Contested Cowboys

While most studies of Mexican American suburbanization since the 1970s focus on the transformation of residential (private) space, it is in suburban public space that some of the most important struggles over belonging and rights have occurred. This article builds a theoretical framework to analyze the relationships between public space, democracy, and cultural citizenship for historically marginalized groups in suburbia. It applies the framework to the efforts by two groups of charros (ethnic Mexican cowboys) who tried to hold charreadas (events similar to rodeos) on land leased from municipal governments in suburban Los Angeles during the 1970s. These cases demonstrate that localized histories of racialization intersect with distinct political geographies to shape unequal possibilities for the effective exercise of Latino cultural citizenship in suburbia. Where ethnic Mexican suburbanites resided in isolated neighborhoods, were disconnected from the urban barrio, and struggled for political representation in vast urban districts, they were unlikely to be successful in claiming public space. But in independently incorporated suburbs with historic webs of Mexican settlements and strong ties to the barrio, ethnic Mexican suburbanites succeeded in challenging suburban exclusion and claiming a more inclusive, transformative "right to the suburb

Archaeology · Citizenship · Democracy · Ethnic group · Geography · Human settlement · Political science · Politics · Public space · Racialization · Representation (politics) · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Suburbanization · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law