From the Editor: Latinx Culture in Turbulent Times

"May you live in interesting times." This expression, purportedly of Chinese derivation, is a curse in the guise of a blessing. To live in interesting times is to live in times of uncertainty, to face challenges unforeseen. And the times in which we live are, if nothing else, painfully interesting. In recent months, millions of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and US Latinas and Latinos have experienced the ravages of recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods. As communities in Mexico, the Caribbean, and the Gulf states recover from these natural disasters, millions of undocumented Americans are facing ever greater economic precarity or legal limbo in the wake of the political disaster that has unfolded in the United States. Together, these events remind us of the power of expressive culture to draw attention to our present condition and inspire individual or collective action.

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In the weeks leading to the 2016 presidential election, the actorvist John Leguizamo implored US Latinas and Latinos to politically mobilize and take to the polls: "We need a Latino Spring in this country," he said, referencing the ground-swell of popular protest known as the Arab Spring that swept certain countries of North Africa and the Middle East starting in 2010. "We need to demand power and opportunity." In his New York Times editorial (October 21, 2016), Leguizamo lamented that racial profiling, discrimination in the media, and political gerrymandering had systematically marginalized Latinx individuals and communities from American society and popular culture: "The exclusion sends a painful message to every Latino child about how he is seen and judged."

In the months leading to the election, the political airwaves pulsed with more odious messages. Then-candidate Donald J. Trump had campaigned on a platform of xenophobia that pandered to his heavily white and populist base. Announcing his candidacy in June 2015, he notoriously denounced Mexican immigrants as murderers, drug dealers, and rapists, and as potential security threats to the nation. At rallies months later, crowds chanted, "Build that wall!" Stoking their populist fervor, Trump promised not only to build a wall—at Mexico's expense—but also to end the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that was initiated in June 2012 by President Barack Obama to shield undocumented Americans brought to the United States as children from deportation.

As president, Trump has followed through on these campaign pledges. He has drastically curtailed refugee admissions and rounded up thousands of undocumented residents in cities throughout the country. He has scheduled the repeal of DACA for March 2018, unless his plan to build the wall is approved by Congress. The fate of eight hundred thousand DACA enrollees hangs in the balance. For Latinx communities, Trump's election and policies are proving catastrophic. In the face of both natural and political storms, however, we can observe ways that culture can empower and bring people together around broadly shared principles of inclusion, human rights, and social justice.

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The diverse works contained in this issue of Chiricú Journal, edited by Solimar Otero and Mintzi Auanda Martínez-Rivera, illustrate the varied and complex ways that communities and the scholars who study them have challenged their marginalization. For example, we hear in the powerful voice of Rachel V. González-Martin a call for Latinx folklorists to question prevailing scholarly conventions. Like Leguizamo, González-Martin urges her contemporaries to interrogate and push back against coercive practices, proclivities, and paradigms. We see in the vivid imagery of Juana Alicia, whose art graces our cover, a stunning reminder of our environmental fragility, our global connectedness, and the potentially disastrous consequences of human activity. Other works either visually or textually engage themes of urgent consideration in light of our political climate. Those themes include: immigration, religion, social media and political mobilization, as well as seemingly insurmountable divisions, so movingly depicted in the sculptures of Alejandra Carrillo-Estrada. Spanning scholarship, creative essays, and artwork, the contributions comprising this issue of Chiricú Journal offer compelling testimony to reciprocal relationships between agency and expression, survival and resistance, "poder y cultura."