Carmelita Torres and bodies of resistance: Reclaiming young Latinas’ bodies within hegemonic discourse: Carmelita Torres y cuerpos de resistencia: Reivindicando los cuerpos de las jóvenes latinas dentro del discurso hegemónico

Polemical rhetorics are often applied to young Latina activists’ bodies. This phenomenon finds roots in early print media and has been left largely unchallenged. While contemporary media adheres to these practices, the activists in question are today able to speak back and redress their misrepresentation within the dominant narrative. Ultimately, this article questions how and why such rhetorics have persisted throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, employing Carmelita Torres, the instigator of the 1917 Bath Riots, as a foundational resource. By posing Torres’s example against three contemporary activists, this article determines that, though hegemonic discourses mediate Latina bodies in problematic and limiting ways, contemporary Latinas resist the negative coding of their bodies and reclaim the discourse surrounding their actions.