LatinX Imagined Community

In the case of LatinX communities the example of an imagined community is in operation when participants imagine, and culturally express, what are symbolic acts of belonging, for example, belonging within the cultural context of Aztlan (in California) or Borinquen (in New York)  through art, poetry, language, naming children, writing historical accounts, and participating in cultural practices precisely because these practices are affirmations of belonging to a community, especially when full integration into mainstream society is functionally not possible.

So to think of oneself as Latin@/LatinX does not require for those that might live in California to actually know personally populations that are the descendants of Spanish colonization in Chicago.  It only requires that there is a shared experience of being the product of a colonial legacy and/or a shared cultural reference in order to then create a shared notion/idea of history between these two populations.

Anderson argued that nations are imagined as both limited and sovereign. They are limited in that nations have “finite boundaries, beyond which lie other nations.”

Anderson argues that nations are sovereign:  As such LatinX populations have both the concept of sovereign geopolitical nations (across North & South America as well as the Caribbean) and ideas of culturally sovereign nations maintained via various cultural expressions within the borders of other nations– themselves imagined.