The Racialization and Consequential Criminalization of the Latino Body

Image of a child at a protest, her sign echoes racist comments made by President Trump in 2015 about Mexican Immigrants. Image courtesy of PBS.

As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the “War on Drugs” and the “Border War” in the U.S. have resulted in the racialization of Latinos in the U.S. Latinos in the U.S. are primarily perceived through ideas of mexicanness--though Mexicans and Chicanos make up a large majority of the Latino population in the U.S. (more than half according to PEW Research Center), around half of all Latinos in the U.S. are not Mexican or Chicanos. The U.S. sees latinidad (latinness) through the lense of Mexicanness for a few reasons, one of which being the close proximity between the U.S. and Mexico, a proximity that is not simply shared by a border wall, but rather a sort of geographical overlapping when we consider that whole or part of what is now today considered California, Florida, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were colonies of the Spanish and then later territories belonging to Independent Mexico (all but Florida).

Despite Mexicans be afforded “whiteness” via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and that whiteness being upheld by the Supreme Court, ethnic Mexicans now incorporated into U.S. territory did not simply fit into the racial hierarchy created by slavery. They were not white, but not enslaved people of African descent. Additionally, through a series of land grabs by U.S. government and private citizens (done both legally and illegally--but in both cases ethically dubious) ethnic Mexicans, now American citizens, were economically disenfranchised and forced to work low wage jobs. Due to the social condition of Mexican-Americans forced upon them by the consequences of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans were designated a lower social status which in term was equated with their race. Therefore lower class status and poor social economic conditions, lack of education of ethnic Mexicans were not seen as results of U.S. integration of the Southwest Territory, but rather inherent conditions of Mexicanness. The Mestizaje of Mexicans (racial mixedness) also was a problem for Americans. Americans had their preconceived notions of First Nations primarily that they were barbaric, uncivilized, and lazy, these notions were not exclusive to just First Nations originating in the U.S.. Ethnic Mexicans, who could claim Spanish ties and passed as white, fared much better than mestizo Mexicans and Indigenous Mexicans in the U.S., as indigeneity was deeply discriminated against, to any degree. As Almaguer points out, “Indio is not just a neutral term for being ‘Indian’ or ‘indigena.” Instead, it is most often used as a derogatory epithet synonymous with being ‘rude,’ ‘uncouth,’ or generally ‘backward.’ Other anthropologists suggest that the term Indio went hand in hand with the notion of Indians as lazy, idle, or shiftless, as in the phrase laboring ‘como Indio’ (Page 8). These notions of indigeneity are not only prominent in Mexican discourses about race but also American ones as well and results in the discrimination and racialization of mexicans as a result of indigenous heritage. Which, emphasizes the widespread descrimination of mestizos with a proximity to inidgeneity as well as inidgenous persons.

To sum up this portion, la mexicanidad (Mexicanness) has a long history of being discriminated against in the U.S for their indigeneity and for the socio-economic conditions forced upon them during the integration of the Southwest Territories.

Later, The War on Drugs, and even later the Border War, will exacerbate the racialization of the Mexican and the Latino. Much like how Genova describes the racialization of the Muslim Figure as an ambiguous could be threat, the same process has been extended to Mexicans and Latinos since the War on Drugs. With the “threat” of carteles bringing drugs into the U.S., racism against Mexicans has skyrocketed. And the discourse around cartel violence and narco trafficking at the border has implicated all Mexicans as criminals. Mexicans, a diverse ethnic, geographic, racial and linguistic group, are not easily definable. It is that ambiguity that creates anxiety and paranoia. This ambiguity fuels racism as any Spanish speaker, any person with an olive complexion, any person with a certain stereotypical phenotypic feature, could be a narco. The fear of the narco has racialized the Mexican to be a criminal and a narco, in addition to their legacy of racialization following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The Border War has also exacerbated these fears. Despite, the U.S. benefitting for hundreds of years of the importation of Mexican laborers to exploit economically, discourse around undocumented immigrants paints them as exploiters of the American economy. Now, the Mexican figure has not only been a safety threat-- remember, since the War on Drugs Mexicans have been racialized to be criminals, but also an economic threat who seek to “steal American Jobs.” It is also worth noting that many fears regarding undocumented immigrants have to do with “White Replacement Theory”, in which they fear that minorities groups will superpass white populations in both number and social, political, and economic power and priviledge. You can see this discourse on Tucker Carlson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnBduzGRtHU.

Any person who could be an undocumented immigrant--a Spanish Speaker, a Latino, a person of a tan or olive complexion, etc., now are racialized as “illegals”. The fear of losing economic capital to immigrants, the fear of the crime they will supposedly bring (a fear we ourselves have constructed) have been reasons for racializing Mexicans in recent years. Any undocumented immigrant...following the Border War is “illegal” and therefore the criminal. The use of the word “illegal immigrant” automatically equates the Mexican body (and any body that could be confused as Mexican) as a criminal.

Though Mexicans are a diverse national group, they share various social and ethnic characteristics with other groups of Latinos, those being primarily Spanish and mixed heritage. Almaguer posits that “Having a “common culture” rooted in the Spanish language and Catholic religion was the key ethnic signifier that bound these diverse nationalities into one category” (3). In other words, coming from a Hispanic Culture (one that speaks Spanish) became a unifier for all Latino groups in the U.S. The prevalence of the racialized Mexican in the U.S. is then extended to any group or individual that shares commonality with Mexicans. In this way, all Latinos, are racialized through the lens of Mexicanness, whether or not a given Latino had ever stepped foot in Mexico. Additionally, fears around communism during the Red Scare in Latin America contribute to the racialization of the Latino-- communism, and it’s social evils are racialized into bodies due to the histories of socialism and communism in some Latin American countries.

Any Latino then, could be an undocumented immigrant, a narco, or a communist.

As we have discussed this week, racialization of hispanic bodies exists even in their own country of origin. In Mexico, “Racial categorization and self-identity among ethnic Mexicans in the United States generally crystallizes along lines of racial difference that position them within a skin-color hierarchy, or pigmentocracy” as Tomás Almaguer points out in this weeks´ reading (7). For example, this clip from Al Jezeera discuss the representation of mexicanness in Mexican media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgBozq0Ir9A, highlighting the colorism and racism against indigenous or darker skinned Mexicans in the mainstream media in Mexico. In the clip Tenoch Huerta, a darker skinned Mexican actor, speaks that colorism is prevalent in the way it represents darker skinned Mexicans (and therefore those who have a perceived proximity of indigeneity) as criminals.

As I have discussed above, indigeneity is one factor for racialization of the Latino in the U.S. and in their home countries, but additionally, the racialization of the Latino as a criminal has also been widespread in U.S. media.

It was only 7 years ago that former President Donald Trump spoke at a campaign rally, defining Mexicans as “criminals,” “rapists,” and “killers”. See this compilation of Trump’s comments on Mexicans, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxZkg0rOWI4. President Trump's discourse stems from the racialization of Mexicans as criminals and as illegals. This rhetoric is widely found and circulated in conservative media outlets, looking up “Fox News” alongside “Mexican” or “Latino” in a the YouTube search bar retrieves a plethora of racist discourses that equate the latino to a criminal. Though more progressive news sources tend to discredit these discourses, it is important to note that most media outlets use the terminology“Illegal immigration”. Again, such a verbiage is used to paint all Latinos arriving to the U.S. for a plethora of reasons (Economic, Political, Safety, etc.) as criminals. This language is violent as it perpetuates criminality as an inherent condition of Latinos wanting to enter the U.S. or who have already done so.

While the image of Latino criminals is disseminated by news corporations, it is also circulated via popular culture in the United States. The popularity of Narcos and Narcos: Mexico are two cultural phenomena that speak to this example. Narcos began as a semi fictional clow set in Colombia, detailing the life of Pablo Escobar and his cartel. The popularity of the show catapulted a sister show, Narcos: Mexico, which depicts the boom of the drug trade in Mexico during the 80s. The popularity of the show is indicative of Americans' obsession with Organized Crime in Latin America. In an Op-Ed for the New York Times, Héctor Tobar argues that the continued obsessions with the image of the narco and the drug war in U.S. media, epitomized by Narcos, perpetuates the racialization of Latinos as criminals. Recent and popular shows like El Chapo and films like Eastwood’s recent The Mule continue the spectacle of criminality in Latin America.

With so little representation of Latinos in mainstream culture, quality representation is of the utmost importance, and it is important that cultural products do not give confirmation bias to the racist rhetoric that paints the latino body as criminal.

Promotional Image of Netflix's series "Narcos". Image Courtesy of Netflix.

Works Cited

HoSang, Daniel, et al. “‘Race, Racialization, and Latino Populations in the United States” Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2012.

Noe-Bustamante, Luis. “Key Facts about U.S. Hispanics and Their Diverse Heritage.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 31 May 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/16/key-facts-about-u-s-hispanics/.

Tobar, Héctor. “Hollywood's Obsession with Cartels.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Jan. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/sunday/latinos-cartels-trump-narcos-hollywood.html.