Metropolitan Latinidad
Transforming American Urban History
9780226839837
9780226839813
9780226839820
Metropolitan Latinidad
Transforming American Urban History
A wide-ranging collection of essays that centers Latinos in the history of American cities and suburbs.
Latino urban history has been underappreciated not only in its own right but for the centrality of its narratives to urban history as a field. A scholarly discipline that has long scrutinized economics, politics, and the built environment has too often framed race as literally Black and white. This has resulted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the full social canvas of American cities since at least the early twentieth century.
Traversing metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Chicago, El Paso, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, this collection of essays brings together both established and emerging scholars, including long-time urbanists and academics working in the fields of Latino, borderlands, political, landscape, and religious history. Organized at different scales—including city, suburb, neighborhood, and hemisphere—this impressive body of work challenges long-standing narratives about metropolitan America. The contributors—Llana Barber, Mauricio Castro, Eduardo Contreras, Sandra I. Enríquez, Monika Gosin, Cecilia Sánchez Hill, Felipe Hinojosa, Michael Innis-Jiménez, Max Krochmal, Becky M. Nicolaides, Pedro A. Regalado, Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez, and Thomas J. Sugrue—engage a diverse range of subjects, such as urban rebellions, the suburbanization of Latinos, affordable housing, labor, the built environment, transnationalism, place-making, and religious life. The scholars also explore race within Latino communities, as well as the role that political and economic dynamics have played in creating Latino urban spaces. After reading this book, you will never see American cities the same way again.
Latino urban history has been underappreciated not only in its own right but for the centrality of its narratives to urban history as a field. A scholarly discipline that has long scrutinized economics, politics, and the built environment has too often framed race as literally Black and white. This has resulted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the full social canvas of American cities since at least the early twentieth century.
Traversing metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Chicago, El Paso, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, this collection of essays brings together both established and emerging scholars, including long-time urbanists and academics working in the fields of Latino, borderlands, political, landscape, and religious history. Organized at different scales—including city, suburb, neighborhood, and hemisphere—this impressive body of work challenges long-standing narratives about metropolitan America. The contributors—Llana Barber, Mauricio Castro, Eduardo Contreras, Sandra I. Enríquez, Monika Gosin, Cecilia Sánchez Hill, Felipe Hinojosa, Michael Innis-Jiménez, Max Krochmal, Becky M. Nicolaides, Pedro A. Regalado, Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez, and Thomas J. Sugrue—engage a diverse range of subjects, such as urban rebellions, the suburbanization of Latinos, affordable housing, labor, the built environment, transnationalism, place-making, and religious life. The scholars also explore race within Latino communities, as well as the role that political and economic dynamics have played in creating Latino urban spaces. After reading this book, you will never see American cities the same way again.
360 pages | 14 halftones, 4 line drawings, 1 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2025
Historical Studies of Urban America
History: American History, Urban History
Reviews
Table of Contents
Introduction
A. K. Sandoval-Strausz
Metropolis
1. Latinx Uprisings: Violence, Representation, and Social Movements in Urban America, 1960s–1970s
Pedro A. Regalado
2. “You Were the Ones That Called Us, Georgia”: Mexican Construction Labor as Place- and Mythmaking
Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez
3. Latinos on the Crabgrass Frontier: Migrants, Immigrants, Race, and the Transformation of Postwar Suburbia
Thomas J. Sugrue
4. Are Latino Suburbs Ethnoburbs? And Why It Matters
Becky M. Nicolaides
Neighborhood
5. Adobe Homes for the Sun City’s Mexican Barrio: Community Housing Alternatives and Creative Self-Determination in El Paso, Texas
Sandra I. Enríquez
6. Gods in the City: Acción Cívica Evangélica and Latino Religious Politics in New York City, 1969–1978
Felipe Hinojosa
7. The “Puerto Rican Exception” and the Limits of Latinidad in Urban History
Llana Barber
8. Latinx Palimpsest: Remaking a Colonia on the Edge of Aztlán
Max Krochmal and Cecilia Sánchez Hill
9. “Gastronomical Gallivanting in Foreign Fields”: Mexican Restaurants and Cultural Exchange in Interwar Chicago
Michael D. Innis-Jiménez
Hemisphere
10. LatinX Metropolitan Pasts: A Hemispheric and Speculative Approach
Eduardo Contreras
11. “In the Grips of the Monster That Forced Us to Flee”: How the Cold War Made Our Latino Cities
Mauricio Castro
12. Navigating Space and Race: Afro-Cubans in Miami and Los Angeles
Monika Gosin
Acknowledgments
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
A. K. Sandoval-Strausz
Metropolis
1. Latinx Uprisings: Violence, Representation, and Social Movements in Urban America, 1960s–1970s
Pedro A. Regalado
2. “You Were the Ones That Called Us, Georgia”: Mexican Construction Labor as Place- and Mythmaking
Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez
3. Latinos on the Crabgrass Frontier: Migrants, Immigrants, Race, and the Transformation of Postwar Suburbia
Thomas J. Sugrue
4. Are Latino Suburbs Ethnoburbs? And Why It Matters
Becky M. Nicolaides
Neighborhood
5. Adobe Homes for the Sun City’s Mexican Barrio: Community Housing Alternatives and Creative Self-Determination in El Paso, Texas
Sandra I. Enríquez
6. Gods in the City: Acción Cívica Evangélica and Latino Religious Politics in New York City, 1969–1978
Felipe Hinojosa
7. The “Puerto Rican Exception” and the Limits of Latinidad in Urban History
Llana Barber
8. Latinx Palimpsest: Remaking a Colonia on the Edge of Aztlán
Max Krochmal and Cecilia Sánchez Hill
9. “Gastronomical Gallivanting in Foreign Fields”: Mexican Restaurants and Cultural Exchange in Interwar Chicago
Michael D. Innis-Jiménez
Hemisphere
10. LatinX Metropolitan Pasts: A Hemispheric and Speculative Approach
Eduardo Contreras
11. “In the Grips of the Monster That Forced Us to Flee”: How the Cold War Made Our Latino Cities
Mauricio Castro
12. Navigating Space and Race: Afro-Cubans in Miami and Los Angeles
Monika Gosin
Acknowledgments
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
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