Abstract
This chapter focuses on border challenges, ethnic struggles, and the responses of Latino communities in Arizona. The Arizona’s immigration reform, SB 1070, and the anti-ethnic studies law, HB 2281, attempt to streamline undocumented migration and the erasure of Raza and Mexican-American Studies at the Tucson Unified School District. The dissemination of political hateful discourses guides the militarization of the border as an important social location and the creation of communities under siege. These laws dehumanize Mexican and Latina/o communities, specifically those situated on the US-Mexico border. Mexican and Latina/o communities in Arizona, at a state and local levels, daily experience a misguided and blatant, extremist, and unconstitutional climate of xenophobia and racial hostility. This chapter concludes with a brief examination of the repercussions of Republican political vitriol, a dissemination of an “ecology of fear,” and the assassination attempt launched at Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords which brutally ended the lives of six individuals and left 14 others wounded in Tucson, Arizona.
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Torres, R.S. (2012). Border Challenges and Ethnic Struggles for Social Justice in Arizona: Hispanic Communities Under Siege. In: Lusk, M., Staudt, K., Moya, E. (eds) Social Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4150-8_13
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