Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America

Description

A noted Hispanic journalist sheds new light on the history of Latinos in America, ranging from the first sixteenth-century colonies in the New World through the 1998 presidential election, and offers close-up portraits of distinguished Americans of Hispanic descent who have played a key role in the ever-evolving face of American life. Reprint.Readers familiar with immigration history as told in books like Roger Daniels s Coming to America will experience a sense of déjà vu with Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez. The immigrant experience is a constant in American life; although the tides ebb and flow, it seems that there always has been an immigrant presence in the United States. What s different today, of course, is where the immigrants are coming from: half are Latin American.

Gonzalez, a columnist for the New York Daily News, studies these latest arrivals in a book that combines history and journalism. He has a keen understanding of Hispanic diversity, focusing not just on "Hispanics" as a monolithic category but as a variety of people from many nations. The politics in Harvest of Empire are often tendentious: Gonzalez unfavorably compares U.S. border control efforts to building the Great Wall in China, demands an end to Puerto Rico s "colonial status," insists that Spanish become an official language actively encouraged in the public schools, and so on. His agenda will no doubt appeal to a certain kind of reader, but at the cost of alienating many others, including, probably, a majority of Hispanics living in the United States. For those looking for a left-leaning account of Hispanic immigration, however, this book succeeds as an ambitious survey. --John J. Miller