The history of Latinx people in the United States is one marked by criminalization and police violence, yet efforts to address police brutality and repression are seldom understood as “Latinx issues.” How does anti-black racism and assimilationist tendencies within mainstream Latinx politics and media downplay the problem of police violence? How can a focus on questions of policing help us think about issues of racial difference, citizenship, and solidarity within Latinx communities?

Aaron G. Fountain, Jr. 
Aaron G. Fountain, Jr. is a Ph.D. Candidate at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He has done freelance writing for Al Jazeera America, Latino Rebels, Black Perspectives, The Hill, Medium, and others.

Marisol LeBrón
Marisol LeBrón is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance, in Puerto Rico and co-author, along with Yarimar Bonilla, of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. She is currently completing a short bilingual book entitled, Against Muerto Rico: Lessons from the Verano Boricua, about how Puerto Ricans are resisting colonialism and fighting to foster a life-affirming future for the archipelago.

Additional resources:
 
Latinx Narratives on Police Brutality, Respectability Politics, and Historical Erasure
 
Riot Shaming by Latinos Needs to Stop
 
Forgotten Latino Urban Riots and Why They Can Happen Again
 
Reading Towards Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness
 
Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD