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The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, by Leo R. Chavez. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. 265pp. $21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804759342.
It is hardly surprising that the state which was chosen by the Minuteman Project in 2005 to launch its attack on Mexican immigrants five years later passed legislation (SB 1070) criminalizing undocumented Mexican immigrants within its boundaries. Leo Chavez argues that the Minuteman Project was the political expression of a public discourse pregnant with images regarding the binary classification of citizen versus immigrant. The Minuteman Project may have been disingenuous in selecting Arizona, a state where a "disproportionate number of undocumented migrants crossed" (p. 135), as a platform for drawing the nation's attention to "the Latino Threat Narrative."
The Latino Threat is "part of a grand tradition of alarmist discourse about immigrants and their perceived negative impacts on society" (p. 3). The Latino Threat Narrative argues that Latinos are not like previous immigrant groups because they did not foUow their path to becoming part of the nation. The narrative portrays Latinos as "unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming part of the national community" (p. 2). Instead, Latinos are portrayed as an invading force from south of the border intent on taking back land (the southwestern United States) they see as formerly theirs. Chavez uses the term "Latino" as an inclusive descriptor for a heterogeneous population that consists of different groups, each with a distinct historical background and level of integration into U.S. social and economic Ufe. However, "Mexico, Mexican immigrants, and the U.S.-born of Mexican...