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    322 views161 pages

    Beyond La Frontera

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    Ángel Luna
    Migracion

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    MARK OVERMYER-VELAZQUEZ Beyond la Frontera The History of Mexico-US. Migration gh Edited by MARK OVERMYER-VELAZQUEZ University of Connecticut Bs ADQUIRIDO POR Con pw eee | FECHA DE INGRESO -241a5/ Jol 3 _ o REG, —o4a.0.53 Et COLEGI ST e's ELA ASIFICACION << / DE Sareea (me J FRONTERA . cant NO. EJEMS NORTE wns EJEMPLAR—— BIBLIOTECA New York — Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 042253 5 COLEF BIBLIOTECA Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’ objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dares Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2011 by Oxford University Press, Inc. For titles covered by Section 112 of the US Higher Education Opportunity Act, please visit www.oup.com/us/he for the latest information about pricing and alternate formats. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com, Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, ‘without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond la frontera : the history of Mexico-USS. migration / edited by Mark Overmyer-Velzquez. p-cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-538222-8 1, Mexico—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. 2. Mexico—Emigration and immigration—Governtment policy—History—20th century. 3. United States—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. 4, United States—Emigration and immigration—Government policy—History—20th century. 5. Migrant labor—United States—History—20th century. 6. Mexicans—United States—History—20th century, I. Overmyer- Velézquez, Mark. E184.MSB497 2011, 304.873072—de22 2010042949 Printing number: 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Cover art by Favianna Rodriguez, Favianna.com Para mi mamd, su familia, J todos los migrantes mexicanos que han cruzado y vivido mds alld de la frontera. PART I Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 CONTENTS aw FOREWORD Saskia Sassen Weaponized Fences and Novel Borderings: The Beginning of a New History? ix PREFACE xv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES xvii INTRODUCTION —_ Mark Overmyer-Veldzquez Histories and Historiographies of Greater Mexico xix CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORIES Juan Mora-Torres “Los de casa se van, los de fuera no vienen” The First Mexican Immigrants, 1848-1900 3 Gilbert G. Gonzalez Mexican Labor Migration, 1876-1924 28 Fernando Satil Alanis Enciso The Repatriation of Mexicans from the United States and Mexican Nationalism, 1929-1940 51 Michael Snodgrass The Bracero Program, 1942-1964 79 vii viii CONTENTS Chapter 5 PART II Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Oscar J. Martinez Migration and the Border, 1965-1985 103 COMPARATIVE THEMES Helen B. Marrow ; Race and the New Southern Migration, 1986 to the Present 125 Jonathan Fox Indigenous Mexican Migrants 161 David FitzGerald Mexican Migration and the Law 179 Eithne Luibhéid and Robert Buffington Gender, Sexuality, and Mexican Migration 204 Alex M. Saragoza Cultural Representation and Mexican Immigration 227 EPILOGUE —_Douglas S. Massey The Past and Future of Mexico-U.S. Migration 251 APPENDIX Chronology of Mexican Migration 267 CONTRIBUTORS 287 BIBLIOGRAPHY 291 INDEX 337 FOREWORD ga Weaponized Fences and Novel Borderings The Beginning of a New History? Saskia Sassen Columbia University @z of the outstanding features of this volume is the exceptional breadth of the spaces and the times through which it constructs the Mexico-USS. history of migrations. A theme that is explicitly or implicitly present is the border—either as an actor or as an absence that makes itself felt as a specter, When I read these chapters I cannot help but see the many different worlds that are called forth by this particular border and indeed give “the border” an ever-shifting meaning. Today, in most of the world, a national state border is a mix of regimes with var- iable contents and locations. Different flows—of capital, information, professionals, undocumented workers—each constitute bordering through a particular sequence of interventions, with diverse institutional and geographic locations. The actual geo- graphic border is part of the cross-border flow of goods if they come by ground trans- port, but not of capital, except if actual cash is being transported. Each border-control intervention can be conceived of as one point in a chain of locations. In the case of traded goods the chain of locations might involve a preborder inspection or certifi- cation site. In the case of capital flows the chain will involve banks and stock markets located deep inside national territory and electronic networks that function above the level of national borders. In brief, institutional points of border control intervention can form long chains moving deep inside the country. The geographic borderline is but one point in that chain, One image we might use to capture this notion of multiple locations is that the sites for the enforcement of border regimes range from banks to bodies. When a bank executes the most elementary money transfer to another country, the bank is one of the sites for border-regime enforcement. A certified good represents a case where the object itself crossing the border is one of the sites for enforcement: the emblematic case is a certified agricultural product. But it also encompasses the case of the tourist carrying a tourist visa and the immigrant carrying the requisite certification. Indeed, in the case of immigration, it is the body of the immigrant herself that is both the carrier of much x FOREWORD of the regime and the crucial site for enforcement; and in the case of an unauthorized immigrant, it is, again, the body of the immigrant that is the carrier of the violation of the law and of the corresponding punishment (i.c., detention or expulsion). And yet, notwithstanding this variety, today we are seeing a collapse of diversity and a starker bipolar differentiation than the older histories described in some of these chapters. A large segment of actors, from firms to professionals, move in protected transversal bordered spaces, constructed through the suspension of older border con- trols and new regulations granting global firms and transnational professionals cross- border rights and guarantees of contract. These bordered spaces are impenetrable from the outside. No coyote can take you across those novel borderings. At the other extreme are the less protected, those who need to demonstrate their claim to entry, whether tourists or migrant workers, and at its most extreme, a less protected, more persecuted mix of people for whom the crossing of the border has degraded into an operation marked by the violation of their most basic rights as human beings. The cross-border space of corporations and high-level professionals is marked by protections and oppor- tunities, The cross-border space of migrants, whether documented or not, is marked by a shift from opportunity to confinements of all sorts, at its sharpest a space of capture and detention. In its richness and complex histories, the Mexico-U.S. border is a heuristic space: it tells a story about interstate borders much larger than the conventional and for- mal account of such borders. It is a type of space that makes the migrants who cross that border historic agents whose moves signal a larger history in the making. I have Jong thought of certain migrations as vanguards that are telling us much more than their movement from misery to (hopefully) possibility. In my own research on intra- European migrations I have found that to capture this vanguard character of particu- lar flows, it is necessary to detect the diversity of migrations even within a particular national and geographic flow. Here these chapters make an important contribution: they show us how beneath the overall seemingly never-ending Mexican flow to and from the United States lie multiple particular histories. There are endings and there are beginnings of new flows within the overall Mexican migration with diverse geographic and temporal frames and diverse activators of these flows. Let me elaborate on this mix of theme: A direct effect of globalization, especially corporate economic globalization, has been the creation of increasing divergence among different border regimes. Thus, the lifting of border controls on a growing variety of capital, services, and information flows has taken place even as other border regimes maintain closure. At one extreme, impediments to particular cross-border flows are now stronger than they were in the past, as is the case with the migration of low-wage workers. At the other extreme is the construction of specific “borderings” to contain, protect, and govern emerging, often strategic or specialized, flows that cut across traditional national borders. This is the case, for instance, with the new regimes in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NABTA) and World Trade Organization (WTO) and especially the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade for the cross-border circulation of high-level professionals. Where in the past these professionals may have been part of a country’s general immigration regime, now we have an increasing divergence between the latter and the specialized global, rather than national, regime governing these professionals, including formal Foreword xi cross-border portable rights. This is a tighter border than the geographic border and even the weaponized fence, Mexicans who move through this regime are in a space that separates them radically from Mexicans who do not—there is no option for undocu- mented border crossing. If there is one avant-garde historic agent in this shifting meaning of the territorial border today, it is the multinational corporation and global finance. The formalizing of their right to cross-border mobility is producing a large number of highly protected bordered spaces that cut across the conventional border. In that sense this is a type of global actor that operates not only in some electronic domain above borders, but also deep inside national territories. The effect is a partial but strategic denationalizing of national territory. There exists an interesting parallel with the specific protections and privileges granted to foreign firms through the regime informally referred to as the maquila. The sharp shifts from geographic borders to transversally bordered spaces inside national territories are now far more common and formalized for major corporate economic actors than they are for citizens and migrants. Neoliberal policies, far from making this a borderless world, have actually multiplied the bordered spaces that allow firms and markets to move across conventional borders with the guarantee of multiple protections as they enter national territories. In contrast, citizens and migrants keep losing protections under neoliberal regimes. This resonates with the other asymmetry: the international human rights regime is a weaker system of protections than the WTO provisions protecting the cross-border circulation of professionals. It is also weaker, although far broader, than the specialized visas for business people and the increasingly common visas for high-tech workers. In this process, particular legal protections get detached from their national territorial jurisdictions and become incorporated into a variety of often highly specialized or par- tial global regimes and thereby are often transformed into far more specialized rights and obligations. The multiple regimes that constitute the border as an institution can be grouped on the one hand into a formalized apparatus that is part of the traditional interstate sys- tem and on the other hand into an as yet far less formalized array of novel types of bor- derings lying largely outside the traditional framing of the interstate system. The first has at its core the body of regulations covering a variety of international flows—flows of different types of commodities, capital, people, services, and information. No mat- ter their variety, these multiple regimes tend to cohere around (a) the state's unilateral authority to define and enforce regulations in its territory and (b) the state’s obligation to respect and uphold the regulations coming out of the international treaty system or out of bilateral arrangements. The second major component, the new type of bor- dering dynamics arising outside the traditional interstate system, does not necessarily entail a self-evident crossing of borders; it includes the formal portable rights referred to above, which come out of the new world-trading regime instituted in the 1990s, and it includes a range of dynamics arising out of specific contemporary developments, notably emergent global law systems and a growing range of globally networked digital interactive domains. Global law systems are not centered in state law—that is, they are to be distin- guished from both national and international law. And the global digital interactive xii FOREWORD domains are mostly informal and hence outside the existing treaty system; they are often basically ensconced in subnational localities that are part of diverse cross-border networks, ranging from financial networks articulated through specific financial cen- ters to diverse global civil society networks. The formation of these distinct systems of global law or globally networked interactive domains entails a multiplication of bor- dered spaces. But the national notion of borders as delimiting two sovereign territorial states is not quite in play. The bordering operates at either a trans- or a supranational or subnational scale. And although these spaces may cross national borders, they are not necessarily part of the new open-border regimes that are state centered, such as those, for instance, of the global trading system or legal immigration. Insofar as these are global bordered domains that cut across national borders, they entail a novel instance of the notion of borders. State sovereignty is usually conceived of as a monopoly of authority in a partic- ular territory, Today it is becoming evident that state sovereignty both articulates its own borders and accommodates novel types of borderings. Sovereignty remains as a systemic property but its institutional insertion and its capacity to do the work of legit- imating have become unstable. The politics of contemporary sovereignties are far more complex than notions of mutually exclusive territories can capture. ‘The question of a bounded, that is, bordered territory as a parameter for authority and rights has today entered a new phase. State exclusive authority over its territory remains the prevalent mode of final authority in the global political economy; in that sense, then, state-centered border regimes—whether open or closed—remain founda- tional elements in world geopolitics. But these regimes are today less absolute formally than they were once meant to be. An additional factor is that critical components of this territorial authority that may still have a national institutional form and location are actually no longer national in the historically constructed sense of that term; they are, I argue, denationalized components of state authority: they look national but they are actually geared toward global agendas, some good and some not so good. In the case of the Mexico-UsS. border, it is becoming increasingly clear that it is a zone for the operations of a vast number of actors. We can see this in a number of conditions, including the seventy-plus nationalities present in the capital ownership of the northern Mexico border maquila, the hemispheric operations of drug cartels, and the significance of U.S.-made arms shipments for border operations linked to criminal trades of drugs and of people. In my reading, what dominates this border zone is a vast mix of processes that are actually mostly functioning within the law, notably the newly enabled flows through WTO and NAFTA. In that light, what stands out as a sharply delineated insertion of something new is the weaponized “protective” fence that began to be built in the 1990s, even as NAFTA was implemented. It is this that is the deviant presence: it stands out in a space that is marked by multiple and diverse cross-border transactions. Insofar as the state has historically had the capability to encase its territory through administrative and legal instruments, it also has the capability to change that encase- ment—for instance, deregulate its borders and open up to foreign firms and invest- ment or build a weaponized fence. The question that concerns me here is whether this signals that the capabilities entailed by territoriality, a form of exclusive and final authority, can be detached from geographic territory. Such detachment is conceivably Foreword xiii partial and variable depending on what is to be subjected to authority. This in turn raises a question about how the issue of borderings functions inside the nation state. "The “border function” is increasingly embedded in the product, the person, the instru- ment: a mobile agent that endogenizes critical features of the border. Further, there are multiple locations for the border, in some cases long transnational chains of locations that can move deep inside national territorial and institutional domains, such as the already mentioned facts that in financial flows, the actual border “moment” is often deep inside a country—a bank certifying the legitimacy of a money wire—and in cer- tified agricultural products the first border “moment” is often deep inside the country of origin, notably Mexico. ‘The locations of bordering capabilities are today in a phase of sharp unsettlement that opens up a whole new research agenda. The chapters in this book help us see this larger transformation through the specifics and details of the diverse times and spaces of that construction we call the “Mexico-U.S. border” It is one of the most intense bor- der zones in the world, which makes it particularly heuristic for the larger question of bordering. The specialized types of reterritorializing of global actors briefly described here have contributed to the making of bordered spaces inside the exclusive territory of state authority. But they are not to be confused with state authority. In that sense they dena- tionalize what has historically been constructed as national. This is a highly bordered event, but the nature of this border is foundationally different from that of the nation- state, that is, from interstate borders. In this context it is worth noting that extraterrito- riality, a specific type of state territorial authority, is now largely used by Mexico in the United States to deal with the undocumented Mexican population. Denationalized domains inside national territories create a whole new type of internal bordering. One question for research is whether these new types of internal orderings that have emerged over the past fifteen years increasingly weaken the geo- graphic border. Could it be that the brutal weaponizing of the Mexico-UsS. border dur- ing that same period of fifteen years represents not a new phase but a last violent move on the part of a deeply unstable notion of the border? PREFACE aw with many studies of migration history, Beyond la Frontera is inspired in part by my own migratory past. Growing up a landed immigrant in Canada to Mexican- and US.-born parents, I experienced in small measure some of the historical questions this volume raises. Never really “at home” in any of those three countries, I have always sought to understand national migration experiences and narratives from a variety of cross-border perspectives. Of course, it is an immense privilege to be able to study and write about the often wrenching dislocations and arduous journeys as well as formida- ble successes of migrants. As many of us are, I am very fortunate to be the beneficiary of the migrations of my family’s prior generations. Thanks to my infinitely patient and supportive partner, Jordanna Hertz, my immediate family has added Eastern European via New York City to the mix. Our three precious hijitos, Sarai Dov, Maceo Ilan, y ‘Adan Amichai, are constant reminders of the intersecting paths of our combined past histories, My first serious academic inquiry into the history and historiography of Mexican migration began in 2002 when, with the mentorship of Miguel Tinker Salas, I taught a historical survey of Chicana/o history at Pomona College. Trained predominantly as a modern mexicanista by Gil Joseph, my south-of-the-border approach to U.S. Chicana/o and American studies forced me to confront rigid notions of mexicanidad and facile assumptions about the national origins of Mexican migrants. Gil’s superlative schol- arship and enduring support continue to shape my scholarship. Also at Yale, Patricia Pessar and Stephen Pitti deserve my sincere appreciation for reading earlier drafts of my work and writing letters of support. Several fellowships supported the preparation of this volume. My inchoate under- standing of Mexico's migratory past began to take form thanks to an International Migration Institute Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, directed by Roger Waldinger. Cesar Rodriguez, Jean Silk, and Nancy Rodriguez’s assistance with a Yale University Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies Library Visiting Fellowship helped to advance my work. I completed the edits on the manuscript as the Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University. Merilee Grindle, Edwin Ortiz, June Erlick, xvi. PREFACE Hal Jones, and the other staff at DRCLAS provided an ideal environment for scholarly production. lam grateful for the lively discussions with the other fellows at the Center, in particular Jorge Duany and Robert Alvarez. My semester at DRCLAS was made possible and all the more enjoyable by the generous hospitality of the familia Holladay- ‘Wolkoff. Joshua, Mara, Elana, and Peter housed, fed, and schlepped me with ineffable charm and carifio. ‘At the University of Connecticut I have had the good fortune to benefit from financial support and a long tradition of Mexican studies. Soon after arriving to UConn one of the pioneers of Mexican studies in the United States, Hugh Hamill, invited me to his home to review his library. Among the books Dr. Hamill generously offered me from his rich collection were those of his former student and colleague Lawrence Cardoso and Arthur Corwin, authors of two of the first long-range studies of Mexico-USS. migration. I continue to learn from each of their research. A fellowship at UConn’s Humanities Institute provided me with the time to read and write and, more importantly, the camaraderie and intellectual company of Dick Brown, Charles Mahoney, Jo-Ann Waide, Michelle Bigenho, Anke Finger, Robin Greeley, and Michael Lynch. In the history department Shirley Roe, with the assistance of Nancy Comarella, made it possible for me to put together leave time for this and future projects. | am indebted to all my colleagues in the department for fostering an engaging academic home. Several graduate students helped to energize this work with their own, including José Rodriguez and Andrés Pletch. I am particularly grateful for Andrés’ diligent and creative assistance with the volume's bibliography and chronology. At UConn’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Elizabeth Mahan, Beth Summers, Carolyn Golden, Carrie Stevens, and the dynamic cohort of MA students have each helped to animate this project at various stages. Many thanks go to Adriana Vega por su ayuda con la traduccion excelente del capitulo tres. Other colleagues at UConn and elsewhere have been invaluable collaborators in the genesis and development of this project. Evelyn Hu De-Hart at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America has become a treasured mentor and guide through the institutional labyrinths of ethnic and area studies. Thanks also to José Angel Hernandez and mis compadres Enrique Septilveda, Ray Craib, Rick Lopez and Guillermo Irizarry for their insights and comments on this project. I was thrilled that Favianna Rodriguez agreed to create an original piece of art for the book. It is an honor to have her beautiful and inspirational work on the cover. This work started with an engaging and inviting conversation with Brian Wheel from Oxford University Press. I deeply appreciate his careful collaboration and encour- agement with this volume. Danniel Schoonebeek guided me through challenges of for- matting and submission. Marc Becker, Truman State University; Carlos A. Contreras, Grossmont College; Ellen Eisenberg, Willamette University; Terri Turigliatto-Fahrney, Ph.D., Saint Louis University; Claude Hargrove, Fayetteville State University; Monica Rankin, University of Texas; Fernando Fabio Sanchez, Portland State University and Dr. Christopher White, Marshall University helped to shape the initial manuscript and make Beyond la Frontera a better work altogether. Final thanks go to the volume’ indi- vidual authors for their carefully researched and elegantly crafted original contribu- tions. It has been a pleasure to put together this work with them over the past three years. Figures 31 6.1 6.2 8.1 8.2 El E2 E3 EA ES E6 Ev Es 5 ED Tables E51 5.2 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES a Return of the Argonauts, 1931 63 Percentage of Population, Foreign-born from Mexico, 2000 US. Census 133 Percentage of Population, Black or African American (One Race), 2000 US. Census 151 Apprehensions along the Southwest Border, 1980-2007 189 Percentage of Unauthorized Migrants from Three Mexican Communities Apprehended at Least Once and Border Crossing Success Rates, 2005-2010 194 ‘Mexican Migration to the United States in Three Categories 252 Mexican Naturalizations and Entries of Citizen Relatives 256 Indicators of US. Immigration Enforcement Effort 257 Border Apprehensions and Internal Deportations from the United States 258 Percentage of Undocumented Migrants Crossing through Baja California and Going to California 260 Probability of Taking a First and Later Undocumented Trip to the United States 261 Probability of Returning to Mexico within 12 Months of Entering the United States 262 ‘Trends in Real Hourly Wages Earned by Mexican Immigrants, Mexican Americans, and Non-Hispanic Whites 264 Average Amount of “Migradollars” Sent and Brought Back by Mexican Migrants 265 Number of Mexican Green-Card Commuters, 1963-1973 106 Mexican Immigrants Admitted to the United States and Deportable Aliens Located, 1961-1985 110 xvii xviii 53 54 6.1 62 63 64 8.1 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Speculative Estimates of Undocumented People in the United States, 1981 112 Results of the “Tortilla Curtain” Survey Conducted in February 1979 with Fifty Residents of South E] Paso and Fifty Merchants with Businesses in South El Paso 118 Hispanic Origin Ethnicity Population by US. State of Residence, 1980-2007, ‘Traditional Immigrant and Mexican Immigrant Gateway States. 134 Hispanic Origin Ethnicity Population by US. State of Residence, 1980-2007, Traditional Southern States. 137 Foreign-born Population by US. State of Residence, 1980-2007, Traditional Immigrant and Mexican Immigrant Gateway States. 143 Foreign-born Population by U.S. State of Residence, 1980-2007, Traditional Southern States 145 Racial and Ethnic Self-identifications of Hispanic Respondents, 2003-2004 152 Years to Process Immigrant Visas for Mexicans, Filipinos, and All Other Nationals, 2006 191 . NTRODUCTION ~ Histories and Historiographies of Greater Mexico Mark Overmyer-Velazquez University of Connecticut “México, pafs de emigracién?” —Molstis GonzALEz NAVARRO (1960, 95) Ma" migration to the United States has comprised the world’s largest sus- tained movement of migratory workers in the twentieth and twenty-first cen- turies.' As part of the post World War IT massive wave of migrants from across Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, in recent decades Mexicans have comprised by far the largest migrant group in the United States (Waters, Ueda, and Marrow 2007; Suarez and Péez 2009). Although frequently cast as peripheral to projects of nation- state formation and consolidation, over the past 160 years Mexican migrants and migration have played central roles in the economic and political development of both countries.” With roots in the nineteenth century, an increased migratory flow in the first decades of the twentieth century prompted the beginning of significant 1. Mexico's emigrant population is part of a global total of over 214 million emigrants (United Nations 2009) 2. In this chapter I am careful to distinguish between the sets of terms migrant and migration and immigrant and immigration. The latter set can imply a unidirectional path to the United States and, as such, has been linked to a historical privileging of assimilationist and melting-pot theories that ignore both the transnational movement of people back and forth across borders and their varied national and regional

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