Poscolonial Constructions of “Latinidades” in Spain

• In Event: “Latin@s” making in American and European Migratory Spaces

Abstract

Spain and other Southern European countries have been one of the most important destinations for Latin American emigrants in the last two decades. This paper analyses the rise of the US pan-ethnic labels “Latin@”/”Hispanic” among Latin American immigrants in Spain, redefining them in a postcolonial European transnational field. Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Latin American immigrants and Spaniars in three ethnograpic areas (the “Latin@” media, the Spanish Army, and the Latin American celebrations and demostrations in the streets), I explore the micropolitics and negociations around the construction of “latinidades” in Spain as contested and contradictory sites of postcolonial identity rebordering. I will show how “Latin@” identities are politically and economically manufactured in these three areas, showing how these panethnic labels opened up new demands for “belonging” to a multicultural public sphere from within the media, the military and the streets. I will also show how, at the same time, these pan-ethnic labels in Southern Europe are interpreted as part of a global dominance of Neoliberal market hegemonies. The use of “Latin@”/”Hispanic” is also seen as an anglo-imperial device of governamentality onto an indian-afro-european Atlantic etnoscape that renders them as exotic, marketable, and subaltern population in the Western world.

Author

• Liliana Suárez-Navaz, Stanford/Universidad Autonoma Madrid