This volume approaches Latinx literatures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the prismatic lens of modernity. Foregrounding from the outset that there is no single Latinx experience, we understand Latinx modernities as multiple and multiplying. Latinx literary modernities constellate the coloniality of US domination, the rapid and often traumatic social changes wrought by new technologies, the displacements associated with domestic revolutions and international warfare, and the innovation of literary forms commensurate with the spiritual yearnings of people on the margins of society. Our volume assumes an organization based on conceptual categories of US and Latin American modernities with the intent of highlighting emergent approaches to Latinx literatures. These conceptual categories – space, being, time, form, and labor – allow scholars working on different national groups across different time periods to be in more direct conversation with one another without assuming that they are telling the same story. Our categories make visible surprising connections, illuminate new methods, and push back against the coloniality of aesthetic models that limit the conditions of possibility for Latinx literature.

Environmental policies and enforcement pose fundamental corruption issues relating to the tensions between economic self-interest and the public good. By directing our attention to the challenges of collective action, they also highlight the importance of state-level institutional and political characteristics – notably, the political clout of industrial and environmental lobby groups. High levels of corruption and low levels of trust both weaken the stringency and enforcement of environmental policies and affect levels of emissions, although as levels of trust in a state increase, the effects of corruption weaken or vanish. Our environmental findings closely parallel those in other chapters having to do with COVID policies – not surprising, as they raise similar questions of policy and compliance – and support our argument that thinking solely in terms of specific acts of rule- or law-breaking is an incomplete understanding of corruption, its causes, and its consequences.

The United States, despite its generally favorable rankings on international indices, has significant corruption problems. Those issues cannot be ignored, but neither should they be exaggerated or oversimplified. American corruption is not any one single problem: contrasts are apparent among the states, across regions, and at different levels of the federal system. Some are illegal, but other types are legal – or not clearly against the law. While corruption is a significant issue in the context of law enforcement, race relations, environmental policy, and public health, its sources, consequences, and context differ from one sector to the next. Inequalities along racial and class lines add further complexities and significantly affect the prospects of reform. Checking corruption and dealing with its consequences will be a matter not only of enacting and enforcing sound laws but of how well we govern ourselves within a large, complicated, multi-level, but fundamentally democratic constitutional framework.

Arguments that corruption is “grease for the wheels,” benefiting economic growth, are difficult to sustain. State-level findings show that extensive corruption tends to leave a state poorer, and more economically unequal, than states where the problem is less significant. Citizens’ ability to respond to those difficulties by political means is in turn influenced by corruption itself, general levels of political participation, the strength or weakness of trust in officials and fellow citizens, the amount and quality of political news coverage in the mass media, and a state’s social composition. Problems of low trust could conceivably be addressed via effective universally applied public policies, but those in turn can challenge, and be challenged by, key aspects of America’s long-term bargain between government and citizens and by citizens’ expectations of each other. Corruption often undermines trust, and trust can underwrite effective reforms, but the relationships are complex and contingent upon levels of trust that are neither too low nor too high.

Health care comprises a major segment of the US economy and is a critical influence upon citizens’ quality of life. The quality of health care and access to it are negatively affected by corruption. So too is citizen compliance with public health policies, a fact that became apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay-at-home orders, for example, were significantly less effective in states with more extensive corruption. Low levels of trust in government contributed to those disparities. Such effects are more pronounced in poorer areas and Black communities. Racial contrasts in vaccine equity – access to vaccinations and related services – were pronounced and, again, reflected levels of corruption. Particularly intractable problems of collective action posed by structural corruption and structural racism must be addressed if disparities in the quality of health care are to be reduced.