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Social Forces 82.3 (2004) 1244-1245



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Latino Homicide: Immigration, Violence, and Community. By Ramiro Martinez Jr. Routledge, 2002. 204 pp. Cloth, $85.00; paper, $22.95.

As part of a "problem-solving" effort aimed at reducing gun violence in the nearly homogeneous Latino (Mexican-American) neighborhood of Boyle Heights in the City of Los Angeles, I would often laud the "Boston Gun Project" in my presentations as a shining example of an intervention that worked in reducing youth gun violence. My audience consisted of the residents of this neighborhood, some of whom were bilingual, others who spoke only Spanish. But in English or in Spanish, the collective voice of the community was clear: "This isn't Boston." In essence the community was questioning why one would be so naïve as to think that a program designed in a northeastern city composed primarily of blacks and whites, for a problem that was confined almost exclusively to the young black males of that city, would have any legitimacy in their neighborhood. As he set off to examine Latino rates of homicide in contemporary urban America, armed with the traditional theories of urban violence, community, and crime, one has to wonder how many times during the production of this research Ramiro Martinez needed to remind himself, "This isn't Chicago."

Martinez confronts the media (and politicized) creation of the "Latino as violent" stereotype in a carefully crafted and thoughtful manner. He provides the reader with historical overviews of the creation of the Latino identity, focusing on the origins of their presumed association with violence by indicting the popular media and policymakers alike, especially those lawmakers involved with immigration legislation. Using a rich set of data culled from police homicide files in the five cities he studied (Chicago, El Paso, Houston, Miami, and San Diego), Martinez deftly debunks this stereotype as he demonstrates that Latino homicide rates over the study period (1980-94) are not only much lower than expected, but much more in line with homicide rates of non-Latino whites than with African Americans. This finding is inconsistent with the expectations predicated on theories formulated by the Chicago School. One [End Page 1244] would expect Latino rates to be more similar to black rates, since Latinos have much more in common with blacks than with non-Latino whites in terms of labor market success, spatial and social isolation, and patterns of discrimination. Martinez is careful, however, to add the caveat that important differences exist between the experience of African Americans and that of Latinos, and that these differences should not be underestimated. While the book also includes important analyses of such phenomena as violence among Mariel Cubans in Miami and border killings in California and differentiates the role of drugs and gangs in motivating violence among white, black, and Latino populations, the book's lasting contribution will be its ambitious effort to explain the discrepancy between Latino and black rates of homicide.

Martinez takes turns focusing on issues of community, urban poverty, and immigration, comparing and contrasting these features across the five cities in an attempt to distinguish the experience of Latinos from that of African Americans. At first blush, the similarities appear to outweigh the differences because both groups experience high levels of unemployment and poverty. Telling differences emerge, however, with respect to rates of female-headed households and labor force attachment, the latter of which provides the foundation for Martinez's explanation of the Latino-black difference in homicide rates. Acknowledging that poverty makes life more difficult in the barrio as well as in black neighborhoods, Martinez argues that it is the "relative deprivation and structural conditions [that] provide a compelling explanation of Latino homicide." Both subcultures of violence and the type of strain purported to operate within the black community are muted in the barrio because of a difference in one's reference point: African Americans are more likely to compare their collective position within society to the positions achieved by European immigrants over the last one hundred years, while Latinos need only "look across the border" (quite literal in...

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