Harvest Of Empire Summary

In Harvest of Empire, Juan Gonzalez’s aims at giving general readers, students, professionals, and intellectuals a general understanding of Hispanics and their place in American history. As a columnist, political activist, and having experienced firsthand what it was like growing up a Hispanic from Puerto Rican, Gonzalez attempts to detail how the “U.S. economic and political domination over Latin America has always been and continues to be the underlying reason for the massive Latin presence in this country” (XVII).

According to Gonzalez, it is vital that the historical presence of the Latino in the U.S. come not from guides, historians, or interpreters who have not lived it, but by the very people that weathered the struggle. It is not surprising that historians have fallen short of painting the whole picture, especially in describing how the increasing income and wealth disparities between inhabitants of Latin American and the U.S, culminated in the

“irresistible magnet” that enticed workers from the poorest areas to emigrate to the U.S. to claim a share of the prosperity they believed this country had to offer.

There are three major themes Gonzalez details in order to give a complete overview of how and why the migration of Latinos to this country was very different from the European migration to colonial United States.

In the first part “Roots” Gonzalez, covering the colonial period of United States, argues that through territorial expansion into Latino lands in colonial days the U.S. was able to exploit Latin American territories to their benefit. In the second part, “Branches”, Gonzalez devotes several chapters to major Latino groups. Through intensive and in-depth interviews with different people, and also telling his own story, Gonzalez paints a picture of contemporary Latinos in the U.S. The last and final section of Harvest of empire Gonzalez demonstrated modern day issues such as the controversy over illegal immigration that has spanned more than sixty years, the disastrous impact of globalization on Latin America in the wake of NAFTA, and the continuous debate over the use of foreign languages and

culture.

One of Gonzalez’s goals is to highlight those key elements that initiated the influx of millions of desperate workers coming to this country to “reclaim a share of that wealth” that the US gained by “penetrating ever more deeply into Mexico, the Caribbean, and South and Central America. Had it not been for the U.S. all of these people from Latino areas would not have come in record numbers. Moreover, how such rapid increases of Latino immigration has led to deep insecurities among whites and African Americans toward people that were culturally and linguistically different from what they were used to seeing. Gonzales is also attempting to get the reader to understand and recognize the important part that Latinos play in the making of this country. In order to do that we need to know how Mexico, the Caribbean, other Latin countries and the United contributed and were affected by increasingly rapid change in this country’s demographics.
United States is solely the cause of the great wave of Hispanic immigration because of because foreign policy has always involved the creation of labor forces.