Latino Politics

This hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border draws together literary theory and historical analysis to outline how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug trafficking - culminating in the misnamed “war on drugs” - has shaped Mexico. Working from and against this political context, Cristina Rivera Garza posits that collective grief is an act of resistance against state violence and that writing is a powerful mode of seeking social justice and embodying resilience.

Enslaved West Indian women had few opportunities to record their stories for posterity. Yet from their dusty footprints and the umpteen small clues they left for us to unravel, there's no question that they earned their place in history. Pick any Caribbean island and you'll find race, skin color, and rank interacting with gender in a unique and often volatile way. In A Kick in the Belly, Stella Dadzie follows the evidence and finds women played a distinctly female role in the development of a culture of slave resistance - a role that was not just central, but downright dynamic.

Al publicar México negro, nunca imaginé que, a 35 años de distancia, miles de lectores seguirían leyéndolo. Tampoco supuse la catástrofe que significaría la burocratización de la energía en México: Pemex es la única compañía petrolera quebrada en el mundo. Su insolvencia financiera puede destruir el crédito público de México. Ha sido, con algunas excepciones, una cantera de bandidos. ¿De qué les ha servido la expropiación petrolera de 1938 a más de 50 millones de mexicanos sepultados, hoy en día, en la pobreza?

In Breaking In, veteran journalist Joan Biskupic tells the story of how two forces providentially merged - the large ambitions of a talented Puerto Rican girl raised in the projects in the Bronx and the increasing political presence of Hispanics, from California to Texas, from Florida to the Northeast - resulting in a historical appointment. And this is not just a tale about breaking barriers as a Puerto Rican. It's about breaking barriers as a justice.

In the lead-up to every election cycle, pundits predict that Latino Americans will overwhelmingly vote in favor of the Democratic candidate. And it’s true - Latino voters do tilt Democratic. Hillary Clinton won the Latino vote in a “landslide”, and Barack Obama “crushed” Mitt Romney among Latino voters in his reelection. But those numbers belie a more complicated picture. Here, historian and political commentator Geraldo Cadava illuminates the history of the millions of Hispanic Republicans who, since the 1960s, have had a significant impact on national politics.

Power Shift charts the rise of Latino political power and its impact, from the breakthrough election of the first Mexican American to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949 to today’s leadership of California and its heavyweight role in polarized America. This inspiring story recounts the origins and development of 10 LA-based Latina and Latino leaders who transformed politics and government, forging a progressive political tradition in the process.

La increíble historia de los niños indígenas que sobrevivieron 40 días en el Amazonas. “Lo intenté mucho y no conseguí una explicación. Después de 40 días de búsqueda por parte de los militares mejor entrenados del mundo en supervivencia y rastreo de jungla, los cuatro niños vinieron a aparecer a escasos diez metros del lugar donde un chamán indígena dijo que estarían."

Venezuela, 1992. Unknown colonel Hugo Chávez stages an ill-fated coup against a corrupt government, igniting the passions of Venezuela’s poor and catapulting the oil-rich country to international attention. For two rival spies hurriedly dispatched to Caracas - one from Washington, DC, and the other from Fidel Castro’s Cuba - this is a career-defining mission.

In the last three decades of the 20th century, LGBT Latinas/os faced several forms of discrimination. The greater Latino community did not often accept sexual minorities, and the mainstream LGBT movement expected everyone, regardless of their ethnic and racial background, to adhere to a specific set of priorities so as to accommodate a “unified” agenda. To disrupt the cycle of sexism, racism, and homophobia that they experienced, LGBT Latinas/os organized themselves on local, state, and national levels.

In this compelling new book, relying on original reporting from the most dangerous corners of Rio to the halls of power in Washington, DC, Dave Zirin examines how sports and politics are colliding in remarkable fashion in Brazil, opening up an international conversation on the culture, economics, and politics of sports.

LeJuan James loves being Hispanic. But growing up in the US to immigrant parents, he quickly noticed their house rules and traditions didn’t always match up with his friends’. The result was a lifetime of laugh-out-loud relatable content for his videos. Definitely Hispanic is a collection of heartfelt memoiristic essays that explores the themes LeJuan touches upon in his videos and celebrates the values and traditions being kept alive by Hispanic parents raising US-born children.

Als eine seiner ersten Amtshandlungen verringerte der Kettensägenmann Javier Milei die Zahl der argentinischen Ministerien von 22 auf 9. ¡Afuera! Der exzentrische Polit-Quereinsteiger, der aus dem Nichts kam, ohne Partei, ohne Struktur und die Verhältnisse im peronistischen Argentinien auf den Kopf stellte, ist der erste libertäre und bekennend anarcho-kapitalistische Präsident der Welt. Dieses Werk beleuchtet die Gründe für den wohl unglaublichsten Politikerfolg der jüngsten Vergangenheit. Milei wird vor allem von den jüngeren Argentiniern wie ein Rockstar verehrt. Doch was sind seine Ideen?

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and the greater part of the capital was demolished. Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, who had worked in the country for nearly thirty years treating infectious diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS, and former President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, had just begun to work on an extensive development plan to improve living conditions in Haiti.

In Mestizos Come Home! author Robert Con Davis-Undiano documents the great awakening of Mexican American and Latino culture since the 1960s that has challenged this omission in collective memory. He maps a new awareness of the United States as intrinsically connected to the broader context of the Americas. At once native and new to the American Southwest, Mexican Americans have “come home” in a profound sense: they have reasserted their right to claim that land and U.S. culture as their own.

Ernesto Nieto has been the chief architect and driving force behind the National Hispanic Institute, the internationally recognized producer of next-generation Latino leaders. In this must-listen for those invested in Latino community leadership, Nieto outlines the personal transformation necessary in crafting and pursuing visions for the future.

En las elecciones del 2004, hubo 3 millones más votantes hispanos que en el año 2000. Los hispanos pusieron al presidente George W. Bush en la Casa Blanca en el 2000 y luego lo reeligieron en el 2004. Es imposible ignorar una influencia tan grande y un voto tan importante.

El cambio más dramático que está viviendo este país no tiene nada que ver con la guerra contra el terrorismo o con la economía; tiene que ver, simplemente, con la revolución demográfi ca impulsada por los latinos. Es la Ola Latina.

As late as the 1960s, tacos were virtually unknown outside Mexico and the American Southwest. Within fifty years the United States had shipped taco shells everywhere from Alaska to Australia, Morocco to Mongolia. But how did this tasty hand-held food - and Mexican food more broadly - become so ubiquitous? In Planet Taco, Jeffrey Pilcher traces the historical origins and evolution of Mexico's national cuisine, explores its incarnation as a Mexican American fast-food, shows how surfers became global pioneers of Mexican food, and how Corona beer conquered the world.

En este libro, Catalina Ruiz-Navarro, una de las voces más destacadas de este movimiento en Latinoamérica, recorre, a partir de un testimonio profundamente honesto y agudo, un camino que aborda el cuerpo, el poder, la violencia, el sexo, la lucha activista y el amor. A su vez, once heroínas, entre las que se cuentan María Cano, Flora Tristán, Hermila Galindo y Violeta Parra, bellamente retratadas por Luisa Castellanos, alzan la voz y evidencian que hablar de feminismos es necesario, es importante, es la resistencia.

American Imperialism is a short work in which Schurz denounced the Spanish-American war and the United States’ acquisition of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. He considered the war as a battle of conquest which violated the intent and principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Schurz believed that imperialism should remain the province of despotic European governments. Together with the other leaders of the American Anti-Imperialist League, such as Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain, Schurz insisted that imperialism was incompatible with democracy.

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared", Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Her writings were smuggled out of prison and published anonymously in human rights journals. The Little School is Alicia Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment in Argentina in the 1970s.