cover were changing these old ideas in ways

that reflected, not assimilation, but rather the social, cultural, and linguistic

separatism that would result in a separate nation. In other words, Business Week offered yet another rendition of the Quebec model.

That same year, Samuel Huntington published Who We Are: Challenges to

America's National Identity, which focused on the threat of Mexican immigra-

tion. He repeated the problems with Mexican immigration found in the quotes

at the beginning of this chapter. He spoke of a Mexican reconquista, a blurring of

the border between Mexico and the United States, and the problem of a blend-

ing of cultures (p. 221). This was happening, according to Huntington, because

"Mexican immigrants and their progeny have not assimilated into American

society as other immigrants did in the past and as many other immigrants are

40 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

doing now" (p. 222). He asserted that the areas where Mexican immigrants and

their children were not assimilating were in use of English, educational attain-

ment, occupation and incomes, and intermarriage, adding: "If this trend con-

tinues, it could produce a consolidation of the Mexican-dominant areas into

an autonomous, culturally and linguistically distinct, economically self-reliant

bloc within the United States" (p. 247). In short, as in the Quebec model, the

reconquista would lead to the formation of a separate nation (p. 230).

Appearing in 2006 was Patrick Buchanan's second book on the topic, State

of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. With chap-

ters titled "The Invasion;' "The Aztlan Plot;' and "The Return to Tribalism;'

Buchanan's message that a Mexican invasion was taking place was apparent.

Speaking of the reconquista, however, Buchanan added a novel twist of trans-

national conspiracy to the retelling: for over a decade Mexico and its president,

Vicente Fox, had pursued a strategy that "aims directly at a reannexation of the Southwest, not militarily, but ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, through

transfer of millions of Mexicans into the United States and a migration of'Ang-

los' out of the lands Mexico lost in 1848" (p. 125). Buchanan noted, "In Califor- nia, the project is well advanced. As native-born Californians depart, Hispanics

move toward dominance. As Mexicans come in the millions-one in six is al-

ready here-they are urged to seek U.S. citizenship to advance the agenda of

the mother country" (p. 125). Later, he explained a bit more about how the

takeover would occur: "La Reconquista is not to be accomplished by force of

arms, as was the U.S. annexation of the Southwest and California in 1848. It is

to be carried out by a nonviolent invasion and cultural transformation of that

huge slice of America into a Mexamerican borderland" (p. 132). Also in 2006, Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project, and Je-

rome R. Corsi published Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders.

Although the book was as much about Jim Gilchrist and the Minuteman Proj-

ect as it was about undocumented immigration, it reiterated the Mexican inva-

sion theme in a chapter titled "The Trojan Horse Invasion;' and the reconquest

theme in a chapter titled "The Reconquista Movement: Mexico's Plan for the

American Southwest."

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE AS DISCOURSE

Perhaps it is only by becoming aware of the mind-numbing repetition glimpsed'

in the examples above that we can get a true sense of the degree to which

the narratives of invasion, reconquest, and the Quebec model have become

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 41

taken-for-granted assumptions about the threat posed by Mexican immigrants,

by Mexican Americans with multiple generations in the United States, and at

times all Latinos. Although more could have been included, those presented

above are enough to demonstrate that the pattern has been established. The dis-

course of these pundits, authors, and scholars is unified in its representations of

Latinos, especially Mexican immigrants and their descendants, as people who

will not and cannot become part of U.S. society. The Latino Threat Narrative, as a discourse, is an example of Michel Foucault's notions of knowledge and

power. The objects of this discourse are represented as the Other and as a "threat"

and "danger" to the nation through such simple binaries of citizen/foreigner,

real Americansl"Mexicans" or real AmericansI"Hispanics;' natives/enemies, us/

them, and legitimate/illegal. Once constructed in this way, Mexican and other

Latin American immigrants, and even U.S.-born Latinos, are ready to be repre-

sented as "space invaders"-as Nirmal Puwar has put it-whose reproduction,

both social and biological, threatens to destroy the nation's identity.49

What I am getting at might better be understood in relation to Antonio

Gramsci's notions of hegemony and common sense.50 Hegemony is the system

of values, attitudes, morality, and other beliefs that passively or actively sup-

port the established order and thus the class interests that dominate it. Com-

mon sense is the largely unconscious and uncritical way of perceiving the world

that is widespread in any given historical epoch. Common sense incorporates

within it the prevailing consciousness, or hegemony, that is largely internalized

and taken for granted by members of society.

The Latino Threat Narrative works so well and is so pervasive preci~ely,be­ cause its basic premises are taken for granted as true. In this narrative, Latinos,

whether immigrant or U.S.-born, are a homogenous population that some-

how stands apart from normal processes of historical change. They are im-

mutable and impervious to the influences of the larger society and thus are not

characterized as experiencing social and cultural change. They are uneducated,

monolingual Spanish speakers, segregated into ethnic enclaves. Bec<}use they

lead separate social and linguistic lives, one must assume that they marry only

their own kind. They are locked into Catholic doctrine, leading to high fertil-

ity rates. In this narrative, Latinos, especially Mexican immigrants ,and their

children, are seldom represented as agents of positive change, because their

unwillingness to integrate denies them the opportunity to influence the larger

society in any appreciable way, except in the negative-as a threat to exist-

ing institutions (e.g., education, social services, medical). In other words, the

42 CONSTRUCTING AND CHALLENGING MYTHS

Latino Threat Narrative posits a neo-evolutionary scenario but in reverse, the

devolution of society. Because of these characteristics, Latinos, especially those

of Mexican origin, are said to be outside the practices of citizenship/subject-

making and incapable of feelings of belonging. 51 In this way; the Latino Threat

Narrative constructs distinctions between citizens and noncitizens, elaborating

a segmented citizenship in which some members of society are valued above

others. Such differences, once constructed and normalized, rationalize and

justify governmental practices and policies that stigmatize and punish certain

categories of immigrants and their children.

The discursive construction of Mexican immigrants and their children, and

often Latinos in general, resonates with anthropologist Mary Douglas's insights

into the cultural constructions of Purity and Danger. She argues that culture

classifies things and people into categories that make order out of an otherwise

chaotic existence. When something or someone is "out of place:' it or they are

often considered dangerous, as pollution, threatening the purity of those in

place-that is, in their "proper" category. Mexicans in the United States are

constructed in the discourse examined here as people out of place and thus as

a threat to the nation in which they reside. Put another way, one that Benedict

Anderson might agree with, the Latino Threat Narrative does not imagine La-

tinos, whether immigrants or U.S.-born, as part of the national community.52

When they do enter into the social imaginary, however, it is as an internal threat

to the larger community.

Through news stories, TV and radio talk shows, movies, and more, the

media construct social imaginaries, the implicit understandings that form

collective subjectivities and make common practices possible.53 Social imagi-

naries, argues Edward LiPuma, exist by virtue of representations and provide

the taken-for-granted assumptions about identities (e.g., citizens, immigrants,

consumers) and belonging in the world. For people immersed in these social

imaginaries "there appear to be no genuine alternatives:' for "modern agents

have increasingly come to imagine these imaginaries as the unquestionably real and natural ground for acting in the world:'54

The Latino Threat Narrative is a social imaginary in which Latinos are

"virtual characters." They exist as "illegal aliens," "illegitimate recipients of

organ donations:' "highly fertile invaders:' and "unassimilable separatists bent

on a reconquest of the Southwestern United States." Their lives are part of a

virtual reality, what anthropologists Daniel Miller and James G. Carrier call

virtualism.55 Virtualism is a critique of contemporary capitalist society and the

THE LATINO THREAT NARRATIVE 43

problems that result when virtual reality is perceived as reality and then we

attempt to make the world conform to that virtual vision. 56 We learn about the

Latino threat through the media, but the actual lives of Latinos, whether im-

migrants or U.S.-born, may not correspond to those constructed, virtual lives.

And yet anti-immigrant sentiment and immigration laws are in many ways a

response to what we think we know about the Latino threat based on the virtual lives with which we are familiar.

The virtual lives of "Mexicans:' "Chicanos:' "illegal aliens:' and "immi-

grants" become abstractions and representations that stand in the place of real

lives. Rather than actual lives, virtual lives are generalized, iconic, and typified

and are turned into statistical means. They are aggregate figures melded into

cost-benefit analyses. They are no longer flesh-and-blood people; they exist as

images. Because of this, a "global card trick" occurs between virtual personas

and real life personas.57 The virtual personas of Latino immigrants-repre-

sented as a threat to the nation-make the authority that has accumulated for

real immigrants in their role as workers and consumers vanish. The positive

contributions of Latino immigrants often disappear in public discourse be-

cause of this card trick. Through their very visible marches and demonstra-

tions, immigrants attempted to subvert the taken-for-granted truths accorded

to virtual immigrants and to assert what they believe are their very real, mate- rial contributions to society.

As we make this critique of modern culture, we must always keep in mind

that real immigrants do exist. Undocumented immigrants have lives. Immi-

grants and their children eat, breathe, and dream in cities and towns ac~oss America. How their actual lives "live up to" their virtual lives as represented in

the Latino Threat Narrative is the subject of the next chapter.