A Term Best Left in the Past: On Frances R. Aparicio's "Negotiating Latinidad"

Frances R. Aparicio | Negotiating Latinidad: Intralatina/o Lives in Chicago | University of Illinois Press | October 2019 | 220 Pages

In Negotiating Latinidad: Intralatina/o Lives in Chicago, author Frances R. Aparicio examines the lives, cultures, and familial bonds of 20 “Intralatina/os,” a term defined as individuals with mixed or multiple Latin American ethnicities. 

Aparicio uses a synthesis of words when describing her interviewees’ ethnicities: Mexican and ColombianJose are labeled as MexiColombian, Mexican and Puerto Rican Paco become MexiRican. In the same way, Aparicio walks readers through these concepts thoroughly and repeatedly. She also takes great care to lay out the parameters of her interviews. All were conducted using the same questions, varying from the somewhat impersonal (“What kinds of foods do you eat at home? Which do you like best? Why?”) to the genuinely intimate (“Were there any conflicts in your parents’ relationship over the fact that they were from two different national groups?”). Aside from one man who was born in Guatemala, all of Aparicio’s subjects were second-generation Latinx Americans who resided in Chicago at the time of the interview. Aparicio uses only the feminine and masculine Latina/o to describe her interviewees, and the term “Latinx” does not appear in the book. However, I use Latinx in my review for the sake of inclusivity.

The title of Aparicio’s book is an immediate attention-grabber for anyone tuned into the Latinx community. Latinidad, a term meaning attributes shared by Latinx people, is a highly contentious word. The word has been critiqued because there is no “universal” Latinx experience. Indeed, Latinidad’s claim to be describing the universality of Latinx experience discredits the diverse struggles of Afro Latinos and LGBTQ+ communities. Moreover, as journalist Janel Martinez explains in a video for The Root, the word “Latinidad” is anti-Black and “serves a very narrow audience.”

Aparicio addresses this questionable term in the book’s introduction and first chapter, writing “scholars have noted that although we use the term, we remain suspicious of its homogenizing effects.” The thesis of Negotiating Latinidad revolves around Aparicio’s reworking of Latinidad to examine how horizontal hierarchies of power and oppression operate. She looks to the Spanish language as an example in a later chapter. Many in the Latinx community speak Spanish, but within the language, there exist notions of superior and inferior pronunciations. As Aparicio writes, “such hierarchies are a legacy of the imperial power of Spain in its New World Colonies, internalized even after independence and still evident in the norms, standards and expectations that constitute educated speakers of Spanish throughout Latin America.” In other words, racism is embedded in the language’s horizontal hierarchies.

There are also examples of light-skinned subjects such as Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Mexican-American Daniel, who speaks Spanish at work to feel included among his Latinx co-workers who otherwise considered him an outsider.

As a reader in present-day America, it was impossible to read something about Latinidad without thinking about the protests and Black Lives Matter rallies following George Floyd’s death. I especially thought of this text when I saw a video on Twitter of a young, Afro-Puerto Rican girl protesting and performing a traditional bomba dance in Loìza, Puerto Rico. She, and many other Latinx people around her, were protesting for an end to racism on their island—which is as strong a force there as it is on the mainland. Though there are similarities in culture, their experience and attributes are not the same as a light-skinned person living in their town. 

I also thought of my own experience as a light-skinned Mexican woman living in the Midwest. I have lived a life of immense privilege in mostly white neighborhoods where I have experienced little racial bias, or at least bias of which I was aware. But my version of Latinidad would likely be radically different from a darker-skinned Latinx in the same neighborhood.

Aparicio does not discount this disparity and devotes a chapter to racial inequalities entitled “Relational Racilizations,” which she describes as “the process through which Intralatina/os are racially subordinated and excluded from their national communities based on skin color and phenotype.” This section focuses on the experiences of several interviewees, including Afro-Latinx Marisa and Enrique, racially ambiguous Marcos, and light-skinned Stacey. As Aparicio points out, light skin “does not always mean inclusion for Intralatina/os.” Stacey, an EcuadoRican, feels excluded from Chicago’s Ecuadorian community due to her light skin and disclosed a story about being charged extra to enter and then being asked to leave after refusing. Although her light skin precludes her from certain Latinx circles, her whiteness simultaneously provides her with social privileges that many other Latinx simply do not receive. Yet Stacey’s exclusion seems minor when compared to the experiences of Afro-Latinx subjects Marisa and Enrique, whose maternal families would not accept their Afro-Puerto Rican fathers into their lighter-skinned Mexican families.

Much of Negotiating Latinidad focuses on how each subject’s view of certain Latin American nationalities is “informed by the emotional legacy and trauma behind their family’s stories.” Aparicio hypothesizes that strong feelings toward someone’s ethnicities are determined by their relationship to their mother, father, or both. These stories are some of the most intriguing in the book, with the author digging deep into the complexities of the relationships between children and their immigrant parent(s). Throughout Aparicio’s book, these stories consistently contradict the term Latinidad. Each interview captures the diversity of Latinx culture and how many Latinx cultures are at odds with one another.

As an examination of the changing culture of Intralatinx people, the book succeeds. Most narratives tell a story of children wanting a life different from that of their parents, sometimes ostracizing one identity for another and other times reclaiming a heritage not relayed to them by their parents. However, even with the introduction of horizontal hierarchies, it is unclear whether the book succeeds in reclaiming the term Latinidad. Though the book dives into racial inequalities, it does not consider how other vulnerable populations could come to terms with the Latinidad label.

For many, Latinidad is a term best left in the past. The complex stories and emotions told by these Intralatinx subjects only prove this point. Negotiating Latinidad is at its best when illustrating the stories of its interviewees and providing readers with statistics that demonstrate the changing Latinx community in Chicago and beyond.