De muchos, uno: The institutionalization of Latino panethnicity, 1960-1990

The idea that Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and other Latino subgroups share common cultural propensities, and thus form part of a panethnic collective, has become widespread in America. Contemporary political leaders, media organizations, and demographic surveys reproduce the notion of a "Hispanic" community. This, however, has not always been the case. As late at the mid 1970s, the label "Hispanic," as well as the idea that panethnicity was a viable and salient form of Latino collective identification, were virtually unthinkable.;Drawing on several archival sources, interviews and press reports, this work explains how Latino panethnicity became institutionalized within the United States. Specifically, it reconstructs three historical processes: the construction of "Hispanic" social movement agendas, the creation of a "Hispanic" data statistic, and the emergence of "Hispanic" media. I argue that these developments were historically interdependent, such that the process of institutional change within the social movement sector was sparked, reinforced and legitimated by the simultaneous change processes occurring in the media and state sectors, and vice versa. Moreover, I show that these interdependencies were facilitated by a web of cross-sectoral networks that provided organizational actors with symbolic resources for translating the idea of Latino panethnicity to different publics.;The dissertation lays out this argument empirically using three organizational case studies. The first study focuses on the National Council of La Raza, and shows how it evolved from a Chicano to a "Hispanic" social movement organization in the late 1970s to gain leverage with state and, later, corporate funding agencies. The second study centers on the U.S. Census Bureau and details how it negotiated statistical principles with pressures from Latino political leaders to create a "Hispanic" data category for the 1980 census. The final study examines how Univision Communications Corporation, evolved from a Southwestern Spanish-language television network that focused on Mexican-Americans, into a national, "Hispanic" network by using census data to create the idea of a "Hispanic market" and consulting with Latino activists about the content of U.S.-based "Hispanic" news and entertainment programs.;The dissertation ultimately cast serious doubt on the presumption that Latino panethnicity is a timeless, natural quality shared by all Latinos, and, conversely, that Latino panethnicity is merely a product of state, market or political forces.