A History of Latino-Focused Journals and Collaborative Research
- A History of Latino-Focused Journals and Collaborative Research
An array of academic journals is accessible to scholars today who publish research on Latin American and U.S. Latino issues, but only a few decades ago such avenues were severely limited or nonexistent. It is due to the work of pioneering journals, exceptional editors, and collaborative practices with scholars and activists of the 1960s and 70s that they bucked the odds and created new venues to help shape fields of "U.S. Latino Studies," ethnic and interdisciplinary studies.
The focus of this special issue is on the impetus and work that was required to bring Latino-focused journals into existence, establishing a foundation for dissertations and books published in the twenty-first century. This process took place during and following the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s, when Chicano, Puerto Rican, American Indian, and other voices pushed for recognition of their presence and experience in the United States. They published newsletters, followed by journals, typed and mimeographed in home garages or using accessible printing shops. The new journals were fortified by concurrent work at universities—the creation of programs and classes in Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Ethnic studies, and the founding of university research centers, some of which sponsored journals that continue today. Collaborative efforts between such centers, the activists, intrepid editors, and collaborators fostered research and opened avenues for scholars and the development of new epistemologies. Publishing ventures took off, writers found an outlet for poems and manifestos, and a path opened up for the globalizing Latino diaspora programs and journals recognized today.
This theme proposes a review of the rise and success of early journals,1 from the late 1960s through the end of the century, how they flourished, and how the volunteer efforts of editors and collaborators sustained journals and led to important books. Some of these early journals continue to publish today. The fore runners introduced crucial terms that define lived existence and experience: bilingual/bicultural, Raza, Chicano, Chicana, Boricua, and later, diaspora, transnational, biracial, exile and migration, feminisms, sexualities, and other intersectionalities.
The articles include rich assessments on the impact of artist collaborations across the years, excellent research by scholars, interviews, and reflection articles by several pioneering editors. It has been a great privilege to work with each contributor to this special theme, because of his or her invaluable commitment and dedication, which has made possible this presentation on the history of early journals, and which helped found the contemporary field in U.S. Latina/o studies.
A NEED FOR JOURNALS
In the 1950s regional associations were created to bring forth research (long neglected by European American–oriented scholarship) on Latin American Studies; they launched annual journals and pursued topics in terms of "area studies." This was followed by the creation of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in 1966, and it's now prominent journal the Latin American Research Review (LARR). It soon became evident that there was also need for academic journals addressing the lived experience and history of U.S. Latinos, who had been generally designated "Latin American" without understanding of the long history of U.S. Latino presence.
Protests by activists since the midcentury brought attention to such discrimination and invisibility: the denial of benefits to Black and Latino veterans returning from Korea and then Vietnam, social injustices, and educational inequities. In cities or at universities where activists convened, and in the Southwest where they lived and traveled, seeds were planted to create the incipient journals on Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Raza studies. Of these earliest journals—publications so designated once they include an opening editorial, several articles, creative work, and continuity of information in front and back pages—many have been in continuous publication; others have had a trajectory [End Page 1] that in turn inspired the rise of new journals in the 1980s and 90s.
Beginning with two Chicano–oriented journals in 1967 and 1968, El Grito and Con Safos in California, followed by The Rican in Chicago, and The Black Scholar in San Francisco, the process was launched. Founding editors of such impacting journals as Revista Chicano Rique...
