Reviewed by:

• Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz
• Monica Perales

Barrio America presents a compelling new interpretation of the twentieth-century urban crisis that placed Latinos at the heart of urban revitalization. [End Page 495] While many credit the professional creative class for the rebirth of cities after decades of depopulation and disinvestment, A. K. Sandoval-Strausz argues that it was Latino migrantes who moved into urban neighborhoods across the United States, revived flagging real estate markets, filled vacant business districts, and transformed the urban landscape. Focusing on Chicago's Little Village and Dallas's Oak Cliff neighborhoods, it reveals how national and global forces reshaped urban life in the postwar period, and illuminates how Latinos "saved" the American city and built meaningful lives, claimed rights, and remade urban space to suit their needs.

Urban populations began dwindling in the 1950s and 1960s due to numerous factors, including manufacturing firms' relocation to suburbs, federal highway expansion, discriminatory lending practices, and White residents' fleeing desegregation. Latinos, who had long-standing ties in both Chicago and Dallas but still made up a small proportion of the total population, held a tenuous position in each city's racial hierarchy, acting as buffers between anxious White residents and African Americans home-buyers seeking access to quality housing and better amenities. Between 1965 and the 1980s, major immigration reform and economic shifts in Mexico and Latin America led millions of migrantes to make their homes in the United States, and the "Latinization" of American cities rapidly expanded. Latinos arrived, Sandoval-Strausz writes, "at the point when they were most needed" (153). In cities that had been hemorrhaging people, jobs, and tax revenue, migrantes stabilized urban neighborhoods by renting and purchasing affordable housing, filling the needs of the labor force, and establishing new businesses in empty storefronts, bringing vibrant community life back to urban areas. As property owners and members of a growing political constituency, they flexed their power through protests and inter-ethnic urban political coalitions to elect African American and Latino candidates into city government despite the efforts of established political machines to maintain the status quo. Beginning in the 1980s, greater numbers of migrantes displaced by civil war in Central America arrived in U.S. cities and continued to contribute to the vitality of these communities.

In separate and especially fascinating chapters on transnationalism and Latino urbanism, Sandoval-Strausz illuminates how migrantes and their families refashioned abandoned city spaces into places for meaningful interaction and mutual support. The transition of plazas as communal spaces into barrio business districts and housing that prioritized walking and sociability harkened to the mid-century vision of New Urbanists. Even local businesses benefitted from Latinization. In Oak Cliff, the Charco Broiler restaurant saved itself from insolvency by adding jalapeños and other menu offerings to cater to their new neighbors (249). The book closes with the heightened anti-immigrant rhetoric of the last several decades, [End Page 496] including the especially virulent strain evident in national politics since 2016, and the increasing gentrification of the very neighborhoods migrantes saved from ruin. Sandoval-Strausz concludes that the two most pressing threats facing these communities are the "people who have money and are drawn to these neighborhoods" and those "who hold power and are contemptuous of them" (325).

Barrio America makes a forceful case for the positive and necessary contributions Latino migrantes made to American cities in crisis, despite the structural limitations, discrimination, and xenophobia they encountered. Weaving together data drawn from census records, government reports, newspaper coverage, and rich oral histories, it builds on recent excellent scholarship on Latinos in the Midwest and makes significant contributions to Texas history, bringing cities like Dallas—whose Latino history deserves more attention—into the fold of urban studies. Barrio America distills the complex histories of urbanization, immigration reform, foreign policy, and Latino community formation in a way that is engaging and accessible for academic, student, and general audiences alike.

审核人：

• Barrio America：拉美裔移民如何通过AK Sandoval-Strausz拯救了美国城市
• 莫妮卡·佩拉雷斯（Monica Perales）

《 Barrio America》对二十世纪的城市危机提出了令人信服的新解释，这使拉丁美洲人成为城市复兴的核心。[结束第495页]虽然许多人认为在数十年的人口减少和投资减少后，城市的复兴是专业的创意阶层，但桑德瓦尔·斯特劳斯（AK Sandoval- Strausz）认为这是拉丁美洲移民他们搬到了美国各地的城市社区，复兴了不景气的房地产市场，填补了空置的商业区，并改变了城市景观。着眼于芝加哥的小村庄和达拉斯的橡树悬崖社区，它揭示了战后国家和全球部队如何重塑了城市生活，并阐明了拉美裔人如何“拯救”了美国城市并建立了有意义的生活，主张权利并重塑了适合的城市空间他们的需求。

由于许多因素，包括制造公司搬迁到郊区，联邦高速公路的扩建，歧视性的贷款做法以及白人居民的逃离种族隔离等因素，城市人口在1950年代和1960年代开始减少。拉丁美洲人在芝加哥和达拉斯有着悠久的联系，但仍占总人口的一小部分，在每个城市的种族等级体系中都处于弱势地位，在焦虑的白人居民和寻求购买机会的非裔美国购房者之间起到缓冲作用优质的住房和更好的设施。1965年至1980年代，墨西哥和拉丁美洲的主要移民改革和经济转变导致数百万移民为了在美国安家，美国城市的“拉丁化”迅速扩大。Sandoval-Strausz写道，拉美裔人来了，“在最需要的时候”（153）。在人口，工作和税收流失的城市，移民通过租赁和购买负担得起的住房，满足劳动力需求以及在空置的店面中建立新业务，使充满活力的社区生活带回城市，来稳定城市社区。作为财产所有人和不断壮大的政治选区的成员，他们通过抗议活动和种族间的城市政治联盟来发挥自己的力量，尽管建立了政治机构来维持现状，但他们还是将非裔美国人和拉美裔候选人选为城市政府。从1980年代开始，中美洲内战使更多的流离失所者抵达美国城市，并继续为这些社区的生命力做出贡献。

在有关跨国主义和拉美裔城市主义的单独且特别引人入胜的章节中，桑多瓦尔-斯特劳斯阐述了移民及其家庭如何将废弃的城市空间重塑为有意义的互动和相互支持的地方。广场作为公共空间过渡到巴里奥（barrio）商业区和优先考虑步行和社交的住房，这改变了人们对本世纪中叶的新都市主义者的看法。甚至本地企业也从拉丁化中受益。在橡树崖（Oak Cliff），Charco Broiler餐厅通过添加墨西哥胡椒和其他菜单产品来迎合新邻居而摆脱了破产（249）。本书以近几十年来反移民的言论为结尾，[End Page 496]包括自2016年以来在国家政治中表现出的特别猛烈的压力，以及从废墟中拯救出来的非常邻近的移民的高档化。Sandoval-Strausz得出的结论是，这些社区面临的两个最紧迫的威胁是“有钱并被这些社区吸引的人”和“拥有权力并轻视他们的人”（325）。

尽管有结构上的限制，歧视和仇外心理，美国Barrio America还是有力地证明了拉丁美洲裔移民对处于危机中的美国城市做出的积极和必要的贡献。它结合了从人口普查记录，政府报告，报纸报道和丰富的口述历史中获得的数据，以最近在中西部对拉丁美洲人的杰出奖学金为基础，为德克萨斯州的历史做出了重大贡献，使达拉斯这样的城市（其拉丁美洲人的历史值得更多关注）进入城市研究领域。《 Barrio America》以一种引人入胜且对学术界，学生和普通读者都可访问的方式，提炼了城市化，移民改革，外交政策和拉丁裔社区形成的复杂历史。