Latin American Diasporas: Common Origins and Different Paths

This issue gathers contributions from Canada, Israel, and Spain regarding the integration of Latin Americans in those countries. Most studies on Latin American migrants focus on population movements within Latin America or, particularly in the English-language scholarly literature, on their migration towards the United States. Not surprisingly, it is mostly in the latter context that the idea of a Latin American diaspora has drawn the attention of researchers, and that the emergence of a pan-ethnic identity in exile has been proposed and discussed. The term “Latino”—as it refers to a relatively well-defined population subset—is directly connected to the U.S. reality and it reflects historically rooted understandings of ethnicity and minority self-identification and categorization in that country. However, the often-overlooked notion that a Latin American diasporic construction can take place in other host societies is certainly worth exploring. Outside the United States, Latin Americans have settled in many regions of the world, but they have created certain migration corridors that are particularly significant, in that they are establishing distinct realities—through an emerging sense of community and by means of shared experiences and aspirations. Latin Americans in Canada, in Israel, and in Spain can claim a common origin, but their “Latino-ness” will probably take different shapes as they become part and parcel of each host society: being Latin American in French (in Québec) or in Hebrew is different from being Latin American in English or in Spanish. Canada, Israel, and Spain are all countries of immigration, but their respective models of diversity-management, the volume and configuration of their immigrant intake, and their political and socioeconomic environment, not to mention the linguistic and cultural framework, create diverging patterns of integration and minority/majority relations.

But if each receiving society will foster different ways of carrying and reinterpreting a Latin American heritage, can we actually consider this heritage as a common trait of all or most Latin Americans, be they migrants or not? Indeed, Latin America includes at least twenty nation-states that, because of their colonial origins, reflect in their institutions and societal organization—albeit in many different ways—a worldview with roots in the Southern European tradition, that of the Greco-Roman world, the Italian Renaissance, the Counter-Reformation, and the Iberian absolutist social order. However, such shared past does not preclude a debate about which countries should be covered by the label “Latin America.” Some expansive definitions will encompass the whole hemisphere with the exception of Canada, the United States, and the dependencies and territories belonging to European countries (that is, the geopolitically-driven approach favored by CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States created in 2011). Other more restrictive definitions will focus on language (Spanish or Portuguese) or on the “Hispanic” legacy, thus excluding Brazil from the cluster. Geography also is occasionally a factor: Mexico would be a “North American” country, thus outside the realm of a “Latin America” spreading over South and Central America. Is Haiti part of Latin America? Even Cuba’s place is ambiguous, as the Caribbean is usually seen as a distinct area.

It goes without saying that the colonial experience in the Americas involved an extraordinary process of ethnic mixing, cultural amalgamation, and ideological construction, and that the indigenous populations contributed decisively to the process of nation-building, although from a highly subordinate position. But no characterization of Latin America’s historical foundations supposes the existence of a monolithically unified civic culture throughout the region or within each country, for that matter. In fact, many studies show the presence of both unique cultural orientations, and the existence of diverging values and attitudes between regions and between social groups. But, even if all Latin Americans are not necessarily aware of the specific components of their collective distinctiveness, many do have a resilient consciousness of a common connection that transcends national borders. Not only has there been a strong supra-national Latin American project during the Independence Wars—best incarnated by Simón Bolívar’s dream—, but also the rhetoric about “Latin American unity” remains a...