The Latino Question: Politics, Laboring Classes and the Next Left, Paperback

In the United States, the number of Latinos struggling in pursuit of the American Dream has never been greater. Millions work towards this ideal each year, only to find themselves trapped in a cycle of debt and labor. The need for a vivid, empirically grounded study on Latino politics, culture, and social issues is more essential now than ever before--The Latino Question fulfills this gap, offering a cutting-edge overview and analysis of the transformative nature of Latino politics in the United States.

In a radical alternative to the dominant orthodoxy in Latino political studies, Rodolfo D. Torres, Armando Ibarra, and Alfredo Carlos emphasize the importance of political economy for understanding Latino politics, culture, and social issues. Written in an accessible style, the authors draw from extensive original research and several critical traditions--including Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault--to make crucial links between socio-economic and culture-based approaches for understanding the politics of race and ethnicity in capitalist society. Notably, they present front-line evidence of how some Mexican communities across America are not only resisting, but also reinventing and transforming the predominant economic ideas. The Latino Question will be essential for anyone hoping to understand the changes in Latino communities in America today.

Rodolfo D. Torres is professor of urban planning, political science, and Chicano and Latino studies, and director of the Latino Urban Theory Lab at the University of California, Irvine. Armando Ibarra is associate professor in the School for Workers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is coeditor with Torres of Man of Fire: Selected Writings of Ernesto Galarza. Alfredo Carlos is a faculty member in political science and Chicano Latino studies at California State University, Long Beach as well as the executive director of the Foundation for Economic Democracy.