TRANSNATIONAL URBAN LATINIZATION

BY STUDENT

As countries and individuals become more connected, we can truly see how globalized our world has become. National and transnational networks have emerged that have allowed us to get a sense of what is really going on around the world.  What exactly is transnational urban Latinization and what role has it played in changing the lives of many as we know it? When I was 15 years old I moved to Greer, South Carolina to live with my Aunt. The south is heavily populated with Hispanics, even during the time I had lived there, and I had even made a lot of friends in school where most were in fact Mexican. Something I witnessed was how all of the construction workers were mostly Hispanic and were being paid “under the table” or getting paid covertly. I remember befriending a girl named Daniela who had a father working in construction being paid money under the table and she had opened up to me about her home life and life in Mexico, although she was born in the U.S., her father was not. She had always told me she had more family, older siblings, in Mexico and that her dad would send money to Mexico, but at that time I did not understand fully what this meant to her extended family or father. I did not stay in South Carolina long, only until I finished my sophomore year of high school but looking back and taking many Latin American and Caribbean classes, this memory opens my eyes to the realty of transnational urban Latinization.

The idea of transnational urban Latinization exists in many forms, including remittances, which is money that is worked for in a country such as the United States that is sent back home to a country of origin, like Mexico, to help family members back home who suffer economically. As we read in Carlos Decena’s article titled “Putting Transnationalism to Work,” the author interviews a man named Alex Rivera who has a film called “Sixth Section” that focuses on the labor and lives of many Mexican immigrants in the city of Newburgh, New York. Upon getting to the United States by hiding in a van, Rivera discovers something more than he had ever thought, that using his labor in the U.S. made him able to help work at diminishing his hometown’s poverty in Mexico (Decena 2006). This interview discusses something very important and vital to the idea of transnational urban Latinization, which is the remittances that Rivera had sent home in hopes of fixing his small hometown. He, along with many other migrants, had come together to form “Grupo Unión” which was committed to saving money while working in the U.S. and sending what was earned back to their hometown to regenerate and revive it (Decena 2006). One quote that stuck out to me during this interview was When Alex Rivera more or less revealed why exactly it was that this group of people got together to commit to what they were doing, it says “One response is transnational organizing: “I’m going to organize and send money. I will become powerful there, where my family is. I will become powerful somehow.” It is a process of becoming powerful in the context of being told to disappear (Decena 2006). This quote puts into perspective how these migrants had to overcome their identity, or lack thereof, and come together to create this new ideology of saving their hometown and their families, showing to us how transnationalism at play works!

Money had been sent back home frequently enough and at large amounts and they were able to fund the making of a baseball stadium to begin generating the economy and bring their hometown back to life! There was a point in the interview that they had even had an ambulance in their hometown that was secured for them, and even though many had seen it as just an ambulance, Grupo Unión had seen it as an accomplishment (Decena 2006). This correlates with my story of Daniela’s family and high school experience because although I do not know the past of her father, you see two very similar stories by the same group of people working to get by in life not only for themselves but for others. This gives us an understanding of the importance urban Latinization plays when crossing borders! These “hometown associations” have compelled cities across borders and created direct economic advantages that have created this transnational urban Latinization, in turn changing the lives of those sending and receiving remittances, and the origin and sending counties, as well!

WORKS CITED:

Decena, Carlos Ulises, and Margaret Gray. "Putting Transnationalism to Work." 2006. Accessed October 13, 2015. https://blackboard.albany.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-1951496-dt-content-rid-8928134_1/courses/2159-ALCS-283-10080/decena_sixth_section_2006.pdf.