The West

The West

Suzanne Obler and Deena J. González

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in Contemporary Politics, Law, and Social Movements (Oxford University Press, 2015)

According to the director of the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana, Larry Swanson, the Western Census Region is defined by thirteen states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. For the purposes of this essay, and because some of these states are reviewed elsewhere in essays on the Southwest and on the Northwest, the focus will fall on California, Nevada, and Utah. It is important to emphasize that for the Western Census Region, or the thirteen states named here, the US Census Bureau finds that nearly one-third of the total population is Hispanic or Latino. In the South the figure is 16 percent, in the Northeast 13 percent, and in the Midwest 7 percent of the total population. More important, in this large western territory, the Latino/a population grew, according to the most recent census data, by 34 percent, or twice the percentage of the West’s total population growth.