Latinas in the United States, set: A Historical Encyclopedia

Preface

Latina history is a mosaic across time, region, gender, and borders. At the heart of this encyclopedia is a commitment to reclaim the lives of Latinas within their own historical moments and to recover their stories— frequently hidden, forgotten, or ignored. Since the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, Spanish-speaking women have left their imprints on U.S. soil. They appeared on the historical landscape before the establishment of English and French settlements. Many Latinas have Native American roots, while some trace their heritage to the rich contributions of the peoples of West Africa, brought to these shores as enslaved women. Still others descended from Spain and diverse European countries and, in time, combined their particular experiences with different communities of people in the Americas in the process of mestizaje, the blending of Spanish, African, and indigenous peoples. This pivotal point is important for understanding the cultural and biological syncretism that, in turn, gave form to Latinos in the United States in both the past and the present. As poet Aurora Levins Morales has aptly surmised: “I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish. I was born at the crossroads and I am whole.”1 Nomenclature for Latinas in and of itself reveals much about the diversity of Spanish-speaking peoples in the United States, past and present. There has never existed a single signifier of self-identification from Tejanos and Californios of the nineteenth century to Latinos and Hispanics today. In this encyclopedia Latina is an umbrella term that refers to all women of Latin American birth or heritage, including women from North, Central, and South America and the Spanishspeaking Caribbean. Mexicana and Mexicano refer to those born in Mexico, and Mexican American indicates U.S. birth. Chicana and Chicano reflect a political consciousness that emerged out of the Chicano student movement, often a generational marker for those who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s. Nuyorican refers to Puerto Ricans born on the mainland, not just in New York, while Puertorriqueña and Puertorriqueño include islanders and Nuyoricans alike. Boricua signifies endearment, empowerment, and unity for all Puerto Ricans. For some, regional identification becomes synonymous with nationality—Tejanos in Texas and Hispanos in New Mexico and Colorado. Others situate themselves in terms of racial location, preferring perhaps an Iberian connection (Hispanic) or emphasizing indigenous (mestizo/a) or African (Afro-Latino/a) roots. Cultural/national identification remains strong— Salvadorans, Dominicans, Brazilians, and Cubans, to name just a few. Divergent cultural locations mark the heterogeneity within Latino communities, a heterogeneity that occurs even within families. As Salt Lake City housing activist María Garcíaz reflected, “My mother is Spanish; one brother is Mexican; my sister Mexican-American; I am Chicana. Three brothers are Hispanic and the youngest is Latino.”2 Within these pages the historical and literary narratives marking the U.S. Latina experience come to life. From mestizo settlements, pioneer life, and diasporic communities, Latinas in the United States documents women’s contributions as settlers, healers, ranchers, and landowners, as community organizers and educators , and as writers, artists, and performers. Their experiences during and after Euro-American colonizing and conquests of the Southwest are also explored, in addition to the early-nineteenth-century migration of Puerto Ricans and Cubans. For the twentieth century, issues of immigration, literature, cultural traditions, labor, gender roles, community organizations, and politics are addressed, as well as individual biographical profiles of women who have left their marks on history , such as Puerto Rican feminist Luisa Capetillo, conservative New Mexican politician Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven, and Guatemalan labor and civil rights activist Luisa Moreno. This encyclopedia focuses on how Latinas have shaped their own lives, cultures, and communities through mutual assistance and collective action and how our understanding of pivotal events, such as the U.S.-Mexican War, the Great Depression, and World War II, becomes transformed when they are viewed through women’s eyes. Written to engage general and scholarly readers, this encyclopedia, the first to focus specifically on Latina history, consists of almost 600 entries (700,000 xv q Preface q words) and nearly 300 photographs. The introduction features five comprehensive regional and historical overviews of Latina history in the Southwest, the Northeast, the Midwest, the Southeast, and the Pacific Northwest. Several themes interlace the diverse components within this compendium of new knowledge. First, the encyclopedia is essentially a working-class history of Latinas whose experiences and actions during three centuries helped build this nation...