This dissertation explores how the political economy particular to southern Dallas, Texas impacts a community-based college-readiness program for high school students in a Latino community. A community-based educational space (CBES) operated by a civil rights organization serving Latino youth who would be the first-generation to attend university, sought to craft an effective neoliberal Latino professional by reducing the individual -- the youth participant in a college-readiness program -- into a symbol that reflects a predefined aesthetic -- the excellent Latino American. I argue that the intersecting agendas of the college-readiness program and the Latino civil rights organization unintentionally magnified my study population's historical precarity without addressing the socioeconomic perspectives that led so many to find transitioning into post-secondary education frightening and threatening to familial systems of economics and care. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]