the Female Body GOVERNING

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isabel molina guzmán & angharad n. valdivia
Multiplicity and Homogeneity
in the Discourse of Latinidad
The tendency to classify and describe U.S. Latina and Latino bodies
and populations as “Latina and Latino” is quite recent. Whereas
previous formulations of the U.S. study of populations originating
from Latin American included Chicano Studies to refer to Mexican
origin populations and Boricua Studies to refer to Puerto Rican origin
populations, the current usage of the category “Latina and Latino”
represents an attempt to broaden the concept to include a comparative
ethnic and Latina perspectives—in short, it is a response to and
recognition of both material and symbolic changes—and the complex
multiplicity of the U.S. Latina and Latino population. For example,
Dominicans are quickly outnumbering Puerto Ricans in New York City;
Nicaraguans are outnumbering Cubans in Miami; Los Angeles is the
second largest Mexican, Salvadorian, and Guatemalan city in the world.
Given that the largest Mexican city, Mexico City, numbering 25 million
people is the largest city in the world, being the second largest is
demographically and symbolically significant. In fact, clusters of Latina
and Latino populations live in almost all major cities, despite the fact
that the bulk of Urban Studies and indeed the U.S. imaginary continue
to circulate the binary discourse of the city as Black and suburbs as
White, a binary that obscures the demographic diversity of the U.S.
population and leaves Latina and Latinos and others in the margins,
in some unspecified undetermined space (Davis, 1999). Consider, for
instance, the Levi’s jeans ad in the 2002 Super Bowl where a digitally
enhanced Mexican man danced through a downtown street intersection
in Mexico City. Despite the productive inclusion of Latinidad in
the hyperexpensive and usually unreachable universe of Super Bowl
ads, this ad placed the Latino body outside the boundaries of the
United States and thus underscored and supported the construction
of U.S. urban space as Black and the location of Latina and Latinos as
somewhere beyond the boundaries of U.S. cities and suburbia. As well
dominant narratives situate Latina and Latinos bicoastally although the
fastest growing region for Latina and Latinos is the Midwest. Contrary
to popular homogenizing constructions, the U.S. Latina and Latino
population is geographically dispersed throughout and beyond the
states; racially, culturally, linguistically diverse; and multiple, dynamic,
and perpetually transforming.
The same can be said of the concept of Latinidad, which remains a
dynamic, diverse, and changing set of attributes, styles, tendencies, and
personas (much like the bodies and cultures that are assembled and