Abstract
Ramiro Martinez Jr.’s updated book, Latino Homicide: Immigration, Violence, and Community, compares homicide rates of Blacks, Latinos, and Asians across six cities: Chicago, El Paso, Houston, Miami, San Antonio, and San Diego, from 1990 to 2010, using police department homicide investigations for the data. Since his first edition, empirical research on Latinx crime has remained virtually untouched, while media stereotypes of Latinxs have exploded (gangbangers, undocumented, and rapists, among a few). Martinez asks whether Latinxs as a group are prone to crime as is often suggested in the media. He argues that the Latinx homicide rates have dropped in a uniform manner and remain lower than expected, given higher rates of disadvantage, lack of resources, and immigration. Furthermore, he tests whether cities close to the U.S.–Mexico border are experiencing higher homicide rates: They do not. He also examines the influence of gangs on homicide rates, especially in Chicago. Martinez’s study offers support to the thesis that immigration lowers homicide rates and suggests that the Latino “Criminal Threat” is not empirically supported.
Martinez’s book begins with a historical analysis of the six cities, describing agricultural workers in Texas, migration patterns to Chicago, and the Mariel boatlift from Cuba in the 1980s. Samuel P. Huntington’s (2004) prevalent and sustaining argument suggests that the historical patterns and lack of assimilation by Latinx will increase crime rates, specifically the homicide rate. Martinez finds little support for the increase in crime and homicide rates when comparing poverty levels by race and ethnicity. He writes, “Working within this tradition, I found that local context matters, and although the conditions producing Latino criminal activity are complex, Latinos are not as criminally involved as expected, at least as measured by the serious crime of homicide over time and across place” (p. 168).
In later chapters, Martinez examines specific neighborhoods in the six cities. He finds that homicides, when they do occur, are primarily arguments among fellow ethnic group members, similar to other scholars’ findings (Harris and Feldmeyer 2013; Steffensmeier et al. 2010). Additionally, he compares gang retaliation and finds that the two have similar rates across the different cities and neighborhoods. In San Diego, he compares the Latinx, Black, and Asian homicide percentages pre-, peak-, and post-event, such as pre-gang period, gang peak, and post-gang peak. He finds that in pre-gang peak and post-gang peak, the percentage of homicides were similar across all three groups; however, during the gang peak, the homicide percentage increased, especially among Asian gangs. In other words, when comparing homicide percentages, by race or ethnicity, the results are similar. Furthermore, El Paso, Texas, never reaches the homicide percentage that the other five cities do. He concludes that the Latino Criminal Threat, in the media and among some scholars, persists even when the crime rates have declined across time and space.
Limitations of this study are few. First, Robert Vargas (2016) suggests that cities and neighborhoods are too large a geographical area in which to analyze crime and homicide rates. Vargas would suggest blocks for analyses. Second, this study underestimates shootings because Martinez collected only deaths of individuals due to homicides. A better database might include the number of callouts to neighborhoods. Third, the book mentions Critical Race Theory (CRT) but does not really account for CRT in the analyses. A large portion of the book argues against the prevailing arguments of the first edition. Martinez’s first chapter argues that he will be taking a CRT perspective; however, he seems to entrench and reify race and ethnicity. Martinez needs a more complex analysis of race, ethnicity, immigration, citizenship status, and homicide rates.
Anyone interested in an analysis of Latinxs and crime rates should read Latino Homicide. The book provides a macro analysis of six cities across race and ethnic group of homicides. It is well written and researched. This book would be well paired with Tomás Jiménez’s Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity; Robert Vargas’s Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio; and Tanya Golash-Boza’s Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism. Specifically, Replenished Ethnicity and Latino Homicide, together, argue against Huntington’s (2004) (and others’) ideas of the lack of assimilation among Latinxs. Wounded City examines the political economical influence on homicide rates of Chicago, addressing that homicide rates are complex and not due to the Latino Criminal Threat. Tanya Golash-Boza’s book demonstrates that individuals who are deported are racialized in the United States prior to being deported and after. The racialization of deported individuals would add to Martinez’s discussion of Haitians in Miami, Florida.