Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper will provide an overview of the fundamental changes that the cruise ship business has undergone with the emergence of capitalist globalization and in the context of the Caribbean region. Rising profits and investments in tourism during the later decades of the 20th century and into the 21st century have been an important part of the globalizing economy. This has been a consequence of both the major technological and organizational developments of global capitalism, but also, and most importantly, of the global system's changing social and class relations. The shifting social relations and productive activities that undergird the cruise ship business have meant gains for some involved, most especially, transnational capitalists, and exploitative and contradictory dynamics for many others. Annually millions of tourists from high consuming sectors worldwide partake in brief holiday escapes aboard cruise ship vessels. At the same time, the cruise ship business has become an oligopoly, controlled by a handful of large companies, that has driven many competitors out of business or acquiried them. Labor in the business has become more flexibilized, with low-wage workers (from a variety of nationalities) whose activities are increasingly standardized, monitored and micro-managed. While moving away from indicative development planning (with an eye to national goals), state policymakers in the Caribbean, for their own social reproduction, increasingly promote the interests of transnational capital such as with the cruise ship business. Importantly, labor and environmental protections have been stymied as the cruise ship companies, adept at public relations and skirting regulations, remain largely unaccountable.

This paper describes the performance of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in 10 Latin American countries under the New Economic Model (NEM). Based on an original databank, the authors analyze SME performance in relation to production, ...

This article, published on my Korebelief.com blog in May 2018, is about an appeal for a parking fine I was slapped with by Norwich City Council that year.

As the article states, the appeal is "a small part of a program of human rights advocacy I have been pursuing on my own and others’ behalf, in response to a Barbados-sown, globally grown campaign of psychological warfare that has been directed against me for more than half a century".

The words of my appeal provide "a template" of the kind of "human ecology focused activist litigation" I have been developing with the direct and indirect assistance of visual artist Deborah Liversage, the environmental justice litigators Client Earth, the mental health advocacy network Emerging Proud and various other individuals and organizations which, while not inerrant and infallible agents, have much to offer as channels of healing in the world.

I published the appeal in the hope that it would underscore the links between the choices that Barbadians were about to make in the then imminent May 24 general elections on that island (where I was “parked” for a brief period in October 2017) and political and other developments unfolding in England, which has been my “bunker” since July 4th, 2006, when I arrived here as an immigrant.

The article documents my first use of an automotive parking fine as an opportunity to engage with the British legal system in a radically creative way.

I not only make vehicular parking a metaphor for the problem plagued legal status of immigrants in "Brexiting Britain", who like me, are being adversely affected by the UK's "hostile environment" policies. I also make it a metaphor for the transitory nature of words as their meanings change.

The article therefore adds to the broader discourse about language use that I have been developing through my book "The Bible: Beauty and Terror Reconciled" and related human ecology projects.

Fundamentally, it demonstrates the faith based creativity that has been my salvation in the face of the most daunting challenges I have experienced and provides a template for pragmatic, peaceful resistance - an alternative to characteristically violence inducing Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Communist, Capitalist, Feminist and other secular and religious ideological excesses.

It documents

This newspaper column from 2003 examines how Indians in Trinidad and Tobago are misled, guided by so many fears, the encouragement of feelings of victimhood, and smallness of vision. There is an important contribution for Indians to make to the building of this New World civilisation, which is still in its infancy and only half-made. What is needed is a vision, mission and leadership not griping about “discrimination”, but looking fearlessly to the future.

This article performs a strange comparison to question the very applicability of the “burden of proof” to both subaltern mediums and scientists. I look at the problem of proof not only in the field of subaltern spiritual work, but also in the practice of petroleum geology and the history and philosophy of science. By tacking back and forth between “science” and “obeah” in the Caribbean, I hope to problematize the burden of proof that the trials of mediality have often sought to produce – from the experiments with witchcraft in early modern courtrooms to the Victorian trials of psychical research. Might there be other ways of understanding what is at stake in mediumship than the burden of proof?

Longer-than-normal editorial for the latest issue of the Caribbean Journal of International Relations & Diplomacy. Crystallises some of my broad thinking about the structural challenge facing the Caribbean in terms of both integration and development strategy, and suggests some tentative ideas for a way forward on both.

This Report presents an analysis of the heritage regulatory framework of six cities with Spanish fortifications in the Caribbean: San Juan, Puerto Rico; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; La Habana, Cuba; St. Augustine, Florida, USA; Veracruz, México and Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.

An important center of dancehall reggae performance, sound clashes are contests between rival sound systems: groups of emcees, tune selectors, and sound engineers. In World Clash 1999, held in Brooklyn, Mighty Crown, a Japanese sound system and the only non-Jamaican competitor, stunned the international dancehall community by winning the event. In 2002, the Japanese dancer Junko Kudo became the first non-Jamaican to win Jamaica’s National Dancehall Queen Contest. High-profile victories such as these affirmed and invigorated Japan’s enthusiasm for dancehall reggae. In Babylon East , the anthropologist Marvin D. Sterling traces the history of the Japanese embrace of dancehall reggae and other elements of Jamaican culture, including Rastafari, roots reggae, and dub music. Sterling provides a nuanced ethnographic analysis of the ways that many Japanese involved in reggae as musicians and dancers, and those deeply engaged with Rastafari as a spiritual practice, seek to reimagine their li...

In this essay I examine the racial achievement gap in American education in terms of an impaired psychosocial developmental process. I argue that the well-documented academic underperformance of certain minority groups may stem from the unfavorable resolution of a key developmental crisis in constituent members’ early scholastic experience. I go on to suggest that individual educators can play an important role in eliminating the achievement gap by changing the way they teach in their own classrooms. In part, they may do so by adopting a "transcultural" pedagogy or teaching style, according to which both teachers and their minority students develop (at minimum) transcultural proficiencies and (at maximum) transcultural identities, as a promising way to achieve two important ends. First, the fostering of an academically-industrious self-concept in members of historically underachieving minority groups and hence, second, the closing of the achievement gap "from the bottom up"—one classroom at a time.

This book examines the ways Cuban families struggle to access food and maintain a decent quality of life as the socialist welfare state continues to falter in post-Soviet Cuba. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in Santiago de Cuba, book reveals how Cuban families struggle to acquire food and assemble “a decent meal,” a local social category where families determine whether food quality and cultural-appropriateness meet their standards. The research illuminates the social and emotional dimensions of the practices of food acquisition. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and subsequent the loss of its most significant trade partner, Cuba entered a period of economic hardship known as the “Special Period.” Although new trade agreements have significantly improved the quantity and quality of rationed food, supplies have not returned to Soviet-era levels. Several years after the worst scarcities of the Special Period, many people from Santiago reported that they continued to live with food shortages and economic hardship. This book reveals that one of the most common ways of dealing with food scarcity, was “luchando la vida” (struggling for life): the arduous task of finding ingredients seen as essential to what is considered a “decent” meal. To understand this situation, the book introduces “the politics of adequacy,” which details how people resist and make sense of scarcity or changing availability of basic life necessities, such as food. This work is based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork inside the homes of 22 families in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second largest city. Spanning neighborhood, social class, household income level, and skin color, this book captures previously undocumented details of household dynamics, community interaction, and individual reflections on everyday life in Cuba today.

Book Keywords: Food, Cuba, Socialism, Inequality, Consumption, Adequacy, Caribbean, Distribution, Household, Everyday Life

"Las autoras de la presente obra hacen una relación de los procesos históricos de resistencia que permitieron la formación de los palenques en Colombia, y en este contexto reconstruyen cómo fue el pro- ceso en el Palenque San José de Uré. Esta metodología les permite mostrar que en aquellos terrenos, como en cualquier otro enclave palenquero, los movimientos de resistencia tenían como objetivo final encontrar espacios físicos de libertad corporal y espiritual en áreas de difícil acceso geográfico. Esto contribuyó a que los individuos pudiesen desarrollarse sin el control corporal de la colonia o de la república, eventualmente terminaron siendo espacios donde la historia racista del país los alcanza y genera la persecución, pero no por sus cuerpos laborales, pero si por los espacios que han creado de agricultura, ganadería y minería. Estos espacios que fueron abiertos con mucho sacrificio y dolor, terminan siendo espacios de conflicto de apropiación por esos intereses de “nación” o de la “ilegalidad” territorial del paramilitarismo y la expansión de la agricultura industrial como la de la palma africana.
"

The early ethnological works of Alfred Métraux are analysed bearing in mind his first fieldwork trip to the Chiriguano, in 1929. The paper discusses personal, academic and professional features of Métraux’s ethnological experience, the nature of the 1929 trip and his concrete relationships with the Chiriguano groups and individuals. Next, we analyse his ideas on material culture as a privileged means of understanding the synthesis of Andean, Chaco and Amazonian cultural influences. Finally, the dilemmas and limitations of his analytical approach regarding Créole cultural influence and social and cultural change are discussed. [Key words: Alfred Métraux, Chané, Chiriguano, material culture, change.]
Se analiza la etnología temprana de Alfred Métraux a la luz de su primer viaje de campo a los chiriguanos, en 1929. Se discute el perfil personal, académico y profesional de Métraux, las peculiaridades de su trabajo de campo en 1929 y sus relaciones concretas con los indígenas chiriguanos en el terreno. Se examinan luego sus ideas sobre la cultura material como campo experimental privilegiado para rastrear procesos de síntesis de influencias culturales andinas, chaqueñas y amazónicas, así también sus dilemas y límites a la hora de interpretar el factor de la influencia criolla y el proceso de cambio social y cultural en un sentido amplio. [Palabras clave: Alfred Métraux, Chané, Chiriguano, cultura material, cambio.]

Youth is often a period of high sexual activity and partner change or concurrency, making strategies to prevent HIV/ STI infection and pregnancy especially important at this stage in life.  Condoms, if used consistently and correctly, are the most effective HIV prevention method for sexually active people with more than one partner.

This Fact Sheet is one of several developed for the Pan American Health Organization to analyze progress in respect of the sexual and reproductive health goals of the Adolescent and Youth Regional Strategy and Plan of Action . Goal 5 of the Plan of Action is to ensure sexual and reproductive health, and this includes targets 5.1 to 5.6. The current fact sheet analyzes data relating to the second of these targets, concerned with increasing protection from HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy  through condom use.

In about half of the Caribbean and Central American countries, around half of young women aged 15-24 used a condom during their last sexual encounter with a non-regular partner.In some countries, young women did considerably better in terms of condom use prevalence in 2014, notably Cuba, Belize and St. Lucia. Data from Cuba, Belize and Suriname show encouraging increases in condom use by young women. There were higher rates of female youth condom use in Caribbean than in Central American countries.

In the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys, only four countries collected data on condom use at last sex for both male and female youth. In the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti and Honduras, condom use was higher among young men than young women.

Data from six Caribbean countries on condom use among young women at first sex show prevalence of a quarter or less in the Dominican Republic and Haiti but percentages of 58% or more in four Eastern Caribbean countries. Girls are especially vulnerable during their first sexual encounter and it is remarkable that those in the Eastern Caribbean were able to achieve rates of condom use reportedly higher at first sex than in many other countries for last sexual encounter.

Available data also suggest higher condom use in the non-Hispanic Caribbean than in Latin American countries with the exception of Cuba. It is possible that this is an explanatory factor for the higher rates of adolescent pregnancy in Latin America than the Caribbean as shown in Fact Sheet 5. However, paradoxically, the Caribbean is also the Western Hemisphere sub-region with the highest rates of HIV among young people (Fact Sheet 4), suggesting the need to identify factors other than condom use associated with HIV.

Between 1826 and 1843 the medical practitioners of Jamaica engaged in a long and fraught campaign to create a College of Physicians and Surgeons.  This campaign linked the island with the global processes of medical and political reform, especially in Britain, and numerous studies have revealed the political barriers that faced efforts to reshape medical practices in this period.  Yet the metropole was also in a continuous dialogue with its colonial periphery.  Existing work has looked at what this dialogue meant for the circulation of medical theories and practices, but equally important was the transmission of medical institutions, which provided structures for their development and application.  The campaign in Jamaica offers an important case study of the complex process by which medical institutions spread in this period and reveals both the imperial aspects of medical and social reform in Jamaica and the colonial aspects of medical reform in Britain.

En este artículo se comparan dos textos clásicos sobre la sociedad de plantación: Casa-grande & senzala (1933), del brasileño Gilberto Freyre, y Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940), del cubano Fernando Ortiz. Los dos autores describen y analizan la convivencia de los grupos y sujetos de distintas proveniencias étnicas, culturales y sociales con dos conceptos que significan valoraciones profundamente diferentes: ‘mestizaje’ (Gilberto Freyre) y ‘transculturación’ (Fernando Ortiz). En el ‘mestizaje’ se mantiene el ‘mito de las tres razas’. El fundamento de la convivencia es, en última instancia, el mestizaje biológico bajo las condiciones de la sociedad colonial cuyas leyes y orden el proceso de mestizaje no pone en cuestión. La convivencia del mestizaje está marcada por la ambivalencia entre represión y protección. La ‘transculturación’ de Fernando Ortiz define los sujetospor sus prácticas sociales y por su posición en las configuraciones de poder económico y social. En ...

U.S. foreign policies are determined by a small group of elites making decisions with grave consequences for humanity, with little input from the U.S. public and even less consideration given to the opinions of non-U.S. citizens. What would a just U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America look like? We propose some guiding values for the formulation of a just policy, centered on the dual principles that each person should have input in a decision to the degree that they are impacted by it, and that the perpetrators of crimes owe reparations to their victims. We then outline some specific pieces of a different policy, including but not limited to U.S. respect for international law, and conclude by discussing elements of a long-term strategy for achieving those changes.

Las memorias de su gobernación de Puerto Rico del almirante William D. Leahy durante los años de 1939-1940. Incluye dos versiones del manuscrito inéditos hasta esta edición y otros documentos del período incluidos informes de inteligencia sobre las cruciales elecciones de 1940. También un análisis del editor de los textos y el significado histórico de la gobernación en el momento en que comenzaba la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

La segunda parte del libro del mismo título sobre Puerto Rico y el Caribe durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.  Este volumen contiene 18 ensayos de especialistas y capítulos sobre el Caribe Inglés, Martinica, Cuba, Haití , la República Dominicana y Puerto Rico.

This story opens with the post-disaster setting of "Caiseas Blues" [reprinted in Best Small Fictions, Sonder Press 2020; adapted from an unfinished novel "A Terrible Racket"]. The tale breaks ground in its portrayal of senior sexuality, and its unique use of scripture as an intertext. In a locale in which much of what the characters hold dear has been taken from them, the strange relationship between the matriarch Marta and her invalid husband Gabriel is revealed. Marta plays a God-like role in putting Gabriel, her angel, through the paces. But a chat with her daughter Isabel reveals the cruel irony of hearing everything, but never being able to speak. The epiphany moves Marta to what Gabe interprets as a sort of penance. [CORRECTED--restores unauthorized cuts made by journal from Sections 4-5].

""De la guerre de Sept ans aux émancipations nationales de l’Amérique ibérique, les sociétés européennes et coloniales de l’espace atlantique connaissent une série de ruptures politiques majeures qui redessinent la carte politique des Amériques comme de l’Europe. L’hémisphère occidental se peuple de nouveaux Etats, républiques ou empires, l’un éphémère – le Mexique –, l’autre durable – le Brésil. Or, si les Révolutions américaine et française, et, depuis peu, haïtienne, ont pris toute leur place dans la séquence prestigieuse des révolutions atlantiques, les indépendances hispano-américaines et brésilienne continuent à apparaître comme des mouvements incomplets ou ratés. Ce jugement sévère ne fait pas justice à la richesse et à la complexité de ces révolutions d’indépendance qui posèrent de façon précoce la question de l’égalité civile et de l’esclavage, au sein de sociétés coloniales où les libres de couleur et les Indiens étaient souvent majoritaires.
Rassemblant des contributions de spécialistes reconnus des trois continents, L’Atlantique révolutionnaire : une perspective ibéro-américaine traduit la richesse et le dynamisme de l’historiographie actuelle sur le moment révolutionnaire ibérique et ibéro-américain. Il place le sous-continent au centre de l’attention sans pour autant négliger la question devenue classique des imbrications et des interactions impériales, aux Antilles, notamment. Inscrit dans la perspective de la nouvelle histoire atlantique, il explore les dimensions sociales, politiques et « raciales » d’un moment décisif pour la modernité politique et la construction de sociétés plurielles confrontées à la dialectique de la liberté et de l’esclavage, de l’égalité et de la discrimination. ""

British planters, merchants and other non-landholding persons from Barbados owned and transported enslaved persons to the South Carolina colonial settlement as early as 1670. However, there is minimal specific information about Africans or Barbadian Creoles selected for these voyages. To date, no empirical research has examined any data on African or African descended artisans (enslaved or free) who accompanied their owners or authorized travelers to the New World. Such historical lack provides negligible if any recognition of the skillsets rendered by specific artisans that significantly enhanced the economic development of both Barbados initially, and later during the early development of Charleston. There is also little information known as to why Black artisans were specifically chosen or able to travel to and from the new Atlantic World. This lack of knowledge directly opposes the analyses of the numerous studies done on the importation of West Africans brought to Carolina for their expertise in rice technology and indigo processing which notably benefitted colonial capitalism during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Research generally seeks to gain better understandings of ways in which inhabitants of African-Caribbean heritage created a life for themselves by the manifestation and transformation of their culture through adaptive strategies, coping mechanisms, and creative resistance. The architectural, industrial and socio-cultural details of sugar and rice plantations have been documented to interpret ways in which local patterns of life emerged and evolved in Caribbean and Carolina settings. Yet little of these studies provide voice, face, and evidence of the co-existence amongst Bajans and Gullahs working in rural and ‘urban’ settings such as Bridgetown and Charleston.

A multitude of African and Creole artisans and skilled tradespersons played important roles during the colonial period, thus this research investigates the associated cultural heritage of craftsmanship and the built environment. The study examines artisans working within utilitarian and decorative arts with data mined from critical archives, history, genealogy, and archaeology resources associated with Black artisans originating in Barbados and their trajectories to later connections with Gullahs of Charleston, South Carolina.

La Roche, R. A.(2017). “Bajan To Gullah” Cultural Capital: Wood, Stone, Iron, and Clay 1670 To 1770. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4454

The architectural practice that constituted modern architecture in the islands of Puerto Rico and Cuba during the years 1960-1969 developed hand in hand with socio-political and economic reformations. At the heart of these processes, innovative experimental social housing became the raison d'etre of urban, scientific and technological research. Even though many ingenious projects proposed by local as well as foreign architects were praised for their technological and form making innovations, they failed as models for future housing developments. Following Martin Heidegger's Building Dwelling Thinking, the crisis of these experimental dwellings revealed the disarticulated relation between housing form and socially shared modes of dwelling and habitation.

In 2004, an unlikely combination of rural insurgent groups and urban gangs fought over the fate of President Aristide and brought Haiti to the brink of civil war. Ten years on, the country is still plagued by instances of armed violence. While most policy experts and practitioners seem to agree that over the last decade, violence transformed from a political into a criminal phenomenon, scholars remain divided over the question of whether Haiti's urban armed groups should be framed as a political movement or as hardened criminals. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and overt observation conducted during six months of fieldwork in Haiti in 2013, this article argues that it is crucial to refocus the analysis on the functions gangs fulfil on behalf of their politico-criminal sponsors. In contrast to the proclaimed internal shift from political to criminal motivation, this approach suggests that the constantly changing priorities of political entrepreneurs and organised crime groups shape the nature of the violent service offered by urban armed groups. The findings of this article mirror comparable dynamics in other countries in Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa and have crucial implications for international agencies working in the urban environment and dealing with urban armed groups.

From: Las artes en Quito en el cambio del siglo XVII al XVIII (Quito: FONSAL, 2009), pp. 11-25.
Traces the history of architect José Jaime Ortiz through archival sources from his birth in Alicante, Spain, through his work in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to the culmination of his career in Quito.

In an effort to provide audiences the opportunity to more deeply engage issues of race and identity as raised by the (1)ne Drop project, we have embarked upon a national campus tour. Colleges and universities are now able to host the (1)ne Drop exhibit on their campuses. Curated specifically for college campuses, each exhibit will be accompanied by a multimedia lecture on skin color politics and Black racial identity, entitled “One Drop: Fact, Fiction, or Fate” presented by Dr. Yaba Blay, (1)ne Drop author, Artistic Director of the project, and teacher-scholar of Africana Studies.

"The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences explores these competing narratives and the consequences of criminalizing immigration in the United States and abroad. It examines the impact of national, state, and local legislation on the psychosocial well being of immigrants. The book explores key ways in which immigration is criminalized, and examines how the problematization of immigration becomes a political tool. The first chapters of the book explore the criminalization of immigration through the lens of pacification and the theater of cruelty. In both chapters, the authors seek to understand the process of “othering” members of the immigrant population to exact social control and to mollify the public. These front chapters set the tone for remainder of the book. They provide the impetus for why states have enacted, or have attempted to enact state level immigration laws that make it nearly impossible for the undocumented to live within the boundaries of these states. In section two, three U.S. states are highlighted: Arizona, Alabama, and Indiana. While the chapters on Arizona and Alabama summarize key aspects of state laws, author Sujey Vega highlights the life of one undocumented immigrant as she navigates life in the Heartland.

The book then turns its focus to the criminalization of immigration in a socio-political context. Here, four chapters provide explorations of the criminalization of immigration on labor standards enforcement, immigrant detention, the right wing perspective in the United States and in Europe, and white supremacy. Labor standards impact the rate by which undocumented immigrants are paid, which in turn impacts their health and safety within and outside the workplace, protections from workplace discrimination, and collective activity protections. The criminalization of immigration erodes many of the workplace and labor protections that we have come to view as essential. Similarly, the privatization of corrections has influenced the incarceration and detention of many undocumented immigrants and has even influenced the very laws described in section two of this book. If not for the possibility of profiting off of the detention of the undocumented, many of immigration related laws would not have come to fruition.

The next section of the book provides a transnational and international context to the criminalization of immigration. With chapters focusing on human rights violations, the transnational dimensions of Mexican migration, the making of the Maras, and the criminalization of immigration in the United Kingdom, these chapters ask the reader to examine the criminalization of immigration from a broader perspective. The reader learns how national issues become international and, likewise how international immigration issues influence national policy.

The final chapters of the book put the human face on the criminalization of immigration. Each chapter represents a case study of a specific aspect of the criminalization of immigration. They approach the issue from the viewpoint of a day laborer, an undocumented woman who has become a victim of domestic violence, a child whose parents are undocumented, and a detention officer who wrestles with his decisions to continue his job. Regardless of which chapters one reads, the raw emotion felt by placing oneself in each context is overwhelming.

Overall, The Criminalization of Immigration: Contexts and Consequences provides a complete examination of an issue that cuts through emotional value conflicts. It provides the facts and knowledge essential for a fair and balanced debate"

The 2017 hurricane season caused widespread devastation across Central America, the Caribbean and the SouthEastern United States. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria were among the most intense Atlantic hurricanes and the costliest for the Circum-Caribbean region. For the small islands of the Caribbean, the hurricanes highlighted the acute vulnerability to climate change. The scale of physical ruin and level of social dislocation, however, do not just reflect the outcomes of a natural hazard. Continued structural dependency and outright entanglement in colonial relationships complicated recovery and coordination of aid to affected communities across the region. We argue that the experiences and outcomes of hazards like Harvey, Irma and Maria therefore invite examinations of persisting colonial power dynamics in discussions of climate hazard. Using Foucauldian theory for such an examination, we pro-blematize simply championing resilience, without noting the possibilities for its use as a biopolitical regime of governing life. Such an appraisal, we suggest, might clarify a path toward reparations and climate change justice.

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the contemporary Latina/o Muslim population in the U.S., focusing specifically on the factors that act as pathways to conversion and elements of community cohesion. To develop the paper, and give the reader a keen insight into the Latina/o Muslim community in the U.S., this paper will explicate its methodological approach, provide a brief review of previous literature, offer a glimpse at the demographics of the Latina/o Muslim community in the U.S., and offer a typologically codified and analyzed layout of the prime pathways Latina/o Muslims take in converting to Islam. Connecting this research to broader currents in global religion will reveal that studying Latina/o Muslims offers opportunities for more paradigmatic, and universal, understandings of religion and transnational flows of cultures, ideas, and beliefs in a globalized world. Prior to concluding the paper, some avenues for further research on the topic are presented. This study is a foundational piece for mapping contemporary Latina/o religion and the contours of the Muslim community in the U.S. – especially their minority manifestations – and serves as a supplementary entry into the expanding collection of research on transnational religious phenomena in our current, globalized, and pluralistic context.