"Inside El Barrio" charts the legacy of Fidel Castro through the unique lens of Cuban household life during the El Perodo Especial (the Special Period). Taylor traverses the neighborhoods and residential developments of Havana between 1989 and 2006, the final and most complex period in the "Age of Castros Cuba" to uncover the hidden vibrancy of Cubas streets and citizens. In doing so, he acquires a deeper understanding of Cuban society by exploring what it means to live in a people-centered nation and the importance of neighborhoods in shaping everyday life and culture.
Named One of the 24 Best History Books of All Time by Book Riot The Inspiring True Story of a Segregated Unit Whose Exploits Underscore the Forgotten Latino Contribution to the Allied Victory in World War II As a child, Dave Gutierrez hung on every word his father recalled about his cousin Ramon, "El Sancudo" (the mosquito), and his service in World War II, where he earned a Silver Star, three Purple Hearts, and escaped from the Germans twice. Later, Dave decided to find out more about his father's cousin, and in the course of his research he discovered that Ramon Gutierrez was a member of Company E, 141st Infantry, a part of the 36th "Texas" Division that was comprised entirely of Mexican Americans--the only such unit in the entire U.S. Army. The division landed at Salerno, Italy, in 1943, among first American soldiers to set foot in Europe. In the ensuing months, Company E and the rest of the 36th would battle their way up the mountainous Italian peninsula against some of Nazi Germany's best troops. In addition to the merciless rain, mud, and jagged peaks, swift cold rivers crisscrossed the region, including the Rapido, where Company E would face its greatest challenge. In an infamous episode, the 36th Division was ordered to cross the Rapido despite reports that the opposite bank was heavily defended. In the ensuing debacle, the division was ripped apart, and Company E sustained appalling casualties. The company rebounded and made the storied landings at Anzio and ultimately invaded southern France for a final push into Germany. The men of Company E distinguished themselves as rugged fighters capable of warring amid the rubble of destroyed villages and in the devastated countryside. Based on extensive archival research and veteran and family accounts, Patriots from the Barrio: The Story of Company E, 141st Infantry: The Only All Mexican American Army Unit in World War II brings to life the soldiers whose service should never have gone unrecognized for so long. With its memorable personalities, stories of hope and immigration, and riveting battle scenes, this beautifully written book is a testament to the shared beliefs of all who have fought for the ideals of the American flag.
In this book, Gilberto Rosas draws on his in-depth ethnographic research among the members of Barrio Libre to understand why they have embraced criminality and how neoliberalism and security policies on both sides of the border have affected the youths' descent into Barrio Libre.
In Market Aesthetics, Elena Machado Sáez explores the popularity of Caribbean diasporic writing within an interdisciplinary, comparative, and pan-ethnic framework. She contests established readings of authors such as Junot Díaz, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Robert Antoni while showcasing the work of emerging writers such as David Chariandy, Marlon James, and Monique Roffey. By reading these writers as part of a transnational literary trend rather than within isolated national ethnic traditions, the author is able to show how this fiction adopts market aesthetics to engage the mixed blessings of multiculturalism and globalization via the themes of gender and sexuality. New World Studies Modern Language Initiative
Since the early twentieth century, thousands of Mexican Americans have lived, worked, and formed communities in Chicago’s steel mill neighborhoods. Drawing on individual stories and oral histories, Michael Innis-Jiménez tells the story of a vibrant, active community that continues to play a central role in American politics and society. Examining how the fortunes of Mexicans in South Chicago were linked to the environment they helped to build, Steel Barrio offers new insights into how and why Mexican Americans created community. This book investigates the years between the World Wars, the period that witnessed the first, massive influx of Mexicans into Chicago. South Chicago Mexicans lived in a neighborhood whose literal and figurative boundaries were defined by steel mills, which dominated economic life for Mexican immigrants. Yet while the mills provided jobs for Mexican men, they were neither the center of community life nor the source of collective identity. Steel Barrio argues that the Mexican immigrant and Mexican American men and women who came to South Chicago created physical and imagined community not only to defend against the ever-present social, political, and economic harassment and discrimination, but to grow in a foreign, polluted environment. Steel Barrio reconstructs the everyday strategies the working-class Mexican American community adopted to survive in areas from labor to sports to activism. This book links a particular community in South Chicago to broader issues in twentieth-century U.S. history, including race and labor, urban immigration, and the segregation of cities.
How does a so-called bad neighborhood go about changing its reputation? Is it simply a matter of improving material conditions or picking the savviest marketing strategy? What kind of role can or should the arts play in that process? Does gentrification always entail a betrayal of a neighborhood’s roots? Tackling these questions and offering a fresh take on the dynamics of urban revitalization, The Philadelphia Barrio examines one neighborhood’s fight to erase the stigma of devastation. Frederick F. Wherry shows how, in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Centro de Oro, entrepreneurs and community leaders forged connections between local businesses and cultural institutions to rebrand a place once nicknamed the Badlands. Artists and performers negotiated with government organizations and national foundations, Wherry reveals, and took to local galleries, stages, storefronts, and street parades in a concerted, canny effort to reanimate the spirit of their neighborhood. Complicating our notions of neighborhood change by exploring the ways the process is driven by local residents, The Philadelphia Barrio presents a nuanced look at how city dwellers can make commercial interests serve the local culture, rather than exploit it.
A young boy explores his vibrant Latino neighborhood, with its vegetable gardens instead of lawns, Nativity parades, quinceaera parties, and tejana and salsa music.
This book intends to be helpful to people-students and oth ers-who are beginning to think about how to change the world via that activity we call development planning. The issues of What is Progress? and How do we get it? are world-wide, although they appear in different form in societies like our own from the way they do in the Third World countries with their explicit development planning. These are two very big questions and have no easy or final answers. However, we can think about them in more rather than less effective ways. Thinking about them can be both a way of beginning to take action on issues of growth and change, and a way of understanding our own situation. vii viii I PREFACE This book argues that thinking about development plan ning has gotten into trouble by dividing economy from so ciety, and misconstruing moral-social-political issues as tech nical ones. Development planning has centered on economic planning, treating social issues as obstacles to growth, or as problems arising out of economic change. The book takes up a number of specific topics which enter into development planning-topics such as the organization of work, educa tional planning, family policy-to show how in reality the social and the economic, the moral and the technical, are one, and how thinking about policy in each area should therefore take an integrated perspective.
Too frequently, the media and politicians cast Mexican immigrants as a threat to American society. Given America's increasing ethnic diversity and the large size of the Mexican-origin population, an investigation of how Mexican immigrants and their descendants achieve upward mobility and enter the middle class is long overdue. Barrios to Burbs offers a new understanding of the Mexican American experience. Vallejo explores the challenges that accompany rapid social mobility and examines a new indicator of incorporation, a familial obligation to "give back" in social and financial support. She investigates the salience of middle-class Mexican Americans' ethnic identification and details how relationships with poorer coethnics and affluent whites evolve as immigrants and their descendants move into traditionally white middle-class occupations. Disputing the argument that Mexican communities lack high quality resources and social capital that can help Mexican Americans incorporate into the middle class, Vallejo also examines civic participation in ethnic professional associations embedded in ethnic communities.
