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Acknowledgments

Lisa García Bedolla

This book continues to represent the coming together of two sets of interests that have driven my intellectual work: the politics of the domestic and of the international. Also, as an academic, I have always been interested in questioning how things came to be, rather than accepting the conventional answers. Unfortunately, much of the study of US politics begins and ends at the US border, with little reference to the broader world outside or focus on internal communities that do not hold power. Consequently, when I began studying US politics, I found little that described my experience or my history. Surely, I should not have been invisible to those who study “American” politics, given that Florida, Louisiana, and what is now the western United States were once Spanish-speaking polities, and that the term “America” encompasses not only North America but also Central and South America and the Caribbean. Thus, on the domestic side, as a Latina growing up in the United States, I have had an ongoing concern with the political experiences of those of Latino origin residing there.

From an international perspective, as the daughter of Cuban immigrants, I have been faced with the geopolitical, historical, and social aspects of my family’s experience at every Thanksgiving dinner where my family adds black beans, rice, and pork to the traditional menu of turkey and stuffing. Those meals were always served alongside often heated political debate. As a result of those spirited discussions, I felt a strong desire to know better the history of my parents’ country of origin, and how and why my family ended up in the United States. With this book, I was finally able to bring together these two foci of experience. It is my hope that it helps readers to contextualize the US Latino experience beyond US borders, in order for them to understand more fully the factors influencing this community’s migration, politics, and politicization in the United States. And, importantly, I hope that, through a greater knowledge of the history of US relations with the Americas and their inhabitants, readers will understand better how these relationships have influenced the trajectory of American democracy since the nineteenth century.

Christian and I completed the third edition as COVID-19 raged globally. I was sheltered at home with my family, grateful for that home, for that family, and for the employment that allowed her to continue with this sort of intellectual work. But that work was hard, and slow, and I very much appreciate the patience of our Polity editorial team, Louise Knight and Inès Boxman, who were understanding of our delays and our plain inability to focus on the work in the ways that we needed to. We appreciate their commitment to this book and their tolerance of the delays caused by the global pandemic.

This experience has made me even more grateful for the many privileges in my life and for the family that has supported me, always, in this work. Nothing I do is more important than the people I am connected to, both personally and professionally. It is my sincere hope to provide them with the cheerleading, support, and laughter they bring to me. I also hope that my children continue to see this book as a tribute to their ancestors, those intrepid risk takers who made their lives possible. Finally, this book continues to be dedicated to my media naranja, José Luis Bedolla, who, after 29 years, continues to bring me joy and peace every day. Nothing would be possible without him.

Christian Hosam

This book is a labor of love, with equal emphasis on both labor and love. I have been gratified to have had this opportunity but, in taking it on, I never fully accounted for the time and effort it would take to get it to the finish line. Where the love comes in is all of the people who cheered me on and supported me in big ways and small, and encouraged me to advocate for myself and learn to tell myself “no” to increasing demands on my time.

First and foremost, I have to thank Lisa García Bedolla for the opportunity to work on this project. As an early-stage graduate student, I was excited and enthused about the chance to write this book, but mostly stunned that she asked me. The imposter syndrome I felt came out as confusion. I literally sat in her office and asked: “Why me?” Working with her has shown me how to balance multiple demands, start a project from scratch, and remain rooted in communities outside of academia. She has been a constant supporter, mentor, and collaborator on this project and others (all while being a wife, mother, professor, and Dean), and I am extremely grateful that she felt compelled to take me under her wing as she has.

Being a young scholar in training, the way you progress is by finding people to model yourself after. Luckily, I’ve been blessed with a wealth of mentors and advisors who have been generous with their time, advice, and grace. Leonardo Arriola, Desmond Jagmohan, Didi Kuo, Joel Middleton, Cecilia Mo, G. Cristina Mora, Tianna Paschel, Eric Schickler, Janelle Wong, and many others whom I have not named here have all been critical in their own ways, for which I am so grateful. Thanks go to Marcia Chatelain for being a confidant, mentor, and someone who is always right on time with a kind word and cup of tea. Special thanks go to Taeku Lee for being a wonderful advisor who provides me with so many opportunities and has constantly had my back during my graduate school journey. I make sure to run all my biggest academic risks (this book being the biggest so far) by him before I make a final decision.

Thank you to Ann Glusker and Natalia Estrada at the UC Berkeley Doe Library for their awesome work in helping find datasets and information about various chapters in the book. They truly helped us refine our gauge for deciding whether a hunch was a dead end or something that needed to be pursued further.

That I have also had such a tremendous set of colleagues to go through graduate school with has made this process far smoother than I had any right to hope for. My first-year cohort has been wonderful in setting norms about self-care that allow us to be more open about the struggles that we all face, which has, in a fortunate turn of events, made it a much more productive environment to work in. So many of the graduate students and assistant professors in my orbit have become my friends, with whom I can share professional and personal struggles, many of which came up during the writing of this book. Matt Brundage, Tara Chandra, Sonya Chen, Jordie Davies, Justine Davis, Norris Davis, Jake Grumbach, Jane Henderson, Jenn Jackson, Andrew McCall, Vanessa Navarro Rodriguez, Stephanie Peng, Réuben Pérez, Clara Perez-Medina, Bhumi Purohit, Diane Wong, and Jae Yeon Kim have all provided such wonderful and necessary support systems.

Jaime Sánchez, Joel Rhone, and Kelsey Henry all started graduate school a year before I did and seeing their successes gave me confidence that I made the right career choice, and their work and friendship continues to sustain me even now. For Jaime especially – who is destined, among other things, to be an important scholar of Latino politics in his own right – having his thoughts and perspectives in the back of my mind as I was writing kept me grounded to the stakes and rigor of the work.

My friends force me to take my head out of the books sometimes and keep a clear focus on the world around me. This kind of love, insight, and steady stream of laughter is my anchor through my professional life and makes me a better scholar and person by reminding me that my life is more than the measure of what I produce in the ivory tower. Chipper Bounds, Emma Coleman, Talia Derogatis, Rajaa Elidrissi, Faith Hibbert, Penelope and Brodie Hosam, Kevin Hutchinson, Andrea Kelly, Evelyn Kim, Reinette Kirton, Kamla Kumar, Tenzin C. Kyisarh, Elizabeth Litvitskiy, Jenny Muñiz, Cleo Nicole Okai, Maimouna Siby, Clive Smith, Jeffrey Smith, Ammie Tea, Arpita Vora, Quinn Wong, Catherine Wulff, and many others give me the kind of life-sustenance that we all need, and I am humbled to have been blessed to receive it from such a rollicking and wonderful cast of characters.

Finally, to my mother, Cheryl Hosam. She passed away in 2016 after a short bout with cancer, and the aftershocks of that loss are still with me today and will be with me for ever. But the sadness is undercut by the pride that I can take in how palpable her influence is in everything I do. A Trinidadian immigrant who worked multiple jobs but had a passion for reading and a razor-sharp insight into politics, her imprint is in everything I do. I miss her every day and this project, just like all the others, is inspired and shaped by her in ways big and small, explicit and subtle. Mom: I hope I honor you with this work, all my work, and with my life.