In 1598, escorted by 130 soldiers and an untold number of women and children, Juan de Oñate spearheaded Spanish efforts to colonize what was to become present-day northern New Mexico (Nostrand 1992). On Spain’s northern frontier, as in other parts of its New World colonies, the crown required all new settlements to adhere to royal planning ordinances. King Phillip II’s codification of the Laws of the Indies in 1573 was intended to give order and a sense of familiarity to Spanish urban places (Crouch, Garr, and Mundigo 1982; Suisman 1993). Serving as the village focal point, theplaza mayor(main...

Studies of urban ethnic enclaves, or residential areas where minorities experience cohesion as a group, are growing in popularity in the present era of globalization, which is marked by historically high rates of migration. Such studies almost universally treat the ethnic groups in question in relation to the “host societies” or “charter groups” that constitute the historically dominant peoples of the regions in which migrants settle (Pacione 2001: 362–366). In the case of ethnic enclaves of the United States, the host society is usually, but not always, Anglo. Mike Davis (2000), for example, shows us that traditionally black inner-city...

San Francisco’s Latino community does not rival in size or visibility such predominantly Hispanic metropolises as Los Angeles and Miami, but it boasts a long-term cultural contribution to an ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan city. Widely admired for its historic qualities, scenic charms, and social tolerance—and economically propelled by the Bay Area’s high-technology boom—San Francisco became one of America’s most expensive real estate markets in the late twentieth century.

This multicultural mecca has long attracted a heterogeneous mix of Latin Americans, mainly of Mexican and Central American origin. Although they have faced problems caused by gentrification and displacement in...

This chapter explores cultural landscapes and the nature of change in two barrios in San Diego: Barrio Logan, just south of downtown; and San Ysidro, the border gateway to Mexico lying twelve miles south of the city center. Two ideas traditionally have been used to explain barrio landscapes in Mexican/Latino communities in the United States: (a) the “barrioization” paradigm; and (b) the “barriology” paradigm. The former seeks to explain the formation of barrios as an experience of a less-advantaged Latino population staking out a territory which is then overwhelmed by urban diseconomies—poverty, crime, negative land uses, and so on....

Four miles south of downtown Los Angeles, in the “exclusively industrial” city of Vernon, there is an extraordinary mural that sprawls more than eight thousand square feet across the high white walls and fences that surround Farmer John’s meatpacking facility. Like the colorful pages of a 1950s illustrated children’s storybook, the Leslie A. Grimes trompe l’oeil mural whimsically depicts Tom Sawyer–like farm boys—and no less than 709 pigs—frolicking merrily about a lushly bucolic countryside that is the very epitome of our romanticized image of nineteenth-century rural America. The block-long-plus mural is at once as illusionary as it...

ANew York Timesarticle entitled “Latino Culture Wars” (2002) featured the story of a young girl who was to represent her school in Jamaica, Queens, by singing a solo at the twenty-fifth anniversary conference of the New York State Association for Bilingual Education. The lyrics of the song focused on pride in Puerto Rican heritage. Ironically, though, the nine-year-old singing the song was from Guatemala. The article argued that, despite the increasing diversification of the city’s Latino community, the dominant culture to which all Latinos were assimilating was a Caribbean culture, particularly a Puerto Rican one.

New York City’s...

September 2, 2001, was a bad day for the coach of the U.S. national soccer team. His team had lost a World Cup qualifying match to Honduras at Washington’s rfk Stadium before a sell-out crowd of over fifty-four thousand fans—with half of the fans supporting the Honduran team! Coach Bruce Arena complained that his team could never have the home-field advantage in Washington, even though the stadium is in the nation’s capital. He observed, without irony, that “it would be virtually impossible to hold a World Cup qualifier in this stadium anymore . . . We want to put...

Popular nightclubs featuring merengue and salsa music are common on Cleveland’s Near Westside.Arroz con habichuelas,tostones,alcapurrias, andmofongoare often on the menus of many small restaurants in the neighborhood. Spanish is spoken at the local McDonald’s. Corner grocery stores feature Goya products as their main food line. Spanish-language newspapers are available. Pirate radio stations broadcast in Spanish and compete with legal stations for space on the airwaves. Small Puerto Rican flags hang from the rear-view mirrors of many cars. These signs suggest the presence of a Puerto Rican community.

Amos Rapoport (1982: 88–89), inThe Meaning...

The Midwest usually appears in discussions of the United States’ Latino population only in passing. The numbers of Latinos there are rather modest compared with those for places such as California, Texas, and the southwestern border counties long recognized for heavy concentrations of Hispanic population. For 1990, the U.S. Bureau of the Census counted some 1,727,000 Hispanics in the Midwest; they constituted 2.9 percent of the population (Driever 1996). For 2000, the census counted some 3,125,000 Hispanics in the region, accounting for 5.0 percent of the population (Guzmán 2001). What is sometimes overlooked in the analysis of such summary statistics...

From the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, Nevada attracted few Latino settlers. Among these few were those lured by opportunities in gold and silver mining; others came to work as vaqueros on sheep and cattle ranches, and some stayed on to secure jobs in railroad construction (Martínez 2001; Miranda 1997; Shepperson 1970). Most were from Mexico and California, yet a few came from as far away as Chile. From just over three hundred Latinos statewide in 1875 to over a thousand in 1920, Nevada supported relatively few Latinos until the 1980s, when the state experienced dramatic population increases,...

In his definitive study of the American Southwest, Donald Meinig (1971) delineates the region based on its combined Anglo, Hispanic, and Native American heritage. This tricultural influence situates the Southwest within the boundaries of New Mexico, Arizona, and Far West Texas. Meinig’s Southwest encompasses several major cities that strongly reflect the region’s Spanish and Mexican roots. Santa Fe, with its world-renowned plaza and centuries-old Palace of the Governors, is often characterized as the prototypical southwestern city. In Albuquerque, Old Town represents the city’s Spanish colonial heritage. El Paso’s landscape has been distinctively influenced by its common border with Mexico and...

Findings from the 2000 Census indicate two important trends affecting the Hispanic population. The first is the extraordinarily high rate of Hispanic population increase outside of urban areas over the past decade, with growth rates exceeding both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan growth rates for all other racial and ethnic groups (Cromartie 1999; Pérez 2001). In addition, for the first time in U.S. history, half of all nonmetropolitan Hispanics currently live outside the five southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas (Cromartie and Kandel 2002). The diversity of new rural areas raises questions about forces outside of the Southwest...

Hispanization is the process by which a place or person absorbs characteristics of Hispanic/Latino society and culture. Hispanization of a place is illustrated by, but is not limited to, Mexican restaurants, tortilla factories,panaderías(bakeries),taquerías(taco restaurants); Spanish-language churches, newspapers, television, and radio stations; as well as specialty clothing stores, music stores, and nightclubs. A non-Hispanic person may also absorb Hispanic characteristics, including, but not limited to, the Spanish language; Latin food, dress, music, interior design; and participation in Latin festivals and holidays.

Hispanization is the opposite of assimilation. Assimilation is the process by which a minority culture absorbs...