Latinization, Race, and Cultural Identification in Puerto Rican Orlando

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Latinization of U.S. South has inspired a body of literature examining economic, political, social, and cultural changes in South in recent decades. Amidst discussions of migration, assimilation, and resistance, there is frequent reference to South's biracially coded past and its implications for what Raymond Mohl has called Nuevo New For Mohl and others, Hispanic immigration to U.S. South presents significant questions about how new forms of diaspora in new places challenge existing paradigms for reading social dynamics. In particular, historical constructions of race as a black/white binary in U.S. South leave both newcomers and longtime residents at a loss as to how to read their contemporary reality. (1) An examination of racialization of Orlando, Florida's Puerto Rican population reveals one way this is playing out. In Racial Situations, anthropologist John Hartigan Jr. has argued for importance of thinking about race in terms of the local settings in which racial identities are actually articulated, reproduced, and contested, resisting urge to draw abstract conclusions about whiteness and blackness. Building on this, I argue here that particularities of place, read from both present and past, are an important component of understanding how racial codes are being redrawn in contemporary South. This article uses questions that follow from Jamie Winders and Barbara Smith as guidance for examining Latinization and racialization in Orlando, Florida: How do we make sense of these entanglements of a South contoured by a historical black/white binary, de-jure segregation and de-facto racism, and a South stretched into transnational flows of bodies, cultures, and capital? In contemporary South, who can invoke and be part of its past, and to what ends? How do and should interpretations of southern history affect present actions, and who can access these meanings to interpret and intervene in present? (2) At first look, choice of Puerto Ricans in Orlando may seem an odd case study for exploring impact of new Hispanic populations on social and cultural formations of U.S. South. Florida's Spanish past combines with decades-old Cuban presence there to suggest that recent southern phenomenon of Latinization is not new at all. What's more, neither Orlando nor Florida is referenced as typically southern, and Puerto Ricans are not often mentioned in literature on Hispanics in U.S. South. (3) Of top eighteen metropolitan destinations for Hispanics in United States between 1980 and 200% however, nearly two-thirds of these are in South and four are in Florida. Of those four, Orlando easily takes lead. Following 2010 census, Florida gained two new congressional seats, due in large part to growth of Hispanic population. This growth is especially noticeable in Central Florida, where Puerto Ricans make up by far largest number of Hispanics, as demonstrated in table in following section. Indeed, Florida and, specifically, Central Florida region, has become most frequent destination for Puerto Ricans in United States, and that is changing what Latinization means in Florida. (4) WELCOME TO THE NEW ORLANDO Since Disney World opened in 1971, Central Florida economy has undergone a dramatic shift from oranges and cattle to theme parks and tourism. This shift transformed Orlando from a biracial town into a multiracial city in space of a few decades, as area became a destination for visitors and migrants from around globe. Examining faces on street, it seems clear that racial history of a black/white binary has given way to a modern, and even postmodern, multiracial multiculturalism. How, I wonder, do racial memories that Puerto Ricans have brought to Orlando engage with racial memories of those already present? …