Louis Mendoza, a scholar and Director of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies at the University of Arizona, writes about a cross-country journey he took. Traveling by bicycle, he engaged with various Latinx communities, living among them as he gathered their stories. His research was then published in his book Conversations Across “Our America”. In the book he goes into detail about what he experienced in terms of shifting demographics in the country, as well as what he calls the “vast conspiracy” against Latinx immigrants.
“I use the term Latinoization to refer to the ongoing process of cultural and social change occurring in the United States as a result of the profound demographic shifts of the last fifty years. As I note elsewhere here, these shifts are only partially a result of immigration, but the persistent view of Latinos as perpetual outsiders fuels the myth that we are all immigrants. The interviews and firsthand observations from ground zero of the new geography of Latino migrations complicate and often contradict the vitriolic discourse of anti-immigrant pundits, politicians, and voices that inundate popular media forums.
In the spring of 2006, the United States experienced a series of unprecedented immigrant rights marches involving hundreds of thousands of people across the country as they sought to counter the rising tide of anti-immigrant discourse in the media and in the public at large. These marches occurred in response to highly visible anti-immigrant, anti-Latino discourse that revolves around the core of who “we” are as an immigrant nation, the cultural, philosophical and political qualities that define who “belongs” in the United States. Between the calls for amnesty, guest worker programs, border walls, and the repeal of birthright citizenship, a rampant xenophobia tinged, and continues to inform, debates on immigration as people express their fears that Spanish will supplant English as the national language, that a vast conspiracy is at work in which Mexico was planning to retake the southwestern states, that new immigrants are “dumbing down” the nation or stealing jobs, social services, and education without paying taxes—to name but a few of the more salient issues.
The anxiety of the mainstream population and social conservatives regard-ing demographic change has been primarily projected onto the undocumented population of Latinas/os in the United States; this is true despite the fact that demographic trends would persist even if the rate of entry into this country by undocumented migrants were to cease immediately. Inflammatory rhetoric not-withstanding, the facts of how undocumented immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy are often overlooked or misrepresented. In recent years, anti-immigrant sentiments have given rise to hundreds of local ordinances prohibiting access to housing, education, and jobs. And since Arizona passed statewide legislation in 2010, we have seen many states strive to follow a trend that previously had been mostly limited to small communities. Amidst this climate, efforts to reform outdated immigration policies continue to be stalled at the federal level as politicians remain polarized by competing perspectives on the benefits and liabilities of immigrant workers.”
LOUIS MENDOZA and Frances R. Aparicio, “Conversations across ‘Our America’:: Latinoization and the New Geography of Latinas/Os,” in Latina/o Midwest Reader, ed. OMAR VALERIO-JIMÉNEZ, SANTIAGO VAQUERA-VÁSQUEZ, and CLAIRE F. FOX (University of Illinois Press, 2017), 25–39, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1rfsrxw.5.