Why is it that there is not a strong coalition between Latinos and African Americans? Why haven’t these two groups, which share so much in common, not been able to sustain long-term social and political alliances? One of the reasons is the discourse of citizenship embedded in the new right-wing, anti-immigrant xenophobia which poses a challenge to building multiracial alliances in Chicago-and elsewhere.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2010 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.