LACS 30.20 Indigenous Migration and Latinidad
The course examines the intersection of Indigeneity and Latinidad since the late twentieth century. A significant number of Indigenous Mexicans and Central Americans arrived in rural regions and urban centers of the United States in the 1980s, often disrupting a homogenous narrative about Mexican American and Latinx communities. The class will focus on the Indigenous experience from Mexico and Central America within the political economies that displaced and incorporated them. These new groups maintained their own languages, different from Spanish, and their own traditions and histories, which also enabled new conflicts, solidarities, and possibilities within the Latinx community. By centering on Indigenous people, the class will explore themes of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and Native self-determination and their place and contention with Latinx Studies.