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How to Make Beef Empanadas | Beef Empanadas Recipe

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Talking to Latino Children About Race, Inequality, and Discrimination

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Talking to Latino Children About Race, Inequality, and Discrimination

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This is an academic journal discussing some of the topics of concern for Latino children in America.

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An article about Hispanic heritage and history.

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Who is included in your curriculum and who can be added when teaching Hispanic history?

What are the lasting contributions of Hispanic people and groups to the culture and history of the United States?

How is Latino history woven into the fabric of U.S. history?

What are some historical and cultural connections between Latin America and the United States?

Latin American and Latino History

This section provides historical context and framing for EDSITEment's resources on Latin American and Latino history, as well as ways to integrate NEH-funded projects into the classroom. Lessons are grouped into four thematic and chronological clusters: the indigenous societies of Mesoamerica and the Andes; the colonization of the Americas by Spain; the Mexican Revolution; and immigration and identity in the United States. By no means are these clusters exhaustive; their purpose is to provide context for learning materials available through EDSITEment and NEH-funded projects, and to serve as jumping-off points for further exploration and learning. For each theme, a series of framing questions and activities provides suggestions for connecting and extending the lessons and resources listed for that topic.

Indigenous Mesoamerica and Andes

Indigenous peoples inhabited the Americas long before their "discovery" by Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century. Major civilizations had risen and fallen here, just as they had in Eurasia. One of the most famous archaeological sites in the Americas, Teotihuacan, was home to a complex and wealthy society that collapsed nearly a millennium before Christopher Columbus set out from the Spanish port of Palos in 1492. Students can explore the history and culture of the best-known of the major Mesoamerican civilizations in the lessons The Aztecs: Mighty Warriors of Mexico and Aztecs Find a Home: The Eagle Has Landed. In the South American Andes, the Incas came to control a vast territory crisscrossed with an impressive network of roads traversed by couriers. Students can learn more about the Inca empire and its communication system in Couriers in the Inca Empire: Getting Your Message Across. The NEH-funded project, Mesoamerican Cultures and Their Histories, provides dozens of additional lesson plans about indigenous societies and cultures.

Framing questions and activities:

Terminology and periodization: Often, names and time periods are taken for granted. These discussion questions prompt students to think critically about the names used to refer to groups of people and to the ways they think about the division of time around the period of European contact with the Americas.

While we use the term "the Aztecs" most commonly today, this was not what the inhabitants of Tenochtitlan would have called themselves. Historians usually use either Nahuas/Nahua-speaking, to refer to the language these people spoke (and which is still spoken to this day), or Mexica, which refers to the most powerful of the three groups in the Triple Alliance that controlled Tenochtitlan and the Valley of Mexico when Hernán Cortés arrived in 1519. Ask students to reflect on these different names. Why might "Aztec," which is not what the Mexica specifically or Nahuas generally would have called themselves, have become so common? What is gained from a better understanding of the history of these names and their meanings?

Ask students to read and explore this timeline of Mesoamerican civilizations. Reflect on the words often used to describe these civilizations and what happened to them after the arrival of Europeans to the New World. What words come to mind? Ask them to reflect on the terms "Pre-Hispanic" and "Pre-Columbian." What do these terms communicate, and what do they omit? Why do these questions about terminology and periodization matter? Can they think of alternative ways to refer to these time periods? What are the pros and cons of these alternatives?

Evidence-based claims: The NEH-funded virtual exhibit, Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, invites students to explore recent archaeological finds made at the site, while placing them in historical and cultural context. As students interact with the site, ask them to create a chart with headings such as "Trade," "Religion," "Diet," "Agriculture," and "Social Structure," adapting these categories as you see fit. Students should record what claims the site makes about these different aspects of Teotihuacano society and what evidence is used to support these claims (for example, under "Trade," a student might write: "Teotihuacan had extensive trading partnerships, evidenced by the prevalence of green quetzal feathers depicted in carvings of elites. These feathers needed to be imported from as far as 600 miles away, indicating that the city was able to command resources from such distances through trade and diplomacy").

Holes in the historical record: As students complete the activities in Aztecs Find a Home: The Eagle Has Landed, they will explore another archaeological site: Mexico City itself, which was the seat of Aztec power, the capital of the Spanish colony of New Spain, and now the capital of Mexico. As students observe sites in Mexico City where ruins of Tenochtitlan, colonial structures, and modern skyscrapers are simultaneously visible, ask them to reflect on the other kinds of evidence an historian might use to learn about the Aztecs. Though Nahuatl was a written language, many Nahua texts were destroyed during conquest and subsequent attempts to convert indigenous people to Catholicism. Surviving texts produced in Nahuatl and by indigenous authors were almost all created after the conquest. What does this mean for historians and students? How might they approach what sources do exist? Students can reflect on these questions independently and share their thoughts with a partner, small group, or whole class. For grades 11-12, this exercise would be a good segue into some of the materials from The Conquest of Mexico, a lesson plan created by Dr. Nancy Fitch for the American Historical Association.

Comparing and contrasting: After students have learned about both the Aztec and Inca empires using the EDSITEment lesson plans Aztecs Find a Home: The Eagle Has Landed, The Aztecs: Mighty Warriors of Mexico, and Couriers in the Inca Empire: Getting Your Message Across, ask them to compare and contrast important features of these two civilizations. How were these societies organized? How did tribute and taxation work in each? Language? What territories did each control, and by what mechanisms? Students can work in groups to research different points of comparison before sharing their findings and reflecting as a class.

Contact, Conquest, Colonization

When Spanish conquistadors reached the New World, they encountered these complex indigenous societies with their sophisticated, surplus-producing economies, as well as smaller, nomadic societies. The early Spanish colonizers, far fewer in number than the populous New World civilizations they sought to conquer, often attempted to graft onto existing tribute systems to extract this surplus wealth, with major indigenous cities like Tenochtitlan (situated where Mexico's capital city is to this day) serving as the geographic loci of early colonization. Spanish colonization was helped along by Spain's military technology, alliances with rival indigenous groups, and, most crucially, disease. The Spaniards introduced contagious diseases, such as smallpox, to which indigenous people had little immune resistance. Indigenous populations were decimated by the combination of warfare, disease, and harsh labor on Spanish plantations. As Spain's empire expanded, the Spanish crown depended heavily on the Catholic Church to subjugate indigenous peoples, both settled and nomadic, and integrate them into the colonial economy. Along New Spain's northern frontier, which stretched into the present-day United States and where contact and conflict with other burgeoning European empires was likely, fortified missions relying on coerced indigenous settlement and labor were important institutions for expanding the geographic and demographic reach of the Spanish empire. In the EDSITEment lesson plan, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción and the Spanish Mission in the New World, students are invited to use the image of the mission to explore one instance of the missionary institution in the mid-17th century. This lesson might be further enriched with an exploration of Spanish mission sites in California in The Road to Santa Fe: A Virtual Excursion.

The processes of conquest and colonization were often carefully documented by Spaniards, creating a rich-and problematic-historical and literary record. A prime example, the journey of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, can be found by visiting New Perspectives on the West. For another perspective on Spanish exploration and settlement, visit Web de Anza, which is packed with primary source documents and multimedia resources covering Juan Bautista de Anza's two overland expeditions that led to the colonization of San Francisco in 1776. Surviving indigenous perspectives are more difficult to find. Even when available, these sources pose significant interpretive challenges because they were often mediated through Spanish individuals or institutions. For grades 11-12, The Conquest of Mexico provides a plethora of primary and secondary sources (including texts produced by indigenous people), lesson plans, and exercises in historical analysis. Finally, Southwest Crossroads offers lesson plans, in-depth articles, and hundreds of digitized primary sources that explore the many narratives people have used to make sense of this region, from colonization to the present.

Framing questions and activities:

Source interpretation: In several EDSITEment lessons about Spanish colonization, students are asked to analyze images to glean information about colonial institutions and practices. They have also confronted the problem of authorship and perspective in primary sources from this period, with the archive of the colonizer serving as the main paradigm through which the processes of conquest and colonization are understood. Two lessons from the NEH-funded website, Southwest Crossroads: Cultures and Histories of the American Southwest, throw this problem into sharp relief. In Encounters-Hopi and Spanish Worldviews, students work with texts written by both Hopi and Spanish authors, as well as maps and images, to learn about missionaries' violent attempts to convert Hopi villagers to Catholicism and to reflect on the lasting impacts of those attempts for Hopi culture and society. In Invasions-Then and Now, students work with a Spanish account of a sixteenth-century expedition, a map of similar expeditions, and a twentieth-century poem to reflect on the echoes and reverberations of the colonial past.

Image analysis: The EDSITEment lesson Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción and the Spanish Mission in the New World is based on the analysis of a watercolor painting of the mission. Students can learn more about the architecture of Spanish missions from the National Park Service, and use their insights to analyze the architecture of other missions pictured in the University of California's digital exhibition of Spanish mission sites in California. They can explore additional photographs of Spanish missions, as well as get a sense for the distribution of missions in what is now the United States, from Designing America, a website created by the Fundación Consejo España-Estados Unidos and the National Library of Spain. Ask students to think critically about this last source in particular as they read through its descriptions of mission architecture and function. How does this information compare with, for example, this Hopi author's account of the construction of a Spanish mission? Why might this be?

The Mexican Revolution

Beginning in 1910 and continuing for a decade, the Mexican Revolution had profound ramifications for both Mexican and U.S. history. The EDSITEment Closer Readings Commentary on the Mexican Revolution provides background on the conflict and its cultural, artistic, and musical legacies. A lesson plan for the Mexican Revolution covers the context for, unfolding of, and legacies of the Revolution for later social movements. Students can learn about the role played by the United States in the Mexican Revolution in the EDSITEment lesson plan "To Elect Good Men": Woodrow Wilson and Latin America.

Framing questions and activities:

Guided research: Ask students to explore the Mexican Revolution in greater detail. Useful sources, in addition to those already mentioned, include:

The following questions and prompts can guide their research:

Describe Mexican political, economic, and social conditions during the Porfiriato.

What were some of the causes of the Mexican Revolution?

Who were some of the major military actors in the Mexican Revolution? Why were they involved, and what were they fighting for?

How have different people experienced and understood the Mexican Revolution? Provide at least two different individuals' perspectives.

Before students begin their research, ask them to review the sources provided and give examples of primary and secondary sources. As they answer the guiding questions, they should use at least one primary and one secondary source to support each of their answers.

Comparing and contrasting: After studying the Mexican Revolution and U.S. involvement in it, ask students to make comparisons with another revolution or conflict that they have studied. They might consider the following factors:

Major divisions and conflicts

The role of foreign intervention

Outcomes of the conflicts

Major actors involved in the conflict

The way the conflict was represented in contemporary accounts (for example, by researching coverage in historic newspapers on Chronicling America)

Ways the conflict is commemorated today

Students should create presentations of their findings to present to each other. As they listen to their classmates, ask students to take notes about the various revolutions. Use their observations to start a discussion about the word "revolution." What should be classified as a revolution? Could a coup be a revolution? A civil war? Why do they think some civil wars are classified as such, while others are labeled revolutions, even though the impacts of both might be equally profound?

Immigration and Identity in the United States

The border between the United States and Mexico has changed over time, and much of the territory that now forms the southwestern United States was at one point Mexican. But the movement of people, goods, money, and ideas has always been a feature of this border. That movement, especially of people, has not always been voluntary. During the Great Depression, many thousands-and by some estimates as many as two million-Mexicans were forcibly deported from the United States. Over half of those deported were U.S. citizens.

Less than a decade later, U.S. policy changed completely: rather than deporting Mexican-Americans and Mexicans, the United States was desperate to draw Mexican laborers into the country to ease agricultural labor shortages caused by World War II. As a result, the Mexican and U.S. governments established the Bracero Program, which allowed U.S. employers to hire Mexican laborers and guaranteed those laborers a minimum wage, housing, and other necessities. However, braceros' wages remained low, they had almost no labor rights, and they often faced violent discrimination, including lynching. Oral histories from braceros, as well as several lesson plans about the program, can be found at the NEH-funded Bracero History Archive

The Bracero program ended in 1964. Two years before, in 1962, César Chávez had co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) with Dolores Huerta. The NFWA would later become the United Farm Workers (UFW). In response to the low wages and terrible working conditions experienced by farmworkers, Chávez and Huerta organized migrant farmworkers to press for higher wages, better working conditions, and labor rights. Students can learn more about Chávez and Huerta in the EDSITEment lesson "Sí, se puede!": Chávez, Huerta, and the UFW.

The UFW was part of the larger civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond. The Chicano movement fought for the rights of Mexican-Americans and against anti-Mexican racism and discrimination. It was also important in the creation of a new collective identity for, and sense of solidarity among, Mexican-Americans. Other ethnic categories sought to include a greater number of people of Latin American heritage and to capture aspects of their shared experience in the United States. In the 1970s, activists pushed for the inclusion of "Hispanic" on the U.S. Census in order to disaggregate poverty rates among Latinos and whites. Since then, different terms have emerged to describe this diverse population, including Latino and Latinx. The PBS project Latino Americans (available in English and Spanish) documents the experiences of Latinos in the United States and includes a selection of lesson plans for grades 7-12, as well as shorter, adaptable classroom activities. Additional resources for teaching immigration history include the Closer Readings Commentary " Everything Your Students Need to Know About Immigration History," which provides an overview of immigration history in the United States, and Becoming US, a collection of teaching resources on migration and immigration created by the Smithsonian Institution.

Framing questions and activities:

Terminology and identity: There are many words to describe the experiences and identities of Latinos in the United States. The words "Hispanic" and "Latino" are intentionally broad and meant to capture a wide diversity of identities and experiences, which means that they can also erase or diminish specific individuals and their stories. Teaching Tolerance has created and compiled a selection of educational materials, including readings, discussion questions, and suggestions for teachers, to help address this topic in the classroom. Within this Teacher's Guide, the lessons in the section "Borderlands: Lessons from the Chihuahuan Desert" address questions of identity, belonging, and difference in greater depth.

Comparing and contrasting: Like "Sí, se puede!": Chávez, Huerta, and the UFW, the EDSITEment lesson Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and the Power of Nonviolence addresses the civil rights movement and the use of nonviolent protest to fight racism, discrimination, and exploitation. Ask students to research a specific protest organized by the UFW and one by leaders of the movement for African American civil rights. They might return to the lessons for some ideas, or work on a protest not included in the lesson plans. Ask them to discuss the following questions with respect to their chosen protests:

What actors were involved? What united them?

What were they protesting?

What strategies did they use? Describe the mechanics of the protest: its location and duration, what actions the protesters took, how they responded to any resistance or confrontations, how and why the protest ended. Depending on the protest they have chosen, a timeline and/or map may be a good way to represent this information.

Were there any divisions, controversies, or conflicts within the movement?

What responses met the protest? How was the protest represented in different media outlets from the time?

How has the protest been commemorated or remembered since it took place? How have those commemorations changed over time?

If you were to design a monument, event, or other public commemoration of this protest, what would you create? Why?

Guided research: To expand students' understanding of protest and resistance in the United States, ask them to research a contemporary protest movement. They might use the questions from the "Comparing and contrasting" activity, above, as guidance. Students should create presentations about their chosen movement to share their findings with the class; afterwards, they can discuss any similarities and differences they noticed between the contemporary protests, as well as continuities with and changes from the historical protests they have studied in class.

Landmarks of Movement and Migration

Borderlands

Challenging ideas of fixed boundaries of nations and empires, the term "borderlands" conceptualizes the crossroads where cultures meet in the movement of people, ideas, and goods. In the context of United States history, borderlands can describe the changing relationships of the U.S.-Mexico border, the U.S.-Canada border, and Indigenous-U.S. borders. These contact zones help us understand place as a tool for identity-creation and citizenship.

Throughout the colonial era, borders changed over time in the Americas. Spanish colonization further impacted trade, language, and culture-often at the expense of Indigenous people. As people claimed land for themselves and built new communities, regional and ethnic identities developed. Hispanic heritage refers to a person who is from, or a descendant of someone from a Spanish-speaking country. Latino/a or Latinx heritage refers to a person who is from, or a descendant of someone from a country in Latin America. Hispanic and Latinx communities continue to grow and impact the built environment.

Imperialism and Missionaries

Spanish colonization of the Americas began under the Crown of Castile with Spanish conquistadors, such as Bernal Diaz del Castillo and Hernán de Cortés. The Americas were incorporated into the growing Spanish Empire, with the exception of British America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Throughout these land holdings, the Spanish Empire established Catholic missions to religiously convert Indigenous people local to the area. These missions were often found on the outermost borders of Spanish colonies.

Founded in 1716, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción is one of five Spanish missions in San Antonio, Texas. The Spanish established missionary outposts in Texas as barriers to the threat of French expansion from Louisiana. Using a system they previously employed in Arizona and New Mexico, Spanish missionaries moved to remote areas to build missions where they preached Christianity. The missionaries taught American Indians about Spanish language, arts and crafts, and culture in order to convert the Indigenous population to Christianity and allegiance to the Spanish Crown.

The Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico reflects the complex heritage of the American Southwest. Constructed in 1610 to house the first Spanish royal governor of New Mexico, Don Pedro de Peralta (1584-1666), the Palace of the Governors is the oldest, extant public structure built by European settlers in the continental United States. As control of the New Mexican territory shifted over the centuries, the Palace served as residence to the Spanish in the colonial era, Pueblo Indians during the Pueblo Revolt, Mexican governors, and American governors. In 1912, New Mexico became the 48th state of the United States. Over a century late, the Palace of the Governors serves as the New Mexico History Museum.

Trade and Migration

Officially established as a trading route in 1829, the Old Spanish National Historic Trail spans over 2,700 miles across New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. Following Mexican independence in the 19th century, trade between the United States, Mexico, and western territories flourished along this network of trails. The route ensured safe passage through dry and sweltering environments for explorers, traders, and settlers as they traversed between burgeoning trading posts like Santa Fe to Los Angeles and beyond. The historic trail remains a physical reminder of the contact and exchange of goods, ideas, and people across the region.

National Heritage Areas (NHAs) are lived-in landscapes where historical, cultural, and natural resources form congressionally-recognized, nationally important places. The preservation of these distinct historic, cultural, and environmental sites provide a sense of place and community. NHAs foster community collaboration to make history and heritage relevant to local interests and needs.

An NHA in Colorado, the Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area reflects the diverse region where Indigenous, Latinx, and Anglo peoples inhabited the alpine desert valley. Named for the surrounding jagged mountain range, the San Luis Valley contains wildlife and forest wilderness areas, one of the largest and highest alpine valleys in North America, the beginning of the Rio Grande, and part of the Old Spanish Trail, as well as Colorado's oldest town, San Luis. Spanish explorers passed through the region in the 18th century and by the 19th century, settlers migrated to the area via Mexican land grants. The descendants of these families remain in the San Luis Valley today.

Immigration and Work

Funded by the NEH, The Bracero History Archive preserves the experiences of the millions of Mexican guest workers to the United States between 1942 to 1964. The Bracero Program brought Mexican laborers, known as braceros or "strong arms," into the U.S. on temporary work visas due to domestic farm-labor shortages during and after World War II. Of the five bracero processing centers created by the program, Rio Vista Farm in Texas is the only one that remains. Rio Vista Farm served as a reception and processing center for the more than 80,000 manual laborers annually entering the U.S. throughout the duration of the program. Although many braceros returned home after the completion of their contracts, many Mexican-Americans can trace their grandfathers' and fathers' immigration to the U.S. through this program.

Considered the "Ellis Island of the South," Freedom Tower became a symbol of freedom due to the aid offered to Cubans fleeing the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Built in 1925 in the Renaissance style with Spanish Baroque embellishments, Freedom Tower served as the headquarters of the Miami News and Metropolis newspaper before it was acquired by the United States government. Used as a processing center for Cuban immigrants from 1962 to 1974, the building serves as a physical reminder of Cold War era politics and the Cuban exodus. Today, the tower is a registered historic site and the home of the Miami Dade College's Museum of Art and Design.

K-12 Lessons for Hispanic History & Culture

Social Studies and History

The Mexican Revolution-In order to better understand this decade-long civil war, we offer an overview of the main players on the competing sides, primary source materials for point of view analysis, discussion of how the arts reflected the era, and links to Chronicling America, a free digital database of historic newspapers, that covers this period in great detail.

Chronicling America's Spanish-language newspapers-The Spanish-language newspapers in Chronicling America, along with those published in English, allow us to look beyond one representation of the communities and cultures pulled into the United States by wars and treaties of the 19th century. Spanish-language newspapers reveal how these communities reported on their own culture, politics, and struggles to form an identity in a brand new context.

Hispanic American Keywords for Chronicling America-This resource is part of EDSITEment's Race and Ethnicity Keyword Thesaurus for Chronicling America. Here you will find historically accurate keywords that may help in using the Chronicling America historic newspaper database to research topics in Hispanic American history.

Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción and the Spanish Mission in the New World-Focusing on the daily life of Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, the lesson asks students to relate the people of this community and their daily activities to the art and architecture of the mission.

Literature and Language Arts

Esperanza Rising: Learning Not to Be Afraid to Start Over (also available in Spanish)-In this lesson students will explore some of the contrasts that Esperanza experiences when she suddenly falls from her lofty perch as the darling child of a wealthy landowner surrounded by family and servants to become a servant herself among an extended family of immigrant farm workers.

Magical Realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude (Curriculum Unit)-Author Gabriel García Márquez meshes magical elements with a reality which is, in his view, fantastical in its own right. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, García Márquez vividly retells episodes in the history of Latin America through the story of real and fantastical events experienced over the course of one century by the Buendía family.

Women and Revolution: In the Time of the Butterflies-In this lesson, students undertake a careful analysis of the main characters to see how each individually demonstrates courage in the course of her family's turbulent life events in the Dominican Republic during the dictatorial rule of Rafael Trujillo.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: The First Great Latin American Poet (Curriculum Unit, also available in Spanish)-Through this curriculum unit students will gain an understanding of why Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is considered one of the most important poets of Latin America, and why she is also considered a pioneering feminist writer and poet.

"Every Day We Get More Illegal" by Juan Felipe Herrera-In his poem "Every Day We Get More Illegal" Juan Felipe Herrera, the former Poet Laureate of the United States, gives voice to the feelings of those "in-between the light," who have ambiguous immigration status and work in the United States.

"Translation for Mamá" by Richard Blanco-Richard Blanco wrote the poem "Translation for Mamá" for his mother, who came to the United States from Cuba to create a new life for herself and her family. Using both English and Spanish language translation, Blanco honors the bridge between his mother's new identity and the losses she faced in emigration.

Culture and Arts

La Familia-Students will learn about families in various Spanish cultures and gain a preliminary knowledge of the Spanish language, learning the Spanish names for various family members.

De Colores-This lesson plan is designed for young learners at the novice or novice-intermediate level of proficiency in Spanish. The vocabulary, the colors, is appealing to young learners because colors are easy for them to comprehend and observe while connecting the newly acquired vocabulary to familiar objects.

Origins of Halloween and the Day of the Dead-This EDSITEment feature can be used with students as a framework for discussing the origins and history of the Halloween festival and introducing them to the Mexican festival, the Day of the Dead ( el Día de Muertos), recognizing the common elements shared these festivals of the dead as well as the acknowledging the differences between them.

Mexican Culture and History through Its National Holidays-This lesson will focus on holidays that represent and commemorate Mexico's religious traditions, culture, and politics over the past five hundred years.

Lessons from the Chihuahuan Desert

Borderlands narratives have historically been seen as peripheral to the development of American history and identity and the binational spaces border people occupy have been portrayed as dangerous, illegitimate, and as part of a distinct counter-culture. During "Tales from the Chihuahuan Desert: Borderlands Narratives about Identity and Binationalism," a summer institute for educators (grades 6-12) sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and offered by The University of Texas at El Paso, scholars and teachers examine debates about American history and identity by focusing on the multicultural region and narratives of the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez metroplex.

The lessons and materials provided below were created by institute attendees in the interest of developing "their own creative ways of implementing diverse storytelling methodologies into their teaching philosophies in order to more holistically reflect on the complex histories and identities of border peoples and of the binational spaces they inhabit." The complete portfolio of lesson plans is available at the "Tales from the Chihuahuan Desert: Borderlands Narratives about Identity and Binationalism" homepage.

Smokestack Memories: A Borderlands History During the Gilded Age-The second industrialization also known as the Gilded Age from about 1870s-1900s is one of the most significant time periods in American history. In 1887, a smelter was established in El Paso which would become known as ASARCO. The purpose of this lesson is to understand and contextualize the global, national, border, and regional impact of industry during the Gilded Age. (Grade: 7, 8, 11) (Subject: U.S. History, AP U.S. History)

Push/Pull Factors and the Quest for God, Gold, and Glory-Through these two lessons that connect early European exploration of US territories with contemporary immigration, students draw upon the familiar to understand the past and the long history of the United States as a nation by and for people of many cultures. (Grade: 8) (Subject: U.S. History, World History)

Making a Nation-Through these lessons, students will produce an interactive map of North America in the earliest days of colonization that demonstrates the multiple nations and borderlands that cut across the physical space that we now consider to be clearly defined that they can then use throughout their study of American history. (Grade: 8) (Subject: Language Arts and Social Studies)

Borders Near and Far: A Global and Local Investigation of Borderlands-This lesson is designed as an introduction for exploring the theme of borders and borderlands throughout a literature course. Compelling questions and text-based examples are provided to prepare students for independent close readings and discussions of borders at multiple points during the school year. (Grade: 11-12) (Subject: Literature and Language Arts)

Know Thyself-This unit focuses on the topics of identity, stereotypes, culture, and biculturalism. It is a four-part unit intended to extend throughout the semester with supplemental activities and resources in between. This unit is presented in English to serve lower level Spanish courses, however, it can be adapted and taught in Spanish with additional vocabulary instruction and scaffolding. (Grade: 9-12) (Subject: Language, Spanish level 1, 2)

Borders: Understanding and Overcoming Differences-Students will examine the concept of borders, both literal and figurative, as well as what a border is and how it is created. They will use this knowledge as they learn about the U.S.-Mexico border and will delve deeper into the idea of borders as they examine their own lives. (Grade: 8-10) (Subject: Spanish and Social Studies)

"Latino Americans" Documentary Resources

Latino Americans is an NEH-funded documentary series that chronicles the rich and varied history and experiences of Latinos from the first European settlements to the present day. The website contains trailers from all episodes, a timeline, and an opportunity to upload your own video history. The related education initiative invites teachers and learners to explore the many ways that Latinos have contributed to the history and culture of the United States.

To accompany Episode 3: War and Peace, Humanities Texas offers a collection of resources to explore the contributions of Latino Americans during the second world war and the experience of returning servicemen who faced discrimination despite their service. These lesson plans and activities include viewing guides to support students as they watch the episode and primary sources to draw out key themes and events introduced by the film.

Related Websites & Resources

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Hispanic Heritage and History in the United States

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Since 1988, the U.S. Government has set aside the period from September 15 to October 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month to honor the many contributions Hispanic Americans have made and continue to make to the United States of America.

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Article about 15 influential Hispanics.

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There isn't an industry in which Hispanic Americans haven't made their mark in history, with some of the most iconic politicians, singers, actors, athletes and more coming from Hispanic descent.

We're celebrating 15 of the most notable Hispanic Americans whose influence has touched everything from pop culture to politics:

Rita Moreno

Rita Moreno has been a household name for decades, ever since she captivated audiences with her fierce portrayal of Anita in 1961's West Side Story. Moreno would go on to cement her name in history by winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role, becoming the first-ever Hispanic American woman to win an Academy Award.

Born Rosa Alverio on December 11, 1931 in Humacao, Puerto Rico, the actress later changed her last name to match her stepfather's after she immigrated to New York City with her mom in 1936. Moreno made her Broadway debut in Skydrift at age 13, with her career taking off after that.

The pioneering actress went on to star in dozens of film, TV and stage shows through her decades-long career. She became only the third person ever to achieve the coveted EGOT, winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award by 1977. In 2019, she added a P to the achievement with a Peabody Award, one of only three performers to accomplish this feat.
READ MORE: Rita Moreno Was Over Being Stereotyped in Hollywood, so She Quit Making Movies for Seven Years
Cesar Chavez

Born in Arizona to a Mexican American family, Cesar Chavez grew up around the people he later helped through his activism. The defining moment in Chavez's life came when his family moved to California during the Great Depression to become farm workers, cementing his fight for farmers rights.

After receiving an honorable discharge from the Navy, Chavez worked as a lumber handler in San Jose, where he helped set up a chapter of the Community Service Organization, a pivotal civil rights organization for Latinos in California.

Chavez made the CSO his full-time job after he was laid off, meeting fellow activist Dolores Huerta while traveling to chapters around the state of California. The two would go on to found the National Farm Workers Association, later the United Farm Workers labor union, becoming primary figures for Latin American civil rights.

Though Chavez later received criticism from within for his singular control of the union, including times in which he fired those who opposed him, the activist is still regarded as an important civil rights leader and posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom the year after his death in 1993. He was 66.
READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr. Praised Cesar Chavez For His 'Indefatigable Work'
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

In just a few short years, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become one of the major leading voices for Hispanic Americans in politics.

Also known by her initials AOC, Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989 in the Bronx, New York to a Puerto Rican mother and a Bronx-born father of Puerto Rican descent. She excelled through high school after her family moved to the suburbs and was in her second year at Boston College when her dad tragically died of lung cancer in 2008.

After graduating college in 2011, Ocasio-Cortez returned to the Bronx and later campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 democratic primary. She visited Flint, Michigan, and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota after the general election, where she attended the Dakota Access Pipeline protests and decided to run for office.

Ocasio-Cortez eventually challenged Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley, the first to do so since 2004, and pulled off a surprise primary win in June 2018. Through a grassroots campaign, she became the youngest person elected into the House of Representatives during the midterm elections that year.

"I'm hoping that this is a beginning," Ocasio-Cortez said at her victory party in 2018. "That we can continue this organizing and continue what we've learned."

Since her arrival in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez's vocal support of left-leaning ideas, including co-sponsoring the Green New Deal package to combat climate change, has made her a popular figure in progressive politics. She once again won her primary in June 2020, all but ensuring her return to Congress for a second term after the general election in November.

Roberto Clemente

A pioneer of the game, Roberto Clemente paved the way for Hispanic Americans in Major League Baseball.

The prolific right fielder was born in 1934 in Puerto Rico, joined the island's amateur baseball league when he was 16 and made the professional league two years later at 18.

Another two years and Clemente was off to Montreal, Quebec, to play in the minor leagues in 1954. That same year, the Pittsburgh Pirates scouted him during training in Richmond, Virginia and Clemente was called up to the majors by November of that year in the rookie draft.

Clemente, wearing the iconic number 21, went on to become the first Latin American and Caribbean to win a World Series as a starting player in 1960.

The athlete died in a plane crash in 1972 while on his way to Nicaragua to deliver aid to earthquake victims when he was 38. In his honor, the MLB renamed the Commissioner's Award to the Roberto Clemente Award, given to the player who all-around exemplifies sportsmanship and community outreach. He was also inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, making him the first Latin American and Caribbean honoree.
READ MORE: How Roberto Clemente Lived Life to the Fullest Before Tragically Dying in a Plane Crash
Julia Alvarez

Dominican American writer Julia Alvarez has been enchanting readers with her words since the early 1990s.

Alvarez was born in New York City in 1950 before her family moved to the Dominican Republic when she was a baby. They stayed there throughout Alvarez's childhood until her father's involvement in a failed attempt to overthrow the militant dictator forced the family to flee to the United States in 1960.

The traumatic event has since made its way into several of Alvarez's works, including the poem "Exile" in which she recounts the night her family fled. She went on to become one of the most critically revered Latina writers and has published poems, novels and essays throughout her career.

Jennifer Lopez

"Jenny from the Block" has always paid tribute to her Latin roots throughout her success.

Jennifer Lopez was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1969 to Puerto Rican parents who supported her ambitions to become a singer, taking singing and dancing lessons starting at 5 years old. This changed when Lopez dropped out of college to pursue acting, with her parents strongly opposing her aspirations.

After touring the world with various productions, Lopez made her breakthrough performance in Selena. The 1997 movie, in which she played the beloved Mexican singer Selena Quintanilla, who had been killed just years prior, earned Lopez praise and put her on the fast track to superstardom.

Since then, Lopez has remained one of the most notable Hispanic American figures in the movie and music industry, often earning the status of "triple threat." She also earned critical acclaim for her role in 2019's Hustlers, which generated Oscar buzz that resulted in strong opposition to her being snubbed for the awards show.
READ MORE: The Story of Jennifer Lopez's Iconic Green Jungle Versace Dress
Sylvia Rivera

In addition to being an influential Hispanic American, drag queen Sylvia Rivera is also an iconic figure in the gay and transgender rights movement.

Rivera, born in New York City in 1951 of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent, had a rough upbringing. Her father left the family when she was a baby and her mother later died by suicide when Rivera was just 3 years old. Then still known as Ray, the young child was raised by her Venezuelan grandmother who strongly rejected the beginnings of Rivera's transgender identity forming.

Rivera was forced to leave home when she was 10, making her way through the rough streets of New York City. She often faced discrimination and violence, compelling her to begin her transgender and gay rights activism.

"We were sick and tired of being put down," Rivera said in The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America Since Stonewall. "Things just started happening."

Rivera and her friend Marsha P. Johnson, both sex workers, made an indelible mark in the advancement of LGBTQ rights. Both are credited with forming the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), later changed to Transgender, which helped house and support LGBTQ youth and sex workers in Manhattan. They also worked with the Gay Liberation Front, founded after the Stonewall Riot in 1969.

Rivera died in February 2002 due to complications of liver cancer. She has since been heralded alongside Johnson as the mothers of the gay rights movement. Rivera was honored as one of the 50 activists included in the Stonewall National Monument, the first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights.

Ellen Ochoa

Ellen Ochoa made her mark by becoming the first Hispanic American woman to go to space with a nine-day mission in 1993.

Ochoa was born in 1958 in Los Angeles, California, years after her paternal grandparents immigrated from Mexico. She first obtained her physics degree from San Diego State University and later her masters and doctorate from Stanford University's department of electrical engineering by 1985.

Through her impressive research work, NASA selected Ochoa in 1991 and she became an astronaut in July of that year. Two years later, Ochoa made history on board the Space Shuttle Discovery on a mission to study the Earth's ozone layer. She later completed three more missions.

Ochoa became the first Hispanic American director of the Johnson Space Center in 2013, only the second woman to take the helm. After retiring with 30 years of service, Ochoa continues to advocate for women in STEM.

"I think we need all the best and brightest people working in science and engineering fields, and that is certainly not limited to men or white men or anything like that," she told NBC News in 2019.

Marco Rubio

Senator Marco Rubio has made his mark in politics as a leading member of the Republican party.

A Miami native, Rubio was born in 1971 to Cuban immigrants who fled the Batista regime in 1956, two years before Fidel Castro took over through the Cuban Revolution. Though Rubio obtained citizenship through his birth, his parents didn't become naturalized citizens until after his birth in 1975.

Rubio went to Tarkio College in Missouri for one year on a football scholarship in 1989 before returning to Florida and later transferring to the University of Florida. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1993 there and later earned his law degree from the University of Miami in 1996.

His career in politics started just three years later when he won a run-off election in the fight for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives. He rose through the ranks and became House Speaker in 2005, the first Cuban American to do so.

The politician announced his intention to run for U.S. Senate in 2009 and was elected the next year during the midterm elections. Rubio later entered the Republican presidential primary race in April 2015, becoming one of the first Hispanic Americans to have aspirations of the highest office.

Though Rubio ended his campaign in March 2016 after placing second in Florida, the Senator did pick up three primary victories in Minnesota, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C.

He pivoted and ran for Senate re-election that year instead, beating out his Democrat opponent Patrick Murphy with 52 percent of the vote.

Sonia Sotomayor

A Bronx native of Puerto Rican descent, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic American to serve as a member of the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor was born in 1954 in the New York City borough, where she grew up in a predominantly Catholic and Puerto Rican community. She quickly made education a priority through her mother's insistence after her dad died when she was 9 years old.

"I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten. Ten. That's no jest," she told the NY Daily News in 1998.

The future judge went on to graduate valedictorian from high school and earned a full scholarship to Princeton University. She graduated in 1976 after establishing herself as a student advocate, working hard to ensure Princeton began hiring Latin American faculty. She went on to Yale Law School and graduated in 1979, earning her acceptance to the New York Bar the next year.

After working for over four years as an assistant district attorney in New York and stepping away to work in private practice, Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

Twelve years later, Sotomayor made history when President Barack Obama picked her as his first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009.
READ MORE: How Sonia Sotomayor Overcame Adversity to Become the United States' First Hispanic and Latina Justice
Lin-Manuel Miranda

Few Hispanic Americans have made a bigger impact in recent pop culture than Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Miranda was born in 1980 in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City to Puerto Rican parents, who immigrated to New York to pursue academics. Miranda's mother Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda is a clinical psychologist and his father Luis A. Miranda, Jr. is a Democratic Party consultant and immigrant advocate.

Miranda was raised around musicals and started writing his first title at Wesleyan University in 1999 during his sophomore year. In the Heights, loosely based on his own experiences growing up, would go on to open on Broadway in March 2008. Miranda won his first Tony Award that summer after the show received 13 nominations, earning four wins including Best Musical.

Influenced by his upbringing in the predominantly Latin Washington Heights, and his frequent vacations in Puerto Rico, the musical was heralded for featuring a largely Latin American cast with characters often singing and speaking in Spanish.

But Miranda's largest mark on culture came when his musical Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015. Following the life of Alexander Hamilton, Miranda reimagined the beginnings of America told by all actors of color, whose ancestors didn't have a say in how the country was built. The hip-hop musical quickly became one of the most profitable shows to ever hit Broadway.

Miranda once again won several Tony Awards for the show, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical.

Ted Cruz

Much like Rubio, Ted Cruz has elevated the representation of Hispanic Americans in Congress.

Cruz was born Rafael Edward Cruz in Calgary, Canada, in 1970 to an American mother and a Cuban father who had been living in Canada for three years. His father initially left the family and moved to Texas, though his parents reconciled and the family relocated to Houston in 1974. They later divorced in 1997.

The future politician graduated valedictorian from his high school and went to Princeton, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in public policy in 1992. Cruz went on to Harvard Law School, earning his degree in 1995.

Cruz quickly entered politics, joining George W. Bush 's presidential campaign in 1999 where he assisted in building Bush's legal team during the Florida presidential recounts.

After serving as Texas Solicitor General from 2003 to 2008, Cruz stepped away to work in private practice. He returned to public policy when he was elected U.S. Senator of Texas in the 2012 election.

Cruz ran for president in 2016, entering the primary race in March 2015, earning 12 states and receiving 7.8 million votes. He suspended his campaign in May 2016, weeks before the Republican National Convention that made Donald Trump's nomination official.

Dolores Huerta

At 90 years old, Dolores Huerta still stands as a giant in the fight for Hispanic American labor rights.

Born in 1930, the New Mexico native of Mexican descent grew up in a farm worker community in Stockton, California, with her mom and two brothers. She briefly worked as an elementary school teacher after attending college before setting off on the path of civil rights activism.

She joined the Community Service Organization, where she later met fellow activist Chavez. She co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association in 1960 and collaborated with Chavez to found the National Farm Workers Association in 1962.

Her activism continued in California, where she made a name for herself by supporting and leading various strikes for workers' rights. She later stepped away from the union to focus on women's rights after she was badly beaten by a San Francisco police officer during a peaceful raid, resulting in a long recovery.

Huerta now runs the Dolores Huerta Foundation and has received several accolades, including an inaugural Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in 1998 under President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedom under President Obama in 2012.

Julián Castro

On the Democratic side, Julián Castro has been a rising star in American politics.

Castro is of Mexican descent and was born with his twin brother, Joaquin, in San Antonio, Texas in 1974. His roots in Texas trace back to 1920, when his grandmother immigrated as a child to live with extended family. Castro credits his mother, a Chicana political activist, for his life in public service. He counted her influence as the reason why he and his brother, a U.S. Representative for Texas, are politicians.

"Growing up, she would take us to a lot of rallies and organizational meetings and other things that are very boring for an 8-, 9-, 10-year-old," Castro told in 2012. "What I did get from my mother was a very strong sense that if you did public policy right, and you did well in public service, that it's a positive influence on people's lives."

He graduated from Stanford University in 1996, interning for Clinton administration at the White House between his sophomore and junior year, and later Harvard Law School in 2000.

Castro was elected to San Antonio City Council the next year in 2001 until he ran for mayor in 2005, coming in second by a small margin of votes. He was then successful in 2009 after stepping away to run his own law practice. Castro was re-elected in 2011 and 2013.

He resigned as mayor in 2014 after accepting President Obama's offer to become the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in which he served until Obama's term ended in 2017.

Castro was one of the first democrats to announce his 2020 presidential campaign, making it official in January 2019. A year later, Castro suspended his campaign and endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Gloria Estefan

Singer Gloria Estefan is often synonymous with Latin music in the United States.

Born in Cuba in 1957, Estefan's family fled to Miami during the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Her father enlisted in the military shortly after they immigrated and took part in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, where he was captured by his own cousin and held prisoner for two years.

While performing in a church ensemble in 1975, Estefan first met her future husband Emilio Estefan, who had recently formed a band in Miami. She and her cousin were invited to join his band and renamed it Miami Sound Machine, leading to hits like "Conga," "Anything for You," "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," and "Hot Summer Nights." The band's name was dropped in 1989, with Estefan embarking on a successful solo career ever since.

Estefan married Emilio in 1976 and the couple welcomed two children, Nayib and Emily. Her lengthy career has earned her three Grammy Awards and a Presidential Medal of Freedom under President Obama in 2015, as well as the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017. The musical On Your Feet, telling the story of her and Emilio's life, premiered on Broadway in 2015.

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15 Influential Hispanic Americans Who Made History

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There isn't an industry in which Hispanic Americans haven't made their mark in history, with some of the most iconic politicians, singers, actors, athletes and more coming from Hispanic descent.

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An article discussing major events in Hispanic/Latin American History.

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Contents

1. Early Spanish Explorers Reach America

2. Los Angeles Founded, First Hispanic Congressman Elected

3. Battle of the Alamo, Mexican-American War

4. Mexico Revolution Drives Immigration to US

5. Puerto Ricans Granted US Citizenship

6. First Hispanic Senator Sworn in

7. Contributions During World War II

8. Supreme Court Prohibits Segregation for Mexican-American Students

9. Civil Rights Act of 1964

10. Cesar Chavez Leads Delano Grape Strike

11. Mariel Boatlift

12. Multiple Firsts in White House Cabinets

13. NAFTA, Prop 187

14. Sonia Sotomayor Joints US Supreme Court

15. DAPA, DACA Rulings

American Hispanic/Latino history is rich, diverse and long, with immigrants, refugees and Spanish-speaking or Indigenous people living in the United States since long before the nation was established.

And, bringing with them traditions and culture from Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other Latin American and Iberian nations, America's Hispanic population continues to grow, reaching a record 62.5 million in 2020, or 18.7 percent of the U.S. population.

From early Spanish colonialism to civil and worker rights laws to famous firsts to recent Supreme Court decisions on immigration, here's a timeline of notable events in U.S. Hispanic and Latino history.

Early Spanish Explorers Reach America
READ MORE: How St. Augustine Became the First European Settlement in America
Los Angeles Founded, First Hispanic Congressman Elected

Battle of the Alamo, Mexican-American War
READ MORE: Why Mexican Americans Say 'The Border Crossed Us' READ MORE: How the 14th Amendment Made Corporations Into People
Mexico Revolution Drives Immigration to US
READ MORE: How Border Crossing Became a Crime in the United States
Puerto Ricans Granted US Citizenship

March 2, 1917
President Wilson signs the Jones-Shafroth Act, granting U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans and creating a bicameral legislature in the island territory. With the United States about to enter World War I, it also gives America a stronghold and allows Puerto Ricans to join the U.S. Army. Eventually, 20,000 Puerto Ricans are drafted to serve during the conflict, many charged with guarding the important Panama Canal.
READ MORE: Puerto Rico's Complicated History With the United States
First Hispanic Senator Sworn in

Contributions During World War II

Dec. 7, 1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, drawing the U.S. into World War II. More than 500,000 Mexican Americans serve in the American military during the conflict, with 13 Medals of Honor awarded to Latinos. The 158th Regimental Combat Team, largely composed of Latino and Native American soldiers who fought in the Philippines and New Guinea, is called "the greatest fighting combat team ever deployed in battle" by Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
READ MORE: 6 Facts About the Medal of Honor READ MORE: The Surprising Role Mexico Played in World War II
With racial tensions growing between the Hispanic and Anglo communities following an injust murder trial, sailors drag Latino youth from dineres, cafes, bars and movie theaters, ripping off their baggy suits and beating them with clubs and whips. The youth fight back, leaving both Mexicans and servicemen hospitalized.
READ MORE: The Zoot Suit Riots: Causes, Facts & Photos
Supreme Court Prohibits Segregation for Mexican-American Students

April 14, 1947
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals makes a landmark ruling prohibiting segregation in California public schools in Mendez v. Westminster School District. In the case, the family of Sylvia Mendez, then 9, and others sued four school districts for being denied entrance to Westminster Elementary School because they were Mexican. The ruling sets precedent for the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case seven years later.
READ MORE: The Mendez Family Fought School Segregation 8 Years Before Brown v. Board of Ed
May 3, 1954
In Hernandez v. State of Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Mexican-Americans have equal protection under the law. The important civil rights case centers around Pete Hernandez, a farm worker indicted for murder by an all-anglo grand jury in Jackson County, Texas. His attornies argue discrimination, including the fact that no person of Mexican ancestory had served as juror in the county in 25 years, citing the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agrees, holding that the amendment protects those beyond "white" or "negro," also covering those of Mexican ancestry.
READ MORE: The Largest Mass Deportation in US History
Feb. 13, 1959
A plane carrying musicians Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and "The Big Bopper" J.P. Richardson crashes near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing everyone on board. Valens, who was just 17 years old when he died, is the first Mexican-American rock and roll star, scoring four hit records ( Donna and La Bamba among them) in his eight-month-long career.
READ MORE: All the Way the Bay of Pigs Invasion Failed
Civil Rights Act of 1964
READ MORE: US Immigration Timeline
Cesar Chavez Leads Delano Grape Strike
March 17, 1966
Cesar Chavez, general director of the National Farm Workers Association, leads 75 Latino and Filipino farm workers on a historic 340-mile march from Delano, California to the state capitol in Sacramento. Drawing attention to the demands of grape growers, the march, held at the onset of a strike that would last five years, lasts 25 days, and upon arrival in Sacramento on Easter Sunday, the group is met by a crowd of 10,000. Later that summer, the NFWA merges with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the United Farm Workers union that affiliates with the AFL-CIO.
READ MORE: When Millions of Americans Stopped Eating Grapes in Support of Farm Workers READ MORE: Maurice Ferré becomes first Puerto Rican to lead a major U.S. mainland city
Mariel Boatlift

Multiple Firsts in White House Cabinets

NAFTA, Prop 187

Sonia Sotomayor Joints US Supreme Court

June 25, 2012
In a 5-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down most of SB1070, an Arizona immigration law in Arizona v. United States. The decision finds three of the four provisions of the statute are preempted by federal law: the section making it a crime to reside in the country illegally, the section making it unlawful for undocumented workers to apply for a job and the section allowing warrantless arrest based on probable cause of unlawful presence. However, the court does uphold the law's requirement that law enforcement officers verify immigration status during lawful stops.

DAPA, DACA Rulings

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Early Spanish Explorers Reach America Los Angeles Founded, First Hispanic Congressman Elected Battle of the Alamo, Mexican-American War Mexico Revolution Drives Immigration to US Puerto Ricans Granted US Citizenship First Hispanic Senator Sworn in Contributions During World War II Supreme Court Prohibits Segregation for Mexican-American Students Civil Rights Act of

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An article that discusses 10 Latin American short stories. (with links)

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hort stories: how not to despair with the unjust way they are treated in the world of British letters? From their frequent definition in terms of what they are not - a novel - to the reluctance of risk-averse publishers when it comes to releasing one of these not-novels into the world. The latter tendency is falling out of fashion, thank God (thanks in large part to indie presses). But the hapless short-story book is still generally referred to as a "collection" in English. Call me picky, but this has always been a problematic word for me, because it masks the fact that this kind of book - if any good - is still a coherent conceptual unit: stories don't grow spontaneously, like weed, so that writers can simply collect them. What's wrong with calling a book of short stories "a book of short stories"?

Coming both literally and literarily from Latin America, these idiosyncrasies have always puzzled me. It is in the short story that our authors excel, and this is a hill I am willing to die on. The form is valued by readers, publishers and critics alike, cherished for its close connection to storytelling as oral tradition, and second to none in the region's canon. And if I had to choose which books to preserve on a bookshelf of posterity I would salvage this unassuming genre and toss many an oversize novel, especially those written by otherwise excellent short-story writers.

JOLTS, my latest book of short stories, is styled in the Latin American tradition but written in English, a borrowed language - in this way I have managed to straddle both and neither worlds. This is a discomfort I cherish. This feeling of sitting somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, trying to force a dialogue between two totally different canons, and two different parts of myself, has been a constant source of inspiration. But there is always fear about what might get lost in translation. Although I have included many nods to my masters in the book, I suspect some of these could be hard to pin down for a British reader. So this is an attempt to pay explicit homage to some of the Latin American short story writers that influenced my own practice, together with others that have caught my attention in recent years. Hopefully this - incomplete - list might be a first step for any curious lover of short fiction.

Jorge Luis Borges at home in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Christopher Pillitz/Getty Images

1. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges
Few stories better capture the power of writing than this one by Argentina's most famous literary export. Imaginary lands and imaginary planets, forged volumes of the British Encyclopaedia and forged quotes - a Borgesian favourite - come together in this tale where fiction writes itself into reality; in which one can't be told from the other.

2. The Llano in Flames by Juan Rulfo
Rulfo achieved world fame with his novel Pedro Páramobut his short stories are equally worthy of attention. The Llano in Flames, from the homonymous book perfectly embodies his style: economy of prose, sensorial images that in their attention to nature greatly capture the essence of rural Mexico, characters who seem to exist beyond life and death. Rulfo only published two books in his lifetime but his influence can still be felt.

3. Absit by Angélica Gorodischer
A disturbing tale of perversion and revenge in which a child narrowly escapes abuse by pushing her attacker into a construction site hole. It might sound like a spoiler but this act of karmic justice is just the beginning. That this story explores adults' capacity for wrong is clear from its opening paragraph. But are children also capable of evil? A dark but satisfying read by an Argentinian short story talent which deserves to be read more widely.

4. The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow by Gabriel García Márquez
Better known for his immortal novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Colombian García Márquez was also the author of outstanding short stories. In this one, a wealthy couple on their honeymoon in Europe go through a dramatic, Kafkaesque ordeal, taking the reader on a suffocating journey. Legend has it Borges said that 50 years would have sufficed for One Hundred Years of Solitude, but not one word is a word too many in this magnificent story.

5. Perfumada Noche (Scented Night) by Haroldo Conti
A beautiful ode to life, love, and death in a small town in the Province of Buenos Aires. Unlike his novel Southeaster but along with much of his work, this story remains untranslated into English. Conti was disappeared by the Argentinian military junta in 1976. Before this tragic end he gifted us in Perfumada Noche one of the most evocative opening sentences ever written: "The life of a man is a miserable draft, a handful of sorrows that fit in just a few lines."

Miraculous ... Clarice Lispector in Rio de Janeiro, circa 1964. Photograph: Paulo Gurgel Valente

6. The Fifth Story by Clarice Lispector
It is nothing short of miraculous that all of Lispector's short fiction is available in English. Choosing a single story by one of Latin America's finest writers is a cruel exercise but a great entry point to her work is The Fifth Story, from her book The Foreign Legion. All her most interesting traits are there: a certain linguistic strangeness, the subversion of domestic space, the sadistic brutality of everyday life, and the metafictional bent that would explode in her later works.

7. Letter to a Young Lady in Paris by Julio Cortázar
Reading Cortázar's Bestiario as a teenager was my literary "listening to the Sex Pistols" moment. I devoured the book from cover to cover and ran to my mother's Olivetti to start churning out my own short stories. Some of these early attempts still exist in my box of memories but needless to say none of them is as good as Letter to a Young Lady in Paris, from this extraordinary book. A flat swap starts to go wrong when our hero, who writes the missive of the title, starts vomiting bunnies that proceed to destroy the flat. Sounds strange? Welcome to Cortázar's world.

8. Las amapolas también tienen espinas (Poppies Also Have Thorns) by Pedro Lemebel
Criminally underpublished in English, Lemebel, is one of Chile's most singular voices. Gay, mestizo, working class and communist, it would be hard to find a more unlikely survivor of the Pinochet years. His crónicas of the Santiago of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, are brutal yet endearing documents of lives lived in the margins. In this story from his La esquina es mi corazón (The Corner is My Heart) Lemebel tells a tale of desire, class and violent homophobia. And he does so endearingly, honestly, and with characteristic dark humour. Lemebel as a transvestite flâneur is an exceptional guide to the Latin American city.

9. Sky and Poplars by Margarita García Robayo
Fish Soup by the Colombian García Robayo is a remarkable recent genre-bending effort, that brings together short stories and two novellas. A deadpan beat runs through the whole book - at times you find yourself giggling at things, only to question yourself a second later whether you should really be laughing about that. Sky and Poplars is in my opinion where she best displays her craft. In it, romantic and familial unspoken tragedies meet gentrification, to portray a suffocating world of angst and alienation.

10. Towards Happy Civilisation by Samanta Schweblin
In this story from the understated Mouthful of Birds we follow the misadventures of a city-dweller stuck in a provincial train station, trying to return to the capital. The apparently simple act of boarding a train is complicated here to an absurd degree. At times Beckettian riff, at times criticism of the state of the Argentinian railways post-neoliberalism, at times commentary on the civilisation v barbarism binary behind Argentinian identity, this is a story that will unsettle and amuse in equal measure.

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hort stories: how not to despair with the unjust way they are treated in the world of British letters? From their frequent definition in terms of what they are not - a novel - to the reluctance of risk-averse publishers when it comes to releasing one of these not-novels into the world.

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My favorite readings during the semester were Rice and Mother's Tongue. These two essays served as inspiration for the creation of this padlet and got me interested in the world of different cultures that exist in the U.S. Just as Lahiri discussed her father's famous pulao recipe as well as her Bengali culture, I have dedicated a column to recipes and articles about food in the spirit of Latin American/Hispanic culture. I also have columns for academic journals and articles that discuss topics relating to immigration barriers and the issues faced by most Latino immigrants. I used the essay, Mother's Tongue as inspiration for this.

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An instructional video on making this delicious dessert.

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Here you can post some of your favorite readings during the semester and tell us why.

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Short Stories in Latin American  Literature

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Short Stories in Latin American  Literature

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Barriers Experienced by Mexican Immigrants

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Barriers Experienced by Mexican Immigrants

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This academic journal discusses the barriers of Mexican Immigrants relating to mental health and academic achievement.

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These are powerful stories about the reality of immigration from a Latino perspective.

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It's easy to believe in a definitive American immigration story. So much of this country's mythos is built on that idea. ("Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ...") It foretells a fairy tale ending where parents have worked hard, sacrificed much, and settled their children into the new country. The family has assimilated, and the life that came before is a distant memory.

But it's more complicated than that. The telling of immigration stories exposes a rich array of experiences: loss, longing, duality, triumph and contradiction.

When Latino colleagues from across NPR shared their families' immigration stories for Hispanic Heritage Month, their essays were full of things achieved and things surrendered; cultures celebrated and cultures lost; decisions made by choice and by coercion. Camille Salas, a librarian, wrote about her grandfather's decision to join the Navy in exchange for U.S. citizenship. Cecily Meza-Martinez, of News Operations, wrote about her family's hardships and achievements, which included a role in building Disneyland. Producer Ana Lucia Murillo wrote about how her father crossed the border from Mexico to the U.S. in the bottom of a van marked "Laundromat."

Every family came to U.S. with an idea in mind of what its experience might be. But what shines through in these stories is the stark difference between expectation and reality.

We'll share some of their immigration stories here with you. Then, if you have one, we'll ask you to tell us yours.

Intern Monica Itxy Quintanilla's story captures some of the longing and some of the triumph:

"I was raised on stories of mango trees, waterfalls and machetes. My dad, who grew up in a small village in Honduras, glamorized his immigration to the U.S. by decorating his tales with magical realism. For the majority of my childhood, I wholeheartedly believed that mi papi flew into Los Angeles hanging onto the wing of an airplane. ...

"My mother's stories were characterized by a similar sense of adventure and freedom. Born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, my mom's urban upbringing made for tales filled with street outings, botanas mexicanas and celebrations. She'd decorate her childhood stories with sparkling eyes and adjectives like 'friendly,' 'exciting' and 'communal' - all antonyms to the words she'd use to describe the United States. With my parents' overt admiration for their homeland, I inevitably begged the question, 'Then why did you leave?' "

Nicole Cohen, a producer on the Arts Desk, illustrates her family's competing desires in her story. When Cohen's parents moved to the U.S. from Argentina in 1982, "They never planned to stay," she wrote, and it "wasn't until I was in middle school that my dad stopped talking about moving back."

Cohen didn't see it that way. She was born in the U.S., was "stubbornly against" the idea of moving to Argentina, and sometimes refused to speak Spanish at home. But after years of annual visits to Argentina, her perspective shifted. Now, Cohen speaks Spanish with a strong Argentine accent and says that "the sounds, tastes and smells of Argentina conjure home almost as much as the U.S."

Even when it was difficult, many families worked hard to hold on to some remembrance of home. Rekha Patricio, who leads the marketing and branding team, grew up in Venezuela, but her parents, who are from India, gave her a Hindu name to remind her of her heritage.

When she was 16, she moved to the U.S. with her brother and sister. At first, they didn't know where they fit in. Strangers often wanted to categorize them as just one thing - usually Indian, since that's how they looked. But as Patricio grew older, she realized she didn't have to choose one identity over the other, either for herself or, later, for her children:

"I've never considered myself fully Latina or fully Indian. It has always been a juggling act between two cultures and multiple languages. Moving to the U.S. further complicated my identity, as there were more immigrants here and it was easier to label me as 'Indian' because I physically fit that box. It took a few years to get to a place where I felt comfortable enough straddling both worlds and answering the question 'Do you feel more Indian or more Venezuelan?' "

Even when they've managed to straddle two worlds, some things were still left by the wayside.

Dustin Desoto, a producer with All Things Considered, is a third-generation American with roots in Spain and Mexico. He wrote about the loss of language. When Desoto's parents were growing up, he said, they'd be hit with a switch for speaking Spanish in school. To avoid punishment, they spoke English as much as possible, even at home:

"This unfortunately trickled down to my sister and me," Desoto wrote. He never learned Spanish.

Other families lost connections, friends, status, belongings. Even the pursuit of U.S. citizenship had a price. Robert Garcia, who leads the Newscast division, was born in New York City in 1957, about a year after his parents left Bogotá, Colombia. Garcia's parents moved back home, but his mother, Stella, returned to the U.S. to escape Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's reign of terror. Eventually, she applied for American citizenship, but things didn't go as intended:

"The process was so long, bureaucratic, and convoluted that it outlasted her and she died in 1999 before she was fully naturalized. Some six months after her passing, Stella received a summons to appear in court for deportation, despite the fact that the [Immigration and Naturalization Service] had been mailed her death certificate. We patiently explained that neither her court appearance nor her deportation would be physically possible, and after [we received] two more increasingly threatening notices of impending deportation, the U.S. government ... finally let her rest in peace. For the record, you don't get the $700 application fee reimbursed."

Sometimes, though, the immigration story gets a little closer to the fairy tales. Which brings us back to Quintanilla. In the end, her story has the longing, the duality, the contradications, all fused to create a new, more complex American dream:

"Now, decades later, they've finally settled into a country they once felt out of place in. My dad no longer wears his beret with a red embroidered star á la Che Guevara and my mother has grown to love su casita. But their strong value of education and preservation of their culture remains intact and present in both their lives and my own.

"After years of attempting to assimilate into a world I felt both included and excluded from, I've learned to stop categorizing myself into just one label. I am my Mayan ancestors, my great-grandparents, mi mami and mi papi, and myself."

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When These Latinos Tell Immigration Stories, They Push Beyond Fairy Tales

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast It's easy to believe in a definitive American immigration story. So much of this country's mythos is built on that idea. ("Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ...") It foretells a fairy tale ending where parents have worked hard, sacrificed much, and settled their children into the new country.

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This is an article on 20 popular Hispanic foods you should try!

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This is an interesting essay that discusses the history of Latino foods in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as its cultural impacts.

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This American Latino Theme Study essay explores the history of Latino foods in the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries and their growth and popularity in the U.S. food industry
Latino foods are the historical product of encounters between peoples from many lands. Some of these meetings took place in the distant past; for example, Spanish settlers and missionaries were exchanging foodstuffs and recipes with Indian women in New Mexico and Florida decades before the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth. Other encounters have been more recent, as with the arrival of Afro-Caribbean and Chinese-Cuban migrants to New York City, who imparted Latino influences to the "soul food" of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s. Latino foods thus grew out of the migrations of diverse people from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Their history has been shaped by the common experience of Iberian culture that spread widely in the centuries after Columbus. But despite these global trajectories, Latino foods have taken root in particular places and nourished communities of people in the territory that is now the U.S. This nation and its foods are products of the fusion between the global and the local, and Latinos form a significant chapter in that history.

Economic imperatives have been a central driving force in the emergence of new cuisines. Columbus first landed in the Americas while searching for spices, and many Latino foods took shape during a regional economic boom of the late eighteenth century. In a similar fashion, Mexican American cooking was influenced by the availability of new ingredients from the U.S. food processing industry. Moreover, many of the leading agricultural industries in the U.S. have Latino origins. Spaniards planted citrus and nut orchards in Florida and throughout the Southwest, founded cattle ranches in Texas, and built wineries in California. The "three sisters" "maize, beans, and squash "staples of the American Indian diet, were domesticated in what is now Mexico. Markets and restaurants are important centers of culinary innovation, particularly as tourists seek out new dining experiences. By the 1990s, Mexican food became one of the top three varieties of ethnic restaurants and salsa (a spicy tomato-based sauce) famously surpassed catsup as the bestselling condiment in the United States.

Changing fashions for Latino food also reflect shifting ethnic and national identities. Despite their long history and contemporary popularity, Latino foods were seen as foreign and dangerous by earlier generations, many of whom defined "American" food narrowly as the product of New England kitchens. The strong flavors of chile peppers, garlic, spices, and olive oil came as a shock to prim palates accustomed to boiled meat and potatoes with white sauce. Encounters of the 19th century, framed by the U.S.-Mexican War and subsequent conflicts over land, left enduring stereotypes of Latina women as eroticized and dangerous, just as their cooking became associated with "Montezuma's revenge." Attitudes toward spicy foods therefore became associated with patterns of racial thinking that worked to exclude Latinos from full citizenship. Nevertheless, businessmen sought to profit from widespread interest in these foods by selling chili powder, canned tamales, and other ersatz products, which advertisers claimed were more wholesome than the originals. After decades of canned chili, many people did not even recognize the Mexican roots of chili con carne (chili with meat). The arrival of fast food restaurants took Latino foods even further from their ethnic roots. Only the spread of migrant family restaurants across the U.S. in the final decades of the 20th century has started to reclaim Latin American cooking from these stereotypes.

The encounters that have shaped ethnic foods, while centered largely in the marketplace, took place at many levels. Often times cross-ethnic eating also crosses lines of class; whereas early 20th century Bohemian diners went slumming in Spanish restaurants, today they are more likely to patronize taco trucks. Yet historically, culinary cosmopolitanism has been just as likely to emerge from within the lower classes. Single, male migrant workers have long sought out tasty and economical meals with little regard for ethnic origins. Cooks likewise are constantly exchanging recipes with their neighbors, whether they were born across the street or across the world. Successive waves of migration have given the U.S. a diverse and innovative food culture.

Yet narrow views of Latino foods as being only Mexican or Tex-Mex are a pervasive misunderstanding. Although the term Tex-Mex has been used commonly as a marker of inauthentic foods, it more properly refers to the regional cooking of Mexicans living in Texas. Such borderland specialties as carne asada (grilled beef) and wheat flour tortillas established the initial images of Mexican food in the U.S. More recent migration has introduced a much wider range of recipes from throughout Latin America. Restaurant goers with a taste for carne asada can also sample the diverse cuts of grilled meat that are called parrilla in Argentina and Uruguay or churrasco in Brazil. Connoisseurs likewise have learned to distinguish the regional tamales of Mexico and the Caribbean basin, not to mention Bolivian, Ecuadoran, and Peruvian humintas (baked corn tamales), Salvadoran pupusas (stuffed tortillas), Venezuelan and Colombian arepas (maize griddlecakes), and countless other dishes that are now available in the U.S.

Because of its emotional bonds, food has been a metaphor for citizenship. The melting pot formerly symbolized the process of immigrant acculturation to the national culture. More recently, the image of a salad bowl in which ingredients are combined without losing their character has gained favor to indicate the acceptance of cultural diversity within a pluralistic democracy. Nor are these culinary metaphors exclusive to the U.S.; in Latin America, as well, foods have provided ethnic and racial markers. In Cuba, for example, the combination of black beans and rice is referred to as moros y cristianos (Moors and Christians). Cultural contact inevitably results in blending, as cooks incorporate the foods of their neighbors into their own culinary repertoires and thereby transform those dishes. Whatever the preferred metaphor, food has an important role in achieving the ideal of cultural citizenship, the belief that all people have the right to determine their own cultural practices.

Latino foods reflect the enormous social diversity resulting from Latin America's history of settlement and intermarriage. The indigenous inhabitants of the Americas domesticated three highly productive and nutritious staples: corn, potatoes, and manioc, which are now eaten widely around the world. Iberian conquistadors introduced to the region the Mediterranean cuisine of wheat, wine, and olives, along with livestock. Subsequent histories of migration further enriched these cuisines, as African slaves, Asian indentured servants, and Middle Eastern arrivals brought new flavors and culinary techniques. The regional cuisines of Latin America demonstrate the everyday genius of cooks in transforming often-limited ingredients into tasty and nutritious meals.

Maize, a sturdy grain that grows prolifically in diverse climates and terrains, was the dietary staple of Mesoamerica, the densely populated cultural region extending from the central highlands of Mexico through Central America. Because maize is deficient in niacin, cooks discovered an alkaline treatment process to make nixtamal, which could be eaten as a stew called pozole or ground into dough to make tortillas and tamales. Pueblo Indians of the Southwest made a thin nixtamal batter and cooked it into thin blue wafers of piki bread on a heated stone. Yet another version of nixtamal, called hominy, was invented independently near Cahokia in Illinois, and allowed the Woodland Indians to spread across eastern North America. Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and South America also ate corn, but because it was less central to their diet, they had no need to prepare nixtamal. They simply popped the corn, grilled it on the cob, or, in the Andes Mountains, brewed it into an alcoholic beverage called chicha.

Potatoes and related root crops are grown in thousands of varieties in the Andes, in contrast to the meager selection found in U.S. supermarkets. They generally come in two varieties, sweet and bitter, and both are well-rounded nutritionally, with protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. The indigenous people learned to freeze-dry potatoes, taking advantage of night frosts and sunny days, a process that also made bitter potatoes more edible. Other tubers added variety to the diet or were cultivated in extreme mountain environments where ordinary potatoes would not grow. The sweet oca, for example, could be dried into a fig-like substance to sweeten dishes. Andean Indians ate the greens as well as the roots of many species.

Manioc, also known as cassava and yucca, was the staple food of the Caribbean and South American lowlands. Like other root crops, there were sweet and bitter varieties. Sweet manioc grows quickly and can be eaten without elaborate preparation, but it is susceptible to rotting. The bitter variety, which can be stored underground for lengthy periods, contains prussic acid that must be removed before consuming. The Indians learned to grate the root, soak away the toxic chemicals, and then bake the resulting pulp into flat breads on a griddle. Alternately, the processed manioc could be dried into a coarse meal called farofa, which is used widely in Brazil to thicken stews and to add a tasty crust to meats and vegetables.

Indigenous peoples domesticated a wide range of other plants in addition to these basic staples. Frijoles (beans) added protein to native diets, especially when eaten with maize; the complementary amino acids within the two foods magnified their nutritional value. Native fruits and vegetables included tomatoes, squash, avocados, cactus paddles and fruit, pineapple, papaya, guava, and mamay. Chile peppers and achiote seeds added flavoring to an otherwise starchy diet, as did chocolate and vanilla which were also domesticated in the Americas. Although their diets were largely vegetarian, Native Americans also consumed many different kinds of fish and game.[1]

If the indigenous cultures gave local variety to Latino foods, Iberian traditions provided a measure of continuity across the region. Wheat, wine, and olive oil, staples of the Mediterranean diet since antiquity, were eagerly planted by settlers and missionaries wherever possible. This desire to reproduce European foods was driven not only by a desire for familiar tastes, but also by social and religious imperatives. Food was an important status marker in the hierarchical society of early modern Europe and conquistadors were determined to eat like nobles back home. When particular environments were not conducive to growing foods, for example, wheat in the Caribbean, the settlers paid great sums to import the grain from elsewhere. Moreover, the Mediterranean culinary trinity was essential for religious sacraments; according to medieval Catholic doctrine, only wheat could be used to prepare the Eucharist.[2]

European settlers also transplanted livestock to the Americas to ensure access to meat and cheese. Sheep was the most highly valued livestock in the Iberian peninsula, a reflection of Jewish and Muslim dietary influences during the Middle Ages. While wealthy Spaniards ate mutton, the lower classes consumed beef from the vast cattle herds of Castille and La Mancha. Horse-mounted cattle ranching skills were carried from Spain to the gauchos of Argentina and Uruguay as well as the vaqueros of northern Mexico. European livestock reproduced at a tremendous rate in the plains of the Americas, since there were few predators and little competition from humans or other herbivores. Because the animals roamed with little supervision, except during annual roundups, they had a tendency to overgraze the landscape, causing widespread erosion, and in many places they converted fertile grasslands to scrubby deserts.[3]

The role of Franciscan missionaries in establishing California's wine and olive industry is well known thanks to the efforts of historic preservationists, who sought to encourage tourism in the early 1900s with picturesque images of a Spanish pastoral era. Nevertheless, the work of ordinary settlers in making wine throughout the southwest has gone largely unrecognized. El Paso del Norte, present-day El Paso, Texas, for example, was praised by visitors for the quality of its wines. Both friars and settlers planted an Andalusian grape variety known as the mónica. Fortified sweetened wines, similar to Spanish sherry, became known in California as Angélica.

In addition to Native American and Iberian traditions, Latino foods bear tastes from around the world. African slaves were imported to work on plantations in tropical lowlands of the Caribbean, Brazil, and along the Pacific. Many of the inhabitants of those regions still have a taste for starchy main dishes of plantains, rice, yams, or couscous, and flavored with greens, okra, malaguetta peppers, and palm oil. Middle Eastern influences are also apparent in the wealth of sweetened desserts, including flan and other custards, which were reproduced in the convents of Latin America. The presence of complex spice mixtures in dishes such as Mexican mole sauce as well as pickled dishes known as escabeche also derived from medieval Arabic cooking. Finally, Asian tastes arrived by way of the colonial Manila Galleon, which traversed the Pacific each year carrying silver and other trade goods between Acapulco and the Spanish colony of the Philippines. Nineteenth-century plantation owners employed indentured servitude after the abolition of the African slave trade, thereby reinforcing Asian culinary traditions with stir-fries and curry sauces.

Latin America became a hub of globalization during the early modern era through a process that has been called the Columbian exchange. Although Iberian settlers preferred European foods, particularly wheat bread and meat, they acquired a taste for many indigenous foods, including frijoles, chile peppers, and chocolate. Cultural mixture, known in Spanish as mestizaje, has become so complex in Latin America that at times it is hard to tell exactly where particular traditions originated. Rice, for example, was consumed in Spain, Western Africa, and Asia before 1492. Moreover, foods such as corn, potatoes, and tomatoes spread so widely during the early modern era that many people do not realize they were domesticated in what is now Latin America.
Encounters
Despite this long history of cultural blending, many of the Latino foods that Anglo Americans first encountered in the 19th century were of relatively recent origin. A late-18th century economic boom transformed subsistence societies of the Spanish Caribbean and northern New Spain into thriving commercial centers. The beneficiaries of this wealth began to consume more luxury foods, while the working classes struggled to maintain a nutritious diet even as they lost their land to export crops. Oblivious to historical change, 19th century Anglos applied their attitudes of manifest destiny to foods as well as people, and looked down on these cuisines as relics of the past, created by "savage" Aztecs, Caribs, and Africans. This racist attitude colored early cross-cultural interactions and long impeded Latinos from achieving full citizenship.

Late colonial prosperity allowed settlers on the northern borderlands to replace the sturdy, indigenous staple maize with European wheat, although they prepared it in the hybrid form of flour tortillas. Beleaguered by arid climate and Indian raids, rural Hispanic families generally sold their wheat to urban markets and fed themselves corn, either as tortillas or as pozole. When the Spanish Crown finally made peace with the Apaches and Comanches in the 1780s, however, settlers quickly expanded their irrigated fields, producing a surplus they could consume at home. The origins of wheat flour tortillas are unknown. Oral tradition in the borderlands often attributes them to Jewish settlers, who supposedly ate them during Passover, but such flatbreads were common throughout the Mediterranean. Wheat tortillas may also have been invented independently by Indian women who adapted familiar techniques to a novel grain. Regardless of their origins, these tortillas allowed rural folk to raise their status by eating Hispanic wheat, even if they could not afford the ovens and fuel for baking bread. Enormous, thin tortillas became a particular marker of the regional cooking of Arizona.[4]

A similar economic boom likewise stimulated a Hispanic culinary renaissance in Spain's Caribbean colonies, although not everyone shared in the windfall. The local sugar industry began to revive when the British occupied Havana in 1762, importing slaves and technology. The spread of abolition, beginning with the Haitian slave revolt of 1791, reduced competition for Spanish sugar. Coffee also became a significant export crop in the 19th century, particularly in the highlands of Puerto Rico. As historian Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra has observed, the growth of Antillean plantations displaced local rice cultivation along with a range of indigenous root crops. Wealthy planters and merchants used the profits from sugar and coffee to import rice and other prestigious foods such as wine, olive oil, capers, and salt cod, which they prepared using Spanish recipes such as the soupy Valencian rice dishes, which became known in Puerto Rico as asopao de pollo (rice with chicken). Slaves and poor farmers ate more imported rice as well, although the machine-milled grain was less nutritious than the varieties they had formerly milled by hand. Unable to afford the meats and condiments of the rich, they fell back on the relatively monotonous although basically sound combination of rice and beans, the moros y cristianos of Cuba or red beans called habichuelas in Puerto Rico.[5]Whether on the borderlands or in the Caribbean, the localization of European foods gave residents new opportunities to demonstrate their ties with Hispanic civilization.

These connections remained strong even after the U.S. annexed the northern half of Mexico in 1848. Although Mexican residents of the San Francisco bay area were soon overrun by '49ers, more isolated settlements in southern California, south Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona preserved their cultural autonomy. Anglo newcomers to these areas often married into elite families, thereby acquiring a taste for Mexican food. Cookbooks also helped to preserve cultural ties, and over time they became treasured family heirlooms. Encarnación Pinedo published El cocinero español (The Spanish Cook, 1898), perhaps the first Latino cookbook, as a tribute to California-Mexican cookery. A manuscript volume by Refugio de Amador, preserved in the Rio Grande Historical Collections at New Mexico State University, contains recipes for torta de cielo (heavenly cake), turrón de Oaxaca (nougat), and jamoncillos de almendra (fudge squares).[6]

Latino culinary traditions also took root in port cities along the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. Antillean communities were founded by merchants in commercial hubs such as New York City and New Orleans, as well as by the children of wealthy planters who studied in American schools. By the 1850s, they were joined by working-class Cubans and Puerto Ricans employed in garment and cigar factories of New York City and Ybor City, near Tampa, Florida. Bodegas (grocery stores) and restaurants catered to the immigrants' desire for familiar foods.

Many early Latino restaurants tried to attract a crossover clientele, but Anglos often refused to equate Spanish or Mexican cuisine with fine dining. With the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the late 1870s, Mexican entrepreneurs in San Antonio, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, appealed to the growing tourist trade by opening elegant restaurants with names such as El Cinco de Mayo (The Fifth of May) and El Globo Potosino (The Balloon), located in San Luis Potosí, a famously rich mining town. These establishments offered Hispanic and Mexican favorites such as albóndigas (meatballs) and mole de guajolote (turkey in chile sauce), along with French and American dishes. Within a few years, however, most had disappeared from city directories, to be replaced by restaurants with French names.[7]

When Mexican food became the subject of culinary tourism, Anglos sought out exotic street food, not elegant restaurants. Many working-class Mexicans supplemented their household incomes by selling food during civic and religious festivals, and the growth of tourism made their occasional stands into a nightly pageant in streets and plazas. Vendors in San Antonio were gendered female in the popular imagination, as "Chili Queens," while in Los Angeles they were more often associated with masculine tamale pushcarts, although men and women of diverse ethnic groups sold chili and tamales in both cities. Stereotypes of Mexican food as painfully hot and potentially contaminating were conflated with the supposed sexual dangers of the "Chili Queens." Anglo journalists meanwhile accused tamale vendors of criminality and labor activism. Although a popular tourist attraction, vendors were constantly harassed by police and urban reformers, who sought to restrict them to segregated locations such as San Antonio's Milam Plaza.[8]

By the end of the 19th century, Latino foods had become firmly established in the national consciousness with an image of "safe danger." They represented an exotic experience for tourists to test their manhood by flirting with "Spanish" women and risking the strong flavors of chile peppers, garlic, and oil. Yet the food appealed not just to Bohemian slumming but also to working-class ethnics, who learned that they could find a tasty and inexpensive meal in Latino restaurants. Thus, Latino foods soon spread beyond their ethnic and geographical origins; for example, black vendors carried tamales from San Antonio all the way to the Mississippi delta. Cross-cultural exchanges, often based on unequal power relations, continued with the growth of the food processing industry.
Industrialization
Food processing was one of the largest industries in the U.S. during the Gilded Age, as it remains today, and then as now, migrant workers performed the difficult and poorly paid labor in fields and factories that made these businesses profitable. Yet Latino contributions to industrial food have scarcely been limited to manual labor. Historian Donna Gabaccia has noted the paradox that although immigrant entrepreneurs developed culinary icons ranging from hamburgers and hotdogs to Fritos and tacos, national markets for these products generally have gone to corporations with little connection to the communities of origin.[9]Because corporate advertising has had such a prominent role in the mainstream marketing "if not in the technological innovation" of Latino and other ethnic foods, exotic and often disdainful stereotypes from the 19th century have persisted.

The history of chili con carne illustrates the industrial appropriation and distancing of foods from their Latino origins. Businessmen such as Willam Gebhardt capitalized on the popularity of Mexican vendors by marketing chili powder made from imported peppers mixed with spices. Chicago meatpackers added chili con carne to their line of canned products in order to disguise inferior cuts of meat. Chili con carne acquired new forms and flavors as it spread across the country. African American cooks in Memphis put it on spaghetti as "chili mac," while in Ohio and Michigan hot dogs with chili became known as "coneys." In the 1920s, Macedonian immigrant Tom Kiradjieff added cinnamon and other spices to his recipe for "Cincinnati chili," which he served on spaghetti with optional cheese, onion, and beans. Chili with beans became a national staple during the hard times of the Great Depression. Some Anglo Texans eventually denied the Mexican origins of chili con carne, although the cowboy cooks credited with the recipe also learned their ranching skills from Mexican vaqueros.

The well-known story of chili has tended to obscure a parallel history of food processing innovation and entrepreneurship within Latino communities. Labor migrants traveling out of the Southwest to work in Midwestern railroads, factories, and agriculture skillfully improvised familiar foods in makeshift kitchens. By the 1920s, Mexican merchants in cities such as Chicago and St. Louis offered a range of fresh and dried ingredients, kitchen utensils, and prepared foods. Some of these items were imports from Mexico, including the Clemente Jacques line of canned chiles and sauces. Others were manufactured in the U.S. by companies such as the Los Angeles-based La Victoria Packing Company. Fabian García, a Mexican-born graduate of the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, established the first scientific breeding program devoted to chiles, providing the basis for the commercial agriculture in the state. Mexican merchants in San Antonio, who congregated along Produce Row, organized the shipping of tropical fruits and vegetables to the U.S.[10]

Mexicans and Mexican Americans also pioneered the mechanization of tortilla making, although it remained a cottage industry for decades due to the cultural insistence on freshness. By the turn of the century, steel mills had replaced the burdensome daily labor of grinding corn dough, at least in urban areas of Mexico and the Southwest. In 1909, San Antonio corn miller José Bartolomé Martínez patented a formula for dehydratednixtamal flour called Tamalina. Although the local market was not yet ready for a dried product, Martínez's Aztec Mills did a brisk business in daily deliveries of fresh tortillas. Martínez also transformed the leftover masa de maíz (corn dough) into the first commercial corn chips, called tostadas, which he sold in eight-ounce wax bags beginning around 1912. Some scholars have claimed that Elmer Doolin used his recipe as the basis for Fritos brand corn chips. Although Martínez's legacy was usurped by others, Latino food businesses continue to prosper throughout the Southwest. The Sanitary Tortilla Company, for example, remains to this day a San Antonio institution with legions of customers still loyal to cantankerous 1920s machines.[11]

The growing influence of Puerto Ricans also stimulated food commerce and industry in New York City. Along with Cuba and the Philippines, the island had become an American colony following the Spanish-American War in 1898. With the Jones Act of 1917, Puerto Ricans gained U.S. citizenship and also became liable for military service, both of which spurred migration. Historian Virginia Sánchez Korrol has observed that restaurants with names like El Paraiso (Paradise) became important community centers in Spanish Harlem, comforting newcomers with familiar favorites including arroz con gandules verdes (rice with green pigeon peas), codfish fritters, and the plantain dishes known as mofongo and tostones. La Marqueta, an open-air market in the neighborhood, supplied shoppers with Antillean fruits and vegetables.[12] Historian Frederick Douglass Opie has argued, moreover, that Latino migrants from the Caribbean also had a significant influence on the development of African American foods as early as the Harlem Renaissance.[13]

The most prominent Latino merchant, Prudencio Unanue, migrated as a young man from his Basque homeland to Puerto Rico and ultimately built a Caribbean food empire called Goya. By the late 1920s he was importing foods for the Spanish colony in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, but the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) disrupted his source of supply, forcing him to diversify. His decision to market Caribbean food instead proved a profitable one in the postwar era with the tremendous growth of migration from Puerto Rico and then neighboring islands. Goya soon began opening packinghouses and supplying local markets in the Caribbean as well.[14]

Fast food restaurants emerged as another important segment of the Latino food market in the postwar period. Taco Bell has become so dominant in this field that even many Latinos may believe the company website, which claims that the taco shell, a tortilla pre-fried in a U-shape, was invented in the early 1950s by a San Bernardino, California hotdog vendor named Glen Bell. This account of the origins of the fast food taco also fits with critics of "McDonaldization," who argue that modern technology and corporate standardization by outsiders has destroyed the authentic flavor of peasant cuisines. Nevertheless, a search of U.S. Patent Office records reveals that the original taco shell patent was filed in the 1940s by Juvencio Maldonado, a Mexican migrant who operated a successful New York City restaurant called Xochitl from the 1930s to the 1960s. Bell built his fortune not by employing modern technology but rather by franchising ethnic exoticism and allowing Anglo consumers to sample Mexican food without crossing informal lines of segregation in the postwar era.[15]

Despite the availability of Latino brands such as Goya, for decades most American consumers seemed to prefer Taco Bell, Frito-Lay, and Old El Paso. These companies not only transformed the flavors of Latino foods "Glen Bell based his salsa on chili dog sauce "but also used racially charged advertisements such as the Frito Bandito of the 1960s or the Taco Bell dog of the 1990s, which compared Latinos to criminals and animals. Yet consumers have become increasingly knowledgeable about and favorable toward foods that are actually made by Latinos, largely because of the recent spread of migrant restaurants and bodegas across the country.

By the late 20th century, Latino foods were achieving unprecedented diversity in the U.S. Before that time, Latinos were primarily migrants from northern and central Mexico, if their families had not already lived in Florida, the Southwest, or Puerto Rico before those territories were acquired by the U.S. The arrival of people from throughout Latin America came not from the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, which actually imposed restrictive quotas for the first time on people born in the Americas, but rather from Cold War involvement in the region. Each new conflict brought displaced populations to the U.S., from the Cuban Revolution of 1959 to the South American military dictatorships of the 1970s and the Central American civil wars of the 1980s. Political exiles and economic migrants introduced new restaurant cuisines at the same time that Latin American food processing firms began making inroads into domestic markets, including basic staples (Maseca tortillas, Bimbo bread), fast food (Pollo Campero), and alcoholic beverages (Chilean wines, Corona beer). Thus, the growing demographic importance and rising professional status of Latinos has contributed to a mainstream recognition of and desire for Latino foods.

Newly arrived migrants wasted little time in recreating their national cuisines. In the 1960s, Cuban exiles transformed Miami into Little Havana, centered on the nostalgia-filled restaurants, cafes, and street vendors of Calle Ocho (Eighth Street). Middle-class housewives meanwhile consulted treasured copies of Cocina al minuto (Cooking to the Minute, 1956), even though the author, Nitza Villapol, was widely considered to be a traitor for having remained behind in Cuba after the end of the Cuban Revolution. A decade later, Dominicans established a presence in the Washington Heights area of New York City, and bodegas were soon filled with dried shrimp and live chickens to satisfy Dominican tastes. When the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC, became home to Central American migrants in the 1980s, restaurants began selling pupusas and gallo pinto ("spotted rooster," a Nicaraguan and Costa Rican version of rice and beans). Mexican regional cuisines have also became more diverse, with Zapotec and Mixtec mole sauces available in Oaxacan restaurants in Los Angeles, while chain migrations have brought Mayan salbutes (tostadas) from the Yucatán to San Francisco.

One promising change in recent times has been a growing acceptance of Latino foods as fine dining. The 1960s counterculture prompted a skeptical attitude toward industrial processed foods and new interest in the peasant cuisines of the Global South, including Latin America. Although the desire for more authentic foods has at times exoticized Latinos, sophisticated diners have flocked to upscale restaurants serving Peruvian, Caribbean, Brazilian, Mexican, and other Latin American cuisines. Diverse national favorites have also come together in "Nuevo Latino" restaurants, which feature eclectic combinations of such foods as ceviche (marinated fish), plantains, grilled meats, and salsas.

Despite these gains, working-class Latinos still suffer pervasive discrimination. Many taco truck owners confront the same forms of harassment suffered a century earlier by the "Chili Queens," even when these vendors are U.S. citizens.[16]Health officials meanwhile target Latino foods as contributing to a supposed epidemic of obesity and diabetes. While it is true that poor Latinos suffer disproportionately from these conditions, as do the working classes more generally, stigmatizing "unhealthy behaviors" has been a longstanding theme of middle-class reform efforts toward the poor and foreigners. A century ago, migrant diets were criticized for excessive whole grains like maize and not enough fat and protein, exactly the opposite of advice given today. Sociologist Airín Martínez has found that migrant Latino mothers have basically sound ideas about comiendo bien (eating well) and that they often go to great lengths to provide healthy food for their families. But like 19th century migrants, their efforts are undermined by the structural constraints of poverty and limited access to fresh foods.[17]

Latino cooks have clearly made significant contributions to the potluck that constitutes the national cuisine. Latin America's mestizo cuisines offer unique combinations of foods from around the world. They feature not the costly ingredients and elaborate techniques of French haute cuisine but rather hearty dishes with vibrant flavors. First shunned by Victorian diners and later imitated by the food processing industry, Latino foods have recently gained acceptance at the center of the table. If we are what we eat, then the U.S. is becoming an increasingly Latino nation.

Jeffrey Pilcher, Ph.D., is a Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He specializes in the history and culture of Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and the history and culture of food. His major works include Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food; Food in World History; The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City; and ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. He received his Ph.D. in History from Texas Christian University.
Endnotes
[1] Sophie D. Coe, America's First Cuisines (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), chapters 2-3.

[2] Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), chapter 2.

[3] Elinor G. K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

[4] Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), chapter 2.

[5] Cruz Miguel Ortiz Cuadra, Puerto Rico en la olla, ¿Somos aún lo que comimos? (Aranjuez, Spain: Ediciones Doce Calles, 2006), 58-64.

[6] Rio Grande Historical Collections, New Mexico State University Library, Las Cruces, Amador Family Papers, MS 4, box 7, folder 1, Refugio Ruiz de Amador manuscript cookbook.

[7] Victor M. Valle and Mary Lau Valle, Recipe of Memory: Five Generations of Mexican Cuisine (New York: The New Press, 1995), 131; Pilcher, Planet Taco, chapter 4.

[8] Jeffrey M. Pilcher, "Who Chased Out the 'Chili Queens'? Gender, Race, and Urban Reform in San Antonio, Texas, 1880-1943," Food and Foodways 16, no. 3 (July 2008): 173-200.

[9] Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

[10] Margarita Calleja Pinedo, "Los empresarios en el comercio de frutas y hortalizas frescas de México a Estados Unidos," in Empresarios migrantes mexicanos en Estados Unidos, ed. M. Basilia Valenzuela and Margarita Calleja Pinedo (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2009), 307-43.

[11] Vanessa Fonseca, "Fractal Capitalism and the Latinization of the U.S. Market" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 2003), 28-43.

[12] Virginia E. Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 55-56, 63-65.

[13] Fredrick Douglass Opie, Hogs and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 139-53.

[14] Joel Denker, The World on a Plate: A Tour through the History of America's Ethnic Cuisine (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003), 147-62.

[15] Pilcher, Planet Taco, chapter 5.

[16] Vicki Ruiz, Citizen Restaurant: American Imaginaries, American Communities," American Quarterly 60, no. 1 (March 2008): 1-21.

[17] Airín Martínez, Comiendo Bien: A Situational Analysis of the Transnational Processes Sustaining and Transforming Healthy Eating among Latino Immigrant Families in San Francisco" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Francisco, 2010).

The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government.

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American Latino Theme Study: Food (U.S. National Park Service)

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This American Latino Theme Study essay explores the history of Latino foods in the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries and their growth and popularity in the U.S. food industry Latino foods are the historical product of encounters between peoples from many lands.