Latino Soldiers and Global Coloniality: The Korean War Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

This dissertation addresses limitations in our grasp of both coloniality and the role of Latino soldiers in U.S. transpacific military expansion. In Latinx Studies, coloniality is usually understood from the history of Anglo or European domination of the Americas. Yet the history of Latino soldiers deployed in the Korean War (the outset of U.S. efforts to integrate Asia) calls for more expansive theoretical models: models that can account for the various and complicated dynamics of empowerment and subjugation undergirding the workings of global coloniality. Instead of assuming the exclusion of racial minorities (and Latinxs in particular) from U.S. hegemony, I focus on the contradictions of militarized minority inclusion in the U.S. Cold War empire. In that context, Latino soldiers seemingly enjoy opportunities afforded by their putatively democratic inclusion into the military labor force of empire-building. These opportunities are predicated on neoimperialism, and Latino soldiers are subject to necropolitical threats and ongoing colonial and racializing injustices. The chapters focus on interracial and intra-ethnic dynamics among peoples across the Pacific who are gendered, racialized, and classed differentially by U.S. Cold War politics. I consider the effects of the Korean War on Puerto Rican subaltern masculinities centering on intercolonial relations between Puerto Rico and Korea through the gendered and sexualized tropes of the Korean territory and bodies in archival materials and short stories by Emilio Díaz Valcárcel. I examine the imperial violence and intra-ethnic conflict built into the structure of the American Dream through the distressed figure of the Mexican American veteran in the narratives of upward mobility via military labor by Rolando Hinojosa and El Teatro de la Esperanza. I analyze the problems of inherited militarized citizenship premised on liberal, capitalist, and imperialist terms of integration in bildungsroman narratives by Beatriz Eugenia De La Garza and Magali García Ramis. By delving into the complex Latinx positionality in the global and domestic social order shaped by U.S. Cold War militarist imperialism, the dissertation demonstrates that the U.S. military expansion in Asia enabled a relative sense of racial, economic, and sexual empowerment of Latino soldiers, but reinforced an imperialist capitalist patriarchal national security state. 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Puerto Rican Masculinities and the Korean War

Chapter Two: Dysphoria of the American Dream

Chapter Three: Fatherless Bildungsroman

Epilogue

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Spanish
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	American Studies Hispanic American Studies Literature, General
Mot-clé	Race Puerto Rican Studies Mexican American Studies The Korean War Latinx Studies Transpacific Studies
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Sergio Delgado Moya, The University of Chicago
Committee Members	Chris Suh, Emory University Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, Mills College at Northeastern University

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