Latinx: ¡Estamos aquí!,or being “Latinx” at UNC-Chapel Hill

The geopolitical and institutional contexts for “Latinx”

In 1999, when I first arrived at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to research and teach in the area of Latina/o Studies, I spent a considerable amount of time explaining “Latina/o,” how its intellectual heritage and focus were distinctive from “Latin American Studies” while drawing from Latin American Studies, American Studies, Comparative Ethnic Studies, and so on (see DeGuzmán, 2011). In Fall 1999, when I created the UNC Latina/o Cultures Speakers Series, and in 2004, when I founded the Program in Latina/o Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, I chose the term “Latina/o” as the descriptor for our area of study and for the peoples and cultures it was addressing. As a feminist, I resisted the patriarchal assumption that the term “Latino” adequately represented everyone. “Latina/o” gave precedence to the “a” over the “o,” providing some counterweight to the overwhelming patriarchal drift of cultures of the Americas and Europe and of the global system. I chose the slash in “Latina/o” over the @ because the enclosure of the “a” in an “o” did not symbolically get us out of the problem of a masculinist bias.

But, these experiments with gender did not solve yet another symptom of hegemony, this one geopolitical, the result of intersections between the colonial and imperial history of US national identity formation that turned a blind eye to the often centuries-old presence of “Latina/os” within territory that came to be “The United States.” Many people outside of Latina/o Studies assumed I was talking about “Latin American” when I said “Latina/o.” While whatever is deemed as “Latin American” may well be a component of “Latina/o,” the two terms are not synonymous, particularly to the extent that “Latin American,” an adjective derived from the noun “Latin America” which designates those Americas that lie to the south of US territory and may or may not include Mexico (geographically part of North America), is perpetually associated with the “Other” non-US-ian Americas. ¹ “Latin American” connotes “not of the United States” and even “not North American,” which assigns Mexico an ambiguous status, highly ironic given that a third of the United States was once Mexico before the end of the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848.

The elision of “Latina/o” with “Latin American” is symptomatic, especially when employed by non-Latina/os, of a deportation of “Latina/o” across US borders, that is, out of the country. To borrow from constitutional law scholar Juan E. Perea (1998), this elision often effects a “symbolic deportation” back across the border of the people, cultures, histories, and lived experiences that have unfolded or are unfolding in the United States. Approached differently, “Latin American” could be understood to be “importing,” not deporting. But in either case, whomever or whatever is being referred to as such is assumed to be foreign, not constitutively part of native national space. Terms such as Latino, Latino/a, Latina/o, Latin@, and Latinx have currency in the United States, not in Spain or France or any part of Latin America. Latin American countries generally favor national origin terms connecting a person to an individual country. Categories such as “Latina/o” and “Latinx” primarily reference people within US territories, whether for more than 500 years or arrived today. The geopolitical space connected with Latina/o or Latinx is US/domestic, including the extra-continental domestic. These labels are US-centric, which does not preclude that space being understood as a deracinated one. While some may view these terms with suspicion for that reason—the maintenance of a critically informed stance on this issue is important (see Saldívar et al., 2005), the US-centrism also performs important cultural work. It underscores Latinx presence (the past, the present, and the future) in the United States and, furthermore, as constitutive of the United States of America, both as a Republic and as an empire, a deracinating empire that has stepped across into the territories of so many people, and as one that forcibly has brought so many people into its sphere.

The exclusionary (il)logic of US Empire, an entity created by repeated incursions into and annexations of the territories of other people and the subsequent failure to treat those “other people” as constitutive of the United States, brings me to UNC-Chapel Hill and to “Polk Place.” The latter is a strip of land between South Building, UNC’s administrative headquarters, and Wilson Library. For years, students have gathered there to challenge perceived shortcomings of their institution and of the state at large. “Polk Place” is named after James Knox Polk, who was born in Mecklenburg County, graduated in 1818 from UNC-Chapel Hill, and eventually became the 11th US President. He was highly instrumental in the 1845 annexation of Texas to the United States and was responsible for waging war against Mexico from 1846 to 1848 over disputes about where the Texas border should be. At the end of the Mexican-American War, Polk acquired for the United States all the other previously Spanish and Mexican lands of what is today deemed “the Southwest,” an area with some of the nation’s largest Latinx populations. At Polk Place, during an election year that witnessed numerous kinds of symbolic and actual violence directed against immigrants and people of color, particularly African Americans, Muslim Americans, and/or Latina/os, “Latinx” students and their allies have repeatedly raised questions about UNC’s commitment to Latinx students. Since 2008, Latina/o undergraduate students along with some graduate students and faculty have been advocating for a Latina/o (now a Latinx) Center (with a specific location and paid staff). The virulent anti-immigrant and anti-Latina/o rhetoric during the 2016 election increased Latina/o students’ feelings that they are nationally disenfranchised, and at UNC-Chapel Hill too. HB2 in North Carolina was largely responsible for the re-emergence of these concerns under a new rallying cry banner, not “Latino,” not “Latina/o,” but Latinx. This is the latest and most visible term in the struggle against marginalization, symbolic deportation, and actual deportation.

Some cultural commentators claim that the word “Latinx” emerged around 2004 from queer communities on the Internet who favored a non-binaristic gender-inclusive term (see Huffington Post, 2016). The label has gathered momentum and support in the era of mobile device texting. For one, it is easy to type. Typing it on a mobile device, you do not have to hit the “123” key at the lower left of the cellphone’s keyboard and then the “#+=” above it to obtain the slash “/” option. This latter is the second in on the top row’s right. These two maneuvers are required every time one wishes to type “Latina/o” or “Latino/a.” Considering these factors, one can see the potential and evident appeal of Latinx to a generation of texters. Latinx allows for an economy of movement. This makes it especially appealing to the Internet generation, the iGeneration, Generation Z, those born in the mid-1990s to early 2000s, in other words, my current undergraduate students. Latinx beckons in relation to mobile devices and the time constraints of contemporaneity. Its relative convenience has contributed to its popularity among young people who spend a great deal of their lives on mobile devices. But, its convenience also masks a complex set of challenges and opportunities offered by the term and also, of course, does little to illuminate the specific history of its ascendancy and applications at UNC-Chapel Hill, a history that this essay traces after first considering more general linguistic and semiotic aspects of Latinx.

Latinx, LatinX, xLatin: Forming a critical mass

From a linguistic perspective, Latinx seems to challenge traditional grammarians. Some literature and language colleagues have posed questions such as these: How does one indicate first or third person possessive when using that term? Does one write “Latinx’s” or “Latinxs’”? Some faculty members have commented, “The possessive seems to be dying out with those younger than twenty-one.” This last statement participates in a centuries-old complaint that the younger generations do not have proper mastery of grammar and that with each passing year they have less of it. Some cultural observers have traced this lament back to the 15th century when, with the invention of the printing press, the rules of English grammar became increasingly standardized. Depending on which language is being considered, this lament has even older antecedents. This contemporary criticism is not entirely unfounded. Part of the “decline” stems from three major factors: (1) that young people in the 21st century United States do not read many books with conventional grammar, (2) their parents, most likely working or otherwise absent, do not have mastery of the grammar either and they do not have the time or the inclination to enforce academically “proper” grammar, and (3) the public school systems, underfunded as they are in so many communities, do not have the teacher workforce, the time, and/or other resources to make up for what the children are not getting at home or learning on their own. I do not see that Latinx is incompatible with the possessive. It seems relatively straightforward to write “Latinx’s” in possessive singular mode and “Latinxs’” in possessive plural mode.

One of the thornier objections to Latinx comes from the aural/oral perspective of pronunciation. For those already in the know about how to pronounce it, there is no special challenge. It is pronounced as “Latin-x.” The “x” works both in Spanish and English despite the argument of two Swarthmore College undergraduates Gilbert Guerra and Gilbert Orbea whose Latinx op-ed was widely circulated on the Internet. They contend that “Latinx” does not work in Spanish and is an example of Anglophone US imperialism’s corruption of the Spanish language. In Spanish, the denomination becomes “Latin-eh-kees” and in English “Latin-x.” But, as an English speaker pointed out to me, those with no knowledge of Spanish, a language in which one would pause at the “x” and pronounce it separately, might pronounce the term “La-tinx” in a way that would rhyme with “lynx,” an elusive and mysterious wildcat of the Lynx genus whose various species are largely endangered in many parts of the world. Sometimes “Latinx” is written as “LatinX.” This capitalization of the “x” might help ward off the pronunciation issue, though the “x” writ large introduces other nuances pertaining to size, degree, exponentialism, and cultural associations, among other factors. More often than not, the category appears as “Latinx” partly because of the ease of typing in the lower case “x” and not having to apply yet another key stroke to achieve a capital. The sudden shrinkage of a four-syllable word (in Spanish) or a three-syllable word (in English) into a two-syllable word ending in a thud on the second syllable and rhyming with “lynx,” an animal on the endangered species list, makes me wonder about the wisdom of using and/or embracing Latinx.

Could it be that Latinx is about erasure rather than about staking existence in a new, positive, open-ended manner? It is true that it erases the conventional gender dichotomy, but that seems desirable especially given the evident oppressiveness of a binary gender system. What if the term is subtly working against the very people whom it is supposed to be representing in its open-ended, inclusive way? Could Latinx be a term subtly in the service of extinction with an effect similar to what switching the “x” to the front of the term—as in “xLatin”—might produce? It would be a sly trick indeed to foster widespread acceptance of Latinx and then flip it or use it in ways that created that effect. The concern crossed my mind when I first took serious notice of the term while perusing the September 2014 special issue of American Quarterly entitled “Las Américas Quarterly.” This volume contains preliminary discussion of Latinx. ² Literary and cultural studies scholar Licia Fiol-Matta and sociologist Macarena Gómez-Barris (2014), this issue’s editors, explained their use of Latinx in this way: “From the South and the borderlands, the ‘x’ turns away from the dichotomous, toward a void, an unknown, a wrestling with plurality, sectors of multi-intentionality, and the transitional meanings of what has yet to be seen.” On further reflection, a fear of the term’s reversal or the association of the “x” with extinction remains a question about the forces of assimilation and of criminalization of any kind of “Latin” identity in US culture and how a critical mass of Latinx people in the nation is re-defining those forces.

“Latinx,” US assimilation, and coalitions

Assimilation, if one thinks of its physiological definition, as the absorption of nutrients into the system of a living organism, does not have to mean absorption into an Anglo-dominant culture such that one’s “original” culture is diminished, lost, or exterminated. This possibility entails a different kind of perspective: that Latinxs are active assimilators/digesters of culture, and not merely being consumed and digested (or not) by a hegemonic culture. Assimilation can mean adaptation to the extent necessary for survival while also preserving one’s “original” culture and/or transforming the dominant culture. This model of assimilation functions along more equitable transcultural dynamics where cultural elements are exchanged across perceived cultural lines, and elements are adopted and adapted by both the supposedly “dominant” and the “sub-dominant.” This very dynamic of exchange and mutual influence pre-supposes a less hierarchical power dynamic between Anglo culture and a Latinx one and the political will to share power, to re-structure the ideology of internal colonization by Anglo White supremacy that is still operative in the United States, at this moment in the second decade of the 21st century with renewed vigor. It also pre-supposes or calls for a dismantling of hard and fast distinctions between two positions: Anglo and Latinx. What would or does their overlap look like? In what ways might the intersectionality be openly acknowledged and celebrated such that rather than appealing to concepts such as “assimilation” and “accommodation” we might think in terms of new forms of mutual integration? This description may sound utopian given the historical power differential, but the notion of “utopia” as a potentially decolonizing space, however under-acknowledged and under-theorized, is relevant here (see Ashcroft, 2017). It is especially important in the context of traditionally Anglo-dominant universities and colleges such as UNC. Not only is UNC Anglo-dominant, but it has deep historical roots in White supremacist ideology as do many US institutions of higher learning. But, despite this ideological history, I see in my students decolonizing dynamics at work. Anglo students critically examine their relationship to these ideologies and actively strive to create more inclusive and egalitarian environments. And, Latinx students (including those who are partly Anglo) insist on being recognized and treated as equal participants and claim cultural and socio-economic space with these principles in mind.

I mention transculturation between Anglo American and Latinx to highlight the issue of Latinx “whiteness” as one that must be confronted. Historically, there has been a distinct tendency for marginalized and/or “sub-dominant” groups to aspire to “whiteness” in any society that values “whiteness” as a sign and vehicle of power, status, and security. This is especially true in the United States, but not exclusively as the desire for blanqueamiento has existed throughout the Americas and is a product of a European colonialist ideology. Sociologist Roberto Rodriguez-Morazzani (1998) refers to this desire as “the Creole dream of emblanqueamiento (whitening) or mejorando la raza (improving the race)” (p. 154). Furthermore, many Latinx consider themselves “White,” as has been evident from Latinx responses to census boxes (see Cohn, 2014). So, how might this gravitation from “other” to “whiteness” be directed to ends or goals besides the search for power, status, and security (often at the expense and/or rejection/abjection of others)? How might whiteness be employed “off-whitely”? (DeGuzmán, 2005: xxviii, 23, 24, 43, 52).

US “assimilation” can occur in relation to historically “sub-dominant” groups such as between African Americans and Latinx (including Afro-Latinx). This alternate assimilation can be seen in how Mexican American civil rights and the African American civil rights struggles fed into each other (e.g. Araiza, 2013; Strum, 2010), or in the long history of musical collaborations between African American and Latinx musicians (see García, 2006), or in the more coalitional moments between US-born English-speaking Blacks and Cuba-born Afro-Latina/o Blacks documented by the Afro Cuban writer Evelio Grillo (2000) writing about South Florida in his memoir Black Cuban, Black American.

Although one quarter of Latinx identify as “Afro-Latino,” according to recent Pew Research Center data, only 18% of that quarter identify as “Black” whereas 39% identify as “White.” These figures show, once again, the colonial force of the blanqueamiento ideology at work (Gonzalez-Barrera and López, 2016). A coalitional politics between Afro-Latinx and African Americans cannot be taken for granted on the basis of this data. It has to be carefully elaborated in relation to differences of history, culture, language, religion, ethno-racial identification, and so on between African Americans’ and Afro-Latinxs’ identifications. However, Afro-Latinx and African American coalitions as well as coalitions between Latinx more generally and African Americans have occurred and will continue to emerge in connection to the disenfranchisement of people in so-called “neoliberalism’s” deep erosion of the “social contract” and its creation of a “transnational economic caste” system where most of the elites are “lighter-skinned” (Dzidzienyo and Oboler, 2005: 5).

The UNC Latina/o Studies Program has emphasized the importance of underscoring Afro-Latina/o presence within Latina/o communities and the cultural production of Afro-Latina/o scholars, creative writers, and performers. Furthermore, the UNC Latina/o Studies Program established, from the start, collaborations with The Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History and also with The Institute of African American Research to foment scholarship, academic programming, and continuing education about Afro-Latina/o populations and also about the historical and contemporary collaborations between Latina/os and African Americans and the inter-relatedness of their struggles for social justice and self-determination. Much more needs to be done in this area. In fact, UNC students invested in the mutual concerns of Black Lives Matter and of the immigrant youth movement with racial profiling, police brutality, and the expansion of the carceral state have been leaders in African American and Latinx coalition-building, fostering various teach-ins, speak-outs, and other public events. Latinx is a potentially fruitful site for the production of this kind of engagement that attends carefully to the distinctiveness of each group’s struggles. It also recognizes striking resonances between their struggles for educational access, socio-economic justice, and political representation in the Tar Heel State as well as at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Does Latinx signal issues such as alternate forms of identity-making and coalition-building between groups anymore than Latino, Latino/a, or Latina/o? In many ways no, but perhaps in some ways, yes. Allow me to explain at least hypothetically before I examine some actual examples of the deployments of Latinx at the university and in the region where I teach. By substituting an “x” for the usual binary gender terminations “o,” “a,” “o/a,” and “a/o,” attention is shifted away from binaries to the more open-ended, ambiguous “x.” This “x” can mean anything. It is the “x” of an algebra in which any value may be assigned. The open-ended, ambiguous, indeterminate Latinx may cause anxiety—even more anxiety than Latin, Latino, Latina, Latina/o, and Latino/a that already partake of some indefiniteness as theorist Antonio Viego (2007: 4–5) discusses when he examines the umbrella Latino category. As I pointed out in my second book, he argues that the radical aspect of Latino “is that it does not yield coherent and cohesive racializations. He compares the ambiguity of the label or term ‘Latino’ to the way in which the notion of queerness works”—as disturbing binary categories and being inconclusive (Viego, 2007: 80–81). Latinx, in substituting the “x” for the binary-producing slash (/), underscores the effect of inconclusivity—of indeterminacy—and thus, paradoxically, whatever act or practice that produces a more determining value as with the “x” of a signature line requesting the signer to provide a signature, to give character or characters to the anonymous.

Although the “x” of Latinx is anonymous and reminds us of what has not yet been determined, the “x” functions as a marker of presence—particularly of presence in a space, as with, for example, the “x” placed before a signature line. That “x” means “sign here.” This “here” constitutes the locational quality of the “x” despite its indeterminacy. The “x” does not orient, but it does locate. It signifies, in shorthand, “Here! ¡Aquí!” And this “aquí” demarcates presence in a given space without that presence defaulting into assimilation as neutralizing or conforming absorption. When the Latinx students and their allies proclaim that they are “aquí” or “here” at UNC, they are not forgetting their pasts, where they came from, who they are. They are asking the institution to acknowledge and honor their presence as constitutive of the institution, not just the marginalized objects of the institution’s diversity management policies.

The “x” of the crossroads: Familiar and unfamiliar places

Not only does the “x” function as a marker of presence—of here-ness—it also functions as the marker of a here-ness or aquí-ness that visually suggests an intersection (x) between at least two lines: a crossroads. Perhaps this has something to do with the curiosity and apprehension raised by the “x” added to Latin and substituted for the “a/o” or the “o/a” or even the “@” as in Latin@. According to Smith (1984),

Something sinister about crossroads has made such conjunction of highways a matter of interest for superstitions, beliefs, and customs connected with this particular spot. … It was the burial place of suicides and murderers, a dump-heap for parricides, and a rendezvous for witches who frequently used this uncanny place for their Sabbat revels. Anything might plainly happen here …

Divinities were sometimes associated with the crossroads, perhaps to repel or neutralize the evil influences attached to the locality.

Latinx signals a here-ness, an aquí-ness, that is a crossroads and the multivalent possibilities of a crossing of people and ways: anything can happen. “Anything” means that we cede control—that the incalculable and the unnamable reassert themselves. The “x” is “uncanny,” or, to use Freud’s terms “unheimlich”—unhomely—from his 1919 essay on the uncanny. It does not take us to a familiar place but to a familiar place rendered unfamiliar because it participates in the unknown. Furthermore, the crossroads “x” is not only associated with the uncanny but what is most often an element of the uncanny—and that is the abject: the socially marginalized, rejected, taboo, forbidden. The “x” of Latinx has begun to include all those forms of abjected “Latin” being: the refugee, the migrant, the undocumented, the incarcerated, the stateless, and so on. This might be one of the strongest arguments for adopting it in place of other available denominations. Proud adoption of a term associated with those who are routinely abjected could be considered part of an intentional decolonizing project.

Not only does Latinx include what it was originally invented to include—those who are gender-non-conforming and/or who do not subscribe to the traditional male/female, masculine/feminine binaries, its “x” does more than that. Its “x” is especially adaptable in its uncanniness to those Latina/os who have been consigned repeatedly to the margins by dominant US culture, by the State, and even by subaltern communities caught up in legitimizing themselves through assimilation, integration, and/or citizenship.

HB2, Latinx, and UNC’s Latinx Center

Latinx surfaced on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in a significant way during late winter, early spring 2016, when the state legislature passed “House Bill 2: The Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act” (or simply “HB2”), a sweeping law that blatantly discriminates against transgender people, requiring them to use public restrooms based on their biological sex at birth (or on their birth certificate) and not on their perceived gender identity. ³ HB2 also severely limits the right of any employee to sue in court over workplace discrimination and harassment. Employees must now do so in federal court rather than in state court, a procedure that is considerably more expensive for the plaintiff and much trickier in terms of timing. UNC might have enforced this bill against transgendered people on various campuses had it not been for the fact that three transgendered clients sued through the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina (ACLU-NC). The ACLU-NC informed donors in a fundraising thank you letter that their lawsuit “on behalf of LGBTQ North Carolinians and our members” was successful: “Our lawsuit won an early but crucial victory in August [2016] when a federal court blocked the University of North Carolina from enforcing this discriminatory law against three of our transgender clients” (Eason, 2016). One of these clients was Latinx, a Mexican American transgender man named Joaquin Carcaño who works at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Institute for Global Health and Infectious Disease. By late Spring 2016, politicized Latinx students at the University officially formed the “UNC Latinx Unity Council.” They were fueled by a renewed sense of the vulnerability of students on and off campus and of minority young people in North Carolina after the blatant stripping of civil rights effected by HB2.

The UNC-Chapel Hill’s undergraduate newspaper The Daily Tar Heel notes that “The Latinx Unity Council is made up of a coalition of Hispanic groups on campus, including Carolina Hispanic Association and the Carolina Latina/o Collaborative” (Bhatia, 2016). The Latinx Unity Council was formed to advocate for inclusive, anti-discriminatory, supportive spaces on campus and to lobby the UNC-Chapel Hill administration to approve the creation of a Latinx Center, one that a significant number of Latinx students, faculty, and staff have been advocating for since 2008. A much-welcomed space in Craige North Residence Hall, one of the dormitories on campus, was designated for the “Carolina Latina/o Collaborative” in 2013. However, Latinx students, who as of fall 2016 constitute over 7.8% of the UNC-Chapel Hill student population, have been left on their own without staff to organize Hispanic Heritage month and most events that contribute to Latinx life and culture besides those fomented by the Latina/o Studies Program, the Scholars Latinx Initiative, and other faculty-advised and/or directed programs. The space in Craige North, while including several small rooms and a modest hallway that can be and has been used as an exhibition space, is technologically limited and not secure. Doors open directly onto the street and whatever is displayed on the wall easily could be stolen or damaged.

Among a slew of October festivities—Mexico’s Día de la Raza (Day of the Race), Columbus Day, and Hispanic Heritage Month celebratory events—UNC Latinx Unity Council students organized a peaceful, speech-based, well-attended demonstration on South Building’s steps. This complex houses the offices of the Chancellor, the Provost, the deans of the College of Arts & Sciences, among those of other administrators. The main goal of the protest was to convince upper level administrators to finally approve the Latinx Center, which might function as a home, a bridge, a place of cultural exchange, and an “embassy” of sorts with an ambassadorial outreach. These four functions can be correlated to four different geometrical shapes: a circle, the hub of a wheel with spokes, an X, and a sphere emitting in all directions. As a living Center, those shapes would work in tandem, simultaneously, and in relation to one another. Undergraduate students, the primary (but by no means the only) advocates for this Center, also envision this space in similar fashion. As of May 2017, a Latinx Center has not yet been approved by upper level administration. The students continue to wait for approval as well as for two permanent staff lines for the Carolina Latina/o Collaborative (CLC) pledged by the Provost to the Día de la Raza demonstrators during the protest. Some technology upgrades have been made but no permanent staff members have been hired for the CLC. The administration has expressed its support for CLC activities. Some changes that would enhance the CLC’s ability to function may yet take place during 2017–2018.

Latinx unity

During all of these proceedings, the UNC Latinx Unity Council employed Latinx to bring together a wide range of students, with the emphasis on “Latinx unity.” Latinx involved students from many different backgrounds with different national origins, ethno-racial and/or class backgrounds, and status, from longtime citizens to more recent immigrants to undocumented students. The students, in their deployment of Latinx, placed a strong and undeniable emphasis on the youth of mixed status (i.e. born here but of undocumented parents) and on undocumented students in general. Their usage unequivocally included non-citizens as much as citizens.

This usage was further tested on 15 November 2016 when students from the UNC Latinx Unity Council, professors and lecturers from a range of departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, and other concerned undergraduates and graduates met in Dey Hall to discuss how to insure a safe and welcoming campus for undocumented students in the wake of the 2016 US election that ushered in a presidential candidate who ran on a largely anti-immigrant, pro-deportation for undocumented peoples—especially undocumented Latinx—platform. At this meeting and in subsequent ones as well as in emails and petitions, Latinx was invoked in a way that included the undocumented. This was the case in a December 2016 petition addressed to university leadership: UNC’s Chancellor, the Provost, and the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. In these instances, the “x” of “Latinx” does indeed emphasize both coalition and unity where differences are respected—even differences that are not necessarily “advantages” in a system where only those who are considered full citizens may be eligible for the supposed rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Actually being accorded these rights is different from hypothetically being granted them, especially in this current political climate where, on account of the nation’s reactionary shift toward authoritarianism and fascism, nothing can be taken for granted as we have witnessed since the presidential inauguration.

On 20 December 2016, the UNC-Chapel Hill administration published on the university website a “Message from University Leadership: Response to petition on undocumented students.” There they reiterated their “commitment to our policy on nondiscrimination and our statement on core diversity values” and reminded their constituents that “at the federal level Carolina has supported the DREAM Act, the legislation that would provide undocumented college students with an eventual path for citizenship” as well as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) “for undocumented students who were brought to the US as children and are studying and living at colleges and universities across the country.” However, the message from the UNC-Chapel Hill administration also stated, “Our university must comply with all federal and state laws, including regulations that address immigration” and “[m]oreover, North Carolina law prohibits counties and towns from adopting sanctuary-type protections” (Guskiewicz et al., 2016). A few weeks later, Spanish-language local newspapers such as La Noticia were reporting that the North Carolina General Assembly was postponing the introduction of Republican representative Harry Warren’s initiative to make it possible for an undocumented person to obtain a driver’s license in North Carolina (Jaramillo, 2017). Not to have a driver’s license in a largely rural and suburban state with considerable distances between destinations effectively prevents one from legally traveling to and from work.

In a situation where state and federal laws may be altered to provide far less protection for undocumented Latinx than they already do or in which the undocumented will be and already have been persecuted or harmed under an anti-immigration president proposing to eliminate DACA rather than helped toward citizenship, the inclusive possibilities of Latinx run up against inclement and/or Draconian ordinances that criminalize and, thus, delegitimize precisely the aforementioned inclusivity of the “x.” Now or then (in the future) what will happen to Latinx? What will happen to the coalition and unity across differences of status among Latinx? During November–December 2016, the rhetoric and actions among Latinx students and their allies on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus were strongly supportive and protective of undocumented Latinx and the undocumented in general. In the first 2 weeks of January 2017, Hannah Gill and Sara Peña, as part of the “The Latino Migration Project” (based at The Institute for the Study of the Americas at UNC-Chapel Hill), circulated a 25-page report evaluating what the authors found to be DACA’s “positive impact” on “immigrants’ economic and educational mobility.” They indicate “that the program is an important facilitator of immigrant integration.” Peña and Gill (2017) stress that

North Carolina had one of the highest application rates to DACA in the nation in the first two years of the program (2012–2014). … By June 2014, North Carolina had 23,849 accepted applications and 20,927 approved applications. At least 75% of applicants were from Mexico, reflecting the state’s foreign born demographics.

This information is useful but also illustrates what I have been highlighting in my discussion of Latinx—particularly with regards to borders and boundaries. How ironic that 75% of North Carolina’s DACA applicants are from a country whose northern section before 1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo literally was the current-day US Southwest! The “x” of “Latinx” reminds us of these uncanny intersections, that the border is a vast contact zone where the past holds the key to the present dynamics. Mexico comes to the United States because the United States came to Mexico. The pattern repeats in variations of the theme established more than 169 years ago. When political conditions worsen at state and federal levels and more legislation punitive to the undocumented is passed, then these coalitions between people of different citizenship status will feel the pressure of “divide-and-conquer” policies. Many students will be driven into the shadows—perhaps as many as 800,000. In fact, this is happening already. The rhetoric of deportation and building a wall between the United States and Mexico has not abated and detentions and deportations are on the rise with the new administration. Anticipating this development, UNCSolid organized a walkout on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus on 20 January 2017, the day that President Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the nation’s 45th president. As with the previous demonstrations, Latinx was invoked as a coalitional term among Latinas/os but also with other vulnerable populations—African Americans, Muslims, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning (LGBTQ), and women.

Latinx with its emphasis on the aquí (here), the coalition, and unity across difference and across (x) lines (//) of division, including national borders, challenges more than the rules of grammar. Latinx faces immigration law. It confronts the current and the future immigration laws and so-called “anti-terrorism” laws. It confronts the “rules of the game” (to borrow the translated titled of Jean Renoir’s 1939 film about the moral callousness of upper-class French society on the eve of impending destruction related to everything that brought on World War II). Not only is Latinx confronting these “legal” rules and regulations, it is and will be daring to question them and re-formulate them at a fundamental, decolonizing level.

The DREAMers, the children of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children without documentation, are not willing to be reduced to deportable, disposable people shuttled back and forth across national borders because someone powerful or an oligarchy decides that they do not belong and cannot belong to the United States of America while certain national exist polls show that “70 percent of people agree undocumented immigrants working in the US should be offered legal status” (Flores, 2016). Many of the DREAMers are willing to fight for what they perceive to be their rights as Americans: “That is what being an American is about, standing up for your rights, standing up for the rights of your community, standing up for the rights of all people who are disadvantaged” (Flores, 2016). The DREAMers have been educated in US schools and they know that fighting for your rights of representation was part of the American Revolution of the late 18th century. Many of them, Mexican and Central American, know that the United States came to them before they or their parents ever came to the United States. After all, a third of the United States (the whole Southwest and California, etc.) was once part of Mexico until the end of the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States has repeatedly intervened in the affairs of Central American countries since at least the mid-19th century. The United States has propped up dictators there whose regimes created socio-economic and political conditions responsible for the diaspora of Central Americans to the United States. DREAMers, if they are allowed to stay, also fear that more Draconian immigration policies will mean that their undocumented parents might have to leave the United States. They fear being separated from their parents and having their families torn apart and their lives put into serious jeopardy. On Christmas Eve 2016, a rally was held in Raleigh, NC, to advocate for equal access to higher education for undocumented youth. According to local coverage on WRAL-TV, channel 5, a Raleigh television station,

As part of a unique Christmas Eve tradition, Latino advocates rallied Saturday for equal access to higher education in North Carolina for undocumented students. … Members of the Adelante Education Coalition, a group of nonprofits that focuses on education issues affecting Latino and migrant students and their families, and the state NAACP demanded change in the rally. “They do pay taxes. They do pay federal, state, and social security taxes. Therefore, why do they not have the same access and the same rights?” said Anna Blackburn, vice president of the Harnet County NAACP. Last year, at least two bills were filed in the General Assembly to change the [NC] tuition policy for undocumented students, but they were never advanced. (Tillett, 2016)

This rally, involving both the Adelante Education Coalition and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was a clear example of an African American and Latinx coalitional effort.

In a political climate increasingly criminalizing the undocumented, the migrant, the refugee, and/or the homeless, the “x” in Latinx will be severely tested. Will it continue to signify gender non-conformity, coalitions across borders, boundaries, and status, and unity not only across differences but also across legislated and/or policed divisions? Will Latinx be invoked in battles to block and/or dismantle punitive legislation? Will the term Latinx be subject to censorship? Everywhere in the US educational system, battles about free speech are being waged and not by participants with equal power. Free speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment, but repeatedly one can find cases where free speech went to the highest bidder or the party with the most power over the school’s purse strings (Moynihan, 2017). Will Latinx face the same sort of suppression in North Carolina as that of Mexican American Studies in Arizona from 2010 onwards with House Bill 2281, which was signed into law by former Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer? This bill, now a law that is still operative as of 2017, prohibits courses and classes that, “1. are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group. 2. advocates ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals” (Arizona House of Representatives, 2010). This bill was aimed at Mexican Americans and Mexican American Studies. However, it could all too easily be adapted to suppress the study of any other ethnicity, or perhaps, of ethnicity itself. The bill/law attempts to enforce individualism and discourage collective consciousness in punishing “ethnic solidarity.” A school district or charter school found to be in violation of House Bill 2281’s text can have its state aid apportionment withheld up to 10% per month. If the school district or charter school is found to be noncompliant

within ninety days after receiving notification from the Department of Education, the Superintendent of Public Instruction may withhold the monies the school district would otherwise be entitled to receive from the date of the determination of noncompliance until the Department of Education determines that the school district is in compliance

according to the text of the bill/law.

One of the ironies of bills/laws such as these is that they exhibit a poor understanding of ethnicity, how it functions in this country, the fact that a dominant Anglo American ethnicity already exists whose cultural hegemony is reinforced in countless ways, and that, in actuality, the study of any particular ethnicity almost always involves the study of more than one ethnicity as there is no such thing as ethnic purity if one considers migrations, conquests, the mixing and mingling of people by force, by choice, or by any combination of these. Latinx is a multiethnic, multiracial, multi-origin-and-heritage category. Teaching about Latinx people and cultural production is emphatically not about teaching for or about “a particular ethnic group.” It entails teaching about multiple ethnic groups and it requires a comparative approach—that of comparative ethnic studies, as one of many informing lenses.

At UNC-Chapel Hill campus and elsewhere in North Carolina, the more immediate concern is how undocumented students who were brought to the United States as children and are studying at colleges and universities in the state will be treated as more punitive anti-immigration measures are put into effect. Students, faculty, and staff have been calling for the creation of sanctuary campuses despite whatever “legal” barriers may exist. A graduate student and lecturer led group referring to their coalition movement as “UNCSolid” has continued to advocate for clarification on exactly how these students may be protected by legislation such as Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) from persecution and allowed to continue their studies and how their families might be spared immigration raids. UNCSolid is calling attention to the importance of being informed about the nuances of the law and about students’ right to privacy.

Part of UNCSolid’s call for greater education to achieve or maintain some kind of safe zone for undocumented students involves teach-ins and webinars on the “#HereToStay Toolkit for K-12 Education and Schools” produced by the Washington, DC-based United We Dream (UWD), “the first and largest immigration youth-led organization in the nation … a non-partisan network made up of 55 affiliate organizations in 26 states” (United We Dream, 2017). UWD organizes and advocates for the dignity and fair treatment of immigration youth and families, regardless of immigration status. As the toolkit’s website proclaims,

UWD’s current priorities are to stop deportations, protect the undocumented immigration community and advocate for policy changes that would provide full equality for the immigrant community in the US. In 2012, UWD initiated the Dream Education Empowerment Program (DEEP), which focuses on laying the groundwork to advance the educational justice movement in the US.

That groundwork entails knowing the case law of cases such as “Plyler v. Doe.” As UWD explains on their website, “In 1982 the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that all students have a right to a free public K-12 education, regardless of immigration status.” UWD then states that “Our nation is still a long way from ensuring that all students regardless of immigration status have access to K-12 education.” The issue remains as to what happens to undocumented students after they graduate from high school. In 19 states (CA, WA, NM, TX, OR, UT, CO, NE, KS, KY, NY, FL, CT, MD, NJ, DE, IL, OK, and MN), undocumented students are able to pay in-state tuition to go to college, but not in the majority of the states including North Carolina. As is often the case, undocumented students have to pay the usually prohibitively high out-of-state tuition, a practice that bars most of them from college and/or university and thus condemns them to the ranks of laborers without college degrees and worse.

UNCSolid’s call for the creation of safe zones for undocumented youth and their families implies crash courses in law for undocumented youth and their allies. Calling for crash courses in immigration and privacy rights law (e.g. FERPA) is also related to another effort on the part of UNCSolid and other groups working on similar issues: requests that the administrations of colleges and universities become more pro-active in clarifying the extent that they intend to protect their students from immigration raids, deportation procedures, and other types of fear, intimidation, and harm tactics that threaten students’ ability to acquire an education in the United States and that in many cases ruins their lives and those of their families. UNCSolid and other such groups also want to know what legal advice on-campus legal counsel services might provide, if any. The basic issue is to what extent universities and colleges are willing and able to protect their undocumented students—or are willing to perform the extra investigative and policy-forming work, including hiring competent immigration lawyers, to do all that they can do within whatever constraining parameters they must function to be “in compliance with the law” and to resist unjust laws. To do all they can do most definitely entails exploring how “the law” is frequently not monolithic—but instead ambiguous as it involves a complex and contradictory interplay of forces between laws of which the “x” in Latinx remind us.

The “x” in “Latinx”: The junction of utopia and apocalypse

Contemplation and implementation of Latinx in relation to the aforementioned issues may hopefully counterbalance merely fashionable uses of the term. Latinx includes the undocumented as well as the documented. Its “x” of the crossroads and frontiers reminds us of what comes next—of what lies at the edge of the known at a historical moment in the United States and elsewhere characterized by rapidly increasing socio-economic inequality, climate denial, political repression, punishment of dissent, incarceration, deportation, investment in endless war, destruction of the eco-system, pollution of our most valuable resources such as clean air and water, and mass extinction. Latinx emerges on the margins in the early 21st century and gains more mainstream currency in the second half of the second decade at a moment when the legacy of the many civil rights movements in the United States is being dismantled, when the public sphere is being starved of resources and infrastructures by an authoritarian, hyper-capitalist order, and also when humans are confronting (or not) the devastating environmental results of the Anthropocene—when so much life, human and non-human (flora and fauna), is eroding, collapsing, vanishing (unnaturally). ⁴ The “x” of extinction shadows Latinx no matter how utopianly some people may want to deploy the term: so does the “x” of programmed replacement, of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics—of machines that have been designed to substitute for humans and other organic life forms.

The “x” of Latinx signifies in many ways, including as the space where apocalypse crosses utopia and vice versa. The juncture of utopia and apocalypse in which Latinx emerges is our everyday reality in the 21st century. This juncture gives an urgent poignancy to the phrase that characterizes the UNC-Chapel Hill students’ campaign for the official establishment of a Latinx Center at UNC-Chapel Hill: ¡Estamos Aquí! / We Are Here! This assertion of presence—of being here at the crossroads of utopia and apocalypse—is one that transforms the “x” of extinction (and replacement) into an “x” of the demand for recognition. The “¡Estamos Aquí!” coupled with Latinx is a reminder that while the “x” may inherently partake in what is not defined or definable, Latinx cannot be contained or tokenized by the diversity management jargon of “emergent community.” Latinx, at more than 55 million people in the United States, are not newly emergent. They deserve serious attention as a constitutive part of the past, the present, and the future of Chapel Hill, of North Carolina, of the South, and of the nation.