E-Books →From Threatening Guerrillas to Forever Illegals US Central Americans and the Cultural Politics of Non–Belonging

Yajaira M. Padilla explores how this regime of visibility and invisibility emerged over the past forty years-bookended by the right-wing presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump-and how Central American immigrants and subsequent generations have contested their rhetorical disfiguration. Drawing from popular films and TV, news reporting, and social media, Padilla shows how Central Americans in the United States have been constituted as belonging nowhere, imagined as permanent refugees outside the boundaries of even minority representation. Yet in documentaries about cross-border transit through Mexico, street murals, and other media, US Central Americans have counteracted their exclusion in ways that defy dominant paradigms of citizenship and integration.
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