Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin

Latinos are part and parcel of Wisconsin's present—and past. Historian of twentieth-century United States migration, labor, and religion, Sergio M. González, examines Latino community-building and religion in the state in his new book, Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin. This new study builds off his past work on Latinos and religion, Mexicans in Wisconsin and Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945. In this book, González covers the growth, adaptation, and advocacy of the community in Wisconsin over the course of the twentieth century, from the 1920s up to the 1980s.Strangers No Longer emerges from his lived experiences as a Mexican American growing up in religious, activist spaces in Wisconsin and the need to tell the story of a population that has frequently been ignored in the state's history. Yet it is not simply a broad overview of the community. González's book is a “story of the profound connections between faith, the ethic of hospitality, and social justice movements in Latino communities in twentieth-century Wisconsin” (p. 3). He focuses on hospitality studies, centering on the Christian notion of caring for the stranger, the sick, the poor, and the refugee. By doing so, González seeks to reframe the history of Latinos in the Midwest and the United States, looking at how sacred spaces shape the population, provide fellowship and moral justification, encourage cross-ethnic and cross-racial collaboration, and alleviate prejudice and isolation. Ultimately, he argues that “understanding the faith and political pursuits of Latinos of Wisconsin not only deepens consideration of immigrant and migrant movement and settlement throughout the Midwest, but is essential for conceptualizing how these communities have defined belonging, political advocacy and mobilization, and their own religiosity” (p. 4).González supports this assertion through chapters that are organized both chronologically and thematically. Given his focus on hospitality studies, he situates each chapter around different kinds of hospitality, bookended by an introduction and conclusion. His first chapter, “Extending Hospitality,” is about the initial Latino, specifically Mexican, migration to Wisconsin and how Catholic parishes served as spaces of community and refuge considering the 1920s Cristero civil conflict between church and state in Mexico. Chapter 2, “Contingent Hospitality,” focuses on issues with Tejano migrant farmworkers in the 1950s and 1960s and how Catholics and Protestants fought over how to work with them. The third chapter, “Assimilative Hospitality,” looks at Puerto Rican migration to Milwaukee in the 1950s, examining the different religious groups that sought to incorporate the population into the city, but ultimately considered them perpetual foreigners. In chapter 4, “Institutionalizing Hospitality,” González describes the interracial and interfaith coalitions that emerged in the early 1960s to improve the conditions of the Latino community. The fifth chapter, “Hospitality and Self-Determination,” focuses on the 1960s and 1970s, covering activists who worked alongside Protestant and Catholic clergy to change community institutions, making them mindful of the needs of Latinos. In the sixth and last chapter, “Radical Hospitality,” González highlights the national sanctuary movement in the context of Wisconsin, where congregations provided refuge to Central Americans fleeing violence in the 1980s.González's book fills in a major gap in the literature. Much of the historiography focuses on Mexican Americans in the southwestern United States or on migrants from the Caribbean in the northeastern United States. Within the context of the Midwest, the scholarship that does exist largely concentrates on the Chicago metropolitan area, although there is increasing work on Michigan and to a lesser extent on other states. Although González generally highlights the history of the Mexican American community in Wisconsin, he does make a point of making it a Latino history by also documenting Tejano internal migration to the state, as well as that of Puerto Ricans.The author also sets his work apart from others by showcasing the role of religious institutions in the lives of Latinos. The historiography on Latinos has largely left out religion until relatively recently. Rather than just focusing on the religious practices of Latinos, González considers the role of politicized religion. He articulates that “by combining a shared moral language with an attention to the connections between hospitality to Latinos and religious social teaching, Wisconsin clergy and laity established a justification for organizing through their religiosity, understanding their activism as fundamental to their identity as people of faith” (p. 209). Religious activism is indeed a common thread throughout González's book.Overall, Strangers No Longer contributes to our understanding not only of Latinos in Wisconsin, but also of the role that religion and organizing play in the state's community. Although the book concentrates more on urban Milwaukee history than on other parts of Wisconsin, it ultimately provides a much-needed perspective on the state's past as a whole. This book is a welcome addition to the fields of Latino, Midwestern, and US religious history.