Nuevo South: Latinas/os, Asians, and the Remaking of Place by Perla M. Guerrero (review)

Nuevo South explores the impact of Vietnamese, Cuban, and Mexican immigration on White racial perceptions in Arkansas. The book is organized both chronologically and by immigrant group, bookended by chapters on the emergence of the "Nuevo South"—the latest iteration of a business-forward framing of the South, and the targeting of "illegal aliens." Aiming to expand the study of the American South beyond its rural and urban concentrations, Guerrero's gaze remains fixed on the northwestern corner of Arkansas, a mostly White region of small towns. She refers to Texas mainly to note that while the Latina/o populations of other southwestern states (e.g. Texas and California) mushroomed in the 1970s, Arkansas never attracted large numbers of immigrants. Many Latina/o immigrants, in fact, settled in Arkansas only after working in Texas or California first. Guerrero argues that a full reckoning of Asian and Latina/o racialization is contingent on local racial ideologies.

The author focuses on a different immigrant group for each decade from the 1970s through the 1990s. Each group was racialized in unique ways—in relation to each other, in response to divisions within each group, and also relative to other racial groups. In the 1970s, Vietnamese refugees displaced by the Vietnam War were relocated to Fort Chafee, Arkansas (among other relocation centers across the country). Chapter 2 addresses the attitudes of White Arkansans who received the first wave of mostly professional Vietnamese refugees somewhat sympathetically, but repudiated the next, less formally educated wave on the basis of their agricultural origins. Next, in 1980, the U.S. government directed that nearly 20,000 Mariel Cubans who had quit their home country's stagnant economy be processed at Fort Chafee. Chapter 3 discusses how local residents, spurred by media representations of the Cubans as purported homosexuals, murderers, and Communists, called on officials to act. The sluggish pace of processing at Fort Chafee ultimately led to an uprising in which a large contingent of Cubans broke camp. Chapter 4 centers on the decade of the 1990s, when nearly 90,000 Mexican immigrants settled in Arkansas, mirroring the demographic shift across much of the U.S. South. The arrival of each successive group alarmed locals, and taken together, the groups' presence irrevocably altered the homogenous White composition of this small corner of Arkansas.

Guerrero draws attention to the role of business and labor in the Nuevo South. Whereas the South (old and new) historically relied on exploited Black labor, it has increasingly turned to documented and undocumented immigrants to fill low-wage and manual labor positions. Native-born Arkansans felt that their livelihoods were threatened by the influx of newcomers—most of whom were racial minorities. They also viewed these immigrants as an exploitable workforce. Undocumented Latinx workers in polleras, or poultry processing plants, were especially vulnerable to cutthroat wages and hazardous or dehumanizing work conditions, as discussed in chapter 4.

Guerrero's very targeted study builds on ethnographic research and archival sources, including government reports and papers. She also pulls from a broad range of secondary sources in ethnic studies, sociology, and history. One of the most interesting sources she utilizes is constituents' letters to state officials, in which citizens demanded that officials address their concerns through deportation or blocking state aid to immigrants. The resulting narrative offers original evidence and fresh subject matter. Guerrero's broader arguments, however, align too neatly with the existing literature on race and place. For example, Guerrero's central idea, that "we must understand the history of place-specific ideologies" (4), is too conventional. The comparative analysis of the three racialized groups would also benefit from further elaboration. Occasionally, the book's contextualization and parallels stretch too far afield from the topic to be useful (e.g. the "plantation bloc" allegory). Still, for those interested in studies on comparative immigration, whiteness, and labor and class, Nuevo South opens a window onto the shifting contours...