Johana Londoño – författare

In Abstract Barrios Johana LondoÑo examines how Latinized urban landscapes are made palatable for white Americans. Such Latinized urban landscapes, she observes, especially appear when whites feel threatened by concentrations of Latinx populations, commonly known as barrios. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and visual analysis of barrio built environments, LondoÑo shows how over the past seventy years urban planners, architects, designers, policy makers, business owners, and other brokers took abstracted elements from barrio design-such as spatial layouts or bright colors-to safely “Latinize” cities and manage a long-standing urban crisis of Latinx belonging. The built environments that resulted ranged from idealized notions of authentic Puerto Rican culture in the interior design of New York City’s public housing in the 1950s, which sought to diminish concerns over Puerto Rican settlement, to the Fiesta Marketplace in downtown Santa Ana, California, built to counteract white flight in the 1980s. Ultimately, LondoÑo demonstrates that abstracted barrio culture and aesthetics sustain the economic and cultural viability of normalized, white, and middle-class urban spaces.

In Abstract Barrios Johana LondoÑo examines how Latinized urban landscapes are made palatable for white Americans. Such Latinized urban landscapes, she observes, especially appear when whites feel threatened by concentrations of Latinx populations, commonly known as barrios. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and visual analysis of barrio built environments, LondoÑo shows how over the past seventy years urban planners, architects, designers, policy makers, business owners, and other brokers took abstracted elements from barrio design-such as spatial layouts or bright colors-to safely “Latinize” cities and manage a long-standing urban crisis of Latinx belonging. The built environments that resulted ranged from idealized notions of authentic Puerto Rican culture in the interior design of New York City’s public housing in the 1950s, which sought to diminish concerns over Puerto Rican settlement, to the Fiesta Marketplace in downtown Santa Ana, California, built to counteract white flight in the 1980s. Ultimately, LondoÑo demonstrates that abstracted barrio culture and aesthetics sustain the economic and cultural viability of normalized, white, and middle-class urban spaces.

This book focuses our attention on yet another community that has been scantily represented in Latino/a/x studies scholarship. US Colombians are no longer content to be characterized as “the other Latinos,” and the editors of this special issue make the case that study of US Colombianidades enhances and productively troubles Latino/a/x studies. This engaging set of essays highlights the rich diversity of US Colombianidades as well as the group’s similarities and differences with other Latino/a/x groups. With its innovative cultural studies and social sciences perspectives and interpretive theories, this volume offers a deep dive into issues such as how racial, gender, sexual, and socioeconomic realities shape US Colombian experience; the representation of US Colombians in popular culture; interethnic relations between Colombians and other Latina/o/xs; the political participation of Colombians in US electoral politics; Colombian transnational understandings of identity; and much more. Iwant to thank the editors of this special issue—Lina Rincón, Johana Londoño, Jennifer Harford Vargas, and María Elena Cepeda—for curating a set of articles that will most certainly inspire Latino/a/x studies scholars to expand our notions of Latinidades and be attentive to the ways in which a focus on US Colombianidades complicates and enriches our field.Previously published in Latino Studies Volume 18, issue 3, September 2020