Preface to the 2012 Edition

Abstract

Since the publication of Latinos, Inc. in 2001, Latinos have become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Latinos are growing at four times the rate of the total population; one in six Americans is Latino/a, and Latinos now make up 16 percent of the population. Similarly Hispanic marketing is now a more than five billion dollar industry whose growth outpaces general market advertising, and with shares of media dollars allocated to the Hispanic market continuing to increase notwithstanding the recession and the major cuts in overall advertising spending.1 After all, Latinos are now the undisputed largest minority group in the United States, and advertisers have continued to take notice. Unfortunately, it is not only Latino demographics and Hispanic marketing that have seen steady and unprecedented growth. Outpacing both is a rise in anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment at the level of public policy and public discourse. That it co-exists alongside the marketing love affair with Latinos is undoubtedly the most significant development since the book’s original publication. Indeed, Latinos, Inc. appeared a little over a week before September 11, 2001 and the attacks that would so quickly transform the United States’ political landscape. My original research documents the ascendant boosterism around Latinos’ marketing power that had led many marketing pundits to conclude that Latinos were on the brink of reaching the mainstream. Soon after 9/11, however, comments about Latinos being “hot” and offering salvation to corporate America seemed spurious and deceptive. Ten years later it is obvi-