Latin American Mexican Studies Summary

Claudia Milian is an associate Professor in Romance Studies. She is also the director of the program in Latino studies in the Global South. Some of her research includes how the traditions of Latino Studies, Latin American Studies, African American Studies, Southern studies, and hemispheric American studies cross paths. Some of the works she has publish are “Latin America: Black-brown passages and the coloring of Latino/a studies”, “Breaking into the borderlands: Double consciousness, Latina and Latino misplacement”, and “Open Double Consciousness and Mulatinidad in Latino America”. Arturo Arias is a professor in Latin American Literature who also taught courses about Indigenous literatures, social and critical theory, race, gender and sexuality in post-colonial societies, and Central American literature. Some of his work include “Cultural Studies”, “Taking their world: Literature and the signs of Central America”, and “Después de la guerra Centro Ameriacana: Identidades, simuladas, culturas reciclables”.

In the article “US Central Americans: Representation, agency, and communities” Milian and Arias discuss how central Americans have it much harder than Mexicans to migrate to the US, because they need to migrate to more than one country to reach their destination. They explain how people suffer traumas due to what they experienced while migrating to a different country. The article states that it is “as many as six in 10 women and girl migrants experience sexual violence during the journey”. The purpose of using this article is to convey the adversities undocumented immigrants face while trying to migrate to the US, the danger they would expose themselves to in order to reach a better future is unimaginable.