Dora the Explorer, Constructing “Latinidades” and the Politics of Global Citizenship

Dora the Explorer, which went into syndication on the Nickelodeon children’s television network in 2000, marks the shifting terrain of a globalized juvenile Latino/a television market that has become increasingly multicultural and pro-bilingual, despite the fact that the most states in the United States have slashed the budgets of or altogether eliminated the presence of bilingual education. Dora the Explorer provides a post-modern model of globalized “Latinidades,” citizenship, race, and gender which express a universal Latino/a subjectivity. At the same time, the show represents a number of distinct Latino/a cultural practices (like the parranda and the comparsa) through the representation of space, language, music, and racialized visual representations of Latino/a children. These double discourses express how nation, citizenship, and identity are a contested terrain most closely illustrated by the show. With a reading of the cultural work, Dora the Explorer performs in general and a close reading of the 2001 episode “Dora La Músico,” in particular, the essay attempts to analyze the capitalist success of Dora the Explorer in terms of the commercialization of and marketing of Latinidades that have real-world implications for US Latino/as and Latin Americans.