Latin Americans

This interdisciplinary dissertation examines Latinx political self-representation across a variety of narrative forms including fiction, nonfiction, film, and social media. Beginning with identifying points of political intersection and divergence within the imagined Latinx voting bloc incorrectly homogenized in mainstream discourse, the dissertation looks at how narrative empathy and political concerns for a singular issue– the child migrant crisis–play out differently across fiction and nonfiction written narratives. The dissertation then takes a turn towards exploring the lack of prominent Latinx political figures in the cultural imaginary, especially Latinas, by looking back to Latin America for exemplary models, and presenting community organizing as seen in recent filmic representation as an alternative form of political engagement. Finally, it focuses on two Latinx political figures–Oscar Zeta Acosta and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez–who rose to notoriety half a century apart, yet took similar community insider/political outsider approaches to their historic runs for office. Overall, the dissertation stresses the importance of self-representation as a means of creating and controlling narrative empathy, as well as countering a mainstream narrative of a monolithic Latinx bloc that is both politically unengaged and threatening.

The intangible nature of the border leads to a wide array of implications for Latinx migrants. By dissociating borders from the literal space that commonly defines the word, borders can be put into conversation along with the institution of the university. By situating this paper in the larger scholarly discussion of the border and university critique it is possible to see how these intersections result in violent realities for Latinx migrants. Roberto Bolaño’s novel, 2666 provides a means to map out the violent realities that universities manifest for Latinx migrants. The feminicide pandemic in the fictional town of Santa Teresa mirrors the very real violence that happens toward Latinx among these border cultures. In the shadow of the university, violence against Latinx prospers to unknowable heights and a question emerges. Is it possible to determine the extent of damage the university causes Latinx migrants? The answer is unthinkable, but this paper is a means not to answer this difficult question in complete but to begin assessing the damage.