This dissertation examines New York Puerto Ricans’ identifications as part of a Hispanic collectivity that saw itself as a permanent and integral sociocultural group of New York City between the years 1931 and 1951. It argues that a New York Latino identity emerged at this time across ethnic, racial and class lines through Spanish-speakers’ strategic appropriations of the era’s transnational frameworks, including proletarian fraternalism (chapter one), Pan-Americanism (chapter two), cosmopolitan aestheticism (chapter three) and anti-colonialism (chapter four). Whereas the coordinates of present-day Latino identities are generally traced back to the ‘invention’ of a Hispanic category in order to create voting or consumer blocs in the late twentieth century or, conversely, to the political and cultural ‘awakening’ of Hispanics during the countercultural decades of the sixties and seventies, this dissertation upsets these timelines by showing how a New York Latino identity materializes earlier than previously thought. Specifically, it explores how the sociopolitical conjuncture of the 1930s and 1940s, with the sweeping reforms of the New Deal, the unprecedented influence of socialist ideas on American culture, the antifascist fight and world war, and the consequent emergence of anti-colonial movements, provided a grammar for New York Puerto Ricans’ self-definitions as part of a pan-ethnic minority that was “here to stay” in New York. In so doing, this dissertation challenges depictions of early New York Puerto Rican communities as isolated or self-contained spaces, and inquires into the ways localized ethnic identities are modulated by national and international events. Reading works by New York Puerto Rican authors like Jesús Colón, Pedro Labarthe, Pedro Caballero, and Guillermo Cotto-Thorner, and drawing from historical documents and New York Spanish-language periodicals such as Artes y Letras, La Voz, Eco Antillano, Pueblos Hispanos and Liberación, this dissertation weaves sociocultural analysis, literary criticism and archival research to begin to redress the relative lack of scholarly attention given to the cultural productions of New York Hispanic communities prior to midcentury and thus provides historical moorings for the cultural expressions of Latino New York.

Despite analysts' predictions and assertions prior to the 2016 presidential election, the Hispanic vote did not prove decisive. Donald Trump's victory elucidates a new electoral calculus, one that will be ruled simultaneously by changing demographics and the backlash against such change. While Hispanic voters largely supported Hillary Clinton, structural and individual impediments hinder their access to the voting booth and their turnout on election day. This thesis explores the reasons why the Hispanic electorate did not prove decisive in the 2016 presidential election. It further illuminates the changing Electoral College map, in which the Midwest and the Rustbelt are determined by an older white electorate and the South and Southwest are determined by an influx of minorities and immigrants, namely the Hispanic electorate. The 2016 presidential election illustrates the demographic changes and subsequent backlash that will persist over the next decade. A growing Hispanic population and electorate will eventually alter the political calculus of national and state elections, but turnout among white voters will continue to prove decisive in the near future. White backlash and transactional voting (e.g. economic, religious) clearly clinched Trump's success in crucial swing states, ultimately securing his Electoral College win. A review of polling prior to the 2016 election, as well as case studies of economic transactional and Hispanic Trump voters, demonstrates the breakdown across party and state lines that ensured Trump's Electoral College victory, despite a large and expanding Hispanic electorate. While it will continue to grow exponentially, it is unlikely that the Hispanic electorate will prove decisive as soon as the 2020 presidential election, but it will inevitably determine national and state elections within the next decade.

This dissertation examines Latino political engagement, why it occurs at lower rates comparedto other racial/ethnic groups, and factors that may prove influential in bridging such gaps in political engagement. Much of the existing literature on the turnout gap, a persistent double-digit average disparity in voter turnout between Latinos and other U.S racial/ethnic groups has not yet grappled with the empirical fact that such disparities appear before Americans are of voting age. Additionally, we know little about forces that shape Latino’s decision to engage in other forms of political participation such as running for political office. I argue that the relative (dis)engagement of Latinos can be better understood by analyzing differences in the development of norms regarding political engagement. In my first dissertation paper, I leverage decades of longitudinal survey data to assess differences in the early political development of racial/ethnic groups in the United States. I find substantial heterogeneity in the development of political interest, engagement, and attitudes among racial and ethnic groups. I also demonstrate that voting aspirations among Latino youth exist well before they reach voting age. In the second study, I employ two survey experiments to test causal arguments regarding the influence of potential socialization agents on Latino youth: group exemplars. I also conduct focus groups with Latino youth to further describe the mechanisms that drive their voting aspirations. The results show that exemplars, or in-group “role models,” influence the norms and intended voting behavior of young Latinos. Exposure to in-group exemplars coincide with greater levels of intent to vote and increased in-group norms placing emphasis on voting. I also find that the actions exemplars engage in or discuss matter greatly. Observed increases in modes of civic participation outside of voter turnout, such as enthusiasm for political volunteerism, were likely a function of the first intervention’s experimental stimuli. In my final study, I assemble an original dataset of Spanish-language television stations across the United States to study their influence on local-level candidate emergence and Latino turnout. The results show that Spanish-language television access has a negative effect on candidate emergence in areas with high Latino population density, while Latinos in areas that have a low density of co-ethnics are mobilized by access to stations. The results add further complexity to the debate on ethnic media and Latino political participation as the observed effects appear to depend on ethnoracial political context.