Saul Garcia Lopez

Whitening Mexican/Latino culture in USA Hispanic and Mexican telenovelas

Panel Abstract: The panel will analyze different racial and sexual strategies that were deployed by US government agencies to represent Latinos. The papers presented in this panel will focus on unearthing the mechanisms that influenced perceptions of minorities, countries, and national cultures according to US policy needs. The paper Whitening Mexican/Latino Culture in USA Hispanic and Mexican Telenovelas analyzes how white ethnic representation is used to legitimate and glamorize Latino culture in order to make minority ethnic people both less threatening as well as more acceptable within the context of US politics. Racialization and Sexual Risk Behaviors among Latino GBT immigrants in Chicago, focuses on analyzing what it mean to be a GBT Latino immigrant, what it means to be part of a group that is conceptualized to be at high risk for HIV infection, and how US politics works on doing so. Politics in Motion: Paul Robeson’s 1947 Concert in Panama investigates the concept of a political performance tour and assesses the multiple ways by which Robeson’s tour of Panama spurred the formation of transnational political, social, and cultural coalitions even as the tour highlighted local dynamics of U.S.-Panamanian relations.