In initiating the publication of The Latino Review of Books the editors hope to introduce a forum for stimulating critical thought and dialogue about the linkages and intersections between the Americas, both North and South. The purpose is to transcend or redefine the conventional boundaries that have constrained our study and understanding of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and their counterpart Latino populations living in the United States. Among the fundamental issues that we would like to explore are the many ways in which the Americas are being bridged and how national borders are being surpassed by existing transnational connections between the countries of origin and their respective U.S. diaspora and by the collective forms of cultural affirmation, resistance, and hybridization taking place among Latino groups within the U.S. society. [Click journal cover for the Table of Contents of Volume 1, No. 1 (Spring 1995)]. This issue is no longer available.

Fall 1995, Vol.1, No. 2

Fall 1996, Vol. 2, No. 2

As we conclude our second year of LRB, we continue to encourage researchers of the Latino/Latin American experience to submit their original research manuscripts to LRB. Our major goal during our third year is to increase the number of scholarly articles for each issue and to ensure an impartial and efficent referee process for all submissions. We hope you continue supporting our efforts and keeping us aware of major Latino-focused research initiatives. Your reactions about the material selected for each issue are also appreciated. We would like to reiterate that the Editors of LRB are not responsible for the opinions expres sed in any review or review essay. However, we encourage and will publish authors' counterresponse to specific reviews of their books. [Click journal cover for the Table of Contents of Volume 2, No. 3 (Winter 1996-1997)].

Vol. 3, No.1-2

 

This issue concludes volume 3 of LRB and marks a new direction in the focus of our journal. From its inception, LRB's intention was to examine the experiences of U.S. Latino(a)s and the transnational connections that individual groups maintain with their Latin American and Caribbean countries of origin. This hemispheric approach was aimed at fostering new frameworks for bringing ethnic and area studies scholars together in the examination of the many different aspects of the overall U.S. Latino(a)/Latin American experience. During the 1990s we have also witnessed the growth and transformation of many of the Chicano and Puerto Rican ethnic studies programs that emerged during the late 1960s and 1970s into programs which also emphasize the collective U.S. Latino(a) experience and allow for inclusion of other nationalities and for comparative approaches to the study of their realities. Moreover, the processes of globalization, hemispheric integration, and transnationalism taking place in the Americas continue to influence and shape the scope of how we view the realities and conditions of U.S. Latino(a)s vis-a-vis their countries of origin.
During the same period, the U.S. Latino population has continued to grow in unprecedented numbers. With a current population of about 30 million, the U.S Census projects growth trends to continue into the new millenium. The sustained Latino population growth is also characterized by an increasing diversification in the nationalities of Latino (im)migrants coming to the United States. While Mexicans and Puerto Ricans are still the two largest individual groups, there have been significant increases in the U.S. Dominican population and the population of several individual groups classed by the Census under the Central and South American Category.
Recognizing the need for a scholarly journal that promotes interdisciplinary, comparative, and hemispheric approaches to the study of the Latino(a) experience, there are two major changes that will be introduced in the next issue (Vol. 4, nos. 1-2) of this journal. First, the journal will bear its new name, the Latino(a) Research Review (LRR). Second, the journal will have an expanded section of scholarly articles, selected through a refereed process. As in the past, we will strive to be as inclusive as possible in terms of articles and reviews about the collective Latino(a) experience and the many individual nationalities included under the umbrella term.
[Click journal cover for the Table of Contents of Volume 3, No.3].

 

Vol. 4, No. 1-2

With this issue of the Latino(a) Research Review (LRR), we introduce our new format which streamlines the publication process and still allows us to bring you new and important research that promotes hemispheric and transnational understandings of the realities and experiences of U.S. Latinos and the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. This means not only crossing the conventional borders between North and South but also looking at many different realities and at the sources of those differences. This particular volume includes several articles that look at those linkages from both interdisciplinary and disciplinary perspectives. First, political scientist Pedro Cabán provides a comprehensive analysis of the controversial issue of the U.S. Navy presence and bombing practices in the Puerto Rican island-municipality of Vieques. He analyses the situation from the perspective of the growth of an international solidarity movement to bring peace to the people of Vieques, and the formation of an unusual political consensus and civil disobedience campaign among Puerto Ricans to get the Navy off the island. His analysis also considers the long history of U.S. colonial policies over Puerto Rico, the role of the U.S. military in wanting to maintain control over Vieques, their mistreatment of protestors, and the overall disregard by U.S. officials of the wishes of the Puerto Rican people. In the second article, anthropologist Frederic W. Gleach focuses on the construction and dissemination in the U.S. popular press of colonial and imperialist images that began with the War of 1898. He analyzes popular discursive practices and images about the war that were used to justify U.S. intervention, including depictions that accentuated the brutality of Spanish colonial rule and the benevolent role the United States would play as liberators and bearers of enlightened civilization for the newly acquired territories. He also examines ways in which the peoples and cultures of these territories were codified as subordinate subjects. His arguments are illustrated with a series of poignant photographs and cartoons taken from a variety of newspapers and magazines at the turn of the twentieth century. The third article, written by Asunción Lavrin, one of the most prominent pioneer scholars of Latin American women's history, provides an historical analysis of those factors that differentiate U.S. and Latin American feminists and suggests strategies aimed at creating bonds among them. These strategies are based on the assertion of and respect for those differences. In the fourth article, sociologist Marietta Morrissey shares valuable insights drawn from her ethnographic research on Mexican migrant workers and settler families in Northwest Ohio. She pays particular attention to the way in which gender roles and family relations respond to conditions in the workplace. Lastly, historian Gladys Jiménez-Muñoz provides a provocative analysis that confirms the feminist tenet " the personal is political" by focusing on racial representations during the early days of Puerto Rican television incorporating her own experiences as a child of the first generation of TV viewers. She uses the black character of " Diplo," played by the comedian Ramón Ortiz del Rivero, a white Puerto Rican who painted his face to play the role of a working-class black man, to make her arguments about the racialization process among Puerto Ricans. With great ingenuity and theoretical sophistication, Jiménez-Muñoz discusses the complex map of racial relations, perceptions, and definitions in the construction of Puerto Rican identity during the post-World War II years.

Several book reviews and LRR's list of books received complement the scholarly constributions included in the articles section.[Click journal cover for the Table of Contents of Volume 5, No.1].

 

 

Vol. 5, No. 1

 

 

 

Vol. 5, No. 1