In the first chapter when Lauren lists off all the famous Latin artists in Hollywood, she casually mentions Antonio Banderas as one of them. Antonio Banderas is a Spanish actor, and Spain, being in Europe, isn't a Latin American country, so it's odd that he would fall into that category. However this incorrect name drop makes sense. It both shows how ignorant Lauren is of Latino culture, and who can claim the label of Latino. Considering how Banderas is occasionally mislabeled in the media as a Latino actor (which is likely how Lauren got her information), it also shows America's tendency to shoehorn all Spanish-speaking people under the same category.
After Usnavys jokingly tells an intoxicated Lauren that her problems stem from her white side, the latter reminds her that her Cuban side is also white note According to Cuba's most recent 2012 census, approximately 64% of Cubans identify as white. . This once again showcases America's ignorance in being unable to distinguish between race, ethnicity, and nationality, and the assumption that "Latino" is a race in itself. Assuming that her paternal family didn't intermix with other races at any point, Lauren could just be a white woman. But because she has a Spanish last name, she's not considered white, which is shown in how she's treated her journalist job, on top of the fact that when she was first hired, the bosses present her as a minority.
This contradiction of terms also contributes to Lauren's identity issues. She reminds Usnavys that she's white, though a few chapters earlier she refers to herself as a "colored". Lauren freely acknowledges that she's white, but since her workplace treats her like a woman of color, she might as well identify as one.
Rebecca's family is said to go back several generations in New Mexico. This probably means that they were around during the colonial era when New Mexico and other states that were formerly of Mexico became part of the U.S. In the aftermath of obtaining these states, the U.S. government, for political reasons, classified Mexican-Americans as white on the census (though were not treated as such), unless they were very Indigenous in appearance. If Rebecca's ancestors were visibly mixed, it's likely that they were classified as white, and even began to view themselves as such as a subconscious survival tactic against the racism they likely received. This would be passed down the family line.
There is some implication that, deep down, Rebecca knows that she's brown Mexican. One clue that points to this is the fact that she's part of a the Minority Business Association, a group that gives recognition to successful ethnic minority business owners. This might be where Rebecca's cognitive dissonance comes in: While she's entirely convinced that she's white, she's also acutely aware that she's treated as an "inferior" minority by actual white people, and so feels forced to congregate with other minorities in order to receive any recognition for her hard work.
Lauren repeatedly looks down on Amber's pro-Chicano activism, and speaks of other forms of pro-Latino activism with disdain. While it looks like she's just being shallow, her disparagement shows the underlying systemic issue of financial and racial privilege within the Latinx community. Lauren is a white Cuban, and is therefore spared from the kind of racism that her Black and brown friends experience on a daily basis. While she probably wouldn't turn her back on her heritage, based on her appearance, she could "opt out" of her Latinidad at any time—a luxury her friends (minus Sara) don't have.
A common nickname for someone named Rebecca is Becky, a name frequently attributed to a "basic white girl". Quite fitting for a character who for the whole story strives to be seen as white.
The novel, being a "chica lit" (Latina chick lit) follows the standard formula of a typical chick lit, which includes a group of middle- to upper-class group of female friends who seek stability in their careers and love lives. However, the novel deviates from the formula by having an ambiguous Bittersweet Ending rather than a full-on happy ending that is common to white chick lits. This is likely to remind readers that, unlike the typical white, heterosexual protagonists who's immediate problems can be reasonably dealt with by the end of the book, the sucias—who are of ethnic, racial, and sexual minority groups—experience problems that are systemic in nature, and thus cannot be solved overnight.
One minor complaint from readers is how Elizabeth is the least fleshed-out from the main characters. This makes sense for the same reason why Lauren is the most fleshed-out character: The latter's POV was written based on Alisa Valdez's personal experiences as a white half-Cuban woman. The author probably wouldn't be able to be as detailed on a Black Colombian lesbian given she isn't one herself.
Fridge Horror
In Lauren's Saints, Lauren's physical appearance is given in more detail, notably that she has pale, freckled skin, orange-brown curly hair, all that she inherited from her white Irish American mother. If Lauren, who's a white Latina, can face discrimination at her job at the Boston Gazette despite being physically indistinguishable from an everyday white woman, imagine what kind of treatment a Latina of color would experience there.
When Lauren starts introducing her friends to the reader, she humorously mentions that Sara's own mother claimed that her daughter had been dangerously clumsy ever since "she grew boobs". We later find out that Sara's present-day injuries are the result of beatings by Roberto, typically whenever she deviates from the "submissive housewife" role or merely suspects that she might be looking at another man. We also know that she and Roberto had been dating since high school, around the time she would've hit puberty. With this in mind, one has to wonder whether it was just a coincidence that Sara became clumsy around the time she hit puberty, or if a teenage Roberto had began to take violent sexual possession of her from a young age.
