Crowding Out Latinos

by Marco Portales

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking analysis, Marco Portales examines the way in which education and the media act as immobilizing social forces to shape the Latino world that exists despite the best efforts of many Mexican Americans and other Latinos. The delicate relationships between what Latinos are and what they seem to be, as perceived both by the larger society and by Latinos themselves, create and craft a culture that students of American culture have not sufficiently studied or understood.

As bandidos or gigolos, drug users or unwed mothers, Latinos continue to figure in the public consciousness primarily as undesirables. Despite decades of effort by Spanish-speaking Americans to improve their image in the United States, Mexican Americans and other resident Latinos are still largely perceived by other Americans as poverty-stricken immigrants and second-class citizens. Accordingly, the great majority of Latino citizens receive substandard educations, equipping them for substandard jobs in substandard living environments.

The lives of Mexican Americans and other Latinos, Portales contends, can best be illuminated by looking at the history of Chicanos and particularly Chicano literature, which dramatizes the impact of education and the media on Latinos. Like Irish literature, Chicano literature has sought to articulate and to establish itself as a postcolonial voice that has struggled for national attention. Through psychological and sociopolitical representations, Chicano writers have variously used anger, indifference, fear, accommodation, and other conflicting emotions and attitudes to express how it feels to be seen as an immigrant or a foreigner in one's own country.

Portales looks at four Chicano literary works--Americo Paredes' George Washington Gomez, Anthony Quinn's The Original Sin, Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street, and Ana Castillo's Massacre of the Dreamers--to focus attention on social issues that impede the progress of Latinos. By doing so, he hopes to engage both Latino and non-Latino Americans in an overdue dialogue about the power of education and the media to form perceptions that can either empower or repress Latino citizens.

All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

A Hurting America, 2001-03-25
From The Monitor

Crowding Out Latinos is a think piece examining the treatment of Mexican-Americans-from head to toe-by present as well as past America.

Marco Portales, author of Crowding Out Latinos, with a gifted pen and a face to the wind, has created questions and provided information, which position the reader to interpret and respond: Why are Latino's being excluded and erased from the America's daily docket? Why is Hispanic literature not recognized as American Literature? Why is the economic and political advancement of Latinos stagnant? Why has "American media...made it clear that mainstream society does not have time, space, or inclination to focus attention on Hispanic matters"? Growing up in Edinburg, Texas, Portales has examined the traits and plights of the Latino people with his own eyes rather than solely through sheets of statistics. Portales, existing in the midst of the Latino struggle for social equity, has not only blamed "white America," or "media America," but also places blame on the Hispanic Americans. For example, the Latino high school dropout rate is 47%; Portales chides Latino parents' apathy, charging them insouciant, and attacks the public education system for being defunct and placing the weight of the educational heavens on the assumed Atlas- teachers.

Portales, during an internal struggle, chose to title his book "Crowding out Latinos." His original title was, "Crowding Out Latinos?" Upon further examination, the latter title was too imprecise, too wishy-washy, and failed to state the problem, but instead, question its existence. This brand of noncommitment, claimed Portales in conversation with me, is a step in the adverse direction, a step that America has hitherto preferred.

Portales boasts, "The United States Census for the year 2000 is sure to count more than 32million Latinos." With America's total population standing near 273million, roughly one out of every nine Americans will be Hispanic. How much larger will the Hispanic elephant need to grow before gaining recognition in the American room?

Crowding Out Latinos is a well-written treatise to rally Hispanics, nay, to call America to arms and face the problems of a pained and struggling people, a people without whom, America-the ideal, the liberty-would not exist.

(All information within is either cited within the book or gathered from conversations with Marco Portales)

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars Great Book, Great Teacher, 2000-07-28
I took a class from Profesor Portales on hispanic Lit. in the U.S. the semester before this book was published. It was one of the most engaging and worthwhile classes I have taken. He told us about the book, and even read a few parts from it. Anyone interested in understanding Latino/Chicano culture in America better should definitely read this book.

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