Jose Luis Falconi and Jose Antonio Mazzotti, editors: The Other Latinos: Central and South Americans in the United States.

Hellman, Judith Adler

Jose Luis Falconi and Jose Antonio Mazzotti, editors

The Other Latinos: Central and South Americans in the United States

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2007, viii + 298 pp.

This edited collection represents a much needed effort to redress the imbalance between the abundant resources relating to Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban immigration to the United States, and the paucity of material available on the "other" Latin American newcomers to North America. Focusing on what they view as three of the most significant groups that compose the most recent wave of immigrants to arrive in the U.S., Falconi and Mazzotti have brought together an interdisciplinary assembly of experts on Brazil, Central America, and the Andean region, scholars who speak from the perspectives of both the humanities and the social sciences. While all of the migrants under study belong to national, ethnic, linguistic, and/or racial groups that have, for many decades, been represented in the United States at least in small numbers, the co-editors argue that these groups are essentially "new" in that they have only now reached a critical mass that allows them to be recognized as a community of compatriots struggling to find their place in a multicultural immigrant society.

To be sure, in comparison with U.S. residents of Mexican heritage who account for almost 60% of the total population identified by the U.S. Census Bureau as "Hispanic/Latino," the people under consideration in this book constitute relatively small groups. However, in the destination towns and cities where they have settled in the United States, they may, as is the case for Brazilians concentrated in Boston, represent the majority of all migrants originating "south of the border."

Falconi and Mazzotti are careful to underscore the great heterogeneity of Latin Americans who have settled in the United States. These immigrants come from many different countries and many different circumstances. Indeed, the social class divide between earlier middle- and upper-middle-class Brazilian immigrants who settled in Boston and the poor Brazilians who later followed them in successive waves is the subject of a very interesting chapter by Maxine Margolis. However, even as they acknowledge the enormous diversity of the three clusters of recent immigrants on whom they have chosen to focus, the co-editors face a daunting intellectual challenge when it comes to sorting out and making sense of such a huge range of characteristics and experiences.

To meet this challenge, the volume begins, logically enough, with two broad analyses. The first is provided by Michael Jones-Correa, who uses census data from 2000 to explore various migrant groups' prospects of gaining and wielding political influence within the American political system--clearly a topic that will be of keen interest to anyone engaged by the presidential primaries and election of 2008. This piece is followed by another excellent general discussion by Helen Marrow, who explores the labels selected by migrants in response to the 1990 census forms as a way to interpret the meanings that migrants give to the categories of race and ethnicity that are constructed by the U.S. Census Bureau.

After these introductory works, however, we leave the world of broad comparative analysis and plunge into the particularities of the ten chapters that provide case studies of Central Americans, Brazilians, and peoples of the Andes. Moreover, the case studies are drawn not only from the research of sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists, but also include literary analysis of immigrant novels by Arturo Arias, Claret Vargas's study of the Bolivian poet Eduardo Mitre, Debra Castillo's examination of the Peruvian immigrant writer Eduardo Gonzalez Viana, and Antonio Luciano Tosta's article on Brazilian American cinema.

If these case studies speak to each other in any way at all, it is on the subject of the construction of immigrant identities and the diversity of immigrant experience, topics that appear in almost every piece. The range of different migratory experiences, logically enough, are a function of the period of time in which migration takes place, the nature of both the sending and the receiving communities, the socio-economic background of the immigrants and their level of schooling, along with characteristics like race, ethnicity, language, and gender. However, the assortment of experiences reported in these chapters, along with the eclectic mix of intellectual approaches employed by the authors, make the task of giving shape to these contributions all the more difficult. Indeed, Falconi and Mazzotti do not even attempt to supply a set of broad conclusions at the end of the collection, and it is easy to understand why they do not.

Thus, the reader, who may well long for some clear and telling comparisons, is best advised to turn to the excellent third chapter, written by Nestor Rodriguez, who provides a systematic study of Central American migration since the 1980s in comparative perspective with that of Mexicans. In this most important contribution, Rodriguez points to striking similarities with respect to the undocumented status of both groups, the great danger involved in their quest to enter the United States, and the special circumstances of indigenous people who constitute a significant proportion of migrants in both cases. At the same time, he highlights the

differences in the degree of difficulty of the journey to the United States, including the distance covered, the natural and social barriers that must be overcome, and the far greater cost of coyotaje, that is, smugglers' fees, for the Central Americans. Rodriguez also uncovers key differences between the two groups with reference to their reception in the "host" country. The Central Americans' presumed connection to leftist insurgencies frequently made them--along with their U.S.-based supporters in the Sanctuary Movement--the object of hostility from local governments and the target of FBI investigation and repressive action. Finally, Rodriguez underscores the difference between Mexican and Central Americans with respect to their inclination and capacity to organize to participate in politics, particularly with regard to their efforts to organize around immigrant and refugee rights.

Overall, there is much in this volume that will be of great interest to students of migration, even if, in its eclecticism, the contributions are, by definition, a bit all over the map.

Judith Adler Hellman, York University