From the East Coast to the West Coast, being Latina means coming from the racially mixed populations of North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. That is, Latinas are a product of the cultures that unevenly combined as a result of the Iberian colonization of indigenous and African populations. This mixture suggests a racial designation different from—and much narrower than—merely having a Spanish surname. The latter is what the U.S. Bureau of the Census officially terms "Hispanic." Significant demarcations, painful historical realities, and persistent racial inequalities are glossed over when European and European American women are included with Latinas or "hispanas" (from hispanoparlante, or Spanish speaker) under the sanitized and deceptively simple rubric of "Hispanic." Latinas come in different races, classes, sexual identities, ages, levels of education, and nationalities.
Despite differences in specific origin, social position, and perception, racial mixture denotes a fundamental characteristic that historically has defined U.S. Latinas, that is, the common identity, burden, and condition of being racially oppressed women. Any claims to a European heritage and identity remain suspect for Latina women, no matter how fair their skin, how Castillian their Spanish, or how "American" their English. It is one of the ever present contradictions in how the national-cultural identity intersects with gender identity.
This tension not only unfolds against Latinas, oppressing them by constituting the group as racially subordinate women. It can also be mobilized in their favor as one of the ways to come together as Latina women, and as women of color—by structuring specific collective identities that will help them resist both racial domination and gender subordination. As women of color, Latinas share the common condition of racism, which brings together all women of Latin American and Caribbean descent, along with African American, Native American, and Asian American women in the United States. However, merely sharing the condition of oppression does not, in and of itself, guarantee the political consciousness of promoting common resistance, unity, and cooperation. This is evident in terms of racial categories, social classes, sexual identities, levels of education, political ideologies, age, physical ability, motherhood status, and/or national background and citizenship.
Such differences partially stem from how these populations were incorporated within U.S. control. Being occupied as part of mid-nineteenth-century land-grabs to secure the Pacific coast of North America (Tejanos, Californios, and Hispanos from Nuevo México after the Mexican War) was not the same as being occupied as part of turn-of-the-century land-grabs to secure the Panama Canal project (Puerto Ricans and Cubans after the Spanish-American War). After 1847 the United States territorially absorbed significant portions of Mexico's old rural aristocracy and middle classes and, since the 1940s, opened its doors to their Cuban counterparts. In contrast, the U.S. mainland has attracted mainly poor and unemployed Puerto Ricans.
Some Latinas arrived on U.S. shores to work as domestic servants, as field hands, and/or as cheap "sweatshop" laborers (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Central Americans from the 1890s to the present). Others came as professionals and middle-class entrepreneurs (most Cubans before the Mariel exodus). Chicanas/Chicanos and Puerto Ricans (since 1917) are the only groups of Latin American descent under U.S. jurisdiction whose entire populations automatically are recognized as U.S. citizens.
Most U.S. Latinas/Latinos share a history of invasions and military occupation, the vagaries and needs of U.S. markets, and interimperial rival-ries—with women among the most vulnerable to social and demographic dislocations. Perhaps for these same reasons, such women also have been in the forefront of struggles for political democracy and economic justice within U.S. jurisdiction and in the rest of the Americas.
According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the poverty levels of the Latina/Latino families in this country have been invariably higher than most of the U.S. population except for African Americans, who, as a group, are slightly poorer than Latinos. In 1974, for example, 10.5 percent of the entire population in this country lived below poverty level; specifically, 8.2 percent of whites, 28.6 percent of Blacks, and 21.9 percent of Latinas/Latinos. By 1992 11.7 percent of all U.S. families were below the poverty level: 8.9 percent of whites, 30.9 percent of Blacks, and 26.2 percent of Latinas/Latinos.
Further analysis of the "Hispanic" category by ethnic origin reveals stark contrasts among the people who are lumped together in this fashion. For the past three decades the largest groups are Mexican Americans (about two-thirds), Puerto Ricans (8 to 11 percent), and Cubans (4 to 5 percent). In a 1981 study spanning the 1950-80 period, Marta Tienda and others found that Puerto Ricans who had come to the U.S. mainland between 1950 and 1969 were not better off than those who had arrived during the 1970s. Cubans who had migrated to the United States between 1965 and 1970 had incomes that were 17 percent higher than those Cubans migrating between 1970 and 1979, while those who left for the United States between 1960 and 1965 had income levels that were 33 percent higher.
The disparities among income levels and, hence, among the various characteristics of each migration and the corresponding postwar Latina/Latino populations, were later confirmed by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. In a 1990 study, this agency discovered that although U.S. Mexican and Puerto Rican families had similar average income levels, Puerto Ricans had the lowest incomes within the entire Latina/Latino population. The report indicated that Puerto Rican families in the United States had poverty levels comparable to those of African Americans (29 percent of all U.S. Puerto Rican families have incomes below $10,000), whereas Cubans had the largest ratio of families (25 percent) with incomes of $50,000 or more.
Historically, as in the present, the majority of Latina mothers have not fared very well. Latina-headed households constitute the demographic categories with the greatest economic need and the lowest income. During the past decade, Latina women under the age of eighteen have tended to be more than four times as likely to have children as are white women, and twice as likely as Black women. For this same period, the number of Latina female-headed households has increased twice as much as the number of Black and white female-headed households. Several studies have established that the percentage of female-headed households within the two largest Latina categories (U.S. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans) has been consistently rising over the past three decades. For Mexican American families headed by females, these figures changed from 11.9 percent in 1960 and 13.4 percent in 1970 to 19 percent in 1989. Puerto Rican families headed by females increased even more dramatically: from 15.3 percent in 1960 and 24.1 percent in 1970 to 39.6 percent in 1989.
Other indicators of the deteriorating economic conditions affecting most U.S. Latinas are the interrelated proportions of labor participation, occupational access, and education levels. A 1981 study by Marta Tienda and others reported that the labor participation rates of Mexican American and Puerto Rican females (legally employed and/or registered as searching for employment) were consistently at least 20 percent below those of Mexican and Puerto Rican males between 1970 and 1992. During the past decade, the position of Latinas within the job hierarchy has not changed meaningfully vis-à-vis the general U.S. female population. For instance, in 1983, women of all races constituted 40.9 percent of the managerial and professional occupations, 2.6 percent of whom were Latinas; whereas, in 1992, women in general made up 47.3 percent of such occupations, 3.9 percent of whom were Latinas. As recently as 1992, only 10 percent of Latinas between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four had attended four-year-plus colleges, as compared to 24 percent of white women of the same age group.
There is a third aspect that is usually avoided when constructing a profile of U.S. Latinas, namely, sexual identity, including the ways in which their individual and collective identities—desire, affection, and sensuality—have been historically and culturally constructed, as well as the institutionalization of compulsory heterosexuality. Latina sexual identities can bring women together as Latinas but also tear them apart. This issue needs to be discussed, problematized, and studied further to promote the emancipation of women of color.
Latina lesbians are among the most sexually oppressed, but they are still Latina. Since these forms of sexual oppression are predicated on the basis of socially enforced anonymity, there is a dearth of data on this matter. Nevertheless, some Latina lesbians have been in the forefront of much of the reconceptualization and problematization of identity politics within the struggles against sexism, racism, and colonialism in this country (e.g., Gloria Anzaldúa).
Latina lesbians have taken a leading role in building bridges across national-cultural lines among women of color regarding scholarship and literary production. Here the role of women such as Cherríe Moraga, who helped to form the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, is important as is her role in putting together, with Gloria Anzaldúa, one of the first anthologies of writings by women of color, This Bridge Called My Back, published in 1981. Another recent example of this kind of work is the 1990 anthology Making Face, Making Soul, Haciendo Caras, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa. These women have contributed significantly to rethinking and critiquing the historically and still hegemonically white/Anglo foundations of what is popularly known as the "women's movement" in the United States.
During the past decade, Latinas have organized around issues such as homelessness, AIDS, domestic violence, popular education, improving working conditions for farm workers, child care, gay and lesbian rights, and feminism. Some examples of organizations in which this work has been carried out are the Escuela Popular Norteña, the Center for Immigrant Rights, the Centro para el desarrollo de la mujer dominicana, and Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social.
A number of Latinas have risen to prominence within these groups. María Lugones, Argentinean, became an important activist and cofounded the Escuela Popular Norteña. A founder and principal leader of the most important radical, Puerto Rican community-based organization, the Young Lords Party (during the late 1960s and early 1970s), was Denise Oliver, who is now a writer and social activist.
Clara Rodriguez, et al., The Puerto Rican Struggle (New York: Puerto Rican Migration Research Consortium, Inc., 1980); Marta Tienda, et al., Hispanic Origin Workers in the U.S. Labor Market (Washington, D.C.: Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 1981).
Gladys M. Jiménez-Muñoz
Latinas
For more on the history of Latinas in the United States, see the following entries:
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