From Threatening Guerrillas to Forever Illegals

From Threatening Guerrillas to Forever Illegals is a pivotal book for the fields of Central American, Latinx, and American studies. Padilla’s deft analyses not only elucidate how US hegemonic representations congeal with juridical-political practices to perpetually disenfranchise (US) Central Americans but also powerfully illustrate the ways this community formation produces counternarratives that contest its exclusion.

— Maritza Cárdenas, University of Arizona, author of Constituting Central American–Americans: Transnational Identities and the Politics of Dislocation

In From Threatening Guerrillas to Forever Illegals, Padilla skillfully curates what she terms a regime of hegemonic representations of Central Americans in everything from presidential communication to films and novels. From the 1980s to the present day, she argues, Central American immigrants have been represented as existential threats to the United States, and through her concept of non-belonging, Padilla makes visible the signification processes that both symbolically and materially marginalize Central Americans so thoroughly that many can inhabit the neoliberal “good immigrant” role only in death. Non-belonging, however, also leaves space for counternarratives that resist neoliberal rules. This is an important read for scholars in Central American studies, Latinx studies, visual studies, and literary studies.

— Leisy Abrego, UCLA, author of Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders

A well-researched, poignant discussion of the representations, misrepresentations, and erasures of the expanding Central American and Latinx communities in the US. [Padilla's] work seamlessly illustrates the significance and consequences of these representations, or lack thereof...Recommended.

— CHOICE