Author Archives: César

Wikipedia Article, “History of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States”

For the purpose of this week’s blog post, I choose to read and review the Wikipedia article, “History of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States”. Before delving into the content and structure of the article, I scrolled through its respective talk page; and found interesting conversations between other Wikipedia users/content editors. In as early as 2007, more than likely prior to the merging of two articles into its current reiteration, Wikipedia users were questioning the breadth of the article’s content range and whether it provided a well-rounded perspective on said History. Interestingly enough, there were concerns with whether or not this article captured the historical presence of differing Hispanic and Latino American groups in the United States. Starting with conversations on who belongs under the Latino/Latin American or Hispanic pan-ethnic terms, Wikipedia users brings to light a critical issue when engaging in conversations about the inclusion and exclusion of certain nationalities and their diasporas under these terms. Considering individuals may operate under differing definitions of said terms there can be unintentional biases in who gets mentioned/covered or highlighted. For example, it could exclude former non-Spanish or Portuguese colonies in Central or South America (i.e. Belize, French Guinea, Guyana, Suriname or Haiti).

I am struggling to articulate a frustration of mine, that repeatedly happens when engaging in any sort of conversation surrounding Latino/Latin Americans/Latinidad or Hispanics; and it is that like in many instances there is hyperfocus on Mexico/Mexican-Americans in relations to the broader relationship between Latinos and the United States. Arguably, it makes sense why it happens often. Mexico and Mexican-Americans intrinsically have a long history with the United States and the lands ceded to it. I would say though that this article leans towards said hyperfocus on Mexico and its diasporas and very little on other community groups. I think this is appropriately reflected in how non-Mexican groups (not looking at the Spanish/Portuguese/British or the US) are mentioned more often towards the bottom of the article in the last two sections. “Incorporation of the Hispanic people” and “Recent Immigration”.

In addition to the expressed concerns of Wikipedia users and my own above, another student in our course mentioned that they noticed that this article is graded as a “start” class page. This implies that Wikipedia recognizes that the page, “History of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States”  has various areas of improvement and concerns–mostly dealing with it having “weak” sections, inadequate sources/citations and that it is still generally being developed. If one were to go to the talk page of this article, you would be able to see where Wikipedia users have repeatedly had to modify external links and on one occasion remove an image. When scrolling through each section I would personally say that there are areas that are under-cited and at-times lacking any verifiable sources. Other times, some sections were brief summaries connected to other related Wikipedia articles and in those instances, I am not sure what the guidelines require in terms of adequate citations. 

Lastly, the structure of this article was a bit confusing for me personally and it had mostly to do with whether or not Wikipedians had originally attempted to organize it by chronological occurrences. It seems to me that that is the general structure but that at times additional sub-sections may have been added within said broader sections throwing the organization off. I would recommend Wikipedians return and revise this page to reconfigure a new structure that better ties in all the content. Through said revisions, there is the possibility to address grammar, spelling and citation errors.

Introduction Blog Post

Hey, y’all! I realize that this introduction blog post is a bit late and for that, I apologize. I had so many technical difficulties that EdTech had to resolve. Anyways, my name is Cesar, and I am a Junior Sociology major originally from Lilburn, Georgia. It’s a random city in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area. One of the things I am most excited about this semester is learning about Latin@s in the midwest, specifically in Ohio. I am accustomed to hearing about Latin@ communities in almost every other part of the United States but the midwest. And, my first experience formally learning about the longstanding and recent communities of immigrants in Ohio was on a Wooster trek with the Political Science department last spring.