The Task of the Latino/a Archivist: On Archiving Identity and Community

Taking into account the very complexity and contestability of the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” to identify its subject matter, this paper draws on contemporary research on archives and identity, philosophy, Latino Studies, and efforts to chronicle the history of Latinos in New York State to ask how the Latino/a archivist can document Latino groups in the United States without restricting the multifaceted ways in which they construct and negotiate their identities. Is the establishment of a historical narrative for various Latino groups necessarily indicative of a codification of identity? Can the stuff of communal history be deployed in such a way as to encourage difference and not essential notions of what it meant and means to be “Latino” and/or “Hispanic” in the United States? These are some of the questions this paper explores in the hopes of teasing out the tensions that exist between historical validity and essentialism, historical re-inscription and foreclosure