The cultural production of Mexican identity in the United States: an examination of the Mexican threat narrative

Abstract

This paper examines how the cultural production of Mexican identity in the US media processes a Mexican threat narrative in the American public's mind. Racial profiling procedures utilized by the US Border Patrol that criminalize Mexican identity are used to illustrate the application of the Mexican threat narrative. The news media is treated as a primary data source because its portrayals are instrumental in processing perceptions in the public's mind that emphasize the criminality or foreignness of ‘others’ in US civic culture. For our purpose in this paper the authors we examined daily news articles from the Los Angeles Times focused on US-Mexico border news events. The analysis of the news articles supports two categorical domains: Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans as perceived threats to US society; and the racial profiling of Mexican identity.