Search results for ""author jason ruiz""

Exploring representations of Latinx people from Scarface to Narcos, this book examines how pop culture has framed Latin America as the villain in America’s long and ineffectual War on Drugs. If there is an enemy in the War on Drugs, it is people of color. That is the lesson of forty years of cultural production in the United States. Popular culture, from Scarface and Miami Vice to Narcos and Better Call Saul, has continually positioned Latinos as an alien people who threaten the US body politic with drugs. Jason Ruiz explores the creation and endurance of this trope, its effects on Latin Americans and Latinx people, and its role in the cultural politics of the War on Drugs. Even as the focus of drug anxiety has shifted over the years from cocaine to crack and from methamphetamines to opioids, and even as significant strides have been made in representational politics in many areas of pop culture, Latinx people remain an unshakeable fixture in stories narrating the production, distribution, and sale of narcotics. Narcomedia argues that such representations of Latinx people, regardless of the intentions of their creators, are best understood as a cultural front in the War on Drugs. Latinos and Latin Americans are not actually America’s drug problem, yet many Americans think otherwise—and that is in no small part because popular culture has largely refused to imagine the drug trade any other way.

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Exploring representations of Latinx people from Scarface to Narcos, this book examines how pop culture has framed Latin America as the villain in America’s long and ineffectual War on Drugs. If there is an enemy in the War on Drugs, it is people of color. That is the lesson of forty years of cultural production in the United States. Popular culture, from Scarface and Miami Vice to Narcos and Better Call Saul, has continually positioned Latinos as an alien people who threaten the US body politic with drugs. Jason Ruiz explores the creation and endurance of this trope, its effects on Latin Americans and Latinx people, and its role in the cultural politics of the War on Drugs. Even as the focus of drug anxiety has shifted over the years from cocaine to crack and from methamphetamines to opioids, and even as significant strides have been made in representational politics in many areas of pop culture, Latinx people remain an unshakeable fixture in stories narrating the production, distribution, and sale of narcotics. Narcomedia argues that such representations of Latinx people, regardless of the intentions of their creators, are best understood as a cultural front in the War on Drugs. Latinos and Latin Americans are not actually America’s drug problem, yet many Americans think otherwise—and that is in no small part because popular culture has largely refused to imagine the drug trade any other way.

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Tourism shapes popular fantasies of adventure, structures urban and natural space, creates knowledge around difference, and demands an array of occupations servicing the insatiable needs of those who travel for leisure. Even as migrants and refugees have become targets of ire from far-right parties, international tourism has grown worldwide. This issue posits a radical approach to the study of tourism, highlighting how tourism as a paradigmatic modern encounter bleeds into diplomacy, militarism, and empire building. Contributors investigate, among other topics, how the United States has used tourism in Latin America as a tool of interventionist foreign policy, how Bethlehem’s Manger Square has become a contested space between Palestinians and the Israeli state, how Spain's economy increasingly relies on northern European tourists, and how the US military's Cold War–era guidebooks attempted to convert soldiers stationed abroad into "ambassadors of goodwill." Contributors. Ryvka Barnard, Daniel Bender, Julio Capo Jr., Rüstem Ertuğ Altinay, Steven Fabian, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Max Holleran, Rebecca J. Kinney, Scott Laderman, Katrina Phillips, Mark Rice, Jason Ruiz, Daniel Walkowitz, Kim Warren

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In “Radical Histories of Sanctuary,” contributors explore both contemporary and historical invocations of “sanctuary,” paying particular attention to its genealogies in social movements against state violence. Expanding the scope of sanctuary, they address not only immigrant activism but also topics such as indigenous strategies of survival in the Americas, gay liberation in rural spaces, and urban housing for refugees. The essays contest liberal conventions of sanctuary that shore up the very forms of power and subjugation they seek to dismantle: from immigrant movements affirming the distinction between “good” and “bad” immigrants to gay liberation movements for police reform that fail to address the fundamental violence of policing. Examining both the liberatory potential of sanctuary and its limits, the contributors argue for intersectional strategies of resistance that connect the struggles of disparate groups against repressive and violent power. Contributors. Rachel Ida Buff, Caleb Duarte, Treva Ellison, Jason Ezell, Carla Hung, Kyle B. T. Lambelet, Sunaina Maira, Rachel McIntire, A. Naomi Paik, Jason Ruiz, Rebecca M. Schreiber, Aimee Villarreal, Elliot Young

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