Zaragosa Vargas

Bio: Zaragosa Vargas is an academic researcher from University of California, Santa Barbara. The author has contributed to research in topics: Collective identity & Working class. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 5 publications receiving 185 citations.

From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity

Abstract: Prelude: From Bomba to Hip-HopIntroduction1. "pueblo pueblo": Popular Culture in Time2. The Lite Colonial: Diversions of Puerto Rican Discourse3. Broken English Memories: Languages in the Trans-Colony4. "Salvacion Casita": Space, Performance, and Community5. "Cha-Cha with a Backbeat": Songs and Stories of Latin Boogaloo6. Puerto Rocks: Rap, Roots, and Amnesia7. Pan-Latino/Trans-Latino: Puerto Ricans in the "New Nueva York"8. Life Off the Hyphen: Latino Literature and Nuyorican Traditions9. The Latino Imaginary: Meanings of Community and Identity10. Latino Studies: New Contexts, New ConceptsPostscript 1998: "None of the Above"

Tejana Radical: Emma Tenayuca and the San Antonio Labor Movement during the Great Depression

Abstract: In the 1930s Mexican Americans fought their first major battles for worker rights and racial equality when they joined the revitalized labor movement.1 In many instances of labor upheaval on farms, at mine sites, and in factories in the United States, Spanish-speaking workers took the lead. They created separate labor unions that were rooted in the tradition of mutual aid societies and workers' leagues, joined unions of mixed racial-ethnic composition, or sought national union affiliation. What emerged was a style of unionism that drew notjust on the courage and militancy of Mexicans but also on their rich historical and cultural traditions, refashioned to fit the immediate labor struggle. From these shared social and cultural experiences emerged a collective identity and class-consciousness. Im-

Obreros y Sindicatos Chicanos: Varieties of Chicano Working-Class History

Abstract: Chicano historians have begun to refocus their attention on the histories and experiences of Chicano and Chicana workers, who comprise two thirds of the twenty-five million Latinos in the United States and one of America's largest and fastest-growing racial minority groups. At one time peripheral to the dominant concerns of American historians, the study of Chicana/o workers is emerging together with the study of America's other minority laboring classes as a new and vibrant area of research. Many existent studies are the outgrowth of revisionist writing of the 1970s and early 1980s. This scholarship focused attention on a group of workers generally excluded from studies of American workers. Work by Chicana/o historians Vicki L. Ruiz, Zaragosa Vargas, Emilio Zamora, Mario T. Gar c?a, and others provides information about the wide range of experiences of Chicana/o workers.1 The reconstruction of the everyday lives of these wage workers, their world-views, values, and habits, provides a critical assessment of the rich diversity of their experiences. Much of this history of working-class struggle and action unfolded in Texas. Historically, Texas has been the largest contributor of Chicana/o labor to other states, and Tejano (Texas Mexicans) workers have played an integral role in the regional and national economies of the United States from the turn of the century well into the post-World War II years. Te j ano laborers fared miserably in the Lone Star state. These minority wage work ers experienced repression, discrimination, segregation, and integration. This is the historical perspective of David Montejano's prize-winning book Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas. Borrowing from the world

Brain, Brow, and Booty: Latina Iconicity in U.S. Popular Culture

Abstract: We were shooting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum one night. It was lit romantically, and Jennifer was wearing an evening gown, looking incredibly stunning. Suddenly there must have been a thousand people screaming her name. It was like witnessing this icon. (Ralph Fiennes in the New York Times, 2002, p. 16, emphasis added) This stamp, honoring a Mexican artist who has transcended “la frontera” and has become and icon to Hispanics, feminists, and art lovers, will be a further reminder of the continuous cultural contributions of Latinos to the United States. (Cecilia Alvear, President of National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) on the occasion of the introduction of the Frida Kahlo U.S. postage st& 2001; emphasis added) “Nothing Like the Icon on the Fridge” (column about Salma Hayek’s Frida by Stephanie Zacharek in the New York Times, 2002).

Defining America’s Racial Boundaries: Blacks, Mexicans, and European Immigrants, 1890–19451

Abstract: Contemporary race and immigration scholars often rely on historical analogies to help them analyze America’s current and future color lines. If European immigrants became white, they claim, perhaps today’s immigrants can as well. But too often these scholars ignore ongoing debates in the historical literature about America’s past racial boundaries. Meanwhile, the historical literature is itself needlessly muddled. In order to address these problems, the authors borrow concepts from the social science literature on boundaries to systematically compare the experiences of blacks, Mexicans, and southern and eastern Europeans (SEEs) in the first half of the 20th century. Their findings challenge whiteness historiography; caution against making broad claims about the reinvention, blurring, or shifting of America’s color lines; and suggest that the Mexican story might have more to teach us about these current and future lines than the SEE one.

Ethnic and Urban Intersections in the Classroom: Latino Students, Hybrid Identities, and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Abstract: Drawing from data collected through classroom observations and in-depth interviews, this article describes and analyzes practices identified as culturally responsive by Latinos students in an urban, multiethnic/racial context. The findings suggest that culturally responsive pedagogy must be more broadly conceptualized to address the cultural identities of students who have complex identities because of their experiences with peers of many varied identities, those whose urban roots have resulted in hybrid identities, and those who are multiethnic/multiracial. Based on these findings, the article forwards the concept of “cultural connectedness” as a framework for practicing a non-essentializing, dynamic approach to culturally responsive pedagogy that acknowledges the hybrid nature of culture and identity.

The Legal Construction of Identity: The Judicial and Social Legacy of American Colonialism in Puerto Rico

Abstract: This book investigates the construction of social reality in the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico over the past 100 years.

The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas

Abstract: Author(s): Johnson, Sara E. | Abstract: The Fear of French Negroes is an interdisciplinary study that explores how people of African descent responded to the collapse and reconsolidation of colonial life in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1845). Using visual culture, popular music and dance, periodical literature, historical memoirs, and state papers, Sara E. Johnson examines the migration of people, ideas, and practices across imperial boundaries. Building on previous scholarship on black internationalism, she traces expressions of both aesthetic and experiential transcolonial black politics across the Caribbean world, including Hispaniola, Louisiana and the Gulf South, Jamaica, and Cuba. Johnson examines the lives and work of figures as diverse as armed black soldiers and privateers, female performers, and newspaper editors to argue for the existence of “competing inter-Americanisms” as she uncovers the struggle for unity amidst the realities of class, territorial, and linguistic diversity. These stories move beyond a consideration of the well-documented anxiety insurgent blacks occasioned in slaveholding systems to refocus attention on the wide variety of strategic alliances they generated in their quests for freedom, equality and profit.