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Mapping Decolonial Environmental Imaginaries in Latinx Culture addresses a growing dialogue between antiracist environmental humanities and Latinx studies scholars that emphasizes how Latinx creativity expresses decolonial environmental values. Even as we face a racial crisis in the US, there is a looming, similarly daunting challenge in environmental change. Locating forms of progressive environmental ideas that think simultaneously about race and racialization is crucial if we are to meet these twin challenges. This essay introduces a mode of comparative analysis that places multiple genres and forms (novels, films, visual art, and short stories) created by authors from multiple Latinx communities (Chicanx, Puerto Rican, Peruvian, and Central American) into conversation. This comparative approach provides a more nuanced account of how Latinxs from multiple racial, class, gender, sexual, and other identity positions think about and represent environmental ideas. As the legatees of colonialism and racism, Latinx artists have much to say about combatting, circumventing, and, at times, proposing remedies for oppression and environmental harm as complex, interrelated phenomena. These authors and artists comprehend racial capitalism as directly causing environmental crises that perform in concert with racism and colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latinos in the United States may have the mistaken assumption that their natural pigmentation protects them from developing skin cancer that, effectively, serves as a barrier to Latinos receiving education in primary and secondary prevention of skin cancer. Latino adults of Mexican or Puerto Rican heritage attending community health fairs in the greater Chicago area responded to a culturally informed and sensitive measure for sunburn and tan, which was previously adapted to capture skin irritation with tenderness from the sun occurring in darker skin types ( n = 350). By self-reported responses and spectrophotometry assessment of constitutive pigmentation, adapted Fitzpatrick skin types ( FST) ranged from skin type I- IV in the Mexican American participants and from II to V in the Puerto Rican participants. The objectively measured proportion of adapted FST II skin type was greater than commonly perceived and demonstrated that many Latinos do indeed have sun-sensitive skin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protestantism has been considered particularly weak for sustaining ethnic boundaries among immigrants. Recognizing the global adaptability and indigenization of Pentecostalism, however, we expect that immigrants from more pentecostal nations will likely retain their Protestantism in ways that affirm their ethnic identity. Using ethnographic data, our research demonstrates how a Guatemalan pentecostal church in Oregon successfully preserves its homeland culture, revealing how the structure of Pentecostalism at La Iglesia de Restauración (affiliated with Elim churches) sustains ethnic continuity with its native indigenous culture. This Latino Protestant church affirms Pentecostalism's capacity to encourage transnational relationships through a variety of social mechanisms, including provision of ethnic symbols and a space to use them, use of homeland languages (both Kíché and Spanish), and promotion of a homegrown leadership. Moreover, the doctrinal division between "world" and "church" discourages assimilation into American culture while simultaneously reinforcing maintenance of "godly" indigenous practices that are legitimated as appropriately religious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study exploring how social networks and resource awareness for physical activity mediates the relationship between civic group participation and physical activity among Latinos. It discusses the influence of religious, health, and neighborhood participation on meeting national physical activity recommendations. The authors go on to discuss how belonging to civic groups and social network diffusion of information promote physical activity engagement.

A literary analysis of the novel "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. It examines the character Ari and his transition into adulthood, focusing on his borderland identity as a Mexican living in New Mexico. Particular attention is also given to the novel's portrayal of homosexuality and the traditional lack of acceptance of gay men in Latino culture.

The naming behavior of ethnolinguistic minorities in the US can provide insight into a group’s cultural stances, language ideologies, and even language planning efforts. This study examines the names of Latinos in Chicago, with a particular focus on those born by the second generation. Building on previous studies of Latino immigrant naming practices in Texas and Los Angeles, a comparative analysis of the ethnolinguistic and gender-related patterns of a corpus of 386 names is performed. Results show a general alignment of name type preferences across Latino communities but suggest there may be site-specific trends in the popularity of individual names. In terms of gender divergence in assimilative naming, an additional perspective is provided to complement previous conflicting findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the complex relationship between mid-19th century Hispanic American culture and Europe by looking at one of the salient sentiments in Domingo F. Sarmiento's Viajes (1845-1847): his antihispanism. Specifically, it focuses on the sections on France and Spain, where Sarmiento's work significantly eschews the style of “travel impressions". In those sections, Romantic orientalism allows Sarmiento to both inscribe the minority status of Río de la Plata's culture and language politically, and to position himself in the larger context of European culture. This rhetorical maneuver enables Sarmiento to revisit and reconfigure notions of local color, exotism and orientalism he had explored in Facundo (1845). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on theatrical productions in Spanish staged in Los Angeles, California from 2000 to 2010, with a focus on the population of Hispanic Americans in that city as the main target of such productions. A brief analysis of productions performed in the city during that period is offered, including "De la locura a la esperanza" by William Flores, "Santiago" by Peter Elmore, and "Las mujeres de Juárez" by Rubén Amavizca Murúa.

James G. Spady's work has established the conceptual and methodological terrain for understanding the African America and the diasporic roots of Hip Hop culture. His book Tha Global Cipha together with his essays on Négritude, Sonia Sanehez, Marcus Garvey, and Geneva Smitherman are essential for future scholars to understand the cultural logic of global rap music and its history. In this essay, I will examine ways in which a Black aesthetics, an African American and Latino culture, has been adapted all over the globe. European research on Rap with its focus on local scenes of rap music has often neglected the historical roots of Hip Hop and its postcolonial implications. This essay focuses on the process of translation, adaptation and appropriation of Black aesthetics. Interviews with pioneers like LA Sunshine and examples of Rap groups like Ojos de Brujo (Spain), K'Naan (Somalia/Canada) and some Berlin based artists will serve as examples. First, this article will examine Spady's conceptualization of rap music as part of the "Black arts continuum," including "Nation language" as one of its elements. Second, I examine the idea of Hip Hop as translation in itself. And, third, I examine Spady's unique methodology that leads to my conclusion of Hip Hop as a participatory aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main goal of this study was to examine from a systemic-transactional stress perspective (Bodenmann, 1997) whether a more traditional gender role orientation may affect psychological aggression and relationship satisfaction directly and indirectly by decreasing supportive (partner's efforts to help the other partner cope with stress) and common dyadic coping (partners' conjoint efforts to cope with stress) among first-generation immigrant Latino couples. Structural equation modeling results from 104 couples indicate that the extent to which Latino men hold traditional gender role views and the extent to which those views differ from their female partners' may increase the risk for psychological aggression and relationship dissatisfaction directly, but also indirectly by reducing the couple's common dyadic coping and to some extent the male supportive coping. Latinas' traditional gender role views do not relate to either partner's psychological aggression or relationship satisfaction. The article discusses gender differences and research and clinical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the theoretical binary formation of Latino religions. It offers a history of the religious experiences of the Latino and Latina in the U.S. The author's sociological analysis on the progression and origin of Latin religions in the U.S. is presented. It discusses four historical moments of the Latin in the U.S. including the Borderland Church studies, the Sociology of Latin Religions, and the Latin religion's interdisciplinary scholarships from 1991 to 1996.