The Latino Stereotype Reinforced

In Season 3 of the Showtime series "Dexter", Jimmy Smits guest stars as Assistant District Attorney Miguel Prado. Prado is of Cuban heritage, and acts very similar to what would the stereotype of a Cuban living in Miami. He places great value on friends and family, his faith is important him, and he is a bit of a hardliner in his prosecution of criminals - an aspect of himself that he personally transcribes into being passionate about his work. Prado befriends Dexter early in the season, and rather quickly learns about Dexter's "talent" of killing people and leaving no trace of evidence.

Prado befriends Dexter and does nothing short of accepting Dexter into his own family, as Prado's inner circle consists mostly of his family anyway - a very popular stereotype of Cubans living in Miami and Latinos in general. Prado then trys to get Dexter to assist him in carrying out his vigilante justice and ultimately trys to have Dexter teach him his craft later on, as Prado becomes fed up with the bureaucracy and inefficiency of the court system. This passion and hotbloodedness is also very consistent with the stereotype of a Latin male.

Towards the end of the season, Prado has an affair with another woman and his wife finds out and leaves him. This again is another popular Latino stereotype, which says that Latino men are very sexual and that this often leads to infidelity. Overall, when analyzing all the aspects and actions of Jimmy Smit's character, he is almost entirely constructed of the classic stereotype of the Latin male. This form of stereotyping, however, was essential to the character and the series, since if Miguel Prado was of another ethnicity of a female, the series could not have transpired the way it did. Dexter might have already been turned into the police had it been someone else and not Prado that found him at the scene of the crime one evening.