Welcome to the front seat: Racial identity and Mesoamerican immigrants

In this article, I argue that mestizo immigrants from the Mesoamerica region experi-ence a low socioeconomic tracking compounded by a racialized subordinating dis-course in the United States. These immigrants come over to the United States from a region where social stratification and racial prejudice are based more on cultural and linguistic differentiation than on pigmentation. Once in their new surroundings, mes-tizo immigrants live a reversal of power relations as well as a new cultural regime that places them in a secondary social role. Key words: diasporic studies, race theory, identity formation theory, identity and ed-ucation, immigration, Latina/Latino/Chicano culture, people of color and socializa-tion I’d marry a black guy immediately, just like that. But not even dead I’d marry an indian. —A Guatemalan ladino woman.1 Comments like the preceding one are not out of the ordinary in today’s identity politics of Guatemala. Such comments indeed reflect the torturous and sad terrain of postcolonial racial discourse in which gender, race, and class constructs appear profoundly linked and expressed in daily interaction among Guatemalans. How