El Nuevo Bajío and the Nuevo South: Race, Region, and Mexican Migration since 1980
by
Yuridia Ramirez
Department of History Duke University
Date:______Approved:
______Sarah Deutsch, Co-Supervisor
______Jocelyn Olcott, Co-Supervisor
______Gunther Peck
______Adriane Lentz-Smith
______Laurent Dubois
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University
2018
ABSTRACT
El Nuevo Bajío and the Nuevo South: Race, Region, and Mexican Migration since 1980
by
Yuridia Ramirez
Department of History Duke University
Date:______Approved:
______Sarah Deutsch, Co-Supervisor
______Jocelyn Olcott, Co-Supervisor
______Gunther Peck
______Adriane Lentz-Smith
______Laurent Dubois
An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University
2018
Copyright by Yuridia Ramirez 2018
Abstract
My dissertation examines the circular transit of ideas about race and identity.
Through transnational archival research and oral histories in North Carolina and throughout Mexico, I argue that migrants’ ideas about race differed depending on their sending community. I use the experiences of migrants from Cherán, Michoacán, to emphasize that race making is a fluid process. Though historians conventionally have treated ethnic and racial categories as separate, if often intersecting, I treat them as fundamentally similar and interchangeable. While the majority of historical scholarship on Mexicans in the United States focuses on areas that were once part of Mexico (like the
US Southwest), my study attends to how ideas about race form differently in regions traditionally isolated from Mexican migration, like North Carolina. This research reveals that indigenous migrants’ identities developed and transformed differently, intimately linked to the ways racial and ethnic histories have been propagated and lived by
Mexican citizens in diverse regions of Mexico. My dissertation also demonstrates that migrants not only adopted the racial ideas of their receiving state, but they also transmitted racial knowledge back to their home communities. In doing so, this history of migration to the United States both begins and ends outside of the country. In our global and transnational context, my project changes our understanding of how racial formations are generated in our contemporary world.
iv Dedication
Para mi mami y papi, que todo lo dieron por mí—este logro se los dedico a ustedes.
v Table of Contents
Abstract ...... iv
Acknowledgements ...... viii
Introduction ...... 1
Transborder Movements for Transborder Research ...... 18
1. “The Blood, and the Face, of First Peoples”: Mexican Indigeneity, Race, and Migratory Exchanges ...... 22
1.1 The P’urhépechas from Cherán: A Legacy of Autonomy ...... 27
1.2 Indigenistas, Indígenas, and an Emerging National Consciousness of Self-Determination ...... 34
1.3 Indigenous Braceros, Development, and a Diaspora ...... 38
1.4 Scales of Consciousness: National Manifestations of Self- Determination ...... 45
1.5 Radio Xepur: The Voice of the P’urhépechas ...... 53
2. “I Don’t Want to Get the Coloreds Riled Up”: North Carolina and Minority Confrontations, 1975-1988 ...... 61
2.1 North Carolina – “Progressive” or a “Paradox”? ...... 66
2.2 The “New Slaves” of the Tar Heel State ...... 75
2.3 Migrant Advocacy and the Discourse of Civil Rights ...... 90
2.4 Race in the Post-IRCA Era ...... 110
3. Transborder Racial Formations and Challenges, 1980-1996 ...... 115
3.1 Discrimination Begins at Home ...... 117
3.2 Migrant Workers and the Nuance of Legal Status ...... 135
3.3 Transborder Imaginings: Preparing Migrants for the Road Ahead ...... 142
vi 3.4 Developing a Migrant Worker Consciousness in Mexico ...... 144
3.5 Those Who Stay ...... 152
4. Contested Conflict: Latinos and African Americans in Durham, 1988- 1997 ...... 166
4.1 Black Catholics and the US South: The Historical Context of Holy Cross...... 169
4.2 Staging the Walkout ...... 183
4.3 Honoring the Black Catholic Experience ...... 194
4.4 Community and Institutional Support to the Forefront ...... 207
4.5 The Franciscan Friars in Durham ...... 209
4.6 Latinos and African Americans in the Bull City ...... 216
4.7 Confronting Anti-Blackness as a Decolonization Strategy ...... 220
5. Black and Brown Labor Struggles in the Tar Heel State at the Turn of the Century: “Yes We Can! Sí Se Puede” ...... 225
5.1 A Slaughterhouse Hell: Tar Heel, NC ...... 230
5.2 Solidarity Struggles: Organizing Working-Class Labor in the Tar Heel State ...... 236
5.3 Justice@Smithfield: Attracting Latino Laborers ...... 250
5.4 Raising Consciousness Amid Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in North Carolina and Beyond ...... 256
5.5 Union Time: Taking on the Smithfield Packing Company ...... 268
5.6 Transborder Awakenings ...... 275
Conclusion ...... 279
Works Cited ...... 288
Biography ...... 318
vii Acknowledgements
I first heard my mother’s migration story when I was fourteen years old. In 1988, my 23-year-old mother sat nervously on a bench in the San Juan Capistrano historic train depot in California. An immigration raid had begun, and my mother resigned herself to being sent back to Mexico, despite having walked all night in the desert with one baby in her arms (my brother) and another in her belly. My mother was pregnant with me. She recalled the immigration officials looked at her, but instead chased after others. After the raid, she took the train to the airport and was reunited with my father in Chicago, where I was born just three months later. Nearly thirty years later, my mother still wonders why the immigration officials did not arrest her.
My parents were young, working class Mexican immigrants, raising two children in rural Wisconsin. We were the only—and perhaps the first—family of color in town, and furious notes were posted on our front door from other community members, letters laden with expletives that threatened our family and demanded that we leave the town and go back to our country. Even amid these attacks, our parents always protected us and instilled in us a sense of pride and honor in our Mexican heritage. Hearing my mother’s migration story, and witnessing her continued pain and trauma, I realized the depths of my mother’s strength, valor, and sacrifice. I have faced struggles as a first- generation college student and being the first in my family to pursue a doctoral degree, but they are incomparable to what my mother has endured for me to be here.
viii Though my own migration story has informed my scholarly journey and research questions, the relationships I have developed have guided the ways I approach my research, teaching, and outreach. I benefitted as a child from an exceptional education in Wisconsin’s public schools, in an era when teachers enjoyed fitting compensation and benefits, schools were adequately funded, and resources were readily available. In high school, my history teacher David Moon fed my curiosity for all things history and politics, while Tracy Dickfoss Chambas encouraged my writing as a political act of resistance and as a means to foster change. Their teaching styles and methods always have influenced my pedagogy, while their mentorship and friendship has been exemplary of the ways I seek to cultivate meaningful relationships with students.
As an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, professors throughout the institution played pivotal roles in my academic and personal life. When Brian Southwell, during my second week of class as a freshman, called on me by my name in a 150- student class, I knew he was something special. My first faculty mentor, Brian answered emails and shared countless meals and conversations with me throughout my undergraduate career, and he even flew back to Minneapolis to see me give the commencement address at my undergraduate graduation ceremony. When I visited
Duke University as a prospective student, knowing Brian was just down the street in
Chapel Hill made my decision to attend Duke even easier, because he was—and he and his family continue to be—family. Other professors in the School of Journalism and
Mass Communication, like Giovanna Dell’Orto, Catherine Squires, and Mark Pedelty,
ix also nourished my passion for writing about race and identity and supported my original research projects and endeavors.
Professors in history and anthropology modeled not only fascinating research agendas and admirable pedagogical styles, but they also pushed me to consider a career as an academic and teacher. As professors, Keith A. Mayes and Michael Lower served as model educators who made learning history, and learning how to do history, both fun and exciting. Donna Gabaccia inspired and oftentimes funded my pursuit of immigration history as both a personal and academic endeavor. The Immigration
History and Research Center, and especially Andy Wilhide and Justin Schell, recognized our contributions as undergraduates and immigrants and considered us equal collaborators and producers of knowledge. Tim Hoogland—Mr. History—introduced and gave me the opportunity to work directly with immigrant and refugee students through the National History Day program, which has been one of the most formative experiences I have had both as an educator and as a human being. I forever will be indebted to Victor M. Macías-González—the first professor I had who looked and sounded like me—for encouraging me to conduct an oral history project with my immigrant parents, for pushing me to become a stronger writer, for insisting I reclaim the beauty of my name and all of its accents, and for being a consistent mentor in my life since my undergraduate career. Patrick J. McNamara taught me about my homeland, supported my development as an historian, and guided me through every step in between.
x I never would have known about graduate school, nor believed I could have pursued it, had it not been for faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota. Ellen
Sunshine, as her name would suggest, was the most wonderful academic counselor I could have had as an undergraduate. She saw me, heard me, and made magic when I needed her the most. Bianet Castellanos encouraged me to apply to a summer research program at the University of California at Irvine for students considering graduate school, introducing me to a world that was heretofore unknown to me. From that experience I only gained more faculty mentors who have become invested in me and in my success throughout my graduate career, like Ana Elizabeth Rosas. Sharyn and Bruce
Schelske, who directed the University of Minnesota’s McNair Scholars Program, provided a safe and welcoming space for us as underrepresented undergraduate students to learn and develop as future academics, encouraged us to recognize and honor our abilities and potential, and defended us from the microaggressions we faced at our research institution. Their actions transformed my undergraduate experience and fostered confidence in my abilities and potential.
As a graduate student, I have been so fortunate to learn from generous faculty mentors who have provided intellectual, professional, and personal support far beyond their duties. They have challenged me to intervene in various historiographies, employ different methodologies and digital tools, and write in ways that are both accessible and accountable. They have read hundreds of pages and scribbled dozens of margin notes that sometimes celebrate my thinking and other times push me to approach ideas and
xi sources with new perspectives and analyses. Beyond their intellectual expertise, my committee also have provided a great deal of personal encouragement. I am especially grateful for Sally Deutsch’s unwavering generosity and sincere kindness, Jolie Olcott’s commitment to her students and social justice, Gunther Peck’s investment in politics and community, Adriane Lentz-Smith’s humor, dance moves, and heart-to-heart inspirational conversations, and Laurent Dubois’s progressive vision that includes diverse publics and an accountable academy.
Other Duke and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) faculty members and staff also have been generous with their mentorship and support throughout my graduate career, among them James Chappel, John French, Reeve
Huston, Nancy MacLean, Jehangir Malegam, John J. Martin, Sumathi Ramaswamy, Pete
Sigal, Phil Stern, Susan Thorne, Liliana Paredes, Melissa Simmermeyer, Joan Clifford,
Jecca Namakkal, Charlie Thompson, Ana Fernández, Bethzaida Fernandez, Holly
Ackerman, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Kathryn Burns, Cynthia Radding, and Zaragosa
Vargas. Anita Yvonne-Bryant was such a godsend to me as a graduate student, and I will never forget all the lessons I learned from our countless hours of conversation in her office.
I would not have made it through graduate school without my crew who are brilliant scholars and friends. Seeing their faces across the table from me at coffee shops and libraries, in classrooms and workshops, and at the occasional restaurant and brewery, filled me with joy, laughter, and encouragement. Since day one, the friendship
xii of Tiffany Holland, Will Goldsmith, Scovill Currin, and Meggan Cashwell helped me make it through each day. Alisha Hines arrived in my second year of graduate school and became my “person” in the history department and in my life in Durham. Kency
Cornejo, an advanced graduate student I met during my first year, became my mentor, role model, guiding light, best friend, and sister. I cannot imagine having done any of this without my fellow McNerdie. Alicia Reyes-Barriéntez was the Juana to my Chana.
Felicia Arriaga, the lifelong Duke student, became my sister-friend throughout my graduate career. From her scholarship to her community advocacy and activism, Feli Fel inspired me to be more productive and grounded in el pueblo. During some of the hardest and earliest years of graduate school, Ameem Lutfi was my rock, salvation, and closest friend.
My work and life also were enriched by many other former and current Duke and UNC graduate students, including Samantha Smalls, Vanessa Freije, Cynthia R.
Greenlee, Bryan Pitts, Corinna Zeltsman, Caroline Garriott, Carlos Abreu Mendoza,
Zeke Moreno, Paco Brignole, Serkan Yolacan, Justin Blanton, Allison Somogyi, Julian
Diez Torres, Luz Angélica Castillo, José Manuel Moreno Vega, Maikel Fabo, Eladio
Bobadilla, Erasmo Castellani, Tom J. Cinq-Mars, Joshua Clough, Aaron Colston, Mandy
Cooper, Rob Franco, Anna Johns, Ashton Merck, Jes Malitoris, Hannah Ontiveros, Claire
Payton, David Romine, Kristina Williams, Brad Wood, and Farren Yero.
I also have enjoyed getting to learn from and having the support of scholars in a variety of fields. I have learned so much from attending workshops and conferences
xiii with scholars like Cindy Hahamovitch, Julie Weise, Ana Minian, Julie Greene, Deborah
Cohen, Adam Goodman, Jessie Wilkerson, Mary Odem, Leon Fink, Max Krochmal,
Hannah Gill, and Mike Innis-Jiménez. One of the most formative experiences I had before my research year was attending the Tepoztlán Institue for the Transnational
History of the Americas in Tepoztlán, México, and learning from the Tepoztecxs faculty and graduate students, among them Elliott Young, Adam Warren, Stephanie Baker
Opperman, Agustín Palacios, Ben Cowan, Gerry Cadava, Laura Briggs, Josie Saldaña,
Alexandra Puerto, Natalia Molina, Tracy Goode, Rebecca Janzen, Pam Voekel, Shane
Dillingham, David Sartorius, Elva Orozco, Ted Cohen, Laura D. Gutiérrez, Denisa
Jashari, Brian Ray, Martha Balaguera, Julián Carrillo, and Soledad Álvarez Velasco.
I am particularly indebted to a number of professors I have met who not only have offered me their mentorship and support, but also their friendship. Jimmy Patiño arrived at the University of Minnesota just as I left, but he became a homie and supportive presence in my life and my academic career. I could have not asked for better friends and colleagues than Cecilia Márquez, Sarah McNamara, and Delia Fernández.
Especially as I entered the job market, each of these fierce Latinas shared documents, reviewed letters, and spent so much of their time intimately coaching me through the process. Jessie Wilkerson reviewed and offered suggestions on my job documents and postdoctoral applications and readily shared her materials and wisdom. Felipe Hinojosa,
Rudy Guevara, and Matt García also offered me their guidance, encouragement, and friendship, and they each serve as exemplary role models for the type of scholar and
xiv teacher I aspire to be. Marisol Lebrón and Jenny Kelly were the best neighbors I had, but they also became confidants and mentors as I navigated the last years of graduate school.
In addition to the intellectual and emotional support I received, I also was awarded fellowships and grants throughout my time at Duke that offset the cost of research and supported my writing. While I received significant funding from Duke’s
Graduate School, I also received numerous grants through Duke’s Center for Latin
American and Caribbean Studies, including a Foreign Language and Area Studies
Fellowship. The Hispanic Scholarship Fund awarded me a grant through the Coca-Cola
Foundation/HSF Scholarship Program. A Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship supported my final year of writing and allowed me to focus on the job market and post- doctoral applications.
I also am indebted to others in North Carolina and beyond for their contributions to my research and writing. In particular, brilliant and generous archivists supported me in North Carolina and throughout Mexico. A special thanks to Sarah Carrier, Amy
McDonald, Kelly Wooten; Luis and Lety at the Archivo General del Gobierno del Estado de
Guanajuato; Victor Hugo Ruiz Vázquez at the Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la
Discriminación; and the archivists at the Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos
Indígenas. The members of the Casa Comunal in Cherán served as unofficial gatekeepers of both written and oral knowledge and were instrumental to the research and oral histories I conducted in their community. I would be remiss if I also did not
xv acknowledge the baristas at various coffee shops in Durham, among them Joe Van Gogh and Saladelia, who not only provided caffeinated beverages but also friendly and meaningful conversations.
Throughout my research travels in Mexico, I found friendship and moral support from locals, graduate students, and professors. Special thanks to mi mama Norma,
Miguel, and the whole family in Guanajuato, who always have included me as part of their extended family and have blessed me with their love and care. I also am thankful to Tracy Goode, who in Mexico City coordinated fun weekend trips, dinners, work and coffee dates, and who managed to make me feel like I was never alone. My life-long sister Karina Bueno and Edgar Uriel Alvarado opened their home to me and spent most weekends with me in Mexico City, picking me up at various locations throughout the city and showing me a side of Mexico City that was more intimate, familiar, and warm.
Adam Goodman and Hil Vázquez spent quality time with me at La Casa de Toño and introduced me to the best vegan tacos I have ever had. On various occasions, spending time with Laura D. Gutiérrez on her visits to the city made researching and working more bearable.
This work would have been impossible had it not been for the people who shared their stories with me and opened their homes in Mexico and North Carolina, including Claudia Pérez Reyes, Don Raul, Doña Zoila Garcia and their niece Gabriela,
Cecilia Mendoza, Cornelio Campos, Don Rigo Sánchez Hernández, Doña Chepa Estrada
Velázquez, Doña Imelda Tomás Macías, Juana Barbosa, Father Marcos Linares, Brother
xvi Martin Boone, Father Bruce Bavinger, Father John Heffernan, Father David McBriar,
Ivan Parra, Monsignor Gerald Lewis, Gamaliel Juárez Sánchez, Oly Juárez Sánchez,
Doña Tere Sánchez Hernández, Lupita Juárez Sánchez, Rosi Huaroco, Maestro Ariel
Pañeda, and Luis Giovanni Fabian Guerrero.
Lifelong friendships with remarkable people have inspired me to lead a healthy and well-balanced life. Colleen Kolb, Anna Lukes, Kelsey Monroe, and Dena Banse have been on this journey with me since our days in the ‘Burg, and I will be forever grateful to them for their support. Maira Rosas-Lee is the best roomie I never had, a true bestie, probably one of my biggest fans, and my go-to when life gets hard and weird. I am so thankful I met Terrell Webb and Claudia Saenz Lujan as an undergraduate student, two people who are more like family than friends and whose community and organizing work has served as an inspiration to me. To the wonderful web, including Jourdan
Palumbo, Jessica MacFarlane, Raha Sabet, Amy Fryt, and Meredith Mechanik, thanks for making Durham and wherever we are together feel like home.
My chosen family in North Carolina only have reaffirmed my commitment to migrant communities and to social justice work. I built a rich community through my church that provided a fountain of support throughout my graduate studies. The laughter, food, and memories created with the Echeverria’s—Doris, Mario, Jorge,
René—will last me a lifetime, and they will forever be members of my family.
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church always will hold a special place in my heart, especially because of Angela Darrow Flynn, Father Charlie, Father Hugh, Father Chris,
xvii Father Mario Gómez, Casey Cole, and the choir members. A special thanks to Viri,
Medardo, Dayana, and Melanie; Eloy Sánchez; Adiel Galdamez; Max Bernal Tapia; Rigo
Pérez; Toño, Silvia, Alison and Andrea; Carmen, Werner, Jayson, and Emerson; Girija,
Tom, Esha and Nikhil; Mansi Shah; Ulices Cortez; Ivan Almonte; Pablo Friedman; and
Sandro Mendoza. A special thanks to my family in North Carolina, including Erendira
Abraham, Cecilia Laja, Martin Laja; mbare Moy Monroy, mi comadre Tomasa Jiménez, my godsons Uriel and Moy, and Maite; tio Juan; mbare Filo, mane Natalie, and my godsons
William and Bladimir. A special recognition to all my Durham folx fighting for immigrant justice and social change on a variety of fronts, and a major shout out to my
United We Dream team, who in my last year of graduate school invigorated my life and encouraged me to continue the fight.
My family across the United States and Mexico have offered me their loving support, warm embrace, and prayers, and they have enjoyed this journey with me. I am especially grateful to my tios, tia, and primos in Wisconsin, primos in Florida, and tios, tias, and primos in Durango, who always have been proud of my accomplishments and achievements. To mi papa Felix, mi mama Toña, mi papa Chencho, and mi mama Melita, I know you all have shined your light on me from afar, and I promise to continue telling our families’ stories for years to come. I also have no doubt my Brazilian mãe Dulce
Vasconcelos is also celebrating my achievements from a better place.
I owe a great deal of debt to one individual who though may no longer be physically on this Earth remains forever in my heart. Jesús Estrada Pérez became my
xviii best friend at the University of Minnesota right before he became a graduate student, and he took me along for his ride. If someone as remarkable as “Chewy” was killing graduate school, maybe I could too. I will never forget his advice about graduate school, and I will certainly never forget all of the times he—from afar—encouraged me through
IMs, emails, postcards, and voicemails. In 2015, he wrote me a powerful message I hope to pass along to others: “Grad school is one endless race, so it doesn’t matter if you run really fast or really slow, you never stop running, so you might as well slow down and enjoy the race.” When I was feeling crippled by self-doubt, Chewy was the first person to stop my foolishness, reminding me to “aplícate!” He sat with my parents at my undergraduate ceremony, and we had so many plans for each of our PhD commencements. I will never stop wishing he was here, and I will never stop missing my Chewy.
The biggest acknowledgement and highest praise goes to my mother and father, who have sacrificed so much and worked so incredibly hard for me to have this opportunity. In the backdrop of all of my academic accomplishments are their long and hard days laboring at a factory, hours of driving and long-distance phone conversations, bouts of sadness and tremendous joy, care packages, and reminders from mami and papi about how much they loved and were proud of their m’ija. I will never be able to match all the sacrifices they have made for me to be where I am today, but I always will honor and acknowledge just how truly and incredibly remarkable they are. Todo lo que soy y todo lo que tengo es por mis padres. Sin ellos no sería nada. Son ellos los grandes amores de mi
xix vida. My brother Jesús has given me the most wonderful gifts of all—Giovani Xavier
Ramírez and Julián Ángel Ramírez. My nephews Gio and Jules were born and have grown up with their tia Yuri in graduate school, and while I would have given anything to have seen them grow up day-to-day, our conversations over FaceTime and Skype nourished my soul. The short periods of time we have spent together over the years, laughing, smiling, and making memories, have meant everything to me.
I took Chewy’s recommendation about “enjoying the race” most to heart when I met Manuel Abraham Reyes. For the last four years, Mohue has stood beside me as a true partner, supporting me in my career, celebrating my accomplishments, and being proud of me for all the progess I have made. His steadfast patience and calm demeanor were a perfect complement to my general anxiety and weariness. When I was anxiously writing or working, Mohue made sure that we were both fed and that the house was kept to a liveable standard. If I was working late, Mohue would sleep beside me, whether it was on a sofa or on the floor next to me, so I would be calmed and soothed by his presence. I am so honored to share this achievement and milestone with him and look forward to a lifetime of more. Han juani ke ti nnehe, Mohue.
All praise and glory be to God! Gracias mi virgencita morena por nunca abandonarme.
xx Introduction
In 2007, an article published in a Spanish-language North Carolina newspaper reported that an estimated thirteen thousand indigenous Latinos were living in North
Carolina, according to an immigrant rights organization in the state.1 The organization hoped that drawing attention to this number would raise consciousness among Latina/o migrants that racist attitudes and discriminatory practices in the US South existed not only between US citizens and migrant laborers, but also among migrants themselves.
These ideas of racial difference, however, did not begin in the United States. For indigenous migrants quoted in the article, racial discrimination began at home, even before migrating.2
This study follows the circular transit of ideas about race and identity among indigenous migrants to North Carolina from Mexico, underscoring how racial ideations are constructed first in Mexico. While Mexican migration to the United States is not a new phenomenon, Mexican migrants often have been considered to be an ethnically and
1 I employ “Latino” when describing immigrants from Latin America and refer to them as “Hispanics” only when citing from the original source. Though the vast majority of Latinos in North Carolina during the late 1970s and 1980s were of Mexican origin, I use “Latino” also to honor the presence of Puerto Ricans and increasing numbers of Central Americans by the 1990s. People within Latin America also more frequently use the term latinoamericano than hispanoamericano. My use of Latina/o and Latinas/os reflects the terms I used during oral interviews to signal gendered migration patterns, and consequently will be the terms I use in this chapter to denote the broader population of migrants of Latin American origin. However, studies recently have examined “LatinX” as an emerging and nuanced category of analysis. See 2 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Indígenas Latinos Del Estado: Entre El Olvido y La Discriminación,” La Conexión, April 17, 2007.
1 racially homogenous population. Even within the country, “Mexican” is considered to be an ethnic monolithic category. To be sure, the motivations for lumping Mexicans into a homogenous category emerged for different reasons in each country. This study seeks to understand how indigenous communities developed an understanding of themselves as racially and culturally distinct from their Mexican counterparts, and how these ideas transformed over time as a result of transborder migratory practices.
My approach emphasizes that ideas about race are inextricably linked to and constructed and developed within specific sites in Mexico. Moving between Mexico and
North Carolina, I emphasize the circular nature of the movement of people and ideas, both in literal and figurative ways. My project changes our understanding of how racial formations are generated in our increasingly global and transnational world. I join race and migration scholars in considering how intersecting systems of racism, oppression, and colonialism maintain and exacerbate social inequalities within and across borders.
Only by emphasizing the historic transborder practices of racism and colonialism in
Latino migrant communities can we raise an intersectional, decolonial, and anti-racist consciousness that will defend and stand in solidarity with the various freedom movements of our current moment.
The indigenous community at the center of this circular study is the P’urhépecha community from Cherán, Michoacán. Michoacán is the second largest sending state of migrants to the United States, with an estimated four million of the state’s residents
2 living abroad; of those, migration officials contend that about 400,000 are indigenous.3
Hailing from the Meseta P’urhépecha in the northwestern part of Michoacán,
P’urhépechas have migrated to the United States in three different phases throughout the twentieth century. In the first phase (1900s-), P’urhépechas worked laying railroad tracks; as braceros during the second phase (1942-), P’urhépechas worked as farmworkers, picking lettuce, cotton, tomatoes, apples, and other crops; and in the final phase (1964-), some continued laboring in farm work, while others expanded into other labor sectors, increasingly service industries and construction work nearing the end of the century.4 Even so, until the 1980s, their migration rate to the United States was relatively low. Mexican indigenous communities, however, were among the most effected by the economic crisis of the 1980s and the trade liberalization policies initiated in 1994 through the North American Free Trade Agreement.5 As the indigenous struggle in Mexico has grown with regard to autonomy and land rights, indigenous migrants also have increasingly differentiated themselves from other Mexican migrants and celebrated their ancestral traditions in the United States.
3 C. Serrano, Enrique, and et al., “La Diáspora Indígena. La Migración Internacional de Los Pueblos Indígenas Mexicanos,” México Indígena. Migración Indígena 2, no. 6 (Diciembre 2003): 49; Benjamín Alvarez, “Alrededor de 400 Mil Migrantes Michoacanos Son Indígenas,” Contramuro Noticias En Michoacán, August 10, 2017. 4 Gail Mummert, “Dilemas Familiares En Un Michoacán de Migrantes,” in Diáspora Michoacana, ed. Gustavo López Castro (Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2003), 118. 5 Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, “Building Civil Society among Indigenous Migrants,” in Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, ed. Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (La Jolla, Calif.: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD/Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD, 2004), 2–6.
3 With this in mind, this dissertation’s main concern is to investigate how indigeneity in Mexico has worked as a racial category, and how this racial category has transformed in the diaspora. Chapter one shows how P’urhépechas from Cherán articulated their sense of indigeneity as intimately linked to cultural markers of native language, traditional dress, ancestral customs and celebrations, communal organizing, and autonomy and defense actions differentiated the P’urhépechas from Cherán, renowned as a community who was strategic in their dealings with local, state, and federal governments, as well as with outsiders who entered their communities. As academic intellectuals and political elites developed and implemented projects geared at educating and providing services to indigenous communities, the P’urhépechas in
Cherán took this opportunity to assert their control in another critical sphere: knowledge production and diffusion. P’urhépechas’ racial and cultural understandings were processes that—contingent on time and place—transformed throughout the twentieth century.
Especially in the early years of Latino settlement in North Carolina, white actors played critical roles in mediating relationships between Latinos and African Americans.
Chapter two demonstrates how political and economic transitions in the state, combined with changing demographics, challenged the role of white actors and their power in
North Carolina. At the helm of institutions, white landowners and farmers benefitted from the perceived conflict—or at the very least the expectation of cultural confrontation and clash—between minority communities. To overcome this division, religious
4 organizations and migrants’ rights organizers drew on the legacy of the Civil Rights
Movement to draw these communities together.
Back in Mexico, migratory routes from Cherán to North Carolina were becoming much more pronounced. Chapter three traces the establishment of migration practices to
North Carolina by the 1980s. Drawing on community knowledge and building on family traditions of migration, men from Cherán migrated to North Carolina with at least some ideas of what to expect with regard to working and living conditions. As cheranense men departed, women who stayed behind saw their lives and their roles within their homes and communities transformed, drawing attention to the ways sending communities, and the people residing in them, also transformed as a result of migration.
The US Immigration reforms of the late 1980s led P’urhépecha migrants to realize the role legal status played not only in their working and living conditions, but also with regard to how they were perceived in North Carolina. The predominantly white and
African American host communities racialized both indigenous and non-indigenous migrants as “Mexican.” Implicit with this racialization were questions of legal status that added nuance to P’urhépechas’ indigeneity, as well as to the racial understandings of their non-indigenous counterparts. Equally vulnerable to discriminatory labor practices and immigration enforcement, P’urhépecha migrants accepted this homogenization in
North Carolina to create community with other Latino migrants in this new immigrant destination. Potential migrants also were learning about the nuances of legality back in
5 Cherán, as labor organizers were hoping to develop a transborder worker consciousness even before migrants left.
As P’urhépecha and non-indigenous migrants immigrated to and established permanent lives in North Carolina beginning in the 1980s, the final two chapters show that the point of fracture did not lie along the axis of indigeneity. Racial division appeared instead between Latino migrants and African American North Carolinians, who confronted each other not only in neighborhoods, but also in more intimate spaces—like religious institutions. At Holy Cross Catholic Church in Durham, amid a long history of structural marginalization and discrimination, black Catholics asserted their dominance within a historically black Catholic church. Latino parishioners left, feeling pushed out of their religious home and with little desire of establishing future relationships with African Americans. All the while, white actors and the Catholic
Church itself had established these racial hierarchies and divisions, allowing for these types of tensions to arise.
As labor organizers worked to build solidarity between Latino and African
American workers beginning in the 1990s, it became important to link the communities together through shared histories of discrimination and especially as they confronted institutional and structural inequalities within workplaces. Chapter five traces how growing labor and immigrants’ rights movements converged in North Carolina to empower Latino migrants broadly. Amid a growing migrant consciousness in the
United States, indigenous migrants also began re-engaging their particular ethnic
6 identity and drawing attention to their historical marginalization and discrimination within the Mexican community. Shared experiences as oppressed peoples encouraged many Latino migrants to join African Americans in black-brown coalition building. The historic experiences of indigenous Mexican migrants had given rise to a consciousness that enabled them to assert their own definition of what it meant to be indígena on both sides of the border.
The Southeast represents a fertile new ground on which to study the dynamic processes of race-making. North Carolina experienced the largest increase in immigrant population of any state between 1990-2000, which reflected a 394 percent increase.6
Within the span of 10 years, the population grew from about 77,000 to nearly 400,000. A report by the Pew Center in 2013 found that the top ten states with the fastest growing
Latino populations were nearly all beneath the Mason-Dixon line. Alabama, South
Carolina, and Tennessee all have experienced more than 150 percent growth in their
Latino populations from 2000-2011.7 However, despite these rapid demographic changes, Latino Studies scholarship has remained largely focused on traditional geographies of Latino settlement, like the US Southwest. This dissertation builds on the
“New/Nuevo South” paradigm that has emerged from scholarship examining the US
6 U. S. Census Bureau, “American FactFinder,” 2000; Rakesh Kochhar, Roberto Suro, and Sonya Tafoya, “The New Latino South: The Context and Consequences of Rapid Population Growth” (The Pew Hispanic Center: A Pew Research Center Project, July 26, 2005), ii. 7 Anna Brown and Mark Hugo Lopez, “Mapping the Latino Population, By State, County and City,” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project (blog), August 29, 2013.
7 South in the wake of significant Latino immigrant settlement.8 Building on that scholarship, I focus on North Carolina while emphasizing the inextricability of the sending community in examining shifting racial ideologies.9 In our global and transnational world, we must attend to the ways transnational and mobile social interactions change the historical contexts of both sending and receiving communities.
My dissertation engages and intervenes in several literatures in Mexican and US history, and beyond. Much like the migrants whose stories I examine in the following
8 Leon Fink, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Raymond A. Mohl, “Globalization, Latinization, and the Nuevo New South,” Journal of American Ethnic History 22, no. 4 (n.d.): 31–66; Irene Browne and Mary Odem, “‘Juan Crow’ in the Nuevo South?,” Du Bois Review 9, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 321–37; Eileen Díaz McConnell, “Racialized Histories and Contemporary Population Dynamics in the New South,” in Being Brown in Dixie: Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Immigration in the New South, ed. Cameron D. Lippard and Charles A. Gallagher (Boulder, Colo.: FirstForumPress, 2011); Leon Fink, “New People of the Newest South: Prospects for the Post-1980 Immigrants,” The Journal of Southern History, 739-750, LXXV, no. 3 (August 2009); Owen J. Furuseth and Heather A. Smith, eds., Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006); Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Lippard, eds., Being Brown in Dixie: Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Immigration in the New South (Boulder, CO: FirstForumPress, 2011); Kochhar, Suro, and Tafoya, “The New Latino South”; Lisa Paulin, “Newspaper Discourses of Latino Labor and Latino Rights in the New U.S. South” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007); Vanesa Ribas, On the Line: Slaughterhouse Lives and the Making of the New South (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016). 9 Perla M. Guerrero, Nuevo South: Latinas/Os, Asians, and the Remaking of Place (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017); Julie M. Weise, Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Fink, “New People of the Newest South: Prospects for the Post-1980 Immigrants”; Fink, The Maya of Morganton; Ribas, On the Line; Gallagher and Lippard, Being Brown in Dixie; Furuseth and Smith, Latinos in the New South; Browne and Odem, “‘Juan Crow’ in the Nuevo South?”; Fran Ansley and Jon Shefner, eds., Global Connections & Local Receptions: New Latino Immigration to the Southeastern United States (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009); Díaz McConnell, “Racialized Histories and Contemporary Population Dynamics in the New South”; Elaine Cantrell Lacy and Mary E. Odem, eds., Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009); Helen B. Marrow, New Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
8 pages, my dissertation resists the confines of the nation-state and the territorial rootedness to one location to trace change over time. Drawing on diaspora studies, I affirm that diaspora should be understood as a process responsive to place and time and as a way through which we can frame our thinking. 10 I follow the migration of indigenous and non-indigenous actors between the United States and Mexico as a diasporic process, emphasizing that ideas about race and identification—like the migrants themselves—are in flux.
Borrowing from the work of Lynn Stephen, I use “transborder” to emphasize not only political boundaries, but also the ethnic, class, cultural, colonial, state, and legal borders migrants cross in both their sending and receiving communities.11 There are in effect “borders beyond the border” that divide Mexicans along racial and ethnic hierarchies that are different than those that exist in the United States. Once in North
Carolina, the influx of Latino immigrants instigated other types of borders: between citizen and alien; immigration enforcement and sanctuary cities; pro-immigrant policies and anti-immigrant legislation; nativists and humanists; and many others.
10 James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994): 302–38; Juan Flores, “Thinking Diaspora From Below,” in Diaspora Strikes Back: Caribbean Latino Tales of Learning and Turning (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2008), 15–31; Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 222–37. 11 ánLynn Stephen, Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
9 I position “race” as the critical point of analysis through which I examine the shifting transformation of indigenous migrants’ self-identifications. Building on the work of historian Thomas Holt, I examine the way race and racism work and articulate within specific social and historical contexts. Though scholars often have treated categories of cultural difference and racial difference as separate, if often intersecting,
Holt has convincingly argued that “in the practical discourse of ordinary folk it carries much the same signification.” Today, more often than not, “we use ‘race’ and ‘culture’ as synonyms.”12 Especially with regard to racial ideas and their role in Mexico, I treat race and culture as fundamentally similar and interchangeable.
Though historians previously have negated the existence of “race” in Mexico, my project illuminates how Mexican and indigenous migrants adopted the racial ideas of their receiving locales and transmitted racial knowledge to Mexico, thereby shifting understandings of race and creating new cultural practices in their home communities.13
In conversation with a flourishing body of work that historicizes race in Mexico and its power in regions and geographic spaces, mine is among the first in-depth history of
Mexican migration to the US South that problematizes the historical constructions of mexicanidad (Mexicanness) as constricted by national identity.14 While regionalism has
12 Thomas C. Holt, “Marking: Race, Race-Making, and the Writing of History,” The American Historical Review 100, no. 1 (1995): 14. 13 Enrique Krauze, “Las trampas de la raza,” La Nación, March 18, 1998; Enrique Krauze, “Latin America’s Talent for Tolerance,” The New York Times, July 10, 2014, sec. Opinion. 14 See for example Jason Oliver Chang, Chino: Anti-Chinese Racism in Mexico, 1880-1940 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2017); Laura A. Lewis, Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race,
10 loomed large in the historical scholarship on Mexico, examinations of race in Mexico are recent and still emerging.
Recent scholarship by historians clearly has identified the ways that the study of race in Mexico must confront this powerful mythology of racelessness.15 This national myth has been propagated through three principles: the belief that mestizos cannot be racist because they are a people of mixed-race ancestry; the belief that Mexican legal codes have abolished race; and that the absence of Jim Crow-type laws in Mexico proves a lack of racism.16 By affirming the country was a mestizo nation, the Mexican state and its officials could reject accusations that theirs were racist policies or programs built on maintaining structural racial hierarchies. While many historians have examined indigenismo and the Mexican indigenista project as one predicated upon the creation of a racial hierarchy, valorization of “whiteness” through mestizaje, and the maintenance of inequalities, my research is among the first historical works to contend that indigeneity needs to be understood as a racial category—just as it is in the United States—and should be examined as such.17
and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Christina A. Sue, Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 15 Chang, Chino, 22. 16 Chang, 22. 17 Rick Anthony López, Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State After the Revolution (Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2010); Alexander S. Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004); Agustín F. Basave Benítez, México Mestizo: Análisis Del Nacionalismo Mexicano En Torno a La Mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Enríquez (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992); Mary Kay Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 (Tucson: University of Arizona
11 While I acknowledge that there exists a growing literature on Afromexicanos and
Asians as “raced subjects” in Mexico, my research complements these investigations by arguing that “indigeneity” also historically has worked as a racial category in Mexico.18
Ideals of normativity in Mexico have been structured by Eurocentrism and privileged on whiteness. Indigenous peoples, as first peoples, posed a challenge to the dominance of the “whiteness” present in the Americas since the colonial period. By exploring how indigeneity also functions as a racial project, I do not intend to draw attention away from blackness or downplay its historic erasure within Mexico. Rather, I aim to examine indigeneity as a way to add nuance to our understanding of racism.
My project reaffirms that the historical erasure, exploitation, and devalorization of Mexican indigenous communities since the colonial period are products of racism and have been replaced with new forms of domination today that perpetuate this racial
Press, 1997); Guillermo Palacios, “Postrevolutionary Intellectuals, Rural Readings and the Shaping of the ‘Peasant Problem’ in Mexico: El Maestro Rural, 1932–34,” Journal of Latin American Studies 30, no. 2 (May 1998): 309–39. 18 Herman L. Bennett, Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Pancho McFarland, “Chicano Rap Roots: Afro-Mexico and Black-Brown Cultural Exchange,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, ed. Juan Flores and Miriam Jiménez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 387–95; McFarland; Talia Weltman-Cisneros and Candelaria Donaji Mendez Tello, “Negros-Afromexicanos: Recognition and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Mexico,” Journal of Pan African Studies 6, no. 1 (July 2013): 140–56; Randal C. Archibold, “Negro? Prieto? Moreno? A Question of Identity for Black Mexicans,” The New York Times, October 25, 2014; Patrick James Carroll, Blacks in Colonial Veracruz: Race, Ethnicity, and Regional Development (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001); Jennifer A. Jones, “‘Mexicans Will Take the Jobs That Even Blacks Won’t Do’: An Analysis of Blackness, Regionalism and Invisibility in Contemporary Mexico,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36, no. 10 (2013): 1564–81; Lewis, Chocolate and Corn Flour; Matthew Restall and Ben Vinson, Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009); Sue, Land of the Cosmic Race.
12 project. For example, Mexico’s national indigenous population is the largest in the
Americas, with the government reporting that at least 10 percent of Mexicans identify as being of indigenous origin.19 However, this statistic is probably an underestimate given that the government’s classification of indigenous identity historically has been linked to indigenous language use.20 It was not until the 2015 census that all Mexicans could self- identify as “indígena” – which also marked the first time Mexicans could self-identify as
Afro-descended.21 These shifting demographics reflect the power of the state to identify a group as raced, even as that identification may be homogenizing and is subject to transformation over time.
Even if not represented in the census nor as existing members of Mexican society, indigenous Mexicans have migrated and established homes in the United States throughout the twentieth-century. This settlement has drawn the attention of interdisciplinary scholars who have addressed the multiethnic composition of the
Mexican population. This foundational ethnographic and theoretical work has been integral to challenging stereotypes of Mexican immigrants by demonstrating that— unlike their non-indigenous counterparts—indigenous peoples in the diaspora face particular challenges with regard to their racial, ethnic, and political identity, cultural
19 Fox and Rivera-Salgado, “Building Civil Society among Indigenous Migrants,” 2. 20 Luz María Valdés, Héctor Hernández Bringas, and Chávez Galindo, Los indios mexicanos en los censos del año 2000 (Ciudad de México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2003). 21 “Encuesta Intercensal” (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 2015).
13 preservation, and family and community relationships.22 Historian Leon Fink traced the migration of the Maya peoples from Guatemala to North Carolina, stressing how linkages to the indigenous sending community were crucial to the immigrant community’s successful organizing strategies in the US South.23 Building on this historical scholarship, I trace change over time to show how indigenous migrants’ understandings of race in the United States were contingent on their communities of
22 Fox and Rivera-Salgado, “Building Civil Society among Indigenous Migrants”; Stephen, Transborder Lives; Lourdes Gutierrez Najera, “Yalálag Is No Longer Just Yalálag: Circulating Conflict and Contesting Community in a Zapotec Transnational Circuit” (University of Michigan, 2007); Lourdes Gutierrez Najera, “Challenges to Zapotec Indigenous Autonomy in an Era of Global Migration,” in Comparative Indigeneities of the Américas: Toward a Hemispheric Approach, ed. M. Bianet Castellanos, Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera, and Arturo J. Aldama (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012), 227–41; Manuel Barajas, “Colonial Dislocations and Incorporation of Indigenous Migrants From Mexico to the United States,” American Behavioral Scientist 58, no. 1 (2014): 53–63; Fox and Rivera-Salgado, “Building Civil Society among Indigenous Migrants”; Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera and Korinta Maldonado, “Transnational Settler Colonial Formations and Global Capital: A Consideration of Indigenous Mexican Migrants,” American Quarterly 69, no. 4 (December 21, 2017): 809–21; Laura Velasco Ortiz, “Transnational Ethnic Processes: Indigenous Mexican Migrations to the United States,” trans. Margot Olavarria, Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 3 (May 1, 2014): 54–74; Liliana Rivera-Sánchez, “Expressions of Identity and Belonging: Mexican Immigrants in New York,” in Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, ed. Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (La Jolla, Calif.: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD/Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD, 2004), 417–46; Laura Velasco Ortiz, “Transnational Ethnic Processes: Indigenous Mexican Migrations to the United States,” trans. Margot Olavarria, Latin American Perspectives 41, no. 3 (2014): 54–74; María Cristina Velásquez C., “Migrant Communities, Gender, and Political Power in Oaxaca,” in Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, ed. Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (La Jolla, Calif.: Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies, UCSD/Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD, 2004), 483–94; Lourdes Gutiérrez Najera, “Hayándose: Zapotec Migrant Expressions of Membership and Belonging,” in Beyond El Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America, ed. Adrian Burgos, Jr., Frank Andre Guridy, and Gina M. Pérez (New York: New York University Press, 2010); Luis Urrieta, Jr., “Las Identidades También Lloran, Identities Also Cry: Exploring the Human Side of Indigenous Latina/o Identities,” in Comparative Indigeneities of the Américas: Toward a Hemispheric Approach, ed. M. Bianet Castellanos, Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera, and Arturo J. Aldama (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2012), 321–35. 23 Fink, The Maya of Morganton.
14 origin. I also emphasize how migrants’ new ideas of race also informed how racial ideations developed over time in their indigenous sending communities.
My research also challenges scholars to consider how indigenous communities themselves have understood and situated their indigeneity in ways that challenged processes of nation building and questions of belonging and citizenship.24 In doing so, I am in conversation with decolonial scholarship that privileges and acknowledges the colonial origins and legacies of intersecting modes of oppression.25 For example, Luis
Urrieta, Jr., a cultural scholar and a self-identifying P’urhépecha, has shown that indigenous P’urhépecha migrants located the substance of their indigeneity not only through visible and physical demonstrations, such as the use of traditional clothing, the continuation of rituals, or the use of native language, but also in the quotidian interactions and ways of being—usos y costumbres—in community with each other and with their environment that, while ancestral, also have changed over time.26 Similarly,
24 Patrick T. Hiller, J. P. Linstroth, and Paloma Ayala Vela, “‘I Am Maya, Not Guatemalan, nor Hispanic’-the Belongingness of Mayas in Southern Florida,” Forum: Qualitative Social Research; Berlin 10, no. 3 (2009). 25 Aníbal Quijano, “Questioning ‘Race,’” Socialism and Democracy 21, no. 1 (March 1, 2007): 45–53; Aníbal Quijano, “The Challenge of the ‘Indigenous Movement’ in Latin America,” Socialism and Democracy 19, no. 3 (November 1, 2005): 55–78; Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad Del Poder, Eurocentrismo y América Latina,” in La Colonialidad Del Saber: Eurocentrismo y Ciencias Sociales, Perspectivas Latinoamericanas, ed. Edgardo Lander (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), 2000), 201–46; Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Walter D. Mignolo, “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing: On (De)Coloniality, Border Thinking and Epistemic Disobedience,” Postcolonial Studies 14, no. 3 (September 2011): 273–83. 26 Urrieta, Jr., “Las Identidades También Lloran, Identities Also Cry: Exploring the Human Side of Indigenous Latina/o Identities,” 332.
15 my research accentuates the nuances of cultural difference and highlights collective over individual structures of identification that emphasize connectedness and commonality.27
While scholars have focused on the ways labor migrants experience violence through border crossings, working conditions, and deportability, most scholars fail to understand migrants and their subjectivities outside of their place as workers or their legal status.28 Even less attention is given to those who stay behind, especially with regard to the trauma of loneliness or even desertion, or of the confrontations between them and migrants who return with a host of psychological and emotional issues acquired in the United States.29 This work considers how encounters between and
27 Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity,’” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (2000): 14–20. 28 Works by sociologists and anthropologists are at the forefront of depicting the cultural and social lives of migrants, in spite of their deportability. See for example Jacqueline Maria Hagan, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008); Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, God’s Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working For Immigrant Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella, eds., Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); George J. Sanchez, “Race, Nation, and Culture in Recent Immigration Studies,” Journal of American Ethnic History 18, no. 4 (1999): 66–84; Xóchitl Bada, Jonathan Fox, and Andrew D. Selee, eds., Invisible No More: Mexican Migrant Civic Participation in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Mexico Institute, 2006); Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Lippard, eds., Being Brown in Dixie: Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Immigration in the New South (Boulder, CO: FirstForumPress, 2011); Owen J. Furuseth and Heather A. Smith, eds., Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006); Helen B. Marrow, New Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Hannah E. Gill, The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina: New Roots in the Old North State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, January 30, 2015. 29 For some recent examples that focus on transborder families and sending communities, see Ana Elizabeth Rosas, Abrazando El Espíritu: Bracero Families Confront the US-Mexico Border (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2014); Holly Michelle Worthen, “The
16 among Latino migrants and African American and white North Carolinians in social spaces and labor environments laid bare the racial ideas that migrants brought with them from Mexico. It also considers how globalization has caused material effects in locales with regard to how human relationships developed and evolved.
While the majority of scholarship on Latino immigration to the US South has emphasized the victimization of Latinos by African Americans, the history of race in
Latin America, and especially Mexico, shows the ways in which anti-blackness and anti- indigenous prejudices have been prominent components of Mexican popular and official discourses.30 For example, “no seas indio,” or “do not be an Indian” remains a common racial and social epithet used to demean people in Mexico, most commonly directed at those belonging to the lower class. Regionally, racialization discourses also were distinct, as northerners were believed to be “whiter” and, in turn, more modern, while southern
Mexico was regarded as an area with a population that was more backward, Indian, and
Black. Whiteness throughout Latin America was privileged and posited as the epitome
Presence of Absence: Indigenous Migration, a Ghost Town, and the Remaking of Gendered Communal Systems in Oaxaca, Mexico” (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2012). 30 Gill, The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina; Chenoa A. Flippen and Emilio A. Parrado, “Perceived Discrimination Among Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: The Case of Durham, NC,” Sociological Perspectives 58, no. 4 (December 2015): 666–85; Marrow, New Destination Dreaming; Helen B. Marrow, “‘The White Americans Have Always Been Very Friendly’: Discrimination, Racial Expectations, and Moral Hierarchies in the Black-White Binary,” in New Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Helen B. Marrow, “Intergroup Relations: Reconceptualizing Discrimination and Hierarchy,” in Being Brown in Dixie: Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Immigration in the New South, ed. Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Lippard (Boulder, Colo.: FirstForumPress, 2011); Ansley and Shefner, Global Connections & Local Receptions; Mohl, “Globalization, Latinization, and the Nuevo New South.”
17 of the modern nation-state, as traces of indigeneity or blackness were debased. These widely assumed beliefs are the remnants of hundreds of years of historical erasure and racial suppression. 31
This study brings together a variety of geographic fields and interdisciplinary methods to challenge both the dominant Southwestern focus of Latino and Chicano studies and the black/white focus of southern history. The New South is not only a place where we can challenge the black-white binary, but one in which we also can emphasize local constructions of racial and ethnic identities, problematizing the historical constructions of mexicanidad (Mexicanness) as constricted by national identity, a practice common in the extant literature.
Transborder Movements for Transborder Research
This research began as a comparative analysis of racial formations among non- indigenous guanajuatenses—those from the state of Guanajuato—and P’urhépechas from
Cherán, Michoacán. As a student who had spent significant time living in and researching Guanajuato, I desired to pursue graduate studies that emphasized this premier sending state within the context of North Carolina immigration. Within a few years, however, I realized that guanajuatenses’ self-identifications with regard to race were unchanging, as they understood themselves as racially “Mexican” on both sides of
31 Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, “Introduction: Racial Nations,” in Race & Nation in Modern Latin America, ed. Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 1–31.
18 the border. As time progressed, the question of the way indigeneity worked to mark indigenous peoples as raced subjects in Mexico became a more invigorating research question, which led me to use the experiences of guanajuatenses—at least for this dissertation—as the “control variables” for my study.
I began my research in North Carolina, conducting oral history interviews with guanajuatense and P’urhépecha migrants I met as a result of personal relationships and community organizing work. These initial migrants served as critical gatekeepers, introducing and facilitating conversations I had with other community members. The migrants I interviewed throughout different regions of North Carolina connected me with their communities and families in Guanajuato and Cherán, where I was welcomed with open arms and as a member of the family. In Cherán, I became a pseudo- anthropologist, a participant-observer that lived, shared unscripted conversations, and celebrated indigenous rituals and family parties as an insider. The interviews I conducted with Latino migrants and their families were in Spanish; the quoted text in the following pages are my own translations of the original recordings. As a historian, it is important to trace change over time, especially with regard to the migrants whose stories are here told. For this reason, their full names are used upon first reference.
Though conventional citation practices suggest we should identify people by their last names after first reference—which I do in most cases—I refer to all the interviewees in this dissertation by their first names after first reference, as the personal relationships we developed were long-standing, intimate, and oftentimes spanned and surpassed
19 transnational borders. While the majority of interviews I conducted were with migrants,
I also recorded oral histories with Mexican and North Carolina priests, church members, community organizers, state officials, and the families of migrants in sending communities.
I complement these intimate stories with archival sources, employing previously unexamined documents from archives and libraries in Mexico City; Guanajuato; Morelia and Cherán, Michoacán; and Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Among these archival sources, personal correspondence, images, and digital recordings give voice to indigenous actors and organizers. I use correspondence between P’urhépechas and their state and federal governments to understand how citizens engaged and sought local officials for support at various instances and to mitigate migration’s effect on their communities. The library and manuscript collections at the Consejo Nacional Para Prevenir la Discriminación were invaluable resources, both with regard to the material collected and accessibility, but also to a growing sense of on-the-ground efforts to transform contemporary Mexican society. In North Carolina, hundreds of English- and Spanish- language newspapers, court cases, and organizational and union records demonstrated migrants’ evolving racial consciousness through a new vocabulary.
My work privileges the stories and understandings of indigenous people and honors the indigenous production of knowledge. For this reason, whenever possible, I have employed the works of P’urhépecha scholars as secondary resources to support my argument. Alicia Lemus Jiménez, an historian, P’urhépecha, and cheranense, writes:
20 The main reason for doing this type of study lies in a personal commitment, in a moral interest, for the indigenous peoples of Mexico. … We do not want to continue being studied as the oppressed, forgotten or martyrs of historical events. We need studies of a historical nature that show what our daily life is; show our past, present, and future experiences, seen from the eyes of indigenous historians.32
As the daughter of Mexican immigrants from the state of Durango, my academic work is driven by my heritage and my own experiences of race growing up in rural
Wisconsin. The migration stories I chronicle in my dissertation were the result of deeply intimate conversations in which I became a character in each oral history I conducted.
The people who shared their stories with me also shared their homes, food, families, and pain with me, as they also allowed me to be vulnerable and share my own migration story. Through laughs and tears, and months of convivencia, these people became part of my chosen family. I feel as responsible for the way I tell their stories as if I were writing my own.
32 Alicia Lemus Jiménez, “Migración En La Sierra P’urhépecha a Los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica Durante La Primera y Segunda Etapa Del Programa Bracero, 1942-1954” (Universidad Iberoamericana, 2008), 8.
21 1. “The Blood, and the Face, of First Peoples”: Mexican Indigeneity, Race, and Migratory Exchanges
On November 4, 2015, about a dozen primary school teachers gathered in
Cherán’s main square. The women, all in their thirties and with joyous faces, received a recognition from their town’s communal leadership for finishing a certificate in bilingual education. As they gathered for a commemorative photograph, myself and some thirty audience members could see their traje típico—traditional dress. The women donned customary P’urhépecha outfits: delicately embroidered white flowy tops, tucked into long, pleated blue skirts that hung just a few inches above the ground. Black and blue traditional shawls were common, but so were more contemporary colored shawls, combinations of purple and black, and multicolored, that the younger generation has begun adorning. Their hair was all perfectly in place, braided with dozens of soft, colorful ribbons that decorated their shoulders. Certificates in hand, they smiled at the camera as they celebrated their accomplishment.
Magdaleno Campos, who works for the community’s indigenous education sector and is one of the few instructors who speaks P’urhépecha, stood from his seated position on stage to share a few words with the audience gathered in the plaza. Though an older man, Campos’s voice boomed over the speakers. Speaking in Spanish with a thin and high-pitched voice, but with the rasp of age and indignation, Campos contextualized for the audience the importance of rescuing their P’urhépecha language and traditions.
22 How they changed our culture, how they inherited to us a culture not our own, those who conquered us. This bothers me. True, we have two types of culture, or even three with the gringa. But let’s not forget the roots that were left to us by our grandparents, our great-grandparents, all of our ancestors, our parents, those roots should never die. And I want to tell my pueblo, that in no moment we be distressed, be ashamed, of the blood, of the face, that we share as first peoples. It’s a very rich culture – its customs, its values, its way of thinking, its reactions, its ways of manifesting the coexistence among peoples, its holidays, its traditions.1
In this chapter, I focus specifically on the establishment and management of a radio station to get at the ways indigenous peoples, particularly the P’urhépecha from
Cherán, have articulated and expressed their own understanding of indigeneity.
Challenging the federal government’s plan to expand radio programming to promote the education and well-being of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, indigenous communities across the country established and managed their own radio stations. By tracing the creation of an indigenous radio station, Radio XEPUR, I show how P’urhépechas from
Cherán publicly rebuked the government’s radio programming as a project that neither
1 Magdaleno Campos, Magdaleno Campos address at P’uhépecha Language Certificate Presentation, November 4, 2015. For Magdaleno, he alluded to mestizaje as the result of two cultures: on the one hand, the colonizers (Spanish), and on the other, their indigenous ancestors. However, Afro-descended peoples were introduced to Mexico in the sixteenth century as slaves and also have been a part of Mexican society and, as such, intertwined in this process of mestizaje. Magdaleno’s omission reflects the regional concentration of Afro-descended Mexicans’ within particular areas in specific Mexican states with historic linkages to slavery. For example, Afro- descended communities today can be found predominantly residing along the coasts of Guerrero and Oaxaca, cities in Veracruz, and in some areas in northern Mexico.1 Their relative isolation within Mexico explains why Magdaleno is not considering them as part of his social and cultural milieu. Just as indigenous communities are disregarded as members of contemporary Mexican society, so too are Afro-descended Mexicans. These discursive practices emphasize the importance of place when historicizing how racial ideas have been constructed and transformed.
23 included indigenous peoples in the decision-making nor considered the nuance of language or mode of communication. As a result, P’urhépechas themselves designed and established a radio broadcast to meet the needs of their community.
The theoretical work on “the public sphere” introduced by Jürgen Habermas in
1962 and expanded on since through revisionist examinations is useful here to understand the stakes of radio programming and its significance to public communication.2 In Habermas’s work, “the public sphere” is a concept that designates a space within modern society in which political participation is achieved through dialogue. Within this institutional space, citizens deliberate about common affairs and matters of mutual interest. While separate from the state, the conversations that occur within “the public sphere” could be potentially critical to the state. For Habermas, the public sphere and the conversations that ensued within it were crucial to participatory democracy.3 Building on this work, I argue that it became crucial for cheranenses—those from Cherán—to play a role in the public sphere in order to ensure their community’s autonomy and the survival of their communal governance and P’urhépecha identity.
2 Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 289–339; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987); Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Mary P. Ryan, “Gender and Public Access: Women’s Politics in Nineteenth Century America,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 259–88. 3 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25/26 (1990): 57.
24 I also contend that the development of an indigenous radio program is a decolonial project intended to challenge indigenous peoples’ exclusion from the broader public sphere. By challenging the structures of power that exclude indigenous voices from the public arena, decolonial projects like Radio XEPUR situate indigenous peoples as producers and disseminators of knowledge and promote an undoing of intersecting modes of oppression through the establishment of an alternative public sphere.4
It is not hard to see what Magdaleno Campos referred to as the gringa—
American—culture physically present in Cherán, a municipality with nearly 13,000 inhabitants. A Chinese restaurant is just a few blocks away from the town’s central plaza, owned by a man who formerly had worked in a restaurant’s kitchen in the United
States. On the far-right end of the plaza, folks wait nearly twenty minutes for the best hamburgers and fries in town. As pickup trucks pass through the town, the license plates from North Carolina, Washington, Illinois, and Arkansas, tell stories of voyages and returns. Just a few days earlier, on October 31, the town’s children dressed in costumes and screamed “Yo quiero Halloween,” to storefronts and homes near the plaza’s square as women reached into bowls to distribute candy to the youth.
Halloween, however, is not a “traditional” P’urhépecha holiday. In fact, many of the town’s elders looked on with disapproval, understanding this new practice as a
4 Agustín Lao-Montes and Mirangela Buggs, “Translocal Space of Afro-Latinidad/Critical Feminist Visions for Diasporic Bridge Building,” in Translocalities/Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Americas, ed. Sonia E. Alvarez et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 382.
25 debasement of their culture and an offense to the sanctity of their Day of the Dead customs.
For young people who have returned to Cherán from the United States, being in
Cherán is difficult, even though they identify as indigenous. Children struggle in primary and secondary schools because they only speak English. Young adults navigate their community happy to participate but still missing the luxuries of their former lives in the United States. The migration of cheranenses throughout the twentieth century has led to many changes in the community’s structural space and its cultural qualities. Just as these visible elements have changed throughout the century, so to have the identities of their citizens.
Thousands of cheranenses have immigrated to the United States without any expectation of returning. Others have come back home, sometimes willingly, other times by force. Members of a diasporic community, cheranenses have resided in sites across the United States and within Mexico since the mid-twentieth century. These inextricable linkages to far-off places have transformed the way P’urhépechas understand themselves and their sending community, demonstrating that neither culture nor ideations of race are static; rather, they must be understood as processes that are both contingent and contextual. Five hundred years after the colonial encounter, cheranenses like Magdaleno Campos, educators, and community leaders have invested time, energy, and resources into the rescuing of P’urhépecha customs and traditions. Throughout the twentieth century, cheranenses drew from their ancestral knowledge and communal
26 ways of knowing to defend their land and preserve their culture, even if that meant physical confrontations with outsiders. Amid a growing national consciousness among indigenous communities for self-governance and self-determination, cheranenses at the local level employed Radio XEPUR to create their public sphere and promote their understanding of indigeneity, an identification that was always in formation and subject to contestation.
1.1 The P’urhépechas from Cherán: A Legacy of Autonomy
Where “indigenous” peoples fit in to the Mexican populace and national identity always has been a complex and shifting identity within the country. Following the
Mexican Revolution of 1910, government officials and intellectuals formulated a national identity geared toward creating a sense of internal racial and cultural equity that ensured Mexico would be understood as a modern nation. These intellectuals—known as indigenistas although they were not themselves indigenous—exalted Mexico’s mestizo
(mixed race) population, declared Mexico free from racism, and erased blackness from the image of the Mexican nation. Scholars have found that while a few indigenistas hoped that the mixing of peoples would eventually rid Mexico of indigenous peoples, most indigenistas believed that only by recognizing that Mexico was at its core an indigenous country could it become a new modern nation. These indigenistas agreed that education was the most effective means by which they could construct an
27 integrated nation.5 The way indigenistas executed their projects across the country varied, with divergent and oftentimes conflicting methods for “reforming” and
“integrating” the indigenous population.6 While some scholars have contended that the indigenistas and mestizaje essentially erased indigeneity, making the “Indian” a subject to be remembered and memorialized, the indigenista project should be examined as a process through which the nation officially constructed the Indian in the early twentieth century.7 As marginalized communities, indigenous peoples always have challenged these national narratives of “indigeneity” through decolonial practices that put forth their own ideations of what it means to be indigenous.
The “Indians” at the center of my study are the P’urhépechas from Cherán, who were and continue to be a group located in west central Mexico, centralized in the state of Michoacán and residing in the Meseta P’urhépecha. Though participating in some
Mesoamerican cultural practices, they were quite different from other indigenous groups. Though they built pyramids and platform mounds, their structures were quite different in shape and structure from those elsewhere in Mexico. They lived in a heavily forested area and made far more use of wood for construction and tools than did their neighbors. For centuries, they were able to resist the expansionist tendencies of the
5 Palacios, “Postrevolutionary Intellectuals, Rural Readings and the Shaping of the ‘Peasant Problem’ in Mexico.” 6 López, Crafting Mexico, 293. 7 M. Bianet Castellanos, “Introduction: Settler Colonialism in Latin America,” American Quarterly 69, no. 4 (December 2017): 778; López, Crafting Mexico, 10–12.
28 neighboring Aztec empire, the threat of elimination during the colonial encounter, and continue to exist today.8
Cherán was the first P’urhépecha community to be the subject of an intensive ethnographic study. Sponsored by an agreement between the University of California, the Mexican Departamento Autónomo de Asuntos Indígenas, and the Escuela Nacional de
Antropología e Historia, the research was an early example of a collaborative project between anthropologists from the United States and Mexican institutions.9 Cherán was purposely selected as a site of study due in part to the influence of President Lázaro
Cárdenas (1934-40). A native of Jiquilpan, Michoacán, a P’urhépecha community,
Cárdenas was of partial P’urhépecha ancestry and an early indigenista. Serving as governor of the state and then as president of the republic, Cárdenas inaugurated various pro-indigenous projects, especially in his home state of Michoacán. Cárdenas’s interest in the region only invigorated the study of the P’urhépecha, who up until then had been little studied. Beals and his institutional supporters chose Cherán as the research site because it was the largest town in the Sierra P’urhépecha during the early twentieth century, and the majority of its inhabitants continued to speak the native
8 Ralph Leon Beals, Cherán: A Sierra Tarascan Village (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Social Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, 1946), xiii. 9 Historian Alexander Dawson argues that social science studies with international dimensions, like Beals’s, transformed anthropologists “from nationalist visionaries into technocrats who used their expertise in specific locales to resolve limited concerns, working as part of international teams with only limited support or interest from the state.” See Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, 142–43.
29 language—Tarasco. A highway also had been completed by the time of Beals’s study, connecting Cherán south to Uruapan and north to Carapan, which connected to the main Mexico City-Guadalajara highway. Since Beals’s study was first published in 1946,
Cherán has been the site of constant research. 10
An anthropologist, Beals hoped to understand through his study how the
10 Beals, Cherán, ix–12; Paul Marr and Christopher Sutton, “Changes in Accessibility in the Meseta P’urhépecha Region of Michoacán, México: 1940-2000,” Journal of Transport Geography 15 (2007): 465–75; Jesús Ángel Pedroza, K’eri uantakua: minhuarhikua ka uantakua Cherán anapu = Territorio y lenguaje en la tradición oral de Cherán (Morelia, Michoacán, México: Unidad Regional Michoacán de Culturas Populares e Indígenas, 2009); George Pierre Castile, Cherán: La adaptación de una comunidad tradicional de Michoacán (México: Instituto Nacional Indigenista y Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1974); Ivonne Grethel Chávez Ortíz, “El Proyecto de La Radio Indigenista En El Municipio de Cherán, Michoacán” (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social, 2003), Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas; Silvia Janet Ramírez Cervantes, “Los Movimientos Sociales Como Un Factor Para La Construcción de Ciudadanía de Los Grupos Indígenas El Caso de Cherán, Michoacán” (El Colegio de San Luis, A.C., 2014); Miguel Leonardo Santiago Ávila, “La Radio Como Herramienta Para La Difusión de Las Cultural Indígenas En México: XEPUR La Voz de Los Purepechas En Cherán, Michoacán” (Universidad del Tepeyac, 2002), Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas; Warren D. Anderson, “P’urepecha Migration into the US Rural Midwest: History and Current Trends,” in Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, ed. Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera- Salgado (La Jolla, Calif.: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, UCSD/Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD, 2004), 355–84; Casimiro Leco Tomás, Migración Indígena a Estados Unidos: Purhépechas En Burnsville, Norte Carolina (Morelia, Michoacán, México: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2009); Juan Gallardo Ruiz, Medicina tradicional P’urhépecha (Zamora, Michoacán: Colegio de Michoacán, Instituto Michoacano de Cultura, 2002); Patricia Ávila, Escases de Agua En Una Región Indígena (Zamora, Michoacán: Colegio de Michoacán, Instituto Michoacano de Cultura, 1996); Robert C. West, Cultural Geography of the Modern Tarascan Area (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1948); Casimiro Leco Tomás, La educación socialista en la meseta P’úrhépecha 1928-1940, El Valor de leer; Variation: Valor de leer. (Morelia, Michoacán, México: Instituto Michoacán de Ciencias de la Educación, México, 2000); Casimiro Leco Tomás and J. Guadalupe Tehandon Chapina, La escuela normal indígena de Michoacán: historia, pedagogía e identidad étnica (Morelia, Michoácan: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2008); Alejo Maldonado Gallardo and Casimiro Leco Tomás, Una Educación Para El Cambio Social: La Experiencia Del Cardenismo En Michoacán, 1928-1940 (Morelia, Michoacán, México: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2008); Nelly Calderon de la Barca Guerrero, “Imaginar, Oír y Controlar Negociaciones de La Radio Cultural Indigenista En Territorio p’hurépecha” (El Colegio de Michoacán, 2008).
30 P’urhépecha understood themselves as individuals and in relation to the national populace. Julian H. Steward, a colleague who wrote the forward to Beals’s book, wondered why Cherán “thought of and thinks of itself as Indian” when it was “difficult to identify anything that is aboriginal besides its language and racial type.”11 Though cheranenses—those from Cherán—felt linked to indigeneity through their connection to place, their relationships with others, and the traditional cultures unique to its locale, other indigenous peoples claimed the same. What made Cherán “Indian,” according to
Steward, was their failure “to integrate emotionally and actively with national life,” rather than specific visible or cultural markers of indigeneity. As part of the indigenista project to bring indigenous communities into the broader populace, Beals’s study understood P’urhépechas’ inward turn as failure. It was cheranenses’ inextricable relationship to their local community and their resistance to integration that defined their indigeneity.
Cheranenses’ internal sense of belonging is not surprising given that Cherán— like hundreds of indigenous communities across the country—had been disregarded, intimidated, and even betrayed by the federal government. The P’urhépechas of Cherán over the years have employed a variety of survival tactics to defend and uplift their communities, a legacy left to them by their ancestors. In the early 1900s, President
Porfirio Díaz, along with the governor of Michoacán, had signed lease agreements
11 Beals, Cherán, xv.
31 allowing foreign companies to exploit and plunder the forests of the Meseta
P’urhépecha. The Compañia Industrial de Michoacán built a branch of railroad through the
Meseta at strategic points to facilitate the exploitation. Santiago Slade Jr., a US citizen and manager of the company, managed to sign at least twenty lease agreements throughout the state of Michoacán between July 1905 and March 1913. In 1908, the company signed an agreement in Cherán, which permitted indigenous cheranenses to extract the wood necessary only for their basic needs. The forests, however, were part of cheranenses’ communal resources, and they refused to cede control. Confronting not only the company personnel but also the national, regional, and local elites that supported them, cheranenses formed their own defenses.12
These contracts marked the beginning of an era of forest exploitation, which would continue in the Meseta P’urhépecha throughout the twentieth century. As Eitan
Ginzberg has suggested, this moment also signaled a crucial shift among the
P’urhépechas of Cherán with regard to how they positioned themselves in relation to regional, state, and government officials.13 By 1913, defense groups from Cherán had
12 Marco Antonio Calderón Molgora, “Documento: ‘Registro Número Catorce -- Arrendamiento de Los Montes de Cherán, Municipalidad Del Mismo Nombre, Distrito de Uruapan, Otorgada Por El Señor Fernando Chávez, Representante de Los Indígenas de Dicho Pueblo, En Favor de La “Compañía Industrial de Michoacán”, Sociedad Anónima. Número 123 Ciento Veintitres. -- Septiembre de 1908,’” Relaciones: Estudios de Historia y Sociedad XVIII, no. 72 (1997): 215–21; Casimiro Leco Tomás, “Gobierno Indígena En Una Comunidad Transnacional: Política Pública Microlocal En Michoacán,” in Políticas Públicas, Economía y Gobierno, ed. José César Lenin Navarro Chávez, Odette Virginia Delfín Ortega, and Plinio Hernández Barriga (Morelia, Michoacán, México: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2014), 276–77. 13 Eitan Ginzberg, “Integración Social y Política: Lázaro Cárdenas, Gobernador de Michoacán,” Cuadernos Americanos 4, no. 58 (1996): 60–91.
32 joined forces with other troops intent on forcing Slade out of the Meseta. Slade managed to escape, but he returned years later to restore his logging operations. This time, even more villagers from Cherán had mobilized and were ready to challenge Slade’s return, many joining the state’s agrarian movement and others supporting the campaign for
Lázaro Cárdenas as governor a few years later. Once governor, Cárdenas repealed the lease agreements and “opened the way for what in Cherán became a long tradition of local autonomy in the woodlands.”14
P’urhépechas in Cherán had employed a variety of tactics to defend their territory and preserve its indigenous and communal heritage. Drawing from ancestral knowledge communicated through oral traditions, elders and local intellectuals with past experiences of community struggle preserved memories and offered their advice as needed. Cheranenses formed alliances with neighbors and surrounding villages and armed themselves if necessary. They were strategic in their confrontations and recognized in turn which tactics to avoid altogether. The pirekua—the Tarascan word for
“ballad”—of Santiago Slade that emerged from this struggle and survives today honors the memory of their community’s success and serves as a symbol of their identity as an indigenous community intimately connected to their forested surroundings and willing to defend their town and its communal interests.15
14 Christopher Robert Boyer, Political Landscapes: Forests, Conservation, and Community in Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 240. 15 Boyer, 243–44.
33 1.2 Indigenistas, Indígenas, and an Emerging National Consciousness of Self-Determination
Cárdenas’s presidency marked a critical moment during which the federal government executed its first attempts at coordinating efforts to support indigenous communities and promote indigenista politics. During Cardenas’s administration, the federal government began to understand the struggles faced by indigenous communities as inextricably linked to an increasing agrarian problem. To better the lives of indigenous Mexicans, the federal government also had to transform other social sectors of the state. Eight congresses that reunited diverse indigenous groups were convened during Cardenas’s administration.16 As Sergio Sarmiento Silva has argued, this period of the indigenista movement was marked by “integrationsim,” with the intent being to allow indigenous peoples to participate in the development and control of projects aimed at indigenous communities.17
From this “integrationist” period emerged the first Inter-American Indigenous
Conference in 1940, held in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. About an hour southeast of Cherán,
Pátzcuaro served as the P’urhépecha capital in the precolonial era and later served as its ceremonial center. In attendance at the conference were government representatives from most of the Americas, with the exception of Canada, Paraguay, and Haiti; leading indigenistas (including Cárdenas) of the era; and indigenous peoples from Mexico, the
16 Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, 97–98. 17 Sergio Sarmiento Silva, “El Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas y La Política Indigenista,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 47, no. 3 (1985): 199–200.
34 United States, Panama, and Chile.18 The conference signaled a major turning point for indigenous peoples throughout Latin America in their struggle for land ownership, and for the preservation, development, and sharing of their cultures. Perhaps most importantly, the conference recognized the reality of indigenous peoples’ lived experiences in the Americas and their right to exist and prosper.19 For P’urhépechas from Michoacán, hosting the conference in the heart of the Meseta P’urhépecha ensured they had the attention of a broader community and further empowered their sense of preservation and defense.
By the late 1940s, however, most Mexican state leaders believed that assimilation, with regard to language, culture, and economy, would be the only way to ensure indigenous communities would become part of mainstream Mexican society.20 A pro- indigenous international treaty emerged from the first Inter-American Indigenous
Conference that called on individual countries to establish their own indigenous institutions. With the need to promote assimilation in mind, President Miguel Alemán created the National Indigenous Institute (INI) in 1948.21 The INI had two major objectives: on the one hand, anthropologists and other scholars working with the INI
18 Roberto Pineda C., “El Congreso Indigenista de Pátzcuaro, 1940, Una Nueva Apertura En La Política Indigenista de Las Américas,” Baukara: Bitácoras de Antropología e Historia de La Antropología En América Latina 2 (July 2012): 11. 19 Ignacio Ovalle Fernández, “Indigenismo de Participación,” México Indígena, April 1977, Caja 1544 A, Exp 3, Fs. 251, 3 Oct 1976-28 Jul 1978, Archivo General de la Nación. 20 Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, 4, 152. 21 Miguel Alemán, “Ley de Creación Del Instituto Nacional Indigenista,” Diario Oficial de La Federación, December 4, 1948, Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas.
35 would execute research projects on Mexico’s indigenous peoples; on the other hand, the
INI also had a more practical directive to improve the living conditions of indigenous communities across the country. As a social-service agency, the INI provided public health services, Spanish-language education, and implemented economic development porgrams.22 While the role of the INI in Mexican history has been highly contested, I am particularly interested in the ways the INI—and the indigenista institutions that preceded and followed it—were in effect state projects intended to “discipline” the indigenous peoples and yet had the unintended consequence of fostering new (often resistant) political subjectivities among indigenous peoples across the country.23
The INI was not a centralized institution, which meant that it functioned primarily through regional agencies known as Indigenous Coordinating Centers (CCI) that administered health care and agriculture services, as well as Spanish-language instruction. From 1950 to 1970, almost a dozen CCI were established across the country, each with their own personnel, educators, and translators, to promote development and integrate indigenous communities into the economic, social, and political life of the nation. In each center, the CCI staff worked with indigenous leaders to craft and execute programs necessary in each specific region. While the general guidelines were established in the main offices of Mexico City, programming and projects were directed
22 Boyer, Political Landscapes, 170. 23 For examples of works that examine the INI and its role in Mexico, see for example Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico; López, Crafting Mexico; Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution; Basave Benítez, México Mestizo.
36 locally, adapted to fit the needs and demands of each indigenous community.24 To oversee the efforts of the CCI, theoretically each center was held accountable to a governing council comprised of an INI-elected official, leaders in local agriculture, health, and education, the local administrator, and three external representatives: one from the state government, one from the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP), and one indigenous representative from the community being served. In many CCIs, this structure ensured that indigenous peoples and their opinions were disregarded, allowing for state officials to hold virtually unbridled control of the CCI’s activities in their region.25 Indigenistas, however, implemented their programming differently across the country, which positioned some indigenous peoples with relatively more power than their counterparts with regard to how programming was executed.
On March 18, 1964, a CCI was founded in Cherán, Michoacán. Patzcuaro already had an indigenista institution—the Centro Regional de Educación Fundamental para América
Latina— and neighboring Paracho also had a booming regional market that established the city as an important locale in the region. In choosing Cherán as the site of the CCI, indigenistas ensured not only that the center was located within a relatively isolated
P’urhépecha community, but it also allowed the INI personnel to guarantee that no
24 “Informe Elaborado Por El Instituto Nacional Indigenista, Acerca Del Estudio Del Problema de La Discriminación Contra Las Poblaciones Indígenas,” April 4, 1978, 28. 25 Boyer, Political Landscapes, 170; Julio César Olivé Negrete, Antropología mexicana (Ciudad de México: CONACULTA, INAH: Plaza y Valdés, 2000), 223–24; Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, 142.
37 single indigenous community held enough power to become a “P’urhépecha capital.”26
Even so, P’urhépechas in Cherán took advantage of their local CCI and with them generated projects, like the radio, demonstrating not only how critical it was for their autonomous project to control communication and its content, but also how local communities often use these institutions in unexpected ways, despite their disciplinary purposes.
1.3 Indigenous Braceros, Development, and a Diaspora
The Mexican administrations that followed Cárdenas’s administration confronted a national and international climate transformed by World War II. While these leaders would not turn their backs entirely on the populist projects for the working poor, they agreed that the federal government needed to promote development through both domestic and foreign investments in Mexican industry. With the revival of the mining and railroad industries, as well as the emergence of paper production, fruit exportation, and construction projects, there was an increased need for forest development. As historian Chris Boyer has found, the “industrialization” of the forests implied “both the mechanization of the production process and the modernization of forest landscapes through the proliferation of sawmills, resin distilleries, paper plants,
26 “60 Años Con Los Pueblos Indígenas” (Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de Comunidades Indígenas, 2008); Gunther Dietz, La Comunidad P’urhépecha Es Nuestra Fuerza: Etnicidad, Cultura y Región En Un Movimiento Indígena En México (Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 1999), 182–83. Tarascan is synonymous with P’urhépecha, but most who self identify as members of that indigenous group call themselves P’urhépecha.
38 trucks, skidders, and chainsaws.”27
The increased industrialization of the forests led to mixed results on the ground.
Villagers in states like Michoacán could earn funds for tapping pine trees and selling the resin to commercial distilleries, while a select few found permanent jobs in newly constructed timber companies and sawmills. In other places, however, confrontations between locals and the companies revealed much conflict. Villagers felt their communities were being exploited by these companies, who enjoyed unrestricted access to their forests. Other locals ignored state regulations that limited their access to the forests and sometimes even posed threats to company personnel, threatening their physical presence and even setting fire to the woods.28
By 1943, it seemed nature itself was retaliating against this industrialization. On
February 20, the Paricutín Volcano in Michoacán’s Meseta P’urhépecha erupted.
Although located about an hour and a half southwest of Cherán, the eruption emitted ash that spread as far as 100 miles away, covering crops and damaging pine trees. The volcano not only damaged the forests surrounding it, but it also had a long-term effect on the ecosystem of the region. Hoping to ameliorate the volcano’s effects on the local indigenous populations, federal authorities announced that men displaced from these communities would be given priority consideration for bracero contracts.29 Begun in
27 Boyer, Political Landscapes, 130. 28 Boyer, 131–32. 29 Boyer, 160; Lemus Jiménez, “Migración En La Sierra P’urhépecha a Los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica Durante La Primera y Segunda Etapa Del Programa Bracero, 1942-1954,” 8.
39 1942, the Bracero Program provided temporary jobs for Mexican workers in the United
States. Historian Chris Boyer found one estimate stating that as many as half of the region’s men traveled to the United States in the wake of the volcanic eruption.30
Though the Paricutín eruption did alter the migratory patterns of P’urhépechas from Cherán, in truth, cheranenses had been migrating internally since the early twentieth century. Even after cheranenses had expelled loggers who were exploiting their forests during the Mexican Revolution, outsiders had continued clandestine logging operations, as well as the illegal contraband of wood and the excessive exploitation of the forests. Many cheranenses, seeking alternative methods of subsistence, had migrated to urban sites within Mexico.31
Scholars like Robert Beals, Robert Kemper, Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, and Lucia
García López all agree that before the 1940s, migration from Cherán was mostly directed to surrounding cities and towns, where cheranenses worked in factories, agriculture, or the building of roadways. The new railways and roadways established in the early twentieth century facilitated the internal movement of these cheranenses as they labored for short periods away from home.32 Only a few cheraneses had migrated internationally
30 Boyer, Political Landscapes, 160. 31 Leco Tomás, Migración Indígena a Estados Unidos, 7, 81–82. 32 Beals, Cherán, 147–227; Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, El Problema de La Población Indígena En La Cuenca Del Tepalcatepec, vol. 1 (Xalapa, Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, Gobierno del Estado de Veracruz, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995); Lucia García López, Nahuatzen: Agricultura y Comercio En Una Comunidad Serrana (Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán, CONACYT, 1984); Robert V. Kemper, Campesinos En La Ciudad, Gente de Tzintzuntzan (México: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1976).
40 before the 1940s, especially men fleeing constant attacks by bandits from other parts of the state.33 Historian Alicia Lemus Jiménez suggests, however, that those cheranenses who migrated to the United States prior to the 1940s were able to do so because they had the financial means to make the journey. The early twentieth century in the Meseta
P’urhépecha was characterized by its instability, ensuring that only local elites could afford the cost to travel to the northern border in hopes of crossing into the United
States.34
This early transnational flow of some cheranenses ensured that by the time others left as braceros, they already had heard stories about migrants’ experiences laboring seasonally in the United States.35 With the introduction of the Bracero Program, cheraneses took advantage of their priority recruitment to escape the structural poverty existent in the Meseta P’urhépecha, which only worsened in the wake of the eruption.36
Cheranenses flocked to contracting centers established in Uruapan and Pátzcuaro by
1945, seeking opportunities to migrate to the United States. Braceros from Cherán left in such great numbers that the community was forced to abandon tree tapping and other
33 Beals, Cherán, 43; Álvaro Ochoa Serrano, La Violencia En Michoacán (Ahí Viene Inés Chávez García) (Morelia, Michoacán, México: Gobierno del Estado de Michoacán, Instituto Michoacano de Cultura, 1990). 34 Lemus Jiménez, “Migración En La Sierra P’urhépecha a Los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica Durante La Primera y Segunda Etapa Del Programa Bracero, 1942-1954,” 25–26; Leco Tomás, Migración Indígena a Estados Unidos, 123. 35 Lemus Jiménez, “Migración En La Sierra P’urhépecha a Los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica Durante La Primera y Segunda Etapa Del Programa Bracero, 1942-1954,” 28. 36 Lemus Jiménez, 9, 36–61.
41 community projects it had begun.37 The introduction of the Bracero Program in the 1940s transformed the social dynamics of Cherán, as international migration became a tradition among cheranense families.
Just as the indigenistas were unveiling their projects across the country, indigenous peoples like the P’urhépechas from Cherán joined the ranks of thousands of others who had migrated to the United States in the hopes of bettering their economic situation. The Mexican government had ordered that Michoacán handle bracero contracts on a local level by the mid-1940s, which led local community members to actively petition their state officials for bracero contracts. While many cheranenses sought out their local government to receive bracero contracts for their unemployed men, others traveled to contracting centers in other states to try their luck. Some cheranenses in 1955 made the nearly twelve-hour trip to a recruitment center in
Monterrey, Nuevo León. Having been successfully recruited, they received their visas and medical exams in Monterrey before being selected for jobs in the United States.
While some cheranenses were sent to pick cotton in McAllen, Texas, others went to work on cucumber farms in Michigan.38
Though the INI tried to promote economic development within individual indigenous communities, the federal government in the 1950s introduced a model of state-led development that made it increasingly difficult for rural communities to
37 Boyer, Political Landscapes, 160 n.99. 38 Leco Tomás, Migración Indígena a Estados Unidos, 124 n.54.
42 maintain their economic autonomy. The federal government desired to transform
Mexican society, leading it to make huge investments in water and sewage projects and seeking to improve urban public health, transit, housing, and commerce. The government also enacted laws that facilitated the industrialization efforts underway in major Mexican cities, like Monterrey and Mexico City. The rural parts of the country, however, were ignored. Land reform and redistribution plans were abandoned in favor of national development programs and projects. Instead, government officials promoted the idea that indigenous peoples mobilize their natural resources through community forestry, arguing that these projects would fund indigenous communities’ economic progress. Rather than uplifting these rural villages, however, these policies led to conflict and resentment within indigenous communities.39 To avoid this internal conflict altogether and provide for their families, even if temporarily, some cheranenses chose to seek bracero contracts.
Their past experiences negotiating with government officials ensured that cheranenses were not scared to reach out directly to their state representatives for opportunities to legally migrate to the United States. In 1961, cheranenses mailed a typewritten letter to the highest official of the state. Declaring himself a “representative of the indigenous community of Cherán,” Jesús Hernández Toledo wrote on behalf of aspiring cheranense hopefuls. Word had spread to Cherán that braceros would be
39 Boyer, Political Landscapes, 167–202.
43 leaving from Morelia soon, and Hernández Toledo vouched for ten of the community’s most impoverished men to be selected among the cohort heading to the United States.
Hernández Toledo explained his hope “that the most needy of men can go work and so that our poverty be alleviated.” The men were “poor, without occupation or land,” their ten names typed along the bottom left margin of the paper. 40
Hernández Toledo’s letter specifically identified Cherán as an indigenous and impoverished community. As standard practice with official correspondence, the first words on the page, typed on the top right-hand side, identified the sending place as
“Comunidad Indígena de Cherán, Mich.” The town’s official seal was emblazoned on the top left corner in blue ink, inscribing “Comunidad de Indígenas” and “San Francisco
Cherán” on the page. Not unlike other Mexican men of the period, cheranenses were poor campesinos—peasant farmers—whose hopes rested on the opportunity for seasonal contracted work in the United States. What set cheranenses apart from other Mexican migrants was that their sending community was recognized officially as an indigenous community. Though their local and state governments often had failed them,
P’urhépechas from Cherán knew when to take advantage of the opportunities their governments afforded them—like Bracero contracts.
Cheranenses also recognized the need to circumvent official policies in order to meet their needs and those of their community. Even though the Bracero Program had
40 Jesús Hernández Toledo, June 1, 1961, Secretaria de Gobierno/Gobernación/Emigración de Braceros, Archivo General e Histórico del Poder Ejecutivo de Michoacán.
44 provided a generation of men the opportunity to labor in the United States, its end in
1964 was not met with defeat. Cheranenses had collected enough knowledge about border crossings and how to acquire work in the United States that they continued to migrate through alternative methods. Though remittances had not been high, the social changes that occurred as a result of migration encouraged men to continue crossing the border.
What these indigenous braceros had begun was a stream of migration— extralegal and otherwise—within families that lasted generations. These streams transformed not only the cultural fabric of the sending community, especially with regard to the role of women and those who stayed behind, but also the immigrant demographics throughout cities and towns in the United States. While the INI had a particular plan for how indigenous communities would develop and be integrated into the modern nation following the Mexican Revolution, indigenous peoples were transforming their own indigeneity, and those of their communities, through migratory practices.
1.4 Scales of Consciousness: National Manifestations of Self- Determination
As an economic downturn was causing unrest across Mexican cities, widening economic disparities in the rural parts of the country were pitting timber companies and agribusinesses against indigenous peoples. While Mexicans in urban parts of the country had profited socially and economically from the 1940s to the 1970s because of
45 the “Mexican Miracle,” a period of rapid economic growth and expansion, indigenous communities had been ignored.41 After having participated in Mexico’s armed struggles of the early twentieth century and being promised recompense, indigenous communities were still waiting for the Mexican government to return their ancestral lands. During the
1970s, humble cheranense farmers and artisans often faced land tenure disputes because of this instability, with conflicts arising from land ownership leading not only to economic setbacks, but also to physical confrontations between community members and neighbors.42
Efforts to revitalize the logging industry in the Meseta P’urhépecha in 1973 also unleashed a great deal of angst. Most tree tappers, among the poorest of their community, opposed any program—especially those by outsiders—that threatened their livelihoods. The exploitation of the forests through illegal logging and contraband resulted in a severe reduction in their quality, soil erosion, and waste in raw materials.
For folks living in this forested region, like those in Cherán who depended on the woods for lumber, artisanal production, foodstuffs, and medicines, this was socially demoralizing and economically devastating.43 In a sociodemographic report, a government agency described Michoacán’s Meseta P’urhépecha in 1977 as composed of
41 See for example Louise E. Walker, Waking from the Dream: Mexico’s Middle Classes after 1968 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2013). 42 Frida G. Villavicencio, “Lenguas Indígenas y Bracerismo: El Caso de Los Purépechas,” in México Indígena, 13 2 (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1986), 60–62. 43 Villavicencio, 61; Boyer, Political Landscapes.
46 seventeen municipalities that were of “very high marginalization.”44 For cheranenses and other P’urhépechas in Michoacán, the 1970s were everything but a period of economic growth and development.
The P’urhépechas of the Meseta, however, began resisting these encroachments on communal lands directly by the 1970s. In the Meseta P’urhépecha, indigenous peoples drew on their ancestral tradition of transparency and communication to establish communal assemblies that met regularly and had the final say in how woods were used and where investments from outsiders could take place. In some instances,
P’urhépechas were able to force companies to halt logging altogether in their communal lands.45 P’urhépechas were casting their own struggle on the local level, just as a growing national indigenous movement for self-determination and autonomy was building.
By the 1970s, a powerful national indigenous movement was developing, as evidenced by the emergence of multiple and better organizing tactics among indigenous peoples that had greater strength, cohesion, and dynamism. The agricultural crisis affecting local communities across the country only encouraged more indigenous peoples to join ranks in the national indigenous movement. As presidential candidate,
Luis Echeverría had made numerous promises to the beleaguered indigenous
44 “Pueblos Indígenas de México: Región Purepecha, Diagnóstico Sociodemográfico” (Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1994), 3, FD 16/131, Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas. 45 Boyer, Political Landscapes, 228–32.
47 communities, among them vowing to stop the exploitation of indigenous peoples and their communities. Intellectuals, particularly self-proclaimed “critical anthropologists,” were attracted by Echeverría’s promises and joined his campaign. As president,
Echeverría named Gonzálo Aguirre Beltrán as head of the INI, who affirmed that the indigenista movement could only succeed if it was fundamentally populist. Aguirre
Beltrán assured that Echeverría would break the paternalist tradition of previous presidents and instead ensure that indigenous peoples themselves promoted their own development.46
Despite increased funding for indigenous communities and their agricultural pursuits, mobilizations among indigenous communities only strengthened by the mid-
1970s. To mitigate the growing discontent, the Echeverría administration encouraged the celebration of the first National Congress of Indigenous Peoples. Held in Janitzio in
1975, just two hours southeast of Cherán in Michoacán, the congress participants developed two major actions.47 In the first, indigenous peoples set forth in their Carta de
Pátzcuaro that their situation only would improve if it was seen as linked to other social, economic, and cultural problems of the day. The indigenous representatives signing the letter demanded to be included in regional and national dialogues about agricultural reform just as would any other farmer, as they too were invested in slowing the emigration of their community members. They also wanted to have a role in deciding
46 Silva, “El Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas y La Política Indigenista,” 203. 47 Silva, 204.
48 what messages were transmitted in their communities, since their children listened to radio programming and watched television shows “with messages that have nothing to do with our way of life or our common customs.”48 Perhaps most importantly, they reiterated the right they had to self-determination.49
The indigenous peoples who participated in the congress also established the
National Council of Indigenous Peoples Indígenas (CNPI) as a united front in the struggle for indigenous peoples’ self-determination, which went on to challenge
Mexican president José López Portillo a year later. The CNPI asked the federal government not only to change the name of the INI to “National Commission for the
Social and Economic Development of Indigenous Peoples,” but also to allow the CNPI direct oversight in the institute’s projects. Instead, López Portillo created the “General
Coordination of the National Plan for Depressed Areas and Marginalized Groups
(COPLAMAR)” as a department directly dependent on the president.50 The CNPI’s desire to change the name of the INI placed the emphasis not on the indigenistas, but on the indigenous peoples themselves, while also highlighting the social and economic development of their communities, rather than a “cultural” need to assimilate, acculturate, or Hispanicize their peoples. With the COPLAMAR, López Portillo and his
48 María Consuelo Mejía Piñeros and Sergio Sarmiento Silva, La lucha indígena: un reto a la ortodoxia (Ciudad de México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores: Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1987), 260. 49 Mejía Piñeros and Sarmiento Silva, 257–64. 50 Silva, “El Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas y La Política Indigenista,” 208.
49 administration signaled to the CNPI how they viewed indigenous peoples and their movement. Though the CNPI had asked for the opportunity to play a leading role in the development of policies and projects directed at indigenous communities, drawing on their previous demands for self-determination, the administration of López Portillo denied their request.
The CNPI and López Portillo again would face off at the Second Congress of
Indigenous Peoples. Reunited in the Centro Ceremonial Mazahua in February 1977, nearly three thousand people gathered in the state of Mexico. Delegates from 83 indigenous communities across Mexico, representing 204 different languages, engaged in important dialogues and conversations with each other in which they aired their grievances, presented their concerns, and discussed the problems their communities faced. Addressing those gathered at the congress, indigenous peoples from across the country spoke of the “inhumane exploitation” they faced in their communities.
Countless leaders called for self-governance and critiqued the private property model that was incompatible with their ancestral systems of communal ownership, which had proved an efficient and effective form of organization. “The concept of private property with regard to the production of goods is considered strange to our idiosyncrasy and tradition,” the delegates declared in their declaration of principles. “We also reject discrimination for economic reasons, race, language and religion.”51 Regardless of their
51 Sadot Fabila Alva, “Nuestras Necesidades Son Del Mismo Color,” El Día, February 25, 1977.
50 place of origin, indigenous peoples demanded to be treated as “human beings” and demanded that indigenistas approach their communities with “effective action programs” rather than “incongruous paternalisms.”52 In various statements, leaders explicitly denounced the “internal colonialism” that continued to marginalize and disenfranchise their communities. It was clear by the end of the 1970s that indigenous communities understood the discrimination they faced, at least in part, through racial and cultural terms.
Members of the CNPI also reaffirmed at the congress the need to restructure the
INI, not only to better meet the needs of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, but also to be in solidarity with their struggle. Other indigenous peoples also addressed politicians who might be present in the audience, asking them to revisit their programs and policies.
Rather than considering the requests from these indigenous peoples, López Portillo was obstinate, maintaining that the INI would continue to hold sole discretion over how programs would be executed for marginalized communities. López Portillo went on to replace Aguirre Beltrán with Ignacio Ovalle Fernández as the new director of both the
INI and COPLAMAR. With his exit, Aguirre Beltrán noted that the indigenista policy had transformed from one that was “integrationist” to one that was “marginalist.”53
The Third Congress of Indigenous Peoples, which was held in National
52 Jesus Michel Narvaez, “Demandarán Un Trato Humano y El Fin de La Explotación Para 8 Milliones de Indígenas,” Sol de México, February 22, 1977. 53 Sergio Sarmiento Silva, “Notas a Propósito Del ‘indigenismo de Participación’ y La Lucha Indígena Actual,” Revista de La Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero 2 (October 1982): 19–28.
51 Auditorium in Mexico City in 1979, also was fueled by much unrest, as indigenous peoples publicly denounced the exploitation they faced at the hands of their local delegate. By 1981, López Portillo had managed to expel some of the strongest leaders of the CNPI, completely altering the way the organization functioned. These actions, sociologist Sergio Sarmiento Silva argues, not only demonstrate the limits with which indigenous peoples had control over the policies and programs that affected them, but
“above all it showed that the state was only willing to negotiate, and even encourage, those demands…that did not decisively question their political project.”54
Though the administration of López Portillo managed to quench the efforts of indigenous self-determination at the national level, the movement had spread a message that indigenous communities in Mexico had the right to define their own needs and interests and develop projects to implement them. The problems that indigenous peoples faced were fundamentally structural and had managed to subjugate their communities for hundreds of years. What indigenous peoples were calling for by the end of the twentieth century was for a re-articulation of the government’s role with regard to indigenous communities. The government had to address the systematic and institutional practices that kept indigenous communities marginalized, while indigenous communities would cultivate policies and projects internally to complement their cultural and communal customs. Even if this project had not succeeded at the national
54 Sarmiento Silva, 210.
52 level, some indigenous communities—like Cherán—would have a bit more success.
1.5 Radio Xepur: The Voice of the P’urhépechas
Building on this national movement, the P’urhépechas in Cherán confronted the indigenistas and their integration projects already equipped with a community consciousness that empowered and prepared them to defend themselves and their interests. P’urhépechas from Cherán had selected the needs and demands they presented to the state since the early twentieth century, all the while ensuring that their local culture and ancestral knowledge was preserved and protected. The language introduced by the indigenistas during the 1940s regarding education and opportunities for control served to inspire cheranenses further, encouraging them to demand rights as citizens and to act as agents for projects that they envisioned and fashioned from within.55 Empowered by the national indigenous movements that by the 1970s were demanding self-determination with regard to projects and policies meant to support them, cheranenses emerged from that decade ready to assert their autonomous power.56
To illustrate some of the ways P’urhépechas from Michoacán established and actively engaged their indigenous identity and juxtaposed it to other Mexicans, I focus on government-developed radio programming in the 1980s that promised to make
55 Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, xxii. 56 Silva, “El Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas y La Política Indigenista,” 202, 207, 210.
53 education instruction accessible.57 By examining Radio XEPUR, their indigenous radio station, I examine some of the specific practices that constructed and sustained racial ideations during this period. The language that cheranenses used to defend their radio programming was integral to the decolonial project that reflected their language, modes of communication, and organizing strategies, all of which they understood as intrinsic to their cultural and racial identities as P’urhépechas.
Though radio communication indeed had been used by the Mexican government increasingly since the 1930s, members of the P’urhépecha community in Michoacán critiqued the expansionist project of the 1980s.58 P’urhépechas from across the Meseta met in Cherán in 1983 to discuss their assessment of radio communication on a national and local level. Not unlike the concerns outlined in the Carta de Pátzcuaro, the
P’urhépechas cited in their meeting notes that the problems they found with radio programming had nothing to do with accessibility, but rather focused on the nature of both the programming and production. P’urhepechas understood the diffusion of information from the state as a vertically organized schema, one in which all information was disseminated from the center to the rural periphery. Rural areas, especially indigenous communities like theirs, were not accustomed to the government’s
57 “Comite Para La Eliminación de La Discriminación Racial, Quinto Informe Periódico de México” (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, November 29, 1983), FD 09/462, Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas. 58 See for example Joy Elizabeth Hayes, Radio Nation: Communication, Popular Culture, and Nationalism in Mexico, 1920-1950 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000).
54 norms for communication. Because the majority of messages derived from urban centers, these indigenous leaders affirmed that the messages transmitted through these media were irrelevant because they did not address the problems or needs of rural and indigenous communities, nor did they adhere to their social and political customs.
Because those with political power controlled the diffusion of information, the
P’urhépecha wrote, the powerful could impose their ideological and cultural control upon the nation.59 The very production of radio programming excluded their indigenous voices both as creators and receptors of these communications.60
Nancy Fraser’s examination of the public sphere is particularly useful here when considering the significance of radio programming by indigenous communities and for indigenous communities. As Fraser has signaled, Habermas’s account of the bourgeois conception of the public sphere contends it is accessible and open to all. The revisionist scholarship has shown, however, that this claim to full accessibility was never accomplished. Class, gender, and race all could be used as reasons for exclusion from the public sphere. In particular, women and racialized ethnicities of all classes were excluded on racial grounds from participation, as were men of more humble and working-class backgrounds. Cultural styles, like language use and style of
59 To be sure, this is part of a global critique about control over mass media and knowledge production more generally 60 “Reunión Para La Elaboración Del Proyecto Nacional de La Red de Radiodifusoras Del Instituto Nacional Indigenista, Revisión Crítica de Las Políticas de Comunicación Del Estado En El Medio Rural” (Cherán, Michoacán: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1983), FD 16/0021, Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas.
55 communication, oftentimes were used against these racialized groups to discourage their participation from the public sphere.61 What results in a socially stratified society is that “unequally empowered social groups tend to develop unequally valued cultural styles.” These powerful pressures “marginalize the potential for contributions from members of subordinated groups both in everyday life contexts and in official public spheres.”62
Fraser and the other scholars have demonstrated that “subaltern counterpublics” always have established alternative publics—parallel spaces of dialogue and exchange where the members of marginalized groups create and circulate the counterdiscourses.
The marginalized peoples most affected by government practices that have disregarded their voices and excluded them from participation always have contested these policies.
On the one hand, subaltern counterpublics serve as safe spaces for retreat; on the other hand, they allow for these communities to organize challenges directed toward the broader publics. Therefore, in stratified societies, like the one in Mexico, the ideal of a participatory democracy must allow a plurality of competing publics rather than just a single public sphere. Through Radio Xepur, the cheranenses established a public arena where their diverse group with different values, interests, and messages could participate. Only by acknowledging the complexity of cultural identities could the
61 Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 61–64. 62 Fraser, 64.
56 P’urhépechas from Cherán begin to communicate across lines of cultural difference.63
The P’urhépechas from Cherán made these arguments against national radio communications because they had established their radio station, Radio XEPUR, in 1982, just a year before the reunion where they assessed the expansion of Mexican radio programming. The INI had rolled out a project in 1977 aimed at creating radio stations in indigenous communities that allowed indigenous community members not only the power to contribute in the programming and broadcast decisions, but also permitted indigenous peoples to produce and present the broadcasts. Within five years of the project’s introduction, La Voz de los P’urhépechas, Radio XEPUR, was founded in
Cherán.64
After having their radio programming for just one year, intellectuals in Cherán came to understand the importance of producing and conducting radio programming from within their community. As self-identifying P’urhépechas, it was they who were best suited to articulate their own region’s problems and needs. The radio became a crucial mechanism through which to communicate announcements about lands and livestock, the death of neighbors, community forums and meetings, and hometown festivals. Radio XEPUR’s programming also was another mechanism through which the
P’urhépechas could rescue their culture and traditions, since some—though not all—of
63 Fraser, 67–69. 64 “Comisión Nacional Para El Desarrollo de Los Pueblos Indígenas, 1948-2012” (Mexico, D.F.: Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de Comunidades Indígenas, 2012).
57 the messages broadcast featured the p’urhépecha language, a significant achievement in light of language loss in the municipality over the years.65 As indigenous communities across the country also were developing their own radio stations, the use of their indigenous language marked a reversal of federal and state government’s policies of castellanización—Spanish-language learning—dating to the 1920s.66 The style of communication and structure of Radio XEPUR encouraged community engagement, both as receptors and producers of messages.
For indigenous communities like the P’urhépecha, the ability to control the style and content of radio broadcasts was inextricably linked to the maintenance of their indigeneity. The public sphere must be understood as an arena through which social identities are formed and enacted. True and meaningful participation needs to allow for people to speak in their own voice, language, and vernacular. For P’urhépechas, programming in their native Tarasco allowed them to address members of their community who continued to speak the language, as well as afforded them opportunities to celebrate their traditions and rescue their language. Each broadcast was
65 “Pueblos Indígenas de México: Región Purepecha, Diagnóstico Sociodemográfico,” 20; See also “IX Censo General de Población - Michoacán” (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 1970); “X Censo General de Población Y Vivienda 1980 - Michoacán de Ocampo,” Lengua Indígena (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 1980); “XI Censo General de Población Y Vivienda - Michoacán de Ocampo,” Lengua Indígena (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 1990). 66 On how castellanización policies were enacted at the federal and local level, see Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, 20–24; Dietz, La Comunidad P’urhépecha Es Nuestra Fuerza, 183; Marie-Chantal Barre, Ideologías indigenistas y movimientos indios (Ciudad de México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1983), 87.
58 a chance to engage a social identification that honored the ancestral practices and customs that set them apart from the rest of the populace.
P’urhépechas in Cherán had the power to decide how Radio XEPUR evolved over time. It has survived since then, and those who live in the United States continue to stream it via their smartphones or computers, staying up to date in the latest community news and developments. Radio, then, allows us to think differently about diaspora. As
James Clifford and Julio Ramos have argued, diaspora as a process allows us to think about the copresence of here and there.67 Radio has served as a way for migrants to connect with their identities across places.
What also remains with this engaged migrant group is the consciousness of being P’urhépecha from Cherán, with a tradition of political agency. From confronting illegal loggers and encroachment on their communal lands to negotiating with state and federal government officials, the P’urhépechas from Cherán throughout the twentieth century both defended and articulated the needs and demands of their community before the state and were intentional about preserving their ancestral knowledge. Amid a growing consciousness and demand for self-determination and a strengthening national indigenous movement, P’urhépechas saw the success of their radio program as evidence that projects accomplished for them, and by them, were tools for empowerment and autonomy.
67 Clifford, “Diasporas”; Julio Ramos, “Migratorias,” in Desencuentros de La Modernidad En América Latina: Literatura y Política En El S.XIX (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Callejón, 2009), 431–44.
59 To be sure, this racial and ethnic identification of P’urhépecha always has been in formation. Throughout the twentieth century, cheranenses have employed their political consciousness and autonomous governance—handed down to them by their ancestors— to challenge the violence of cultural genocide and capitalism and mitigate the effects of migration, while also attending to the needs of their community. Challenging ideas of a
‘monolithic’ Mexican nation, P’urhépechas in Cherán used their radio station to promote their indigeneity and rescue their traditions amid federal projects that ignored their existence and eliminated them from the cultural fabric of the nation.
60 2. “I Don’t Want to Get the Coloreds Riled Up”: North Carolina and Minority Confrontations, 1975-1988
The temperature in North Carolina easily surpassed 80 degrees during the summer of 1975, encouraging a group of five young men to refresh themselves by taking a dip in Panther Lake. Though small and located about thirty minutes south of Raleigh in rural Wake County, Panther Lake was—according to its website—the most happening place for three decades, from the 1950s to the 1980s. Folks learned to swim, fish, and ski at the lake, and with a 35-cent admission charge in 1975, it was affordable for most North Carolinians. Trying to beat the heat, the five young men approached R.
H. Monday, known as “Bubba,” who with his wife had purchased the lake in 1952.
Monday glanced at the young men and denied them admission: they were Mexican.1
Carlie Ray Wise had invited four of his dad’s farmworkers—Andrés Hernández,
Honorio Hernández, Raúl Hernández, and Delfino Merlan—to join him for a swim at
Panther Lake, but Monday had thwarted their plans. When Carl Wise heard from his son what had happened, he was outraged. Carlie Wise insisted that Bubba Monday had no reason to deny them admission to the lake, and yet they were still turned away. “It just isn’t right,” Wise senior assured media outlets. “Swimming ought to be available to anyone who looks decent and acts decent. And my Mexican helpers are just as clean as white people.” Because of Wise’s convictions, he supported his son and workers in filing
1 “Farmer Helps Mexican Workers,” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, August 10, 1975.
61 a suit with North Carolina’s Civil Liberties Union, a state affiliate to the American Civil
Liberties Union. “I don’t blame Bubba,” Wise said. “He’s got his way and others have got theirs. But people’s rights are people’s rights.”2
For his part, Monday was firm in his decision. Because he privately owned the lake, Monday had the prerogative to decide who could enjoy his swimming hole.
Following the incident, Monday tacked a sign near the entrance of Panther Lake that read “Private Club.” Though Monday declined to comment about the situation to the press, he did share some of his reasoning. “I don’t want to get the coloreds riled up,”
Monday said. “Fifty percent of my business is with the coloreds.”3 Monday also owned an adjacent trailer park and general store, and because these businesses were open to both African Americans and whites, he did not want to anger any of his loyal customers.
During their day in court, the judge sided with the migrant workers. In a consent judgement handed down by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
North Carolina, Monday, his agents, employees, successors, and anyone associated with him, were forever banned from practicing or maintaining any policy that discouraged or denied anyone’s entry into Panther Lake. Not only would Monday be forced to allow everyone admittance to his lake, he also would have to pay Wise’s and his workers’ attorney and legal fees.4
2 “Suit Brought Against Swimming Hole Operator,” High Point Enterprise, August 11, 1975. 3 “Farmer Helps Mexican Workers.” 4 Andres Hernandez, Honorio Hernandez, Raul Hernandez, Delfino Merlan, Denito Pineda, Joe Villa, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. R. H. (Bubba) Monday,
62 North Carolina was changing by the late 1970s, and Monday’s fear that he would anger African American visitors to his lake by admitting Mexicans alluded to the place these migrants — often seasonal, but increasingly permanent — would come to occupy in their early stage of migration to the US South. Though Monday provided no evidence that signaled African Americans had been angered by the presence of Mexicans at
Panther Lake, Monday’s anticipation of conflict between the two groups led him to react. In doing so, Monday was attempting to stabilize the social hierarchy in North
Carolina, while Wise was hoping to transform it.
While Monday and Wise are not representative of all North Carolina citizens, they reveal the myriad ways white Americans—especially land and property owners— negotiated the transforming geographic space and racial landscape of the Tar Heel state.
The economic and political transitions in the state also were fundamental to Mexican migrants’ understanding of racial politics. As many of these Mexicans settled and became rooted in their receiving communities, their contact with activists and social justice groups, as well as other immigrants, raised in them a consciousness of being part of an ethnic and racialized community.5
trading and doing business as Panther Lake Recreation Park, Defendant (United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Raleigh Division 1975), American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 5 Racialization as defined by Omi and Winant is a sociological theory that describes the processes of the discursive production of racial identities. In short, racialization occurs when a group of people is seen as a “race,” when it was not seen as a race beforehand. See Michael Omi and
63 This chapter builds on histories that challenge ideas of the US South as a biracial region by demonstrating that the histories of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement are recapitulated through the experiences of Mexican immigrants.6 Southerners’ experiences with other racialized labor migrants since the 1960s provided the context through which they would understand Mexican migrants two decades later. I argue that
Mexican migrants’ racial identifications in North Carolina have been constructed through already existing racialized hierarchies of value and inextricable relationships between race and labor. Especially as North Carolina’s economy changed, many white
Americans like “Bubba” Monday often anticipated that relationships between African
American and Mexicans would be contentious based on increased job competition. The historical experiences of slavery and civil rights, however, provided local activists vying for migrants’ rights with a discursive framework to also describe the plight of farmworkers and increase understanding between African Americans and Mexicans.
Because the Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina had established a precedent through which religious people could mobilize on behalf of human rights and against injustice, ecumenical organizations across the state spearheaded outreach efforts to the
Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994). 6 Some examples of studies challenging the black-white binary of the US South include Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004); Malinda Maynor Lowery, Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Ronald T. Takaki, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
64 emerging Spanish-speaking community. However, unlike previous seasonal migrant groups, many Mexicans worked in the Tar Heel state without legal authorization, which rendered them vulnerable both in their workplace and their quotidian lives. By the end of the 1980s, as immigration reform allowed thousands in the state to legalize their status, Mexican migrants began to confront their place within North Carolina’s racial hierarchy and exert control of their lives in the Tar Heel state.
I contend that white and African American southerners made sense of Mexican migrant experiences in North Carolina since the 1980s through local histories rooted in the distant past of chattel slavery and the more recent history of racial segregation.
Building from the work of ethnic studies scholar John D. Márquez, I do not intend to replace or displace African Americans’ struggles in the state but rather to propose a more dynamic form of racial politics that has responded to and grown more complex because of Latino/a migration.7 I situate whiteness and white Americans like Bubba
Monday and Carl Wise at the core of this racial system in North Carolina and as central to mediating the evolving relationships between Mexicans and African Americans.
Examining how ideas of race change in North Carolina allows for the space to think more critically about how race forms in regions traditionally isolated from
Mexican migration, like the US South. I join Mexican American historians who have emphasized the salience of analyzing racial ideologies within a specific place—in this
7 John D. Márquez, “Juan Crow: Progressive Mutations of the Black-White Binary,” in Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader, ed. Nada Elia et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 48.
65 case, North Carolina.8 This chapter reveals how shifting racial ideologies in North
Carolina resulted from increased social interactions between migrants, laborers, religious people, and long-standing civil rights organizers.
2.1 North Carolina – “Progressive” or a “Paradox”?
Midcentury scholars often have described North Carolina as a “progressive” state.9 Political scientist V. O. Key’s seminal work on Southern politics praised North
Carolina as exceptional among states in the US South for its “progressive outlook” with regard to “industrial development, education, and race relations.” Key described North
Carolina as a “progressive plutocracy,” a state that while progressive in its economic development and political leadership, was governed by a plutocracy of businessmen who were neither democratic in their ruling nor in challenges to their authority. These
8 See for example Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987); George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Benjamin Heber Johnson, Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Stephen J. Pitti, The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Max Krochmal, Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016); Lauren Araiza, To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 9 Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, North Carolina: The History of a Southern State (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954); William S. Powell, North Carolina: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977); William S. Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
66 entrepreneurs promoted moderation and contended that North Carolina was moving toward racial tolerance with regard to its African American community. Unlike other
Southern states, Key claimed, North Carolina was “an inspiring exception to southern racism.”10
Scholars modified Key’s description of the Tar Heel state two decades later, deeming North Carolina a “progressive paradox,” whose internal conservatism outweighed its progressive façade.11 Historian William Chafe’s thirty-year examination of Greensboro positioned the city from 1945 to 1975 as a microcosm of state politics. In
1954, Greensboro was the first city to affirm they would comply to the Supreme Court’s ruling—in Brown v. Board of Education—and integrate schools, though in fact the city continued segregation policies for nearly two more decades. By 1960, young African
Americans staged a sit-in at the Woolworth department store to protest racial segregation, a critical moment in US history. Within a few years, by 1963, residents of the city were among the most active participants in the movement. As segregation continued throughout the decade, by 1969, the “Greensboro uprising” gave way to the emergence of the Black Power movement in the Southeast as National Guardsmen faced
10 V. O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1949), 205–28. 11 Merle Black, “Nominal Democrats and Real Republicans: The Voting Behavior of North Carolina Congressmen,” in Politics and Policy in North Carolina, ed. Thad L. Beyle and Merle Black (New York: MSS Information Corp., 1975), 157–77; Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequence since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
67 off with African American students. It would be seventeen years after the Brown v. Board decision that Greensboro would finally enforce the desegregation of its public schools, one of the last cities in the South to do so.12
North Carolina’s business progressivism was certainly evident by the 1960s.
Amid dramatic economic growth, new industries emerged that changed the face of labor in the Tar Heel state. Though furniture, textiles, and tobacco had been considered the
“Big Three” major industries in the first half of the twentieth century, new industries were drawn to the state by midcentury.13 Combined with low operating costs and nationally acclaimed universities that produced a consistent stream of graduates, North
Carolina became the destination for businesses. Technology and pharmaceutical firms started moving to the Raleigh-Durham area, making the Research Triangle Park one of the premier high technological centers in the country by the 1960s. About two hours away, Charlotte did not lag behind, as it was becoming one of the nation’s most important banking empires by the 1970s.14
12 William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 5–6. 13 Since March 18, 1947, the law has stated that a North Carolina employee cannot be required to join a union as a condition of employment. An employer might recognize a union, and employees may choose to join a union, but they cannot be required to do so. Employees can look at the benefits the union offers and at dues required for union membership and choose whether or not to join. For more information, see 14 Rob Christensen, The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics: The Personalities, Elections, and Events That Shaped Modern North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 2–5; Michael Leonard Walden, North Carolina in the Connected Age: Challenges and Opportunities in a Globalizing Economy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), xiii–xvi.
68 The paradox of North Carolina comes into play when realizing how intimately linked progressive business policies were with conservative and traditional social norms. Right-to-work laws in North Carolina almost had eliminated labor union activity by midcentury, as attempts to unionize were—as journalist Rob Christensen described—
“crushed with bullets and billy clubs.”15 Industries were drawn to North Carolina precisely because of minimal union activity and low wages. Workers’ overall incomes changed dramatically across the country in the early 1970s, which also marked a critical turning point for the North Carolina working class. Though North Carolina Governor
Jim Hunt—who served from 1977-1985—initiated efforts for industrial recruitment that brought new jobs to the state, these were mostly low-paying jobs that recruited unskilled labor. By the 1980s, as promises of profits and cheap labor lured industries, a vulnerable working class also emerged in the wake of the state’s changing political economy.
There were also sharp limits to North Carolina’s progressivism when it came to questions of race. Though V. O. Key wrote in Southern Politics that “the state has a reputation for fair dealing with its negro citizens” and claimed that “no where has cooperation between white and Negro leadership been more effective,” this was founded on the premise of legal segregation through Jim Crow laws.16 Though it was regarded as the least repressive state for African Americans, the sit-in movement began in the state precisely to challenge segregation. North Carolina’s racial system was built
15 Christensen, The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics, 3. 16 Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation, 206.
69 on white supremacy over black Americans, the arrangement between the groups
“rooted in paternalism” and characterized as a “patron-client relationship between white benefactors and black petitioners.”17 While the Civil Rights Movement ushered in two landmark federal laws—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of
1965—that ended legal segregation in public places, banned employment discrimination, and eliminated legal discriminatory voting practices in Southern states, the movement also revealed the fundamental vulnerability and volatility of North
Carolina’s racial climate. As a result, the Ku Klux Klan had a resurgence in the state by the 1960s, its members outnumbering that of any other state.18
The distinct ways economic and social policies were implemented and developed in urban and rural regions of North Carolina also reveal the state’s paradoxical nature.
Though economic and social transformations in North Carolina had begun in midcentury, this was not a uniform process throughout the state. While growth generated employment opportunities in the state’s cities, rural areas struggled to survive. Those North Carolinians who lived in rural counties, especially those away from tourist destinations and retirement communities, suffered the greatest economic and demographic losses after the collapse of the furniture, textile, and tobacco industries in the 1970s.19 In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, black Americans registered to
17 Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights, 8. 18 Christensen, The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics, 3, 134. 19 Walden, North Carolina in the Connected Age, xvii–xviii.
70 vote in metropolitan areas of North Carolina, to be sure, but African Americans living in rural communities continued to be largely barred from the polls.20 Even if legal practices of segregation were outlawed, de facto cultural norms still governed quotidian life in rural communities. While North Carolina’s cities might have been moving toward the progressive politics that made the state exceptional in the US South, rural regions of the state remained fundamentally Southern.21
Even so, some African Americans in rural areas of the state found increasing educational and job opportunities after the Civil Rights Movement. As the state’s prime industries changed, some African Americans were able to move from agricultural work into other sectors of labor. The children of African American farmworkers pursued different careers than their parents, seeking employment in other industries.
Anthropologist David Griffith found that “African American youth simply began refusing to take orders from white men; as elder African American farm supervisors retired or died, it became impossible to work with African American youth.”22
Consequently, the supply of African Americans in farm labor declined through the
1970s, though a handful of African American crews and farmworkers lingered.23
20 Christensen, The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics, 134. 21 Christensen, 2–3. 22 David Griffith, American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 61. 23 “Report of the Commission on Agricultural Workers” (Washington, D.C.: Commission on Agricultural Workers, 1993).
71 Those African Americans who remained in farm work by the 1970s labored increasingly among recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America.24 Several political economic processes converged to stimulate Mexican immigration to North
Carolina. The legacy of the Bracero Program—which from 1942 to 1964 permitted US employers to legally contract Mexican workers—had greatly enhanced the
“Mexicanization” of farm labor, which had its roots as early as 1917 in the Southwest.25
Having established a consistent labor force, the Bracero Program’s end did not impede
Mexicans from immigrating, even if it was through extralegal means.26 Many Mexican
American and Mexican immigrant laborers, actively recruited by crews in the Tar Heel state, began moving away from traditional immigrant destinations in the West,
Southwest, and Texas.27 Though exact figures of immigrant Mexican laborers in North
Carolina are difficult to ascertain, because migrant workers often were isolated or undocumented, data suggests that “migrant workers of all immigrant and native
24 “Report of the Commission on Agricultural Workers,” 43–44; Cindy Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 25 David Griffith, “Labor Recruitment and Immigration in the Eastern North Carolina Food Industry,” International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 19, no. 1 (2011): 105; Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso, El Primer Programa Bracero y El Gobierno de México, 1917-1918 (San Luis Potosí: El Colegio de San Luis, 1999). 26 Alicia R. Schmidt Camacho, Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 83, 108, 110. 27 Hahamovitch, The Fruits of Their Labor, 200–204; Griffith, “Labor Recruitment and Immigration in the Eastern North Carolina Food Industry,” 103–5.
72 backgrounds in North Carolina rose from 7,000 in 1975 to 40,000 in 1981.”28 Though
Latino migrants had worked in North Carolina seasonally since the 1970s, predominantly as farmworkers, it was their permanent settlement that raised questions for some with regard to where to place them on the racial order of the New South, especially in the wake of Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. Because
North Carolina was a new immigrant destination, farmers, activists, religious leaders, and everyday citizens had little experience working with Latino migrants.29 North
Carolinians devised new racialized discursive strategies to either stabilize existing racial hierarchies or raise awareness about the plight of Latino migrant laborers.
Just as in the Civil Rights Movement, religious institutions and organizations spearheaded initiatives to support migrants and their needs, establishing health and educational services, organizing conferences, and facilitating the legalization process. As the migration of Mexicans to the US South intensified, religious leaders in the region actively advocated for and described migrants’ experiences through a racial vocabulary
28 These figures according to the Migrant and Seasonal Farm Workers Association, a private agency that aided migrant workers in six eastern states. See Gill, The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina, 78. 29 Though recent studies have argued rightly that Latina/o migrants had been living and working in the US South throughout the twentieth century, I argue that North Carolina is a “new immigrant destination” because while Mexican migrants had lived there seasonally, their settlement only became permanent beginning in the 1980s. For studies challenging the “new immigrant destination” framework, see Weise, Corazón de Dixie; Nestor Rodríguez, “New Southern Neighbors: Latino Immigration and Prospects for Intergroup Relations Between African-Americans and Latinos in the South,” Latino Studies 10, no. 1–2 (2012): 18–40.
73 of discrimination and inequality, shaping how migrants’ ideas transformed in the diaspora.
Where migrants settled in the Tar Heel state determined how and to what extent migrants could socialize with each other and with other residents, which, in turn, was instrumental in shaping their ideas of themselves and others. Poultry and swine industries in rural North Carolina began to flourish by the late 1970s. Food-processing and service industries in rural areas of the state rushed to attract low-wage labor.
Latinos settled in these rural areas and labored in the agricultural sector, working on
Christmas tree farms, traditional field crops like tobacco, or the poultry and meatpacking industries.30 By 1980, 56,871 “Hispanics” were counted in the decennial census.31 With a growing immigrant workforce, competition for low-wage jobs grew among the laboring class. In turn, the most vulnerable workers were oftentimes pitted against each other.
30 Rebecca M. Torres, Jeffrey E. Popke, and Holly M. Hapke, “The South’s Silent Bargain: Rural Restructuring, Latino Labor and the Ambiguities of Migrant Experience,” in Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place, ed. Owen J. Furuseth and Heather A. Smith (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 45–49; Walden, North Carolina in the Connected Age, xv. 31 “Hispanic Population Growth and Dispersion Across U.S. Counties, 1980-2014,” Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project. A question on Spanish or Hispanic origin or descent was added to the 100-percent questions for the first time; in 1970, this question was asked of only 5 percent of the population. For more on the history of “Hispanic” in the census, see D’Vera Cohn, “Census History: Counting Hispanics,” Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project (blog), March 3, 2010; Nicholas De Genova and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship (New York: Routledge, 2003); G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
74 As Latinos came to occupy jobs traditionally held by African Americans, white citizens like “Bubba” Monday began employing narratives that placed Latina/os and
African Americans in conflict and competition. While the legal segregation of the Jim
Crow era no longer existed, according to one political scientist, “the state’s reputation for racial moderation ha[d] been often overstated, and there was often a white backlash when the racial code was threatened.”32
Because Mexican migrants arrived at a critical moment when North Carolinians also transitioned into a new era of racial politics, white politicians and everyday citizens worried that Latino immigrants would threaten the racial order they had worked so hard to construct and maintain. The question of where Mexicans were positioned on the
US South’s racial hierarchy, how their presence would affect African Americans and relationships moving forward, and what Mexican migration and settlement would mean in the post-Civil Rights US South, would linger throughout the 1980s.
2.2 The “New Slaves” of the Tar Heel State
The context in which southerners understood the nascent Mexican migrant community settling in North Carolina during the 1970s had been determined by earlier migrants. African American and migrant farmworkers faced experiences in the 1960s that were linked discursively to slavery in the most public of ways. The day after
Thanksgiving in 1960, as Americans recovered from the food and merriment, millions
32 Christensen, The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics, 307.
75 sat down in front of their televisions and saw how the other half lived in the television documentary Harvest of Shame. The film focused on the seasonal migration of workers throughout the East Coast. The laborers were predominantly single men, but at times also women and children, who joined the migratory route, chasing the season’s crops.
The narrator was famed broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, a North Carolina native who was long known as giving voice to the oppressed. “We used to own our slaves,” Murrow said, his voice set as the background to footage of migrant workers milling around, waiting to see which farmer would hire them. “Now we just rent them.”33 The documentary shared personal stories of arduous trials and tribulations. The farmworkers depicted in the film spent decades working in the fields while crew leaders abused, mistreated, and exploited them. Workers’ housing and living conditions were no better. Viewers witnessed on the television screen a camp in North Carolina that had no sanitary facilities for its workers and only one source of water. In the 1960s, these workers were predominantly poor African Americans, and sometimes Haitian or other migrants from the West Indies.34 Just ten years later, many of the same deplorable working and living conditions persisted, but the workers had changed. Increasingly replacing migrant black labor were Spanish-speakers from Mexico.
33 Fred W. Friendly, “Harvest of Shame” (CBS, November 25, 1960). 34 See for example Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
76 By the 1970s, the discourse of slavery was prominently displayed in newspaper headlines throughout North Carolina in reference to the plight of Latino farmworkers.
“Near-Slavery Is Found in Southern Migrant Camps” read a New York Times article published in 1977. Journalist Wayne King’s article focused on the farming industry in
Benson, a small town in Johnston County located midway between Fayetteville and
Raleigh. Legal aid officials described the working and living conditions for field workers as “little better than slavery.”35 The most vulnerable and desolate of men were recruited to work in the fields, from men with vices and nowhere to call home, to “illegal aliens” who were led to believe that any complaint would ensure their deportation. George
Carr, a young lawyer from Florida Rural Legal Services Inc., had seen migrant crew leaders exploit laborers from camps in Florida to farms in North Carolina. “It’s like slavery,” Carr said, adding, “it is slavery.”36
A study published in the Raleigh Report on May 12, 1978, described with more detail the relationship between crew leaders and farmworkers. While growers directly employed some farmworkers, others were hired by crew leaders, who functioned as the intermediaries between the grower and the crew. The grower might contract a crew leader through the Employment Security Commission or might informally hire a leader from among his acquaintances, referred to as a “freewheeler.” In 1978, the Migrant
35 Wayne King, “Near-Slavery Is Found in Southern Migrant Camps,” New York Times, August 29, 1977. 36 King.
77 Ministry estimated that more than 50 percent of crew leaders in the state were freewheelers, who were most often accused of abusing migrant workers.37
Crew leaders, however, served diverse functions across North Carolina farms and had varying relationships with workers. In some cases crew leaders worked among other farmworkers in the fields, working alongside their families and others and sharing in whatever profits they might sow. In other examples, crew leaders withheld farmworkers’ wages and charged exorbitant prices for transportation, housing, food, and other services, leading the North Carolina advisory committee of the US
Commission on Civil Rights to report in 1979 that farmworkers lived “in peonage, in involuntary servitude, not too far from slavery.”38
Migrants’ rights activists strategically related migrant workers’ experiences to slavery in interviews with press to elicit emotions from the broader community. After all, slavery was not such a distant memory in the Tar Heel state. It was almost three years after President Abraham Lincoln set forth his Emancipation Proclamation that
North Carolina ratified the 13th Amendment—on December 4, 1865—which abolished the legal practice of slavery. Even so, slavery’s repercussions were felt well into the next century. The state became the focal point of the Civil Rights Movement less than 100
37 Sister Evelyn Mattern, “Migrants and Migrant Ministry in North Carolina: An Update,” Raleigh Report, May 12, 1978, North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 38 Alex Charns, “Slaves Are Free at Last, In North Carolina,” The Washington Post, August 23, 1983.
78 years later, as Jim Crow-era segregation laws led young African Americans to stage some of the most famous and recognized nonviolent actions of the movement, like the sit-ins in Greensboro. Though chattel slavery had legally ended in North Carolina, its afterlife in Jim Crow segregation and legal discrimination continued to influence the quality of life for African Americans in the state. With a new racialized and immigrant community, Latinos—predominantly Mexicans—also would bear the social and economic repercussions of slavery.
Social justice organizers like Carr who recapitulated the Latino labor experiences in the US South through a discourse of slavery did so to create a linkage between the two struggles. As critical ethnic studies scholar John D. Márquez argues, “this maneuver does not imply that antiblack racism is a historical artifact being replaced or displaced by other kinds of struggle mandated by a postcolonial geopolitics,” but rather “it represents a vision for a more relational and dynamic form of black politics that is attuned to the growing complexities of the current moment.”39 By defining Latino migrants’ labor experiences in North Carolina as instances of slavery, Carr encouraged solidarity among African Americans and Latina/os through emphasizing shared identities as expendable and exploitable laborers. Carr and other social justice organizers like him recapitulated the experiences of slavery and segregation through a Latino/a
39 Márquez, “Juan Crow: Progressive Mutations of the Black-White Binary,” 48.
79 migrant experience to purposely bind together the histories of African Americans and
Latina/os as part of the historical afterlife of slavery in the US South.
By 1983, African Americans accounted only for 50 percent of farm labor, as
Latinos came to occupy about 35 percent and contracted Haitian workers comprised the rest.40 This new immigrant labor force faced distinctive challenges that were unfamiliar to the poor workers they had replaced. Most of the new workers did not speak English, making communication with anyone outside of their work camp impossible and intensifying their vulnerability. The majority of these Spanish speakers were undocumented immigrants who, having made it to the United States, wondered why they had ever left their homes. Asención S. Faulkner, an interpreter for the Spanish speakers in Duplin County, near North Carolina’s eastern coast, heard firsthand the grievances of Latino workers. “Once in a while they tell me they don’t know why they came,” Faulkner told a journalist. “In Mexico, they hear they can make a lot of money in
America. They leave thinking they can do better. Then they feel like they’ve been ripped off.”41 Haitian workers expressed similar regrets in coming to North Carolina. “They feel deceived because they were living a better life in their home country,” said Joseph
40 Because of the transient and oftentimes undocumented status of migrant workers, it is difficult to pinpoint exact figures. See Kim McGuire, “Slavery Still Threatens Migrants,” Sunday Star- News, September 11, 1983; NCCC Migrant Ministry Committee, “Migrant Farmworkers in North Carolina,” Summer 1982, North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 41 McGuire, “Slavery Still Threatens Migrants.”
80 Romulus, a native Haitian who worked as a translator.42 Speaking with the press,
Romulus assured that the workers complained not about the amount of work, but about the failure to see their efforts compensated. “They say they don’t care about working hard or the conditions,” Romulus said. “It’s just that they don’t get paid.”43 The dreams that Haitian and Latino migrant workers had carried across thousands of miles and international borders, the dreams of improved lives and material wealth, disintegrated into the fields they worked.
The potential for rivalries among workers existed not only along racial lines—
African American versus Latina/o—but also along lines of legal status. “The hardest working and most easily exploited workers are the illegal aliens,” King wrote, “and 500 to 1,500 ‘illegals,’ as they are called, are reported to be working in the Benson area.”44
Undocumented workers replaced already low-paid black labor on Southern farms.
Mexican American families who traditionally had migrated seasonally from Texas and other parts of the South also found the presence of “illegals” in North Carolina cumbersome. Mexican Americans in the state no longer could find work or decent housing because of the more easily exploited undocumented workers whose presence threatened Mexican Americans’ traditional cyclical migration patterns. Just as in
California and other parts of the Southwest, competition for farm labor in the Southeast
42 McGuire. 43 McGuire. 44 King, “Near-Slavery Is Found in Southern Migrant Camps.”
81 was causing serious fractures and divisiveness between people who seemingly shared more commonalities than differences.45
Some of the Mexican American workers in North Carolina, many of whom came from areas of the Southwest, were all too familiar with and sensitive to the effects caused by the mass immigration of Mexicans. Lawmakers and citizens of the United States had consistently rendered Mexican Americans as ethnically and politically outside of the bounds of “Americanness.” Though US citizens since 1848, Mexican Americans continued to be defined by other Americans as Mexicans. Discriminated against and economically marginalized, Mexican Americans were sensitive to their place in society, and many did what they could to distance themselves from their ethnic heritage and its negative associations. Even so, Mexican Americans in the Southwest were displaced by legal and undocumented Mexican immigrants throughout the first half of the twentieth century, leading them to understand Mexican immigrants as a group that depressed wages, undermined their organizing efforts, and threatened their livelihoods.
Social justice movement leaders began to rearticulate these displacement and replacement narratives by the 1950s, however, emphasizing the role of the US and
Mexican governments in negotiating labor programs and facilitating and even encouraging illegal immigration.46 By the 1960s and 1970s, the Chicano Movement in the
Southwest encouraged solidarity among Mexicans and Mexican Americans based on a
45 Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 44–68. 46 Gutiérrez, 159.
82 shared ancestral, ethnic, and cultural pride.47 Ten years later, most Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in the labor movement shared an agenda of comprehensive immigration reform, as they saw their futures in the United States as inextricably intertwined.48
While relationships between Mexican American and undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers evolved throughout the US Southwest during the twentieth century, the work of rapprochement between citizen and non-citizen Mexican laborers in North
Carolina had not yet begun. The way relations developed between undocumented
Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the US Southwest—from antagonisms to alliances—suggest some of the ways Mexican immigrants would be received in North
Carolina. In the Southeast, when Mexican Americans first were confronted with migrants in the 1980s, on the same fields where decades earlier black enslaved peoples had toiled under white masters, Mexican Americans asserted their value, personhood, and belonging by distancing themselves—sometimes brutally—from Mexican immigrants.
Oftentimes confrontations between undocumented and Mexican American workers took violent turns on the very fields on which they labored. In March 1984, The
North Carolina Independent reported the murder of 25-year-old Salvador Hernández, an
47 Along with the black civil rights and antiwar movements of the era, Mexican Americans also struggled for equal rights in a series of social protests that collectively became known as the Chicano movement. See Gutiérrez, 179–205. 48 Gutiérrez, 193–99.
83 undocumented farm worker whose lifeless body had been found under an apple tree in
Edneyville, a rural town about thirty miles outside of Asheville. In fact, the body had been found four months earlier, in November 1983, by Gene Lancaster, the owner of the apple orchard. Lancaster tried and failed to convince local Henderson County deputies to search his property, so he took on the task. Within days, Lancaster did find
Hernández’s body, and with evidence suggesting that Hernández died of a gunshot wound, local deputies had no choice but to investigate. Their case did not lead them far from home. The deputies identified Richard Delgado as the gunman, a 42-year-old
Mexican American foreman on Lancaster’s farm who claimed he shot Hernández in self- defense. Though the evidence collected suggested a more complicated altercation between the two men, Delgado was allowed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter.
Delgado received a suspended sentence in March 1984 and was forced to pay the court fees. Just four months after Hernández’s body had been found, Delgado already had returned to his post as foreman at Lancaster’s apple orchard.49
Hernández’s murder established the expendability of migrant labor and migrant lives. According to the Independent, Hernández was believed to be an “illegal Mexican immigrant.” The social hierarchy of farm labor privileged crew leaders, as they recruited and sustained a continuous flow of cheap labor for the farmer. Migrant farmworkers, on the other hand, were both dispensable and replaceable. Other similar incidents across
49 Dee Reid, “Foreman Gets Slap on Wrist for Killing Farmworker,” The North Carolina Independent, March 2, 1984.
84 North Carolina had proven this to be the case. In 1975, a Nash County sheriff testified that a crew leader had shot and killed a migrant worker “because he asked him one question too many.”50 In this case, the defendant also pled guilty and received a suspended sentence. Seven years later, a crew leader in Sampson county who reportedly beat his workers regularly was charged with kicking a pregnant worker in the stomach.
There was no conviction on his record.51 Crew leaders rarely faced criminal charges because farmers protected them and because migrants often did not speak English or were too scared to serve as witnesses. While the race of the crew leaders in the aforementioned episodes was not revealed in newspaper reports, their place within the farm labor hierarchy always was situated above that of migrants. In this social hierarchy of value, migrants were fixed at the bottom.
Because value must be understood relationally, Delgado’s social value as a
Mexican American crew leader was contingent upon and made legible through the devaluation of an “illegal Mexican immigrant” like Hernández.52 “Illegal” immigrants like Hernández are rendered rightless and, as ethnic studies scholar Lisa Marie Cacho argues, ineligible for personhood. In theory, undocumented workers are eligible for some legal protections, though in practice, migrants are often reluctant to exercise these
50 Reid. 51 Reid. 52 Lindon Barrett, Blackness and Value: Seeing Double (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 19, 21; Lisa Marie Cacho, Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected (New York: New York University Press, 2012), 13–18.
85 rights, and relevant authorities frequently hesitant to uphold them. The very humanity of undocumented migrants in the United States is represented as something that immigrants must gain. “To be ineligible for personhood is a form of social death,” Cacho argues. “[I]t not only defines who does not matter, it also makes mattering meaningful.”53 As an undocumented immigrant, Hernández’s social value was measured by his labor and relationship to legal workers. Scholar Yen Le Espiritu terms this positionality as “differential inclusion,” where marginalized groups are “deemed integral to the nation’s economy, culture, identity, and power—but integral only or precisely because of their subordinate standing.”54
Most migrants recognized that the US justice system did not work in their favor and consequently did not report the abuse they faced on farms. Steve Edelstein, a
Raleigh attorney, had represented migrant workers and knew the odds were stacked against his clients. “The sheriffs don’t like to investigate because they can’t talk to them,”
Edelstein told The North Carolina Independent. “If there are witnesses, they don’t speak
English… [c]ombine that with the kind of political pressure coming from growers who always protect their crew leaders and you’ve got a mess.”55 When faced with these odds and the power dynamics in play, migrants’ cases stood no chances. Even the popular narratives addressing these instances of abuse revealed the gross injustice at play, as the
53 Cacho, Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected, 6. 54 Yen Le Espiritu, Home Bound: Filipino American Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 47. 55 Reid, “Foreman Gets Slap on Wrist for Killing Farmworker.”
86 headline for The Independent’s article read: “Foreman gets slap on wrist for killing farmworker.” Racialized and vulnerable, migrants in the United States were punished by the law more often than they were protected by it.56
Media representations of conflict and competition between groups – whether they be African American and Latino immigrants, or Mexican Americans and “illegal” immigrants – reify unequal relations and ignore the ways in which increasingly global economies and early neoliberal states disempowered and failed to protect people of color.57 Farm work was a poorly paid and labor-intensive occupation that did not require skilled labor. These replacement narratives insinuate that while African
Americans were no longer willing to be exploited, immigrants willingly labored under arduous conditions, feeling privileged and lucky to be paid at all. US citizens of color rarely challenged unfair hiring practices or discrimination even when they were legally protected by labor laws, because they often lacked the financial means to seek redress.
Undocumented workers, who were entitled to few legal rights because they were not authorized to work in the United States, were a much more desirable labor force.
56 Cacho, Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected, 22–23. 57 Geographer and anthropologist David Harvey described the neoliberal state as one favoring “strong individual private property rights, the rule of law, and the institutions of freely functioning markets and free trade.” To uphold and protect these ideals, the state must use “its monopoly of the means of violence to preserve these freedoms at all cost.” Free markets and free trade are regarded as fundamental goods and should deliver higher living standards for everyone. The emphasis on the individual and personal responsibility, however, oftentimes leads to victims being blamed for their impoverishment or lack of social mobility. See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 64–86.
87 Therefore, both undocumented immigrants and unemployed citizens of color “are ineligible for personhood” because they cannot challenge “unlivable wages or unfair hiring practices.”58 Unemployment and illegal status renders people vulnerable precisely because of US law.
Agencies and community organizations who desired to provide services to these undocumented newcomers in the 1980s recognized they might be rebuked by African
Americans and Mexican Americans, but activists also recognized that these new
Mexican immigrant laborers were in some ways the most vulnerable workers. Though organizations in North Carolina had worked previously with legal migrant laborers, the demographic wave of Mexican immigrant workers forced organizers and activists to learn the particularities of supporting and working with undocumented workers. These
Mexican newcomers’ lack of citizenship amplified their susceptibility to wage theft and abuse in the labor market and criminalized their racialized bodies.
North Carolina farmers were privy to the conditions that their hired hands faced, but migrants already were considered expendable both as laborers and as people. “It’s the bottom rung of society,” one farmer told a reporter. “The labor is usually alcoholics or dope addicts.”59 Donald Hall, another farmer from High Point, assured the press that migrants were dependable and committed. “They don’t care how hot it gets,” Hall insisted, “or how long they work.” While Hall and the other farmer held contradictory
58 Cacho, Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected, 22. 59 McGuire, “Slavery Still Threatens Migrants.”
88 views regarding the integrity of farmworkers, both provided a perspective of migrant workers as distinct from themselves and other laborers, a conviction that for them justified the wages and conditions under which they toiled. Hall had a particular inclination for hiring workers from Puerto Rico and Florida, many of whom he declared were “illegal immigrants.”60 Perhaps Hall believed Puerto Ricans—not unlike the other
Latino workers he hired—were undocumented because they were Spanish speakers.
Hall’s statement shows just how misunderstood and conflated migrants’ national identities were among growers. In the end, whether or not workers had the legal right to work in the country did not matter, because work they did.
Reports of violence and suffering among workers led various support groups in
North Carolina to create a network that engaged and assisted migrants. Educational services were provided for the children of migrants and for workers who were English- language learners.61 Those who worked in vegetable-producing counties received medical services, and transient workers were housed in emergency shelters, while
Farmworkers Legal Services in places like Newton Grove fought for workers’ rights.62
60 McGuire. 61 “Serving Migrant Families” (Migrant Education Section, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 72 1971), American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 62 “Field Memo” (Washington, D.C.: Migrant Legal Action Program, Inc., November 15, 1982), American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University; Sister Evelyn Mattern, “Legal Services Greatest N.C. Migrant Worker Need,” The News & Observer, May 28, 1978, North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
89 However, Chuck Eppinette, the community educator for Farmworkers Legal Services, was wary of what really could be done in support of the laborers. “With the worst crew leaders, it is hard to get somebody to take legal action,” Eppinette said, “because they are afraid of reprisal.” Though farmworkers in 1981 won a slavery suit—United States v.
Tony Booker—against their employer that made national headlines, Eppinette was unmoved by the sensationalism of the slavery suit. “Slavery is… a very sexy issue,”
Eppinette told a journalist. “Worse than that is the violence that doesn’t reach the level of slavery but is far more widespread. Slavery isn’t the biggest problem in this state,”
Eppinette assured the press. “Gross underpayment and rampant violence are the worst problems.”63
2.3 Migrant Advocacy and the Discourse of Civil Rights
The Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina established the precedent through which religious people could mobilize on behalf of human rights and against injustice.
Historian David L. Chappell argues in his work that the story of civil rights is a story of the power of religious tradition. In A Stone of Work, Chappell shows how the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament drove activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou
Hamer, and others into the Civil Rights Movement and instilled in them a value of self- sacrifice. Chappell contends that it was the activists’ radical religion—which challenged liberals’ faith that human reason and time would resolve prejudice—that encouraged
63 McGuire, “Slavery Still Threatens Migrants.”
90 white and African American activists to stand apart from society and instigate change.64
In doing so, the religious activists of the Civil Rights Movement inspired a religious revival that would continue to motivate those organizing for social rights.
One such organization with long ties to social justice activism was the North
Carolina Council of Churches (NCCC). Founded in 1935, the NCCC enabled denominations, congregations, and people of faith to organize in the Tar Heel State on issues such as economic justice and development, equality, human well-being, and peace, following the example and mission of Jesus Christ. An ecumenical organization, the NCCC’s membership included more than twenty denominational bodies, among them Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, the General
Baptist Convention, and others.65 Many of the NCCC’s members also had been involved in the Civil Rights Movement of the US South. As sociologist Aldon Morris has shown, leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. expertly adopted biblical themes and scripture as calls for social action, recasting new, alternative ways of seeing the world.66 Throughout the twentieth century, Southerners had found in religion the moral impetus and stimulus for action.
64 David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Paul Harvey, Freedom’s Coming: Religious Culture and the Shaping of the South from the Civil War through the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 65 Sister Evelyn Mattern, “Statement Given to NC Legislative Research Commission on Migrant Farmworkers” (Raleigh, NC, March 18, 1982). 66 Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1984), 23.
91 By the late 1970s, the Migrant Ministry—a committee of the NCCC comprised of laity, ecclesiastics, activists, and non-Christian members—had become a vociferous opponent of segregation and supported racial justice issues at a time when many of the migrant farmworkers in the state were still African Americans travelling up and down the East coast. No strangers to the plight of migrant farmworkers in North Carolina, the
NCCC and its members spearheaded outreach to Spanish-speaking Latino migrant workers, who appeared to be growing in numbers across North Carolina’s fields. Evelyn
Mattern, a Catholic nun, was the chairperson of the NCCC in the late 1970s and a fervent defender of migrants’ rights. By the decade’s end, Mattern addressed changes in state’s farm labor workforce. “Until recently, most migrants in North Carolina have been black males,” Mattern wrote in an article, published in the Raleigh News & Observer on May
28, 1978, “but the past few years have brought increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking migrants, who travel mainly in family groups.”67 Observers estimated that as many as 30 percent of farmworkers spoke Spanish as their first language. Even as the demographics of farmworkers changed, the migrant ministry continued its platform of peace, social, and racial justice.68 The only way to improve the lives of migrants, the NCCC believed, was by providing services to these newcomers.
67 Mattern, “Legal Services Greatest N.C. Migrant Worker Need.” 68 Migrant Farmworkers in North Carolina, Summer 1982, North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
92 Catholic clergy of the NCCC Migrant Ministry Committee were at the forefront of efforts to support migrant farmworkers and immigrant workers, even though
Catholics accounted for only a small percentage of the North Carolina population. 69
Despite their relatively small numbers, Catholics had a long history of confronting racism and directly engaging in social justice issues in North Carolina. In 1953, one year before Brown v. Board of Education established that separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional, Bishop Vincent Waters ordered the integration of churches throughout the Diocese of Raleigh, shocking the segregated South.70 Even though many Southerners remained suspicious of Catholicism mid-century, Catholic leadership would continue to challenge the region’s racial order. When Spanish- speaking immigrants predominantly from Mexico—a historically mostly Catholic country—started settling in North Carolina, Catholic laity joined other community, labor, and religious organizers in their local outreach efforts.
As Latinos in the 1980s started settling in the Tar Heel state, religious people working with migrants realized that the experiences of Latino migrant workers were distinct from their African American counterparts. In 1984, Catholic nun Kelin “Kitty”
69 As late as 1950, there were scarcely 20,000 Catholics in the entire state, ½ of 1 percent of the population. See William F. Powers, Tar Heel Catholics: A History of Catholicism in North Carolina (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2003), xii. 70 Powers, 14–18; Cecilia A. Moore, “Dealing with Desegregation: Black and White Responses to the Desegregation of the Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, 1953,” in Uncommon Faithfulness: The Black Catholic Experience, ed. M. Shawn Copeland, LaReine-Marie Mosely, and Albert J. Raboteau (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009), 63–77.
93 Bethea, also a member of the NCCC’s Migrant Ministry, observed a significant demographic change among the group of farmworkers she advocated for and served during the summer. A drought in North Carolina had forced groups of farmworkers to return to Florida or Texas earlier than usual. Among the farmworker population that stayed, Sister Bethea noticed smaller numbers of Haitian men and an increase of single
Latino men. However, these single Latino men—unlike other farmworkers—were undocumented, and, because of their legal status, were ineligible for many public programs. Private organizations in North Carolina supported these men where they could, but resources were strained.71 While they had responded to racial and economic injustices before, North Carolina organizers and activists were not as familiar with the particular impact that legal status had on immigrants’ rights and their relationship to others.
At the national level, policymakers also were attempting to grapple with the presence of undocumented immigrants and their place within the US workforce as they debated national legislation regarding immigration reform. Since the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, millions of immigrants and refugees from a variety of countries made the United States their home. However, policymakers worried that the US’s fragile economy following the recession of the 1970s could no longer support new immigrants,
71 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes” (Catholic Center, Raleigh: North Carolina Council of Churches, October 9, 1986), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
94 especially those coming from third-world countries. Under President Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989, immigration reform became a priority. As the number of undocumented immigrants grew and anti-immigrant backlash across the country became more pronounced, Reagan and his administration realized the need to reevaluate current immigration laws and enforcement procedures. The Reagan administration created a task force on March 6, 1981, to review the policies and practices in place and propose recommendations for Congress.72
Two senators, Alan K. Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming, and Romano L.
Mazzoli, a Kentucky Democrat, sponsored their own immigration bill that they introduced to Congress in March 1983 that incorporated many of the task force’s recommendations. The Simpson-Mazzoli bill would prohibit the employment of “illegal aliens” and would offer legal status to undocumented workers who could prove they had been living in the United States since January 1982 or had worked as farm laborers for at least 90 days. 73 In May 1984, the Rural Coalition, a national organization committed to working with rural communities, sent memos to members of its organization and other allied groups that outlined the Simpson-Mazzoli bill and its implications. Among those to receive the memo were members of the NCCC’s Migrant
Ministry Committee. Those who worked with migrant farmworkers in North Carolina
72 María Cristina García, Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 10–11, 90–91. 73 García, 90–91.
95 held on to these memos, presenting them in their meetings and discussing how these policy changes potentially could affect their local communities. By June 1984, the House approved the bill. Eight Democrats and two Republicans from North Carolina voted in favor.74
Following the bill’s passage through the House, the NCCC Migrant Ministry placed immigration reform as a major agenda item at their committee meeting just one month later. Recognizing that the Simpson-Mazzoli bill was nearing passage, the ministry was in a fervor. Members rushed to publish articles that outlined the impact this legislation would have on farmworkers. All agreed it was imperative to mobilize church and Latino groups, as the new law would require collaboration among a variety of people. The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization based in
Pennsylvania, drafted a summary elaborating the key points that the bill addressed, and the Migrant Ministry prepared to make copies of the memo for distribution.75
Though the Simpson-Mazzoli bill covered everything from employer sanctions to legal immigration and enforcement, the Migrant Ministry was most concerned about the legalization process and the creation of temporary worker programs that could potentially displace North Carolina farmworkers. Members of the ministry underlined key points of the Friends’ memo before sharing it with their broader coalition, drawing
74 Alan Simpson, “Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986,” Pub. L. No. 99–603 (1986). 75 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes” (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Council of Churches, July 19, 1984), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
96 attention to main points. Both the House and Senate versions of the bill made clear that legalization did not denote amnesty. Not all undocumented residents would be eligible, and “those eligible would be given temporary legal resident status for a year,” after which they could apply for residency.76 It was precisely this final clause that threatened migrants, as they would be forced to reveal their legal status in the country and could be subject to deportation, especially those who applied without being eligible for legalization. The American Friends claimed that the bill would neither eliminate the presence of undocumented workers nor would it “rid the country of an ‘alien subculture’ of exploited undocumented workers, as proponents claim.”77
The legislation posed three different guestworker provisions that complicated the migrant ministry’s organizing work. US workers were offered fewer protections against displacement, as there was no limit to the number of foreign workers who could come into the country. Even worse, growers could apply for an “emergency” supply of workers if the number they were allocated was deemed unsuitable. Foreign workers brought to the US under this legislation would be ineligible for federally assisted programs, like legal services, leaving foreign guest workers vulnerable to abuse and mistreatment. What the Simpson-Mazzoli bill did, the American Friends Service
Committee argued, was “provide a steady, docile flow of excess labor for growers.” The bill was actually “an agricultural labor bill under the guise of immigration reform” that
76 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes.” 77 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes,” 3.
97 would depress farmworkers’ wages and living standards, if they happened to be employed at all.78
After years of debate and revisions, the Immigration Reform and Control Act
(IRCA), known also as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, was signed into law on November 6,
1986, leading a flurry of organizations to spearhead actions directed at migrant workers preparing to apply for legalization. Several interested groups from across the state met with the Migrant Ministry on Wednesday, December 17, to discuss the legislation and its implications. Quite unfamiliar with how to best support their immigrant community,
North Carolina activists looked to organizers in other states for support. One of those in attendance suggested that perhaps Florida organizers could orient efforts in North
Carolina, as barely a month had passed since IRCA had been signed into law when activist groups in the Sunshine State initiated outreach to immigrants. To be sure,
Catholic Church agencies also would be heavily involved in the processing of applications, so collaboration and support for those efforts would be crucial. Though the
Migrant Ministry realized the volunteer work they were about to embark upon would require a great deal of manpower and funding, they were less clear on where to find it.
Social activists and their organizations were financially and physically ill-equipped to
78 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes,” 4; Quakers and growers might have overestimated migrant workers’ docility. See for example Leon Fink, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
98 support all of the undocumented immigrants hoping to apply for legalization in North
Carolina.79
As thousands of North Carolina migrant workers gathered their materials to apply for legal status, immigrants’ rights groups throughout the state began discussing internally how best to pinpoint whom they should serve moving forward. Thousands of migrant workers would need assistance as they applied for legalization, forcing organizations to be more realistic in their outreach goals. The Migrant Ministry decided that, to be most effective in their service, they had to be unambiguous in identifying a targeted population. On April 3, 1987, members of the Migrant Ministry pushed through a proposal to officially change the name of their committee.80 “This change,” the ministry’s meeting minutes read, “was proposed to make clear that the work of the committee is with ‘migrant’ farmworkers and not ‘immigrant’ persons, though they may at times be the same.”81 Moving forward, they would be known as the Farmworker
Ministry Committee, meaning they would not address issues unrelated to farmworkers
(e.g., construction, service sector, etc.).82 As the population of Latino migrants growing
79 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes” (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Council of Churches, December 11, 1986), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 80 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes” (North Carolina Council of Churches, March 3, 1988), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 81 “Farmworker Ministry Committee’s Meeting Minutes” (North Carolina Council of Churches, June 16, 1988), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 82 “Farmworker Ministry Committee’s Meeting Minutes.” Emphasis added by author.
99 in North Carolina by the end of the 1980s, it became increasingly important to clarify the way religious institutions aligned themselves with migrants in accordance to their labor and legal status.
Just a few months after IRCA was signed into law, discussions on legalization occupied most of the Farmworker Ministry’s time. By May 1987, the federal government had identified local groups around the country to act as “qualified designated entities”
(QDE) to help legalization beneficiaries prepare and file their applications. In North
Carolina, Telamon Corporation, a non-profit that worked with farmworkers, was designated as a QDE, as was the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, the Catholic Diocese of
Charlotte, a representative of the Episcopal Dioceses, and Lutheran Family Services in
Greensboro. Sister Bethea, an active member of the NCCC and Farmworker Ministry, organized the application program at the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh and eagerly recruited volunteers from among the ministry. Workshops were held across North
Carolina to inform people of the procedures and requirements for legalization.83
Religious and community organizations activated across the state to facilitate every aspect of the application process for their local immigrant communities. The
Farmworker Ministry Committee, collaborators, and dozens of volunteers were at the forefront of efforts to support migrants throughout the process. Groups sponsored
83 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes” (North Carolina Council of Churches, May 22, 1987), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
100 events at local churches and community centers in cities like Fayetteville, Newton
Grove, Wilson, Durham, Wilmington, New Bern, Oxford, and Raleigh. At some events, videotapes in English and Spanish described in detail the application process as organizers responded to questions from those present. Because the application required medical exams, the Farmworker Ministry fervently sought physicians who would agree to become certified by Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), as only two doctors — one in Cary, the other 150 miles away in Carolina Beach — were authorized to perform the assessments. Ministry members also hoped to devise ways to offset the cost of the legalization process for migrants, as the application alone was $185, plus additional expenses for photos, medical exams, processing, and other expenditures migrants might incur as they endeavored to legalize their presence in North Carolina.84
Because of their past experiences working with other disenfranchised communities in
North Carolina, these religious people were familiar with the financial and emotional burdens a process like this could take on those they served.
“Amnesty” became a dominant headline in major newspapers in North Carolina by mid-1987, as journalists sought interviews with aspiring applicants and those leading outreach efforts. Before these stories appeared on the pages of The News & Observer,
North Carolinians had been unaware of the thousands of unnamed laborers that toiled in their state’s fields. Because so many of the migrants lived in isolated and rural parts of
84 “Migrant Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes.”
101 the state, migrants’ presence and how the IRCA legislation would affect North
Carolinians broadly had been ignored by most citizens. Now, at least 200,000 N&O readers in the Tar Heel state learned about these immigrants’ trials and tribulations.
Among one of the top five states to employ immigrant labor, North Carolina expected thousands to submit applications for legal status. IRCA allowed undocumented people living in the United States continuously since 1982 or before to apply for legal status. However, the provisions for agricultural workers were different: instead of requiring years of continuous residence, IRCA offered legal status to migrant farmworkers who, during the 1985-1986 season, had been employed in agriculture for at least ninety days. These special provisions available only to farmworkers highlighted the desire for a cheap and easily exploitable agricultural labor force, even while the argument for granting them legal status sustained that legalization would make them less easily exploited.
After months of anticipation, the US Attorney General determined that the federal government would accept IRCA applications throughout a twelve-month period, beginning on May 5, 1987, and concluding on May 4, 1988, from undocumented people who had lived continuously in the United States since January 1, 1982. The state’s only
US Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Charlotte began accepting applications for legalization from undocumented workers on June 1, just a month after the application period began. Nearing June’s end, only 307 applications had been received, but INS officials projected that as many as 18,000 immigrants would apply for
102 amnesty before the May 4 deadline and the farmworker deadline that extended until
November 30, 1988. According to those who worked directly with migrants, the small number of applications already submitted were just a tiny fraction of what was to come.
Migrants were being careful, meticulously gathering the evidence requested by INS officials and waiting to see how the first wave of applications would be received.
Having feared INS officials for years, undocumented migrants approached IRCA and its promises with measured excitement and purposeful circumspection.85
Though IRCA’s promise of legalization eased migrants’ anxieties, farmers’ fears were only just beginning. One early morning in April 1988, John M. Crute, a farmer from
Oxford, loaded six of his migrant workers in his truck and drove nearly three hours to
Charlotte. Though most days Crute’s Mexican workers could be found among fifty acres of tobacco fields, today they would be sitting in vinyl chairs at the INS offices, waiting to submit their legalization applications. In three weeks, Crute had visited Charlotte for the same purpose on three separate occasions, hauling a different group of workers with each trip. Because IRCA also threatened to heavily fine employers of undocumented workers, it made sense to Crute to make the trip, though he was not without worry.
IRCA promised to transform vulnerable migrants into legal residents with a variety of employment opportunities and labor rights. “There’s going to be a lot of them [that] leave the farm and go into public work,” Crute told the N&O. Farmers like Crute feared
85 “Immigration Amnesty Will Let Some Leave Shadowed Life Behind,” The News & Observer, June 21, 1987.
103 that their livelihoods would be destroyed if their farmworkers transitioned into non- agricultural labor. Making the six-hour roundtrip to Charlotte to support his employees’ legalization efforts, Crute hoped his workers would see he appreciated them and that they in turn would return the favor through loyalty. “If you’ve been good to them, they’ll be good to you,” Crute sustained, adding that if “you don’t treat them right, pay them right, they’ll leave. I’d do the same myself.”86 John Mahoney, a Catholic brother working with migrants in Sampson County, agreed that the majority of migrants would look for better paying jobs outside of the agriculture sector.87
The way that Crute—not unlike Carl Wise in the Panther Lake case—related his workers’ experiences to his own reveals the multitude of ways that white North
Carolina growers affiliated to their migrant workers. While some growers valued their migrant workers as barely human, others like Crute and Wise alluded to a connection between them. Crute afforded his migrant workers the same logic and reasoning that
Crute himself would employ if he were in their position, linking migrants’ power to decide their fates to his own. The relationships Crute and Wise had with their migrant workers, while not representative of all grower-worker relationships, do at the very least suggest that interactions between farmers and migrant workers were mixed and dependent on a variety of factors: the size of the farm’s workforce; the farmer’s contact
86 Adam Seessel, “A New Day for Migrants? Balance Changing between Farmers and Field Hands,” The News & Observer, May 22, 1988, sec. D. Emphasis added by author. 87 “Immigration Amnesty Will Let Some Leave Shadowed Life Behind.”
104 with the workers; the workforce’s demographics; the farm’s size, location, and history; the type of farmwork; and the farm’s net profits, among others. North Carolina’s farming industry was oppressive not only because of individual growers, but because the system itself was designed on economic competition and productivity, which led to migrant expendability and disposability.88 Because of the bonds farmers like Crute and
Wise established, their migrant workers might have developed ideas about whiteness and about themselves that were quite different from other workers in the state, and their loyalties might have been more long-lasting.
While migrants interviewed by the press agreed that legalization would at least provide better job opportunities and labor conditions, not all were convinced of transitioning into other job markets. For his part, 23-year-old José Martín Ortiz declared loyalty to his farm. “The money you make in the fields in a half a day equals a full day’s pay in other jobs,” Ortiz claimed. As far as Ortiz was concerned, other migrants would stay, too, because “many of us like to work in the fields, and when you like something, you don’t leave it.”89 For others, however, their choice was based not so much on the pay, but on the work conditions.
For farmworkers like Esteban Medina and Bulfrano Arrellano, IRCA made them less vulnerable to foremen and farmers who not only stole their wages, but also
88 See for example Peter Benson’s analysis in Peter Benson, Tobacco Capitalism: Growers, Migrant Workers, and the Changing Face of a Global Industry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012). 89 “Immigration Amnesty Will Let Some Leave Shadowed Life Behind.”
105 physically and emotionally abused them. Medina, a 48-year-old migrant worker from
Asheboro, said that he and other farmworkers would “feel calmer if we don’t get along with a boss, we can change.”90 Before 1986, being undocumented subjected men like
Arrellano to constant abuse. “They used to call us wetbacks, illegals, and so they wouldn’t pay us more,” Arrellano told The News & Observer.91 Their mobility had been limited before IRCA, forcing them to withstand vicious attacks and deplorable working conditions. “Now, if they don’t pay more,” Arrellano said, “we’re going to move on.”92
Because of the work of religious supporters, hundreds of workers like Arrellano and Medina would soon have the chance to decide their fates in the United States. As expected, the Catholic Church in North Carolina was at the forefront of efforts to assist migrants through the application process. Sister Bethea and her team trained volunteers to assist in application procedures and ensured that aspiring applicants knew all the requirements. By the 1980s, North Carolina’s “agricultural belt,” which included
Sampson, Johnson, Nash, Wilson, and Duplin counties, was the destination of about two-thirds of the more than 30,0000 migrant workers who settled in North Carolina to plant and pick tobacco, cucumbers, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, and other crops. As the Diocese of Raleigh served these counties, Sister Bethea’s work as the coordinator of the diocese’s migrant ministry, and as member of the NCCC’s Farmworker Ministry,
90 Seessel, “A New Day for Migrants? Balance Changing between Farmers and Field Hands.” 91 Seessel. 92 Seessel.
106 was recognized in various outlets, as mainstream newspapers as well as the church publications began celebrating her work.93
Sister Bethea and her team of volunteers were cognizant of the amount of work they had accomplished outside of the number of applications submitted. What was not visible to those reading the applications, or those lauding their success, were the months of anticipation and countless hours spent in trainings, and in contact with migrants, parish volunteers, and supervisors. Regional directors of Catholic Social Ministries had provided weeks of trainings and workshops for volunteers in preparation for their roles.
By the November 30, 1988, deadline for farmworkers, the Diocese of Raleigh had completed 1,600 applications and still were waiting to process 300 more. Perhaps most importantly to the religious volunteers were the hopes and dreams of migrants, etched with each pen stroke and in each fingerprint. Sister Bethea and her team of religious volunteers had heard each individual migrant story—of desperate poverty, violence, danger, and despair—and these lived truths were hidden between the lines of each application.94
Though each application was submitted to the INS with precision and care, the outcomes were not always the same. Sister Bethea and her team guaranteed that all the submission documents were valid and legitimate, meeting the INS’s guidelines. Some
93 Michelle King, “Migrant Ministry: Low Salaries, Substandard Housing, Health Problems Plague Farm Workers,” The North Carolina Catholic, September 24, 1989. 94 Pam Smith, “Implementing the Immigration Law: Catholic Social Ministries Continues to Facilitate the Process,” The North Carolina Catholic, February 5, 1989.
107 migrants received their green card and felt the burden of being in the United States illegally lifted from their shoulders. “They are jubilant they no longer have to live in hiding because of undocumented status,” Sister Bethea told the North Carolina Catholic, a
Catholic newspaper based in Raleigh.95 On the other hand, there also were stories of those whose applications had been denied. Sister Bethea knew a young man who had been told by the INS that he would be granted legal status only if he could prove that his life would be at risk in his home country. While the text does not state whether this man had been a farmworker, it does reveal that, unlike most other immigrants in North
Carolina, this young man had not emigrated from Mexico. Among a new wave of migrants entering North Carolina, this young man came from El Salvador as part of a growing community of Central Americans fleeing civil war, genocide, and abuse in their home countries. By the late 1980s, North Carolina was attracting a broader group of
Latin American migrants who would further change the South’s racial landscape.
Central Americans arrived in the United States just prior to and during the civil wars that ravaged their home countries in the 1980s, violence that resulted after decades of struggle over power, resources, and land. Nearly 300,000 Central Americans legalized their status in the United States through IRCA, the largest portion of whom were
Salvadorans at 60 percent, followed by 25 percent of Guatemalans, 6 percent of
95 Smith.
108 Nicaraguans, and the rest hailing from other Central American countries.96 Even so, the majority of Central Americans arrived in the United States after January 1982, making them ineligible to apply for IRCA. Applying for refugee status also was not an option for
Central Americans, since the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations refused to recognize them as such, because “to acknowledge this would have implied that the governments they supported with billions of dollars each year terrorized their own citizens.”97 Following IRCA, and in the face of certain deportation in the United
States, thousands of Salvadorans fled north and requested asylum in Canada, which at the time granted asylum to up to 80 percent of applicants.98 Those who remained in
North Carolina were relegated to illegality and, thus, were as vulnerable as thousands of other Latino migrants who also could not or would not apply for IRCA. As Central
Americans continued to arrive in North Carolina well into the next decade, their presence in the Tar Heel state would continue to challenge racial ideas among citizens and Latino migrants.
Though nearly three million undocumented migrants across the country were granted legal status through IRCA to live and work, thousands of others were left behind. “Some fear they will make up a whole new class of people in this country,”
Sister Bethea predicted. “Unable to work because they can’t produce the correct papers,
96 Sidney Weintraub and Sergio Diaz-Briquets, The Use of Foreign Aid to Reduce Incentives to Emigrate from Central America (Geneva: International Labor Office, 1992), 9. 97 García, Seeking Refuge, 10. 98 García, 11.
109 they will be targets of abuse by disreputable employers.” The NCCC’s advocacy on behalf of immigrants’ human and labor rights would continue, then, even amid these victories. For her part, Sister Bethea was satisfied with the work they had accomplished.
“Locally, our Catholic Social Ministries staff and parish volunteers have been heroic in offering their time and talent to face the complicated process to help get the job done.”99
2.4 Race in the Post-IRCA Era
At the core of the Panther Lake incident were two white men, Carl Wise and
“Bubba” Monday, who were “making race” among groups of people different from them.100 Both men seemingly had financial means and were powerful disputants, one a farmer and employer, and the other a respected land and small-business owner. On the one hand, Wise assured that his Mexican workers were “just as clean as white people,” ascribing unto his workers a personhood and acceptability through proximity to whiteness. Monday, on the other hand, worried that “the coloreds would get riled up,” though the case mentions no African Americans directly and suggests the clash was merely an abstraction. To Monday, the Mexican men—while perhaps not black—were closer to blackness than whiteness. With the memory of the civil rights movement looming still in North Carolina, perhaps Monday was concerned that “the coloreds” would feel a need to defend Panther Lake as their space. After all, African Americans
99 Smith, “Implementing the Immigration Law: Catholic Social Ministries Continues to Facilitate the Process.” 100 See Thomas C. Holt, The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 16–27; Holt, “Marking.”
110 previously had been enslaved, and most recently had been at the helm of the Civil
Rights Movement. Conceivably, Monday might have felt that he had allowed African
Americans access to Panther Lake only because he legally was required to do so. These
Latino newcomers—whoever they were—still had to request (and struggle) for inclusion. Monday might also have presupposed that African Americans and Latinos felt an innate competition toward each other, as the changing economy beginning in the mid-1970s purposely pitted the most vulnerable workers against each other amid increased job competition. That Latina/o and African American workers might feel solidarity or camaraderie between them would have been inconceivable.
Sociologist Vanesa Ribas provides a useful model through which to understand the Wise and Monday incident in her study of Latino, African American, and white workers in the US South. Ribas approaches intergroup relations through what she calls
“prismatic engagement,” in which subordinated groups’ relationships are mediated by the statuses and signifiers that the dominant group, here white Americans, overdetermine. Ribas explains that the “position of whiteness at the core of this system means that subordinated groups’ relations with one another are refracted through their relations with whites and whiteness.”101 Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s racial formation theory also aids in understanding these complex relationships in the US
South. Their racial formation theory frames how an “immigrant problem” structurally
101 Ribas, On the Line, 8.
111 becomes a “race problem.” 102 Because categories of race are socially constructed and contextual, categories of “White” and “not-White” assured that whiteness was superior.
For their part, many Mexicans born in the United States—like those in the
Southwest—had benefitted for decades by being defined legally as “white,” and subsequently had distanced themselves from African Americans and moved away from their ethnic Mexican roots.103 Mexican immigrants to North Carolina, however, were different, and their understanding of who they were would emerge from the narratives surrounding them.104 Though Mexicans in North Carolina were only just beginning to settle in to this new geographical space by the 1980s, others hurried to locate Mexicans’ place within the South’s racial order.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act further muddied the racialization of migrants. Sister Bethea’s story of the young Salvadoran immigrant being denied legalization points toward the increased immigration of Central Americans to the
United States during the 1980s, what had previously been a dominant Mexican phenomenon. Religious groups also joined in efforts to support these refugees through
102 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, Third edition. (New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2015), 31; Holt, The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century, 22–27; Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 4–14. 103 This of course was not universal. See Krochmal, Blue Texas; Araiza, To March for Others; Brian D. Behnken, ed., The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American and Mexican American Relations During the Civil Rights Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011). 104 Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity,’” 15.
112 the sanctuary movement, emphasizing US intervention in destabilizing the region. 105 By emphasizing Central Americans as refugees and asylum seekers, the sanctuary movement also crafted a distinction between “illegal” Mexicans and “refugee” migrants from Central America. By avoiding these criminalization narratives, Central American advocates hoped to also escape the racialized identity of Mexicans.
While it legalized the status of some three million people, IRCA was comprehensive in much the same way as contemporary immigration reform legislation.
Legalization went hand in hand with legal enforcement in the form of employer sanctions and increased border security and restrictions. While policymakers hoped that those who did not qualify for IRCA might leave the United States, and that others might be dissuaded from ever entering the country illegally, IRCA actually had a more neutral effect. Demographers Karen Woodrow and Jeffrey Passel found that while 1.7 million people had been granted legalization, “the remaining undocumented population may actually have increased between June 1986 and June 1988,” signaling that IRCA did “not cut off the flow of new undocumented immigrants to the United States.”106
The Immigration Reform and Control Act also altered the historical circular pattern of Mexican migrations to the United States, a practice that had been
105 García, Seeking Refuge, 98–108; Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2014), 189. 106 Karen Woodrow and Jeffrey S. Passel, “Post-IRCA Undocumented Immigration to the United States: An Assessment Based on the June, 1988 CPS,” in Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s, ed. Frank D. Bean, Barry Edmonston, and Jeffrey S. Passel (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 1990), 66. Emphasis in original.
113 commonplace ever since the US-Mexican War ended in 1848. Increased border security and punitive hiring practices actually encouraged undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States. Family reunification provisions in the legislation led thousands of
Latin Americans to join their legalized family members in the United States. Mexican immigrants in North Carolina who gained legal status finally felt a sense of security.
With stronger and more established transnational migrant networks, those in North
Carolina could sponsor their friends’ and family’s journey north. By the next decade, thousands of more people from Mexico would come to call North Carolina home and continue to challenge what it meant to be “Mexican” in the Tar Heel state.
114 3. Transborder Racial Formations and Challenges, 1980- 1996
Don Rigo stands at about 5’10” with a strong build and a smile that brightens his face. His black apron completely covers his torso, the remnants of dried meat and blood lingering on its surface. Behind him, on heavy metal hooks that are arraigned along a horizontal metal bar, large pieces of beef hang in display so that customers might easily see and select the meat they want. Every few moments or so, Don Rigo fans the meat to chase away any flies who have managed to sneakily land on the beef slabs. During brief stints, Don Rigo sits to share his life story, but customers stepping in to his carnicería— butcher shop—interrupt his storytelling. Because his storefront is also part of his home,
Don Rigo’s daughters also pop in to ask their dad for help on their homework. As neighbors walk by, Don Rigo lifts and waves his hand at the passersby, recognizing that a local, small business like his survives by the good faith of and pleasant interactions with his neighbors. Today, November 6, 2015, is a regular day at Don Rigo’s butcher shop in Cherán, Michoacán, a sunny and moderate morning. More than a year later,
Don Rigo again would share his life story. Sitting in the busy cafeteria, bakery, and tortillería of La Superior’s market, coworkers greeted Don Rigo respectfully as they walked past, even though he was on his day off. The store’s air conditioning provided a welcome break from the steamy North Carolina summer. Thousands of miles from
Cherán, Don Rigo sat in a small, family-owned Durham supermarket where he worked.
In Durham, Don Rigo also was a butcher.
115 This chapter examines the transborder movement of self-identifying indigenous migrants from Cherán, Michoacán through the voices of the migrants themselves. After all, cheranenses had a long-established tradition of circular migration, dating from the
Bracero Program (1942-64), with many obtaining contracts and others migrating through extralegal means. Though the Bracero Program ended in 1964, the emigration of cheranenses did not stop. During the 1970s, experienced migrants continued migrating to the United States, even if it meant working as undocumented laborers. By the 1980s, however, the economic and agricultural crises encouraged a new generation of cheranenses to migrate, and they left in much larger numbers.1 Finding themselves in the United States in 1986, early migrants from Cherán, like Don Rigo, were able to legalize their status through the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), affording them the opportunity to move back and forth from Mexico to North Carolina. Having gained legal status in North Carolina, many cheranenses encouraged their family and friends back home to join them.
The experiences of indigenous migrants in North Carolina abruptly altered the way they understood both themselves and other Mexicans, as well as other Latinos whom they would encounter on this new geographical terrain. Those cheranenses who settled in the wake of the IRCA nearing the decade’s end, without the opportunity to
1 Casimiro Leco Tomás, Migración Indígena a Estados Unidos: Purhépechas En Burnsville, Norte Carolina (Morelia, Michoacán, México: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 2009), 21, 72–73.
116 apply for legalization, faced more complicated transitions to life in the Tar Heel state, their circulatory migration routes stymied by increased border regulations and enforcement. Their emigration also would affect their families in Cherán, as shifting gender roles and norms empowered women and allowed them to take on new positions in the community and within their homes. Transborder migration had implications on how cheranenses—those who left as well as those who stayed—understood who they were on both sides of the border.
3.1 Discrimination Begins at Home
Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández always was meant to be a carnicero. His great- grandfather, grandfather, and father all had been butchers in Cherán. As a child, Don
Rigo helped his father in their family’s butcher shop and learned the ins and outs of the trade, enjoying the opportunity it afforded them to talk with neighbors and friends. The butcher shop was the family’s only source of income, which meant that expenses were limited to those things that were vital for the family’s subsistence. Even so, Don Rigo waxed nostalgic about his childhood. He and his friends would gather a little bit of money to pay a neighbor to let them watch cartoons on his television. As the kids sat and watched cartoons and movies, the man would sell them snacks to enjoy during the shows. For Don Rigo and his friends, it was such a treat. When the pesos in their pockets were not enough to watch television, Don Rigo and his childhood friends played outside, running around the streets, playing with marbles, and challenging each other in
117 games of hide and seek. At the evening’s end, when all the children would wander home, there were a few things for certain: they were covered from head to toe in dirt, but they had had a wonderful time – for free.2
Though this story of childhood naiveté and playfulness is not unlike others, what makes Don Rigo’s unique were the adults and community that surrounded him and instilled in the children an indigenous sense of identity. For Don Rigo and other
P’urhépechas, what it meant to be “indigenous” was complicated. Their indigeneity was based on a variety of factors, among them native language, class, phenotype, traditional clothing, and performance of rituals. Some of the descriptions of indigeneity were a bit more conceptual, emphasizing communal values and usos y costumbres—customs and habits—that were handed down to them by their ancestors and used to organize their community. In this context, the indigeneity of P’urhépechas from Cherán was a complex interplay of cultural markers, physical attributes, and external identifications.
Born in 1962, Don Rigo was one of nine children raised in the mountains of rural
Michoacán. Don Rigo’s maternal grandparents were central figures in his life and represented the treasured customs of the day. His grandfather wore a calzón de manta and huaraches – trousers made of coarse cloth and leather sandals. His grandmother, like his mother, wore a top tucked into a long, pleated skirt, her delantal—apron—shielding her clothes from unwanted splashes and splatters. What stood out most to Don Rigo,
2 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, May 1, 2017.
118 however, were that the adults, among themselves, spoke a language that the kids mostly understood, but did not themselves speak. They spoke Tarasco, the ancestral language of the P’urhépecha, the indigenous community to which Don Rigo and his family belonged. Though many in Don Rigo’s generation continue to speak the language, Don
Rigo and his siblings were never taught and never learned. Most families in Cherán, especially those that lived on the edges of the city, spoke Tarasco much more frequently than did Don Rigo’s family. On occasions when his parents wanted to go to a neighboring town, Don Rigo remembered his parents would exchange dialogue in
Tarasco, not wanting their children to know they were leaving because—short on money—they could not afford to take their nine children. Don Rigo has questioned why his parents never emphasized learning the language—whether it was for fear of discrimination, or because his parents’ idea of “progress” was learning to speak like everyone else—and regrets that he never learned his ancestral language. Despite not knowing the language, though, Don Rigo always has known that his was an indigenous family living in an indigenous community.3
Even as a child, Don Rigo recognized the varied nuances and contradictions of indigenous identity. While Don Rigo and his siblings were in awe of adults who spoke
Tarasco, many P’urhépecha adults were discriminated against by others for not speaking Spanish or not speaking it well enough. Don Rigo recalled how P’urhépechas
3 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández.
119 from neighboring communities would visit Cherán on errands, and if cheranenses overheard these visitors speaking Tarasco, cheranenses would ridicule their
P’urhépecha neighbors. Tarasco-speaking P’urhépechas from small, rural communities avoided leaving their towns for fear of discrimination; experiences like these further confirmed apprehension. Don Rigo also recalled how a wealthier classmate called those from Cherán “pinches indios” and “huarachudos” – fucking Indians and sandal- wearers. And yet, his classmate, and those who ridiculed others for not speaking
Spanish, were themselves P’urhépecha.4
This form of language discrimination is a function of modern racism, according to scholar Walter Mignolo, and intrinsic to the logics of coloniality. Mignolo argues that language has been integral to the colonial project and has been an example of modern racism, as languages beyond Greek, Latin, and the six modern European languages— among them, Spanish—have been relegated as inferior. In Mexico, the Spanish colonizers established theirs as the official language and identified the hundreds of native languages as inferior.5 Don Rigo’s experiences are indicative of just how engrained these beliefs were among Mexicans broadly, even among those from indigenous communities. P’urhépechas in Cherán could and did position themselves as superior to P’urhépechas from neighboring communities because they spoke the
4 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández. 5 Walter D. Mignolo, “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing: On (De)Coloniality, Border Thinking and Epistemic Disobedience,” Postcolonial Studies 14, no. 3 (September 2011): 275.
120 colonial language—Spanish—and had lost the native language that had marked them as inferior.
Don Rigo made sense of this internal contradiction through the language of class and phenotype. His classmate, and those in Cherán who mocked others, had more resources, or at the very least had more resources at their disposal, than those from other neighboring and more isolated communities. Don Rigo’s classmate came from a wealthy, landowning family who was known throughout the community for their practice of belittling others. “Yes, they were indigenous,” Don Rigo affirmed, “but, how should I put this, they were a little bit whiter, a little bit whiter.”6 Don Rigo then understood the discrimination as both a product of racism and classism, even within his community.
The way that Don Rigo understands the work of “color” with regard to skin pigmentation in Mexican society is complicated, to be sure, but it is the result of a broader historical discourse on race in Latin America. Historians Nancy Appelbaum,
Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt examined how “local, national, and transnational contexts…have patterned the articulations of race and nation.”7
Tracing the history of racial discourses of modern Latin American history, Appelbaum,
Macpherson, and Rosemblatt identify four historical moments in which elite discourses of race and nation became integral to the emerging nation-states. While the third
6 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández. 7 Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt, “Introduction: Racial Nations,” 4.
121 moment (post World War I) saw the emergence of indigenismo and its cultural politics, the fourth moment of nation-building following World War II and the Holocaust led scientists and politicians to move away from discourses of race. Though their racial thinking continued, “ethnicity” came to stand in for race, and “ethnic” came to describe groups—particularly indigenous peoples—“who did not conform to a racialized national norm, generally coded as either mestizo or white.”8 Latin American elites recognized that northern, more modern nations were “whiter,” so they distinguished their citizens based on their proximity to whiteness.
While racialization discourses between Latin American countries differed, historians have found that regional differences within individual countries in Latin
America also were racialized. For example, “those regions that have been marked off as black and Indian (such as… southern Mexico) have been labeled backward in relation to more modern, whiter regions” that include “northern Mexico.”9 Even in this characterization, the historians are using “Indian” as a racial category in relation to white and black, and they are showing that regionally, the process through which
Mexicans are racialized is distinct, fluid, and contextual. Like Don Rigo, historians of
Mexico have understood “Indian” as being synonymous with race, and proximity to whiteness as the most visible and physical marker of privilege.
8 Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt, 8. See also UNESCO, The Race Question: Results of an Inquiry (Paris: UNESCO, 1951); Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 9 Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt, “Introduction: Racial Nations,” 10.
122 Josefina Estrada Velásqueßz, known to everyone in the community as Doña
Chepa, also understood this sort of discrimination to be linked to socioeconomic status.
Born on August 11, 1956, Doña Chepa—unlike Don Rigo—was raised doing hard labor in the fields and forests that surrounded her house. As the oldest sibling of eight, she had to assist her parents in the harvesting of their crops. Before going to school and then upon her return, Doña Chepa would tend to the animals, milking the cows and feeding the pigs before heading to the family’s land to plant seeds and pull weeds, and collect resin from trees in the forest that the family would then sell. They were raised doing hard work, but she was adamant that “it also serves one a lot.”10
Doing all of these tasks, Doña Chepa never wore shoes. She was not accustomed to wearing them and felt uncomfortable sporting even a basic sandal. In school, classmates would ridicule Doña Chepa and her siblings for not wearing shoes. “We were ashamed because they told us we were indios patas rajadas” – Indians with cracked feet.11 This type of ridicule in school also was directed at students who spoke Tarasco.
Classmates would insult them, which led students like Doña Chepa and her siblings to refrain from speaking, eventually losing the language entirely. Even though the school was in Cherán, a self-identifying indigenous community, and the same classmates who ridiculed Doña Chepa also identified as being P’urhépecha, there was one major
10 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, January 30, 2015. 11 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez.
123 difference between them. “They were people who had money,” Doña Chepa said.12 Like
Don Rigo, Doña Chepa framed her experience of internal discrimination and racism based on class and socioeconomic status. Because Doña Chepa and her family were campesinos, some in the community situated Doña Chepa’s family among the lowest echelons of their indigenous community. Ashamed and fearful of how outsiders might judge her, Doña Chepa as a child never ventured outside of Cherán.
Cornelio Campos also lost the ability to speak Tarasco as a result of negative experiences with classmates. Even though born in the 1970s, Cornelio experienced the same patterns of bullying based on language use that had been experienced by Doña
Chepa and witnessed by Don Rigo years earlier. Now an adult, Cornelio recognized that losing his ancestral language was unfortunate and the result of immaturity. However, it also was due to his ignorance, not understanding just how important it was to maintain one’s language. Like Doña Chepa and Don Rigo, Cornelio described language loss also as the result of internal discrimination. “One does not want to feel like the Indian everybody says they are,” Cornelio said, barely audible. “One doesn’t want to be a part of it.”13 Cornelio’s use of “one”—uno in Spanish—allowed him to generalize his language, encouraging others to empathize while also separating himself from his traumatic memories of displacement and shame. Though Cornelio’s grandmother spoke
12 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 13 Cornelio Campos, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, June 14, 2013.
124 almost no Spanish, and his parents speak both languages fluently, Cornelio no longer knows how to speak Tarasco.
The relationship between race and class in Mexico that Don Rigo, Doña Chepa, and Cornelio related in their experiences also has been examined by historians of
Mexico. While the word “race” in Mexico is rarely used by academics or citizens, some scholars have focused on the subtle ways in which class stands in for racial difference. In historian Sandra Mendiola’s work on Puebla street vendors, Mendiola discusses how upper-class elites in Puebla emphasized the cultural, economic, and racial background that distinguished them from the rural mestizos and indigenous peoples who worked as vendors in the urban center. Citing the work of geographers Gareth Jones and Ann
Varley, Mendiola discusses how they noted “tacit ideas of race among middle-class people that explained their understanding of difference.”14 While references to race and ethnicity do not exist in the historical record, the photographs of Puebla’s vendors focused on their cultural characteristics: men and women wearing huaraches (sandals), white cotton clothes, and sombreros. Women in the photographs were pictured with rebozos (traditional Mexican shawls) and braided hair. For Poblanos, who emphasized their European ancestry, it became imperative to differentiate themselves from these indigenous vendors. The vendors’ indigeneity was visible through their clothing and
14 Sandra C. Mendiola García, Street Democracy: Vendors, Violence, and Public Space in Late Twentieth-Century Mexico (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 16; Gareth Jones and Ann Varley, “The Reconquest of the Historic Centre: Urban Conservation and Gentrification in Puebla, Mexico,” Environment and Planning A 31, no. 9 (September 1999): 1549.
125 practices, and this intrinsically linked them to backwardness and ignorance.15 As Jones and Varley contend, the gentrification in Puebla that created this middle-class opposition to indigenous vendors “draws on unspoken racialized notions of difference.”16 In similar ways, elites in Cherán also asserted their superiority within their community by differentiating themselves based on racial and cultural qualities.
These lessons of internal and external discrimination stayed with men like Don
Rigo and Cornelio even after they migrated to the United States in the 1980s. Michoacán has been among one of the largest sending states of emigrants to the United States throughout the twentieth century, and, though distant from the metropolitan area of the state, cheranenses have joined other michoacanos—those from Michoacán—on the route north. Men like Don Rigo were oftentimes the second or even third generation of emigrants in their families. Though his father had never spoken of it, Don Rigo as a child once found a document that had belonged to his father with the words “United States” inscribed on them. Though he never would be able to confront his father about this finding, because children were not to ask questions like that of their elders, Don Rigo deduced that his father previously had immigrated to the United States. Other cheranenses also knew their fathers, as well as other men in their families, had emigrated to the United States, but could neither ask the men about their experiences
15 Mendiola García, Street Democracy, 15–17; François-Xavier Guerra, Annick Lempèriére, and et. al., Los Espacios Públicos En Iberoamérica. Ambigüedades y Problemas. Siglos XVIII-XIX (Ciudad de México: Centro de estudios mexicanos y centroamericanos, 2008), 30. 16 Jones and Varley, “The Reconquest of the Historic Centre,” 1549.
126 nor expect to hear stories of their travels.17 For cheranenses like Don Rigo, and Cornelio
Campos, emigrating—though a family tradition, certainly—had never been part of their life plan, and yet, by the end of the 1980s, both found themselves in the United States.
Having finished high school in 1984, Don Rigo fell in love, got married, and had a baby girl with his wife within the first year of marriage. While he worked with his father in the butcher shop, Don Rigo heard growing murmurs around town of men leaving for the United States. Don Rigo told his friend about this, and sure enough, it turned out that a man from a neighboring town was offering to take men across the border for $1,500. Within a few days, Don Rigo and his friend had gathered the money and had chosen to go, without any real consideration for what they were doing. His eldest sister lived in Illinois, so he planned to settle with her and work. Having never had an inclination to leave his community, Don Rigo left in 1985, leaving his 1-year-old baby girl. She would be four years old by the time she saw her father again.18
Having walked in the desert for three days, Don Rigo successfully crossed the border in 1985. The same man who had led Don Rigo across the border took him to
Illinois, where Don Rigo reunited with his sister. In rural Illinois, Don Rigo joined dozens of other Mexican laborers in farm work, which he never before had done in
17 Interview with Cornelio Campos, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, June 14, 2013; Interview with Cecilia Mendoza, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, June 14, 2015; Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, January 30, 2015. Interview with Cornelio Campos, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, June 14, 2013; Interview with Cecilia Mendoza, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, June 14, 2015; Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 18 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández.
127 Mexico. “Many would tell me, ‘you aren’t used to the fields,’” Don Rigo remembered.
“And I would respond, ‘well, even if I’m not used to it, I have to get used to it, because I won’t be able to choose the job I want. One arrives here, and you go where you’re sent.”19 By the end of the harvest in 1986, everyone left for the winter, either returning to
Mexico or migrating to another place within the United States. Deciding to follow the migratory circuit, Don Rigo and another farmworker went to Florida to pick tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries, among other crops.20
It was there laboring in the fields of Immokalee, Florida, that Don Rigo and his fellow farmworkers first heard about the Immigration Reform and Control Act and the possibility that farmworkers could gain legal status. “Many believed, well that must not be true,” Don Rigo said, remembering the words of disbelief from his coworkers. “Let’s say we go to immigration. They are going to detain us, and they will send us to
Mexico.”21 Many of Don Rigo’s fellow farmworkers never submitted an application for fear that the legalization claims were an elaborate entrapment scheme. Don Rigo and some friends, however, decided to try their luck, rationalizing that “if they detain us, well too bad. So we decided, well, let’s go see, who cares, right?”22 The man who contracted them wrote Don Rigo and the other farmworkers a letter which they presented to immigration officials, and the contractor’s daughter drove the more than
19 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández. 20 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández. 21 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández. 22 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández.
128 300-mile round trip to Tampa, where Don Rigo and his four coworkers submitted their paperwork. They each paid about $150 to submit their final paperwork. Within months,
Don Rigo was notified that he was granted legal status to live and work in the United
States.23
Don Rigo’s legal status granted him and millions of others across the country the possibility of mobility. Don Rigo not only was able to return to Mexico, but he also could legally immigrate to the United States and settle in new destinations like North Carolina and Virginia. It was in the latter state where Don Rigo was confronted with another group of men who also had benefitted through IRCA but in very different ways. While
IRCA had legalized the status of millions of undocumented immigrants and farmworkers throughout the country, it also created a federal contract guestworker program that allowed states like North Carolina and Virginia to legally recruit thousands of Mexican workers to the United States. The H-2A and H-2B visa programs were guest worker programs designed to continue the recruitment of temporary workers, just as the Bracero Program and others like it had allowed Mexican, Jamaican, and West Indian laborers fill the labor shortages of the WWII era.24 Through the H-2A program, agricultural employers could import temporary foreign workers to work on
23 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández. 24 See for example Cindy Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Deborah Cohen, Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
129 their farms. While the program in theory was intended to supplement temporary labor shortages, in practice, farmers used the program to maintain low-wages and poor working conditions.25
Though H-2A workers were primarily contracted in the immediate years after
1986 to work in Florida sugar cane, the mechanization of the sugar cane harvest eliminated the need for workers by 1995. Since then, North Carolina and Virginia have become the primary users of H-2A, using the labor in the production of tobacco. At least until 1990, all of the H-2A workers in North Carolina and Virginia had been Mexican men, who oftentimes toiled the same fields and worked shoulder to shoulder with other laborers, among them those who benefited from and lacked legal status.26
It was nearly impossible to distinguish contracted laborers from those working through extralegal means or who had legal status, like Don Rigo. It was in the fields of
Virginia in 1992 that Don Rigo first met H-2A workers from Mexico. By then, Don Rigo already had successfully re-entered the United States and had found employment in
Virginia. On one farm, four men from the southcentral Mexican state of Guerrero were hired not long after him. The boss explained to Don Rigo that they were contracted
25 “H2A Workers in North Carolina: A Factsheet” (Farmworker Legal Services of North Carolina, 1990), Joan Preiss Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 26 “US Department of Labor Report to Congress: The Agricultural Labor Market--Status and Recommendations” (Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, December 2000), https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/word-etc/dec_2000_labor.htm.“US Department of Labor Report to Congress: The Agricultural Labor Market--Status and Recommendations” (Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, December 2000).
130 workers and offered Don Rigo reimbursement and payment if he would drive the men to get groceries on the weekends. Later, working on another farm, Don Rigo was tasked on the weekends with taking the H-2A workers to the stores and anywhere else they might want to go. On those desolate country roads, Don Rigo and the H-2A workers would delve into conversation. Don Rigo learned that H-2A workers had the trip to the
United States paid for by their contractor, and that they were promised forty hours a week, even if they worked less, which to him seemed a good deal at the time. At that particular camp, the workers were treated well by their employer, but Don Rigo was witness to other experiences; the comparisons to him were shocking. On a neighboring farm, he realized that H-2A workers were not given the opportunity to leave their camp, often were not paid, and sometimes were not even taken to get groceries, which left some eating whatever they could, even nearby plants. On another, men were struggling to receive even their most basic necessities.27 Though all of these workers had the opportunity to work legally in the United States, Don Rigo quickly realized how legality had many nuances and limitations.
Cheranenses who migrated in the late 1980s, like Cornelio Campos, settled in
North Carolina following the passage of IRCA, experiencing firsthand the limitations of legality. Cornelio was born in August 18, 1971, to a bricklayer and housewife, the oldest son of nine siblings. Cornelio’s father and uncles would routinely be absent during his
27 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, May 1, 2017.
131 childhood, crossing the border to work in the United States for different periods of time.
This pattern of migration was established long before Cornelio’s birth by his great- grandfather, who had emigrated from Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, before the Mexican Revolution. Though Cornelio has tried to uncover his great- grandfather’s decision to emigrate, he has struggled to find definitive answers. Cornelio assumed that it was “to try and overcome their [financial] situation,” though he remains uncertain of the exact reasons.28 Even with this long-established tradition of emigrating, though, Cornelio was determined to stay. Cherán had become recognized as a community of emigrants, and Cornelio wanted to challenge this pattern. “I wanted to do it differently,” Cornelio said. “What I was trying to do was prove to myself that things could be accomplished in Mexico.” Cornelio always had publicly opposed emigration.
“For one, all of my friends did not put forth much effort into studying because they said,
‘either way we are still going to end up in the United States,’ so for me it was a way of saying, ‘I need to be different’.”29
As a child, Cornelio immersed himself in the library, reviewing encyclopedias and admiring the handmade drawings sketched on the publication’s pages. Though only eight years old, Cornelio already had developed a curiosity for the arts, especially for drawing and painting, so when a university art student from the capital offered children in Cherán free lessons, Cornelio set out with his pencil and paper. In the
28 Campos, interview, June 14, 2013. 29 Campos.
132 evenings, he would try to emulate the techniques he had learned during his art class, refining his art sketch after sketch. By the time he graduated high school in 1989,
Cornelio was certain he wanted to pursue a university education in an art-related field.
“But little did I know that when I finished high school, the reality was different.”30
Though his father had worked in the United States throughout his childhood, Cornelio would be unable to pursue his dreams of higher education because his family could not afford the expense. Heartbroken and dejected, Cornelio’s plans were derailed. During that time, Cornelio’s relatives that lived in California invited him to the United States, offering to support him with the expenses to cross the border and promising him a home in California upon his arrival. Finding no other option, at the age of 18, Cornelio set aside his pride as he made his way north.31
Though arriving first in California in 1989, Cornelio joined a cousin and thousands of other Mexicans in North Carolina in 1991, where he witnessed firsthand the limits and drawbacks of legalization. Cornelio had never worked in California, so to transition to become a farmworker was difficult. “The most difficult thing for me was, one comes from Mexico, and I certainly never had worked in the fields in Mexico,”
Cornelio said. “Coming here to the fields, it’s really hard.”32 Cornelio, not unlike Doña
Chepa, had rarely ventured outside of Cherán during his youth, so he believed that life
30 Campos. 31 Campos. 32 Campos.
133 in the United States would afford more opportunities. Unfortunately, Cornelio soon realized that he remained in an isolated place, where he both worked and lived. The one thing Cornelio and his coworkers looked forward to what they called “the food day”— the weekly time set aside to travel to a nearby town for groceries. Because his cousin was a crewleader and given a home apart from the workers’ quarters, Cornelio was able to live with his cousin and his family instead of sharing a trailer with six to eight other men. They made an honest living, and though it was not a luxurious job, “they treated us well.” All the men on Cornelio’s crew were from Cherán and knew each other well.
These hometown bonds and migration experiences encouraged them to support each other.
Cornelio and his coworkers often were confronted with the grueling realities of other farmworkers living and working in neighboring camps. On Saturdays and
Sundays, laundromats, post offices, and local grocery stores became the meeting places for migrant farmworkers like Cornelio, where men exchanged stories of themselves, of their experiences working in North Carolina, and of potential employment opportunities at other camps. It was on these fleeting visits with friends that Cornelio learned that in the fields of Franklin and Vance counties, near the northern border with Virginia, were
Mexican men who lived by most everyone’s standards in uninhabitable homes, abandoned houses riddled with holes and no fans. When summers in North Carolina easily could surpass the 100-degree Fahrenheit mark, these living conditions were not only dilapidated but inhumane. Hearing these stories led Cornelio to realize just how
134 disparate the living and working conditions were for migrant farmworkers in North
Carolina, regardless of whether workers were legally contracted, undocumented, or had legal status. To discern who among a group of workers was the H-2A, undocumented, or legal worker just by their appearance or working conditions would be impossible.33
3.2 Migrant Workers and the Nuance of Legal Status
Migrant workers’ legal status adds another layer to the workings of race, as perceptions of race become conflated with perceptions of legal status. The historical racial construction of the Mexican immigrant in the United States as the “Mexican illegal alien” has ensured that Mexican migrants, undocumented or not, are rendered vulnerable to a variety of surveillance measures. As historian Mae Ngai has shown, immigration policies—like the Immigration Reform and Control Act—have facilitated the creation of “a Mexican migratory agricultural proletariat, a racialized, transnational workforce comprising various legal categories across the US-Mexico boundary—
Mexican Americans, legal immigrants, undocumented migrants, and imported contract workers (braceros)—but which, as a whole, remained external to conventional definitions of the American working class and national body.”34 I contend that the H-2A visa program builds upon what Ngai refers to during the Bracero Program (1942-64) as the practice of “imported colonialism,” which creates new social relations founded on
33 Campos. 34 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 128–29.
135 the premise of the subordination of racialized bodies who, though they may work legally in the United States, are not protected from discrimination or exploitation.35
In North Carolina, recruiting H-2A workers became a more common occurrence by the 1990s. Before 1989, North Carolina had had no H-2A workers. In 1989, approximately 650 H-2A contracts were allocated. A year later, about 1,100 workers were contracted through H-2A visas.36 As the new millennium set in so too did 10,600 H-
2A workers arrive in North Carolina, nearly one quarter of the nation’s total.37 Though the majority of migrant workers in North Carolina during the late 1980s and into the
1990s were undocumented immigrants, H-2A workers were a steady stream of guaranteed, cheap labor predominantly from Mexico. Workers harvested several crops, but the most prominent were tobacco, cucumbers, and sweet potatoes. Typically, men started in March or April and continued at least through the end of the tobacco season in early September. Following the tobacco season, which required the highest quantity of labor, came the sweet potato season, which employed a limited number of stoop laborers. Contracts were limited to one season and were arranged by the North Carolina
Grower’s Association (NCGA)—a growers’ cooperative—and the US government, ensuring that the worker had no say in the contract he signed. The worker paid a fee of
35 Ngai, 129. 36 “H2A Workers in North Carolina: A Factsheet.” 37 Rebecca M. Torres, Jeffrey E. Popke, and Holly M. Hapke, “The South’s Silent Bargain: Rural Restructuring, Latino Labor and the Ambiguities of Migrant Experience,” in Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place, ed. Owen J. Furuseth and Heather A. Smith (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 49.
136 several hundred dollars each season to participate in the H-2A program, though they received a reimbursement of the inbound transportation charges at mid-season.38
The onus to apply for H-2A visas was placed on the farmers, but these sought and were provided assistance in navigating the technicalities of the labor program through the NCGA. Growers were expected to submit applications to the US Labor’s
Employment and Training Administration (ETA), who then either granted or denied contracts. However, federal ETA agents, state employment services staff, and farmers often were complicit in attempts to undermine the system and obtain H-2A visas.
Organizations like the Farmworkers Legal Services of North Carolina found that in states like Florida and Virginia, farmers successfully had obtained hundreds of H-2A contracts. Consultants, among them many former high-ranking officials of state employment agencies with relationships with ETA agents, had facilitated farmers’ application process. Because the H-2A program was intended only to supplement a shortage in labor and expected farmers to make attempts to secure employment domestically, these consultants were well versed in ways to adapt the application in order to address these federal requirements. The agency also discovered that the NCGA and its staff person, Craig S. Eury, a former employee of the North Carolina
38 “Fact Sheet on North Carolina Farm Workers,” n.d., Joan Preiss Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
137 Employment Security Commission, facilitated the hiring of about 300 workers for twenty-two tobacco and vegetable farmers.39
Agricultural employers were required by law to prove that they had made efforts to recruit workers in the United States before obtaining H-2A visas, but employment service personnel found ways to thwart US workers from obtaining these jobs. For one, unemployed US farmworkers normally did not seek out employment services, but in the event that they did, they would not be told about contract labor unless they specifically asked for it. Women were discouraged from applying. Those with families were told they would have to provide their own housing. English-speaking workers were isolated in camps where others only spoke Spanish. Though employers were happy to lend money to workers travelling from Mexico, US laborers were expected to cover the cost of transportation themselves.40 Employment service staff and growers purposely ensured that it was nearly impossible for US farmworkers to gain employment.
While the H-2A program allowed an agricultural employer to obtain foreign workers in the event of a temporary labor shortage, in practice, the program allowed growers to contract workers from desperately poor countries, avoiding workforce competition altogether. The program also ensured that farmers could get away with paying contracted workers low wages and providing subpar working and living conditions. Since contracts were granted seasonally and for a limited amount of time,
39 “H2A Workers in North Carolina: A Factsheet.” 40 “H2A Workers in North Carolina: A Factsheet.”
138 oftentimes Latino migrants arrived in North Carolina to little or no work, as the planting had been completed and it was too early for harvest. Food donations from local church groups were sought to sustain these foreign workers who were left without pay or food.41
Local journalists also questioned the extent to which farmers actually attempted to recruit domestic laborers. In 1991, a journalist for Raleigh’s News & Observer reported the reasons for the prevalence of this debate. The NCGA only had listed jobs with the state Employment Security Commission, which subsequently notified fourteen other states of the openings. Besides these listings, recruiting efforts were small. Six advertisements were placed in a weekly newspaper in Southern Pines, a town in North
Carolina that had a population of less than ten thousand. Several advertisements also were made on an Eastern North Carolina radio station. Eury, the executive director of the NCGA, assured that his association would have a shortage of workers even if they had more widely recruited domestic laborers, because US workers do not seek jobs on tobacco farms. “Harvesting tobacco is a hot and dirty job,” he told the N&O. “It’s not easy work.”42
41 Jimmy Creech, “Farmworker Ministry Committee Meeting Minutes” (North Carolina Council of Churches, April 20, 1994), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University; Jimmy Creech, “Farmworker Ministry Committee Minutes” (North Carolina Council of Churches, May 11, 1994), North Carolina Council of Churches Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 42 Randy Diamond, “Critics Say Labor Program Harvests Migrants’ Despair,” News & Observer, July 22, 1991.
139 Farmworkers Legal Services of North Carolina became a leading advocate for migrants’ working conditions and well-being as a result of the realities they faced. H-2A workers were guaranteed wages and working conditions similar to those granted to US employees. However, growers had a hard time ensuring even the most basic rights for
US workers, let alone honoring those of H-2A workers. Farmworkers Legal Services found that employers would not provide written wage receipts and failed to supply adequate drinking water and sanitation facilities in the workplace.43 The failure of the
NCGA to ensure workers had acceptable working conditions and quality of life became the main agenda of Farmworkers Legal Services.
By the mid-1990s, Farmworker Legal Services directly addressed the shortfalls and deceit of the NCGA’s H-2A application. In a February 1996 letter to the acting regional administrator of the Employment and Training Administration, attorney Mary
Lee Hall requested that the NCGA’s application for H-2A workers more closely reflect the actual circumstances that migrant workers faced upon arrival to North Carolina.
Hall’s first criticism was that the application misrepresented the work that was actually offered. While the anticipated start date for the workers was late March to early April,
Farmworker Legal Services had discovered over the years that employment for migrants was available in June, July, and August. Moreover, there were not enough securable jobs by these start dates. “Last year, for example,” Hall writes, “fewer than one-third of the
43 “H2A Workers in North Carolina: A Factsheet.”
140 workers requested in NCGA’s first order were actually in North Carolina by late April.”
Because there were not enough jobs for the workers requested, workers were forced to wait long periods without work and were frequently laid off. And, though the H-2A application declared the contracted migrants would be “primarily” tobacco workers, a significant number of growers did not grow tobacco or did not harvest tobacco as a primary crop. Hall already had called attention to these irregularities and misrepresentations in the NCGA application in a letter a year before, but her concerns were never addressed. In this letter, Hall again requested that these issues be investigated. “If I do not hear from you within 30 days,” Hall assured, “I will have to explore other alternatives to protect my clients.”44
From their interactions working alongside farmworkers, Don Rigo and Cornelio both learned quickly that the conditions under which they labored were intimately linked to the legal status of workers. Not only were laborers vulnerable to deportation for working without legal status, they soon realized, but also susceptible to wage theft and poor living conditions even if legally allowed to work in the United States. Though one would be unable to discern who was undocumented, who was a legal resident or citizen, and who was an H2A worker, the men surrounding Don Rigo and Cornelio all fit in to specific categories that defined their mobility, future prospects, and personhood.
44 Mary Lee Hall to L. Touissant Hayes, “Reference to the Application of the North Carolina Growers Association for H2A Workers to Do General Farmwork in North Carolina This Year,” February 23, 1996.
141 3.3 Transborder Imaginings: Preparing Migrants for the Road Ahead
For migrants like Don Rigo and Cornelio, the stories they heard of the United
States—of the people, of the places, of the labor conditions—had a significant effect not only on their own decision to migrate, but also on the expectations they had of their future. Don Rigo gathered knowledge of the United States from films and media as much as he did from people in his community. Don Rigo recalled films that depicted the geography of the US South, but because he had never considered emigrating, he did not pay it much attention. However, when men would return to Cherán after having lived in North Carolina, Don Rigo heard their tales of trials and tribulations. “Many of those who left from here to there said, ‘Well sometimes they treat us very badly, especially if they are gringos.’” These stories made Don Rigo remember the films he had watched about the Ku Klux Klan, men in white hooded cloaks who terrorized the community of color. When Don Rigo left in 1985 to the United States, he felt scared and nervous as the memories of the films and of the stories he had overhead filled his thoughts.45
Cornelio recalled various instances of hearing stories as a boy in Cherán about the United States, and these memories seemed to have embittered him:
They only talked about the abundance of work, abundance of materials, things, but they never talked about all of the obstacles they faced. I don’t understand why they didn’t do it. I imagine it was too painful for them, or simply, they wanted to imagine that United States was different. They never talked about the problem, they never said it was difficult because they speak another language, it will be difficult because the culture is different. What I do remember them saying
45 Interview with Rigoberto Sánchez Hernández.
142 that they would only stay inside. If they worked on a farm, they would stay there, and their boss would bring them food. Another thing I noticed is that the majority of emigrants, including friends, only talked about the nice things, but from there, nothing.46
Cornelio also remembered hearing stories of what other Mexicans and Latinos were like, which made a lasting impact on how he understood community. Cornelio, not unlike Don Rigo or Doña Chepa, rarely traveled outside of the community and hence never had built relationships with other people. In Cherán, Cornelio remembered return migrants share details of their perceptions of others, especially guanajuatenses—those from Guanajuato—and people from El Salvador. Cornelio recalled how the returned migrants described guanajuatenses as more reserved, and as people who wanted to be leaders and in control of everyone else.
Among early Mexican migrants to North Carolina, guanajuatenses were among the largest community of emigrants in the Tar Heel state, so that cheranenses would regularly confront guanajuatenses in North Carolina and see them positioned in leadership roles is not unexpected.47 Perhaps more interesting is that cheranenses first confronted guanajuatenses in North Carolina, given that not even a two-hour drive from
Cherán would place cheranenses in Guanajuato. Stories of people from El Salvador were more generalized, in which cheranenses just explained how Salvadorans were different
46 Campos, interview, June 14, 2013. 47 John D. Kasarda and James H. Johnson, “The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on the State of North Carolina” (Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, Kenan-Flagler Business School: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, January 2006), 3.
143 than cheranenses. Cornelio, however, alluded perhaps to the types of ways cheranenses viewed Salvadorans as “different.” In Cherán, the community was founded on communal principles, and neighbors supported each other unconditionally. “When one doesn’t get out much,” Cornelio said, “one thinks that everyone” has the same type of comradery. However, skewed these perceptions might be, these stories indicate how
North Carolina was changing drastically with regard to its immigrant populations. By
1995, nearly 20,000 Latin American immigrants from countries other than Mexico settled in North Carolina, many of which were from Central American countries, especially
Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.48 These experiences and stories revealed to
Cornelio that not only were cheranenses different from other Mexicans, but their way of living also was distinct throughout Latin America. By the time Cornelio left in 1989, these stories of differences among people were engrained in his mind.49
3.4 Developing a Migrant Worker Consciousness in Mexico
While stories from return migrants played a role in creating a transborder imaginary of what migrants might expect with regard to quotidian life in the United
States, past and potential cheranense migrants also were participating in workshops and trainings on their rights as workers—contracted or undocumented—even before immigrating to the United States. The knowledge that indigenous migrants from Cherán carried with them, as well as the cultural and linguistic elements of home, defined who
48 Kasarda and Johnson, 3. 49 Campos, interview, June 14, 2013.
144 they were and allowed them to recognize the kind of experiences they could have as workers in the United States. Migrants also learned through these workshops that
“racial” difference in the United States—understood by them as ‘color’—was not the only thing that differentiated workers. Even if the migrant workers all were racialized as
“Mexican” and “immigrant,” their legal status differentiated the kinds of labor and social experiences and opportunities they might face in the United States.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act and the many provisions it created for family reunification and farm workers in the United States created the impetus for labor leaders and organizers to reach out to local Mexican communities, informing those who had returned, who had not yet left, or the family members who stayed behind, of the rights of immigrant workers in the United States. A talk recorded in 1991 brings to life a workshop in Cherán, Michoacán, in which men and women gathered to attend a course on the rights of migrant workers. The recording captured the resonance of the speakers’ voices as they spoke to the community. Though the union representatives spoke with accents and sometimes made linguistic errors, the women were most interested in ensuring that the information they presented was being understood. The conversation and follow-up questions were being recorded, they said, so that it could later be presented on Radio Xepur for those unable to attend the day’s course. With plans to air the talk on Radio Oaxaca and translate it into various languages, the union representatives seemed to be targeting traditional indigenous communities, who by the
145 1990s were emigrating en masse to the United States.50 By targeting these communities, the labor organizers were attempting to promote a binational consciousness as workers—and perhaps even a binational union—that required educating Mexican migrants even before they left.
In a brief one-hour meeting, two US union representatives shared some basic information in the hopes of preparing those who intended to migrate. Dozens in Cherán listened intently as the representatives declared that migrants all had the right to good working conditions, minimum wage, good treatment, and not be discriminated against for “the color of their skin,” a concept that even in Mexico was familiar to this
P’urhépecha community. Migrant workers also had the right to unionize, the union representatives said, which was the most effective way of ensuring that their rights as laborers were met. Though labor unions—sindicatos—were not uncommon to Mexicans, the types of labor unions that existed in the United States were different, so the union representatives quickly described the various types of labor unions that existed across the border. Workers in any in any field could unionize, the union representatives affirmed, and they encouraged audience members that the best thing they could do as migrant workers in the United States was join a union.51
50 Primer Curso Sobre Derechos de Trabajadores Migrantes (Cherán, Michoacán, 1991), FONO CYV/CCA55/007, Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas 51 Primer Curso Sobre Derechos de Trabajadores Migrantes (Cherán, Michoacán, 1991), FONO CYV/CCA55/007, Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas.Primer Curso Sobre Derechos de Trabajadores Migrantes.
146 While joining a union was something the representatives encouraged, they made clear to the audience that not all unions were “progressive.” For the union representatives, it was clear that, at least in this instance, “progressive” unions were those who organized workers regardless of legal status. One of the union representatives identified herself as a Chicana and declared that US unions could not continue to organize workers while excluding those who were undocumented. It was ridiculous and stupid, she continued, that unions in the United States disregarded or ignored undocumented workers. Raising her voice in a broken Spanish, she affirmed that labor unions who refused to unionize undocumented workers were in effect discriminating against them based on their legal status. Undocumented workers were workers, too, and these union representatives were adamant about this fact. Even if some unions by 1991 still were hesitant to organize undocumented workers, the union representatives made sure to emphasize that some unions would represent them no matter their legal status.52
The union representatives’ discussion of US labor unions and their relationship with undocumented workers reflected a much longer, complicated history of labor unions. The admission of people without legal status into unions has been a contested position and fraught with intense debate. In the wake of World War I, anti-immigrant
52 Primer Curso Sobre Derechos de Trabajadores Migrantes (Cherán, Michoacán, 1991), FONO CYV/CCA55/007, Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas.Primer Curso Sobre Derechos de Trabajadores Migrantes.
147 legislation in the 1920s, and growing nativist sentiments among the American populace, organized labor—under the umbrella of the American Federation of Labor (AFL)— understood Mexican immigrants as cheap competitors undermining American workers.53 During the early years of the Great Depression, labor unions blamed
Mexicans for the nation’s joblessness. The AFL supported the government’s efforts to repatriate Mexicans and Mexican Americans across the border to Mexico and backed anti-immigrant legislation in state legislatures and Congress.54 In the late 1930s, unions affiliated with the Congress of International Organizations were the most active and militant advocates for Mexican American and immigrant workers. It was only when these CIO-affiliated unions started competing aggressively with the national federation for membership that the AFL began to reluctantly reach out to the Mexican working- class.
A similar dynamic between the AFL and CIO had existed with regard to organizing African American workers. At its founding convention in December 1886, the AFL had required affiliates to pledge their members would never discriminate against a fellow worker based on color. However, the AFL reversed its position in 1895 and allowed new affiliates to prohibit African Americans from joining their ranks. When the CIO was founded in 1936, it vowed to organize all workers and oppose all forms of
53 George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 96. 54 Zaragosa Vargas, Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 62–63.
148 segregation, hoping to compete with the AFL for membership. As a result, the AFL also changed its position with regard to organizing African American workers. To end the competition for membership, the AFL and CIO decided in 1955 to merge as one union:
AFL-CIO.55
Even César Chávez—a Mexican American—and the United Farm Workers, who advocated for migrant farm workers and their rights, were vocal critics of illegal immigration. Undocumented workers across the country had been used as strikebreakers, debilitating and undermining the strikes of unionized workers, or had come to replace workers who had been organizing for their rights. Though the immigrant laborers themselves were not at fault, unions across the country refused to support or advocate for their rights in light of these actions, and sometimes even reported undocumented workers to immigration officials. Unions also believed that undocumented workers were too vulnerable, with the threat of deportation being far too great for them to become involved in direct action. For unions, the prevailing trend until the late twentieth century was to limit membership to citizen laborers.56
Unions’ anti-immigrant stance predominated broadly through the 1990s, though some unions were demonstrating success through organizing undocumented workers.
55 “A House Divided: African American Workers Struggle Against Segregation,” University of Maryland Labor and Workplace Studies of Special Collections and University Archives, n.d.; Vargas, Labor Rights Are Civil Rights, 63. 56 David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 197–99.
149 Recognizing that unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) had increased their membership significantly through outreach to immigrant—and undocumented—workers, the AFL-
CIO and other unions began to reconsider their historic immigration stance. As demographics changed across the country and immigrant laborers came to occupy a larger percentage of the workforce, the AFL-CIO began to eye undocumented immigrant workers as potential members that could revive union membership. In February 2000, the AFL-CIO’s executive council changed their stance toward undocumented immigrants, calling publicly for the legalization of undocumented immigrants and advocating for the rights of undocumented workers.57
Even if migrants joined unions upon their arrival to the United States, some workers’ rights were restricted based on the conditions of their migration. The union representatives on the panel were sure to mention that there were some limitations for workers who signed an H-2A contract. For example, H-2A workers could not negotiate contracts or go on strike. Even so, H-2A laborers did benefit from some of the same rights that other US workers had. For example, if H-2A workers were not being paid the amount outlined in their contract, were laboring or living in inadequate conditions, or were injured at work, they had the right to complain and demand that the terms of their contract be fulfilled. All workers, regardless of their status, had the right to overtime
57 Steven Greenhouse, “Labor Urges Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants,” The New York Times, February 17, 2000, sec. U.S.
150 pay. The union representatives assured the audience that even workers who returned to and were living in Mexico still could file a lawsuit against their US employer for any past grievances. While contracted laborers were not eligible for many of the rights as US workers, there were some measures they could take to protect their rights and seek redress. The union representatives wanted to make sure that cheranenses—whether return migrants, potential emigrants, or the family members of migrants—understood that migrants in the United States had rights as workers regardless of their legal status.
Even before setting off to parts unknown in the United States, some people in
Mexican sending communities already were being introduced to a vocabulary of
“discrimination” and worker justice, a particularly US-based approach to labor organizing. By the 1990s, aspiring migrants need no longer depend on family members or neighbors to tell them about the United States. Those in Cherán, future migrants or not, learned about working conditions and labor rights by union organizers themselves.
Through community conversations, cheranenses learned the difference between working as an undocumented laborer or as a contracted worker, as well as the variety of labor unions in the United States and the protections they might offer. Most importantly, they were beginning to also consider that migrants in the United States were racially discriminated based on the color of their skin. As cheranenses settled in the United
States, they carried with them the understanding that they could experience racism both within and outside of their workplaces.
151 3.5 Those Who Stay
As migrants set off for distant parts, those who stayed behind were tasked with being a single parent or a child with an absent father. Until the 1990s, the majority of those family members who stayed behind to head the family were women—wives and mothers who confronted quotidian struggles and ensured the wellbeing of the family.
As the heads of households, these women also had the responsibility of teaching their family the traditions and practices of their P’urhépecha community, as well as a sense of pride and honor for identifying as indigenous. Women like Doña Chepa and Doña
Imelda Tomás Macias inherited these responsibilities at a young age, as both were raised in families where migrating was a common practice, especially among the men of their families. While neither Doña Chepa nor Doña Imelda immigrated to the United States as labor migrants, their fathers, husbands, and children immigrated to the United States, leaving them in Cherán to bear the burden of being the head of the household, immediate provider for the family, and the model for indigeneity.
Doña Chepa does not suffer fools. She has a serious demeanor and speaks openly and frankly, with a matter-of-fact affect. Her house is in El Calvario, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Cherán and just a few steps from a Catholic church. The entrance of her house is a storefront, a foyer where Doña Chepa sells Herbalife products and prepares shakes for her regular customers, women who stop by every day and enjoy a shake while they converse with Doña Chepa. She sits with them, her top tucked into a long skirt that hides beneath an apron with pockets that covers her torso. Part of her sense of
152 indigeneity is dependent on her dress, Doña Chepa assured, and though she might no longer wear the same type of dress her grandparents wore—underwear and skirts made of manta, coarse cloth—she feels she has maintained the fundamentals. Doña Chepa never became accustomed to wearing pants and disapproves of the way women, including her daughters, dress today. “They are disfiguring themselves mucho, mucho, muchísimo—a lot, a lot, a great deal—now,” Doña Chepa bemoaned. Doña Chepa assured that “women are no longer macizas,” strong and solid, as they used to be. The women of today, she meant, were no longer like her.58
Doña Chepa was raised in a home where children were expected to both go to school and support the family business–farming. Sometimes even that was not enough to sustain the family, so in 1970 or 1971, her father immigrated to the United States, but returned soon thereafter in 1972 and never again emigrated. Because theirs was a family completely dependent on their farm work, no one in the family had wanted him to leave, especially Doña Chepa, because there was so much work to be done and fields to be tended. Doña Chepa knew that community norms would not allow her to question her father or rebuke him for his decision. And so, Doña Chepa’s father left and returned, and there was never any discussion about the time he spent away, almost as if he had never left. Whether or not he sent money during his time in the United States also was unknown to Doña Chepa. In much the same way as their father, Doña Chepa’s brothers
58 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez.
153 also left to the United States, some to return, others to permanently stay. Two of her sisters also immigrated to the United States with their husbands, and because they lacked legal status, never returned. As the oldest sibling, Doña Chepa would have been tasked with executing the chores left unaccounted for by her migrant father, but because
Doña Chepa was married in 1970, the weight of her father’s absence was carried mostly by her mother, while both of Doña Chepa’s parents dealt with the departure of her siblings.59
The emigration of Doña Chepa’s husband, however, perhaps would have the most significant effect on Doña Chepa’s life and the woman she would become. At just
14-years-old, Doña Chepa did not even think about marriage. Though she only had attended school until the sixth grade, because her parents needed her to work, Doña
Chepa had never thought about boys in a romantic way. But when Samuel M. arrived on her doorstep asking Doña Chepa’s parents for her hand, they obliged. Conversing with young men was strictly forbidden in Cherán, Doña Chepa recalled, so she only had spoken to Samuel a few times. Even so, Doña Chepa and Samuel were soon wed. Within a year, Doña Chepa gave birth to a baby girl, Roselia. When Doña Chepa’s husband’s family faced some challenging economic setbacks, Doña Chepa and Samuel agreed that he would emigrate while Doña Chepa would remain in Cherán caring for Roselia and tending the crops. They borrowed enough money from family to pay the coyote, and
59 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. Gutiérrez, 197–99.
154 with everything in order, her husband left for the United States in 1971, just six months after Roselia was born.60
In many ways, and for a variety of reasons, Dona Chepa assured that her life was not affected by his leaving. She had been raised to work hard, and work hard she did, even in his absence. She learned how to make tortillas and tamales to sell and continued to tend to the animals and crops as she had been doing her whole life. Doña Chepa used the money she made selling her food to feed her family. Though she neither asked nor expected her husband to send her money, whatever he did send she invested in things that would facilitate her work life, like a horse or adding an additional room to her home. Her husband’s trips to the United States were short—often staying only four or six months before returning to Cherán—and he only left after all of the fields were planted.61
Doña Chepa does allude, however, to feelings of loneliness and sadness when one is left in Mexico. Years later, her daughter Roselia—an adult—married and decided to immigrate to the United States with her husband. When Doña Chepa learned that
Roselia would not stay behind, but instead would go with her husband, Doña Chepa remembered feeling relieved and happy. “It is sad all the time to be alone,” Doña Chepa said from experience.62 Even if Doña Chepa’s husband had sent her money occasionally
60 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 61 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 62 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez.
155 over the years, it was no replacement for his physical presence. Hers alone was the burden to care for their eight children if they got sick, or if they needed something for a school project or program. Without their father, Doña Chepa worried that her children would rebel or act out, so she purposely tried to keep them as busy as possible tending to household chores and daily tasks, expecting her children to work just as hard as she had during her childhood. Over the years, Doña Chepa sensed that her children were unaffected by their father’s absence, growing accustomed to only having their mother.
Even when her husband was in Cherán, Doña Chepa felt that their children disturbed rather than delighted her husband.63
Doña Chepa’s children actually might have preferred their father to be away, fearing him or at the very least, dreading what might happen if he was in Cherán.
Though Doña Chepa never mentioned this, her daughter – Cecilia Mendoza— remembered her dad’s returns to their home a bit more vividly. Her father had been an active drinker, and in those drunken moments in Cherán, would frequently hit Doña
Chepa during arguments and disputes. Cecilia remembered that it also was “a really ugly life there, too.”64 Each time her father returned to Cherán, and especially if he drank, Samuel would hit Cecilia’s mother, Doña Chepa. For Cecilia and her siblings,
63 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 64 Mendoza, interview.
156 their father’s absence also meant that their mother would be safe from domestic violence.65
Like Doña Chepa, Doña Imelda experienced similar struggles as a child bride and mother. Doña Imelda also spoke candidly about her life, but did so vividly, using her hands frequently to express important moments, elongating words and phrases she desired to emphasize, and—oftentimes—breaking into Tarasco for minutes without hesitation and without later describing what it was that she had said. She was quick to respond and uncensored in her storytelling, employing curse words without a second thought. Doña Imelda also wore a long-sleeved shirt tucked into a skirt, with a traditional P’urhépecha shawl covering her shoulders on this cool November evening. In her living room, a four-foot Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of Cherán, was beautifully decorated with flowers and offerings, most likely remnants from the saint day festival celebrated just a month before. A devout Catholic, Doña Imelda made certain that the most important symbol of her faith and hometown—the image of Saint
Francis—was the first thing visitors saw upon entering her home.66
Doña Imelda probably was born in April or May of 1948, though the exact date is unknown. She described her childhood as happy, with her and her seven siblings working and frolicking freely outside in the evenings. Cherán in those days was small, and paved roads in town were rare. Pigs and other animals roamed the streets as if on a
65 Mendoza. 66 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, April 12, 2016.
157 lazy afternoon stroll. Dust covered everything, especially Doña Imelda and her siblings after a long evening of playing. Doña Imelda’s mother, a seamstress, made all of her children’s dresses and under garments by hand. Doña Imelda and her sisters were expected to do the laundry, so every day they would head off to the nearby gully with their chelancote—a type of sweet potato common in Cherán that they used in lieu of soap to wash the clothing. During the lunch and dinner hours, the sisters could be heard talking in Tarasco and laughing in the kitchen as they clapped their hands together, carefully forming the tortillas they would soon consume. After meals, some sisters would clean the kitchen while others swept the floor. Doña Imelda’s father worked as a carpenter, while her mother sewed clothing and traditional P’urhépecha clothing that they sold to others.67
Doña Imelda’s family always had been of modest origins, which led both her grandfather and father to seek opportunities in the United States. Doña Imelda and her siblings refused to go to school, so during the day they would hide in their grandparents’ home. There her grandfather told them stories about his childhood.
Because they had had no money, Doña Imelda’s grandfather would trade with maize and other products. This poverty had led her grandfather to emigrate from Cherán in the early twentieth century. With his grandchildren surrounding him, Doña Imelda’s grandfather would share his memories of the United States. “Over there, there are only
67 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos.
158 gringos,” Doña Imelda’s grandfather would say. “And they speak different—English— and one cannot understand them. They cannot understand us, either. They do want us to work, but they don’t really like us, probably because they can’t understand us.”68
These stories surprised Doña Imelda, for all of the people surrounding her—including herself—spoke Tarasco, and she could not fathom people speaking another language that she did not know.
Doña Imelda and her siblings were curious of what the United States was like because their father was there. When Doña Imelda was about four or five years old, in the 1950s, her father had immigrated to the United States. Though this was during the
Bracero Program, which supplied legal contracted Mexican laborer to US industries during World War II, Doña Imelda’s father circumvented the bureaucracy and crossed the border the same way many before him had done and the same way many after him would do. He worked in the United States for a couple of years before returning, and never went back. Though her father never shared stories of the United States, Doña
Imelda and her siblings imagined his experiences through the stories of their grandfather.69
Like Doña Chepa’s husband, Doña Imelda’s husband also would migrate to the
United States, specifically to North Carolina, which would also significantly alter Doña
Imelda’s life and that of her children. As a fifteen-year-old, Doña Imelda remembered
68 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 69 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos.
159 that she andaba de volada—was flirtatious and enjoying the attention she received from neighborhood boys. She fell in love with a young man, and he was going to ask for her hand, but their plans were thwarted when another young man se la robo—took her from her home without asking for her parent’s permission for her hand in marriage, essentially staining her reputation and eliminating any chance for her to marry the boy she loved. Early on, Doña Imelda became pregnant, but “there was nothing to eat, to feed her children.”70 To make matter worse, Doña Imelda still was in love with the other young man, which her husband might have sensed. In those years, Doña Imelda’s husband hit her a great deal, and others, particularly the young man who had wanted to marry her, noticed. “Ay Imelda, I loved you so, and look what you did. You went with him,” Doña Imelda remembered him saying. “I would not be hitting you like that.”71 He pleaded with Doña Imelda to leave her husband, that he would accept her with her children and that they could make a life together. But Doña Imelda refused. She had accepted her life as it was and was determined to make it better—herself.
Full of resolve, Doña Imelda decided to work to support herself and her children.
Even before the sun rose, Doña Imelda could be found in the kitchen, making tortillas that she would send her daughter Lupita to sell in Paracho, a larger city about fifteen minutes away. Afterword, though, Doña Imelda always felt guilty for sending Lupita,
70 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos. 71 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos.
160 thinking, “what fault does she have?”72 Having learned her mother’s sewing techniques,
Doña Imelda also became a master seamstress, sewing and delivering to folks who appreciated her talents. Even if she had to secure a baby on her back with a shawl, she would travel as far as Sahuayo, a town a two-and-a-half-hour drive away, to sell her artisanal work. When her husband left for the United States and stayed in North
Carolina for about five years, working in landscaping, Doña Imelda—like Doña
Chepa—was nonchalant about his absence.73
The emigration of her son also was a critical turning point in Doña Imelda’s life.
At just 14 years old, Doña Imelda’s son left for the United States. One day, her son told her he wanted to drop out of school and join another group of young men who were leaving for the United States. “I said to him, son, you are too little to go over there, son,”
Doña Imelda remembered telling her son. “No one is going to want you working over there when you’re so young.” But he left, headed to North Carolina, to the same place where her husband—his father—had labored. “I felt bad,” Doña Imelda said, sighing deeply. “Bad, bad, bad. I said, God, my son is seeing that we have nothing, nothing to support us. My son is seeing that and now he is leaving. oh holy God, holy father, my father, please heeeeeeeeelp him, holy Father, help your son. That it may go well, Father, give him blessing, holy Father.”74 Drawing out the words as she spoke, the pain in her
72 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos. 73 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos. 74 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos.
161 voice of the memory of the day, and of the traces it left, rang clear. Two weeks after her son had set off, the phone rang at Doña Imelda’s house. Her son had made it to North
Carolina and was working as a farmworker, cutting tobacco. “Oh dear child of my heart,” Doña Imelda said in relief, “I knew that it would go well for you.” Doña Imelda was certain her prayers had kept her son safe. Her son has been in the United States ever since.75
As their husbands emigrated or were absent, Doña Chepa and Doña Imelda were tasked with instilling in their children the indigenous cultural traditions and values that distinguished them, as well as for ensuring that those who leave continue to embrace their indigenous community and traditions even when thousands of miles away. For
Doña Chepa, it was incredibly important that her children appreciate and honor the forests as much as she did, as well as the hard work and connection to the earth and land.76 Doña Imelda, who speaks Tarasco fluently, hoped her children would learn the language as well, but for now appreciates that they have maintained the desire to honor their Catholic syncretic traditions and indigenous cultural practices, even if just on feast days.77 And the lasting effect that both women wanted to instill in their children was that there was nothing to be embarrassed of with regard to being indigenous. “Mostly, I love the forest a lot,” Doña Chepa said. “It is what makes me feel P’urhépecha. I’m
75 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos. 76 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 77 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos.
162 ashamed of nothing.”78 Doña Imelda feels much the same. “I feel like a person of status, a person of respect,” Doña Chepa declared. When she ventured outside of Cherán to sell her needlework, she often would confront people who asked her if they were “indios”—
Indian. “You must be more than me,” Doña Imelda would respond to them, without missing a beat. “Because we have both of our languages, Tarasco and Spanish, while you only have one.”79 For both Doña Imelda and Doña Chepa, that their language and its remnants, as well as their religious and traditional customs, had survived for hundreds of years was testament enough to the value of what it meant to be indigenous. Doña
Chepa and Doña Imelda instilled in their children these lessons, practices, and sentiments that honored and privileged their indigeneity, a sense of being that endured and thrived even across political borders.
Doña Chepa and Doña Imelda also experienced trauma and violence that shaped the type of women, mothers, and leaders they would both become in their communities.
This gendered violence unintentionally created a generation of women who actively engaged in family preservation and community struggles and defense. In later years,
Doña Imelda would cross the border—illegally—to find her son, who she knew was heartbroken and needed her. Doña Chepa, along with several other women, would lead the defense of Cherán against illegal logging and became the documented face of resistance, which gave way to Cherán’s present political autonomy.
78 Interview with Josefina Estrada Velásquez. 79 Interview with Imelda Tomás Campos.
163 Stories of violence and trauma among migrant families reveal the way transnational migration also has local effects on the sending community. Globalization and neoliberal policies have encouraged emigration, while the Mexican state has failed to protect the victims of violence and the forgotten causalities of migration: those who stay, mostly women. Doña Chepa and Doña Imelda also belong to what Rosa Linda
Fregoso calls the “most vulnerable and oppressed group in Mexican society—dark- skinned women.” Violence in Mexico is not only gendered, but it is also racialized and ethnicized and works as another tool of state oppression.80 Indigenous women’s intersectional subjectivities render them vulnerable to both local and global experiences of physical and emotional violence that are only worsened by transnational migration.
And yet, indigeneity also became a resource that sustained Doña Chepa and
Doña Imelda. Their lives reveal that daughters, wives, and mothers, also took on new responsibilities in the sending community and within their families. Searching for ways to manage and maintain their families, Doña Chepa and Doña Imelda both executed nontraditional roles and developed tactics to protect and defend their families while preserving their indigenous cultural practices and customs. Survivors of physical violence, trauma, and loss, Doña Imelda and Doña Chepa also were empowered. As historian Ana Rosas has argued in her work on Bracero families, women emerged “as an
80 Rosa Linda Fregoso, “Toward a Planetary Civil Society,” in Women and Migration in the US- Mexico Borderlands: A Reader, ed. Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 53.
164 integral yet far too often conveniently forgotten and neglected historical force, defending their own interests and in the process raising the consciousness of their families and other women.”81 Perhaps unintentionally, the autonomy women like Doña Imelda and
Doña Chepa gained allowed them to flourish and recognize themselves not only as leaders in their home but also in their community. Their love, ingenuity, and determination to move forward encouraged and enabled them to learn new skills and to act more independently. Doña Chepa and Doña Imelda gained their family and community’s respect through the assertion of their confidence and their voice.
Doña Chepa’s and Doña Imelda’s stories also demonstrate how the sending communities themselves are changing as a result of—and in spite of—migration. As migrants forge new cultures, drawing from new lessons and old practices, those who stay behind also develop strategies and mechanisms to bear the absences.82 The implication is that Cherán, as a local community vulnerable to social change from within, also cannot be separated from the transnational linkages that exist because of its community abroad. The interplay between the local and global take center stage in
Cherán, not only in terms of economic changes, but also with regard to its people. On both sides of the border, cheranenses and their families crafted strategies of survival and solidarity in the face of profound change.
81 Rosas, Abrazando El Espíritu, 4. 82 Hirsch, “En El Norte La Mujer Manda,” 1345.
165 4. Contested Conflict: Latinos and African Americans in Durham, 1988-1997
Having just finished celebrating mass, Father Barry—the pastor at Holy Cross
Catholic Church, a traditionally African American church in Durham—was readying himself to announce to the congregation that today, October 13, 1996, would be the final bilingual mass celebrated at Holy Cross. As he began his announcement, a group of
Latino immigrant parishioners who had made Holy Cross their home for eight years began to stand from their pews. The Latino parishioners knew that this announcement discontinuing their bilingual mass was coming, and they were prepared. The parishioners had organized and planned a walk out from the church on Durham’s
Alston Avenue, a predominantly African American community on the edge of North
Carolina Central University, a historically black public university. Among the dozens of
Latinos exiting the church was also the colorful and elaborate statue of Mexico’s patron saint, the Virgen de Guadalupe, which Latino parishioners carried as they left. Ready and waiting outside were members of the local Durham press, capturing this historic and critical moment in Durham history, which would grab media attention for weeks to come.
The walkout was the culmination of drastic changes taking place in Durham by the end of the 1980s, which were causing telling confrontations in local communities and spaces that reunited community members, especially churches and local neighborhoods.
The US Census Bureau found that only 2,000 people of the total Durham population
166 (182,000) identified as “Hispanic” in 1990, but within ten years, 17,000 of 223,000
Durham residents identified as “Hispanic.”1 The city of Durham became an “all- minority” municipality—no racial or ethnic group could claim a majority.2 In a city whose historic black leadership was celebrated through the recognition of such public places as the “Black Wall Street” in downtown Durham, the arrival of Latino migrants threatened not only physical and geographic spaces, but also the figurative spaces that
African Americans had come to occupy within the social milieu.
The Holy Cross walkout signaled a telling shift in demographics in Durham, as it was the first of various subsequent events that forced institutions in North Carolina — specifically the church and local government — to respond to the mass migration of
Latinos through questions of race. In North Carolina, places of social interaction proved critical to the ways in which newly arrived immigrants interacted with residents and grew to develop ideas about race and where migrants understood themselves on the racial order. The oral and written narratives chronicled the walkout in North Carolina through racial terms. The walkout from Holy Cross in 1996 in Durham demonstrates, however, that a historical analysis provides a broader context through which to understand two minority groups in a Southern city. Latinos and African Americans are
1 The Latino Migration Project at UNC-Chapel Hill, “Durham’s Immigrant Communities: Looking to the Future” (Chapel Hill, NC, 2013). 2 Thomas A. Tweed, “Our Lady of Guadeloupe Visits the Confederate Memorial: Latino and Asian Religions in the South,” in Religion in the Contemporary South: Changes, Continuities, and Contexts (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 144.
167 rarely examined outside of their racialized identifications, and thus stories in which these groups confront each other have been narrated in ways that hyperbolize the racial tensions between them. These accounts also downplay the pervasiveness of white actors that, in many ways, were in leadership roles that exacerbated relationships between minority groups.
In this and the following chapter, I examine the historical context of two local events to argue that the point of fracture upon settlement in North Carolina was not among Mexican migrants—indigenous versus non-indigenous migrants—but rather between African Americans and Latino migrants. As the Mexican migrant community was only just beginning to grow in North Carolina, newly-arrived migrants created a sense of home and community in this faraway land by establishing relationships with other Mexican migrants. In cities like Durham, Mexican migrants found affordable housing in low-income, predominantly African American neighborhoods. In rural spaces, like those surrounding Tar Heel, NC, while entire towns might be populated by predominantly Latino migrants, Latinos often labored alongside African American workers and were often situated in direct competition with them for job opportunities.
From the late 1980s to the turn of the century, the relationship between Latinos and
African Americans would change amid growing local, national, and transborder justice movements.
168 4.1 Black Catholics and the US South: The Historical Context of Holy Cross
Black Catholics historically have been rendered invisible among other blacks because of their religious identity as Catholics, as well as among Catholics for their blackness.3 Even so, surveys and opinion polls suggest there are about 2.5 million
African American Catholics in the United States, which account for three percent of the total Catholic population and nine percent of the total African American population. In fact, as Jamie Phelps points out in his work on black Catholics, there are more African
American Catholics than there are members of several other American Protestant denominations. For example, there are more black Catholics than there are Black
Episcopal Zion Church members, African American Methodist Episcopal Church members, Adventists, Disciples of Christ, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and
Mennonites.4 Just as with the broader black population, black Catholics were viewed as morally and intellectually inferior than their white counterparts. For decades, African
American men and women were not allowed to pursue priesthood or religious life, and places to worship were segregated just as other spaces had been since the Jim Crow era.5
Across the country, US Catholics reflected the widespread racism of society.
3 Jamie T. Phelps, ed., Black and Catholic: The Challenge and Gift of Black Folk: Contributions of African American Experience and Thought to Catholic Theology (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1997), 21. 4 Phelps, 7. 5 Phelps, 26–27.
169 It was even harder to be a Catholic in the US South. Many Bible-belt southerners regarded the Catholic church with hostility and suspicion. A minority in the South, the
Catholic church chose instead to conform to the existing racial ideologies and practices of the region rather than challenge the social system or racial hierarchy. 6 In North
Carolina, there were only 8,585 Catholics—less than one-third of one percent of the state’s population—in 1938.7 Holy Cross was established in 1939 specifically to serve the
African American community, who were not allowed to attend white Catholic churches during segregation. For decades, the black community claimed Holy Cross as theirs and as a sacred space for black Catholics, and they uplifted this as an enduring vision for the church. As one journalist put it, “members of the Holy Cross Catholic Church know their church has a mission worth preserving: reaching out to African American
Catholics, whose needs were neglected during the days of segregation.”8
Segregation in North Carolina churches came into an abrupt end in 1953, almost a year before the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. Unlike most Sundays, Sunday, June 21, in Catholic churches within the
Diocese of Raleigh were quiet, absent of prayer and worship. Instead, pastors read aloud
6 Stephen J. Ochs, Desegregating the Altar: The Josephites and the Struggle for Black Priests, 1871-1960 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 2. 7 Powers, Tar Heel Catholics, 235. 8 Ben Stocking, “Changing Times Divide Durham Congregation: Church Struggles to Serve Latinos, Remain True to Blacks,” The News & Observer, October 21, 1996.
170 a letter written and sent from Bishop Vincent Waters. In the letter, Bishop Waters publicly declared his position on racism and segregation. “Let me state here as emphatically as I can, that there is no segregation of races to be tolerated in any Catholic church in the Diocese of Raleigh,” Bishop Waters wrote. “Equal rights are accorded, therefore, to every race…and within the church building itself. Everyone is given the privilege to sit or kneel wherever he desires.”9 Waters’s mandate to integrate North
Carolina Catholic churches was a call for unity and equity amid an era of Jim Crow segregation that went against the church’s teachings.
The way integration took shape in North Carolina was much more complicated than Bishop Waters perhaps had anticipated. Though Bishop Waters ordered neighboring, segregated Catholic churches to combine, in practice it functioned as the closing of black Catholic churches, with their congregations being told to attend all- white churches where they held no authority. Most historically black Catholic churches throughout North Carolina were closed during this time, an enduring legacy and memory among black Catholics in the state. Holy Cross in Durham, however, remained with its doors open and with its congregation unmoved because it was the only parish in the diocese owned by someone other than the Bishop — the Jesuit order. Because of this, the church and its parishioners remained intact, despite any attacks that might threaten its existence.10
9 “Religion: Cure for the Virus,” Time, June 29, 1953. 10 Father Bruce Bavinger, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, March 11, 2015.
171 A fundamental structural shift within the Catholic church led to a growing sense of black awareness and self-determination among Black Catholics in the United States.
Convened by Pope John Paul II from 1962-1965, the Second Vatican Council—Vatican
II—addressed relations between the Catholic church and the modern world. An ecumenical council—an assembly of Roman Catholic religious leaders meant to settle doctrinal issues—had not been convened in nearly 100 years. Several changes resulted from the council. Catholics across the world could hear the Mass in their native language rather than Latin, and ecumenical efforts were delineated to encourage dialogue with other religions. Perhaps most importantly, Vatican II allowed laypeople to take leadership roles within the church. Having survived through integration efforts, parishioners at Holy Cross were encouraged by Vatican II to create a more democratic church.11
The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements served to further empower the
Black Catholic Movement of late twentieth century. In 1968, a black Catholic priest from the diocese of Rockford, Illinois, founded the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus
(NBCCC). In its first meeting, the NBCCC declared that “the Catholic church in the
United States, primarily a white racist institution, has addressed itself primarily to white
11 Mary A. Ward, A Mission for Justice: The History of the First African American Catholic Church in Newark, New Jersey, 1st ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 84–86, 114.
172 society and is definitely part of that society.”12 The statement continued, calling for a commitment to recruit black men for priesthood and that these serve in leadership roles in their communities and within their diocese. The statement also asked for a commitment from dioceses to provide culturally sensitive training for white priests serving in black communities.13 The NBCCC spurred the formation of other groups of black Catholics, including the National Black Sisters’ Conference, the National Black
Catholic Seminarians’ Caucus, and the National Black Catholic Lay Caucus.14 In response to the national movement for black civil and human rights, the Black Catholic
Movement also was fighting for its own representation within the Catholic church in the form of black leadership.
Well into the twentieth century, the Catholic church had excluded all but a handful of African Americans from its clergy. Instead, white priests had been placed as the pastors of black Catholic congregations for decades. Even the most well-intentioned white priests oftentimes developed paternalistic relationships with their congregation and reinforced black Catholics’ feelings of inferiority.15 On the other hand, black Catholic priests had the potential of serving as representatives for the black community within the hierarchical, cleric-dominated Catholic church and push forward changes in the
12 James H. Cone and Gayraud S. Wilmore, eds., “A Statement of the Black Catholic Clergy Caucus,” in Black Theology: A Documentary History, vol. 1: 1966-1979 (New York: Orbis Books, 1993), 230–32. 13 Cone and Wilmore; Phelps, Black and Catholic, 32–33. 14 Ochs, Desegregating the Altar, 447. 15 Ochs, 2.
173 church that recognized the need to acknowledge black Catholics and honor their rightful place. Even in traditionally black Catholic churches, like Holy Cross, white pastors always had controlled the church’s organization. This church structure only reinforced
African Americans’ position as second-class citizens within the Catholic church.16
Though the Civil Rights Era had since passed, African Americans continued to struggle for representation within religious institutions like the Catholic Church.17
A white man from Michigan, Father Bruce Bavinger recognized the historic mistreatment of black Catholics, and for this reason, devoted his religious life to working in African American parishes. A soft-spoken priest with a welcoming and warm demeanor, Father Bruce joined the Society of Jesus and was ordained in 1978. At the time, there were no black bishops in the US Catholic Church and very few black priests. “Most African Americans kind of saw the Catholic Church as a white organization,” Father Bruce said, “so it took a special kind of dedication to overcome that.”18 A Roman Catholic order of priests founded half a millennium ago by Ignatius
Loyola, the Jesuits have a long tradition of spirituality and reflection. Father Bruce’s vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and obedience specifically in regard to a worldwide mission, reflect his commitment to nurturing men and women for the service of others.
16 Ochs, 1. 17 Powers, Tar Heel Catholics, 375–411. 18 Bavinger, interview.
174 Father Bruce arrived as pastor of Holy Cross in North Carolina in 1985, just as changes in both the Catholic Church and in the state were transforming religious and racial geographies of the South. “There was a lot more mistrust and hostility between all the churches,” Father Bruce remembered, “not just Catholic and Protestant.” African
Americans who attended traditional white churches, regardless of religious affiliation, were rare. As Father Bruce recounted, parishioners at Holy Cross tended to have friendly relationships with their African American counterparts in Black Lutheran and
Episcopal churches, where they felt at home in each other’s churches. An anthropologist examining Catholicism in Savannah, Georgia, also found that black Protestants and
Catholics had rich relationships as compared to their white counterparts. Black
Protestants and Catholics had an intimacy of experiences absent among whites, and because many black Catholics had converted from Protestant faiths, it was both familiar and kindred. Many black Protestants also had previous interactions with Catholics through missionary schools and neighborhood outreach.19 For these relationships to flourish in the US South, what mattered was not what kind of Christian they were, but that they were black.
In instances where black Catholics and Protestants interacted, black Catholics heard stories and witnessed how other African Americans, who belonged mostly to
19 Gary W. McDonogh, “Constructing Christian Hatred: Anti-Catholicism, Diversity, and Identity in Southern Religious Life,” in Religion in the Contemporary South: Diversity, Community, and Identity, ed. Daryl White and O. Kendall White (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 75.
175 Protestant Christian denominations, managed and structured their own churches and placed black pastors and ministers in positions of leadership.20 Even if they could not have a black priest, the Holy Cross parishioners could ensure that they played a key role in the church’s activities and ministry. Negotiating the fine line between a predominantly white Catholic institution and strong black leadership caused tensions to brew below the surface.
One of the most critical ways for Holy Cross to maintain its identity as a black
Catholic church was to ensure that black Catholics were the primary organizers of the ministries and were included in the decision-making of the church. Though whites had been parishioners of Holy Cross since the church’s foundation, they joined the congregation honoring the church’s identity as a black parish and respecting that
African Americans held a great deal—if not all—of authority. Black parishioners at Holy
Cross knew their history as black Catholics. Integration had dissolved other churches like theirs and erased them from memory. That Holy Cross had survived only empowered parishioners in later years to fight for their church’s identity as a historically
African American Catholic church.21
Holy Cross as a congregation was not prepared to face the demographic changes taking place in North Carolina by the 1980s that would have a lasting effect on their church. During his sermons, Father Bruce noticed that a new group of people were
20 Bavinger, interview. 21 Bavinger.
176 attending Sunday masses. In 1987, these newcomers finally approached Father Bruce after services and asked him if he would consider celebrating a mass in Spanish. Father
Bruce contemplated their request. Though he had worked in a Puerto Rican school in
New York City prior to commencing his theology studies, Father Bruce’s Spanish was rocky at best, so he was hesitant to acquiesce. In the meantime, the Spanish-speaking immigrants also asked a priest from St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Durham, about a thirty-minute drive from Holy Cross, if he would celebrate a Spanish mass. Joining forces, the two priests devised a strategy: they decided to offer a Spanish mass once a month at each of the parishes, so a Spanish mass would be celebrated biweekly in two different churches.22 Nearing the end of the decade, the growing Latino immigrant community in North Carolina had secured places to worship in a language and a religious cultural tradition that reminded them of home.
These newcomers were Latinos—predominantly Mexicans—who just had arrived to North Carolina. Mexican men settled during the first wave to Durham’s neighborhoods, predominantly in areas of East Durham. Groups of men, often who migrated from the same communities in Mexico, shared apartments along Hyde Park
Avenue and Juniper Street in the Albright neighborhood of Durham. Because North
Carolina offered driver’s licenses to people without the requirement of presenting a social security number until the mid-2000s, immigrant men were drawn to the Tar Heel
22 Bavinger.
177 state.23 Iván Parra, then director of Durham’s El Centro Hispano, remembered the living conditions for those early founders of Durham’s Latino neighborhood. With six, seven, and at times even eight men sharing a small apartment, “it was a complete disaster,”
Parra said, laughing. “But then the women came and organized everything. There were flowers in the homes, and the homes were clean, and there was an eating schedule and things like that. That was the beginning of everything.” With the increased
“feminization” of migrant streams in the post-IRCA period, families flourished.24
Desiring to mimic their Mexican weekend traditions, families wanted to integrate mass into their Sunday schedules. Because most immigrants labored in construction and service industries, the bilingual mass was celebrated in the evening to respect the morning workday. As the growing Latino community began performing their linguistic and religious practices in Holy Cross, the vanguard African American community of the parish took notice.
Father Bavinger assumed the role of sole celebrant of bilingual masses in 1987, after he and his counterpart realized that fewer Latinos attended the masses at St.
Matthew’s, a church which was much farther away from the north Durham area. Now celebrating two bilingual masses a month at Holy Cross, Father Bavinger drew the
23 Father John Heffernan, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, March 20, 2015; Iván Parra, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, April 5, 2015. 24 Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone, eds., Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003), 134; Segura and Zavella, Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 7.
178 attention of his longtime parishioners. The parish council, comprised predominantly by
African Americans, approached the pastor with their concerns in the fall of 1992. “That’s where I became aware that they were very sensitive,” he paused, searching, “to becoming the place where all of the other churches send the groups they don’t want to take care of.”25 After all, this would not be the first time Holy Cross welcomed a nontraditional group of Southern Catholics, and this led African Americans to grow increasingly leery.
Years before Father Bavinger became pastor of Holy Cross, a distinct group of
Catholic devotees had sought a spiritual home at the church, in a place where they would be free of persecution or judgment. With the approval of then Bishop Joseph
Gossman, the pastor of Holy Cross had allowed for different priests from across the
Triangle to come and celebrate an intimate mass for gay and lesbian worshippers and their friends, a collective that called themselves the “Dignity” group. Following the mass, Dignity would break bread together, and because the masses were held so late in the evening, neither Dignity members, nor African American parishioners, needed to worry about awkward and uncomfortable confrontations. The African American community had begrudgingly accepted the group’s celebration in their church, since
“there was very little permission for [being] gay or lesbian in the African American community.”26 Granted, the Catholic Church as a whole had a firm stance against
25 Bavinger, interview. 26 Bavinger.
179 homosexuality, even if that position played out differently within individual parishes, like Holy Cross.27 The Dignity group, and now the arrival of the Latinos, made the
African American community feel like control of their church was slipping from their grasp.
As the African American parishioners at the parish council meeting in August
1992 recounted to Father Bruce their past experiences with the Dignity group, he came to understand their sense of being a church of misfits, a church to which other churches sent their undesirables. While Father Bruce did not believe this to be the case, he honored how these emotions were contextualized and contingent on a much longer history. “We talked about it at the parish council meeting, and they said, ‘Well, what bothers us is that everybody has their own mass… and that sounds like separate but equal to us, where it sounds good but we always wound up at the bottom.”28 The celebration of Spanish masses, coupled with the celebration of Dignity masses on
Sunday evenings, disturbed the parish council and subverted their attempts to maintain the church’s African American legacy.
For the black community at Holy Cross, the secrecy, intimacy, and illegibility of masses under one roof harkened to a time of trauma and pain. Father Bruce, a priest who devoted his religious life to uplifting black Catholics and their struggles, suggested
27 Commission of Cardinals and Bishops, with the approval of Pope John Paul II, “Catechism of the Catholic Church: The Vocation to Chastity,” § Part III, Section II, Chapter II, Article VI, Number II (1992). 28 Bavinger, interview.
180 a compromise: he would celebrate a bilingual — not Spanish — biweekly mass, open to both English and Spanish speakers. If those were the terms, the parish council would acquiesce, on one condition. If masses at Holy Cross from then on would be open to all members of the parish, Dignity masses also had to be scheduled as open services.29 The parish council and Father Bruce walked out of their meeting with a renewed emphasis to be more accessible to all members of the church while remaining faithful to Holy
Cross’s African American heritage.
The parish council’s decision to open the Dignity mass to the public served as an eviction notice for the LGBTQ parishioners. The gay and lesbian group purposely had arranged for theirs to be a mass exclusively for gay and lesbian Catholics and their friends. A service open to all meant that their mass no longer would be unique, and they rejected the celebration of a mass where the expression or discussion of human sexuality was taboo. The Dignity group, along with their loyal community, left Holy Cross and never returned. Dignity members felt that they had been expelled from the church, an experience they would remember for years to come.30
As their gay and lesbian counterparts walked away from their spiritual home,
Mexican migrants settled in to Holy Cross, where they could claim space and belonging.
Father Bruce, though happy to be able to serve the Latino community, was still developing his language skills to be able to best serve the Latino community. Especially
29 Bavinger. 30 Mindy Fraiser, “History Repeats Itself,” The Herald-Sun, November 6, 1996.
181 during those first years, Father Bruce worked diligently on writing his homilies and would read them aloud on Sundays to what he remembered as a bored congregation.
Amid laughter, Father Bruce joked that his sermons were so dull that the parishioners
“encourage[ed] me to be more brief.”31 Latino parishioners created a Latino ministry that organized traditional Mexican religious celebrations, like the feast day celebration of
Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. Volunteer Latino ministers also directed faith formation classes, teaching catechism to children approaching their first communion and confirmation celebrations. Given the opportunity, the Latino immigrants organized quickly to serve their cultural and spiritual needs.
The English- and Spanish-speaking ministers developed a collaborative relationship, and they also established common meetings to discuss issues and events at the church. Ten members of the black leadership committed themselves to learning even more about their Latino neighbors, creating a group explicitly dedicated to Spanish language learning. “I was kind of impressed with that,” Father Bruce remembered, smiling. The group recognized their counterparts did not speak English, so this was an attempt “just to kind of connect with the Hispanics that were now coming every
Sunday.”32 While some members of Holy Cross embraced the Christian belief of welcoming the stranger, other parishioners felt that their church was losing the identity that it once so proudly celebrated.
31 Bavinger, interview. 32 Bavinger.
182 For eight years, Father Bruce led a bilingual mass and Latino ministry in Holy
Cross with the blessing of both the bishop and the parish council. Despite the presence of Latino members, African American churchgoers continued to serve as the leaders in most of the church’s ministries, thereby not disrupting the traditional organizational structure of the church and in some ways appeasing the black Catholics who felt threatened by the Spanish-speaking community. Even so, tensions remained just below the surface among those who sensed that their church had become a place where unwanted Catholics were sent. For many, Holy Cross had transformed into another integrated Catholic church at the cost of losing its black Catholic heritage. Though it had stood firm in the face of Jim Crow segregation and integration efforts, Holy Cross and its parishioners could not fight against demographic changes and its consequences in North
Carolina. As the years passed, the strain on these relationships gave way to a dramatic end.
4.2 Staging the Walkout
Father Bruce’s transition from Holy Cross set in relief his pivotal role in the continuation of the bilingual mass. For two years, 1994 and 1995, Holy Cross went through a search for a replacement pastor for Father Bruce, who had been re-assigned to serve in Berkeley, California. In neither hiring cycle was a priest chosen, either because the priest requested to not be placed there, or because the parish council disapproved.
After all, since the 1987 National Black Catholic Congress, the black Catholic movement
183 had set forth the need to develop Black Catholic leadership to participate in decision- making, evangelization, and parish development.33 Having finally found a replacement by June 1996, Father Bruce bid farewell to his Holy Cross family and to an established
Latino community who esteemed him with fond regard.34 To replace Father Bruce came
Father David E. Barry, whose reign at Holy Cross was short, but would have a lasting effect on the membership at Holy Cross. In the wake of Father Bruce’s departure, the discontent that had festered for years among black Catholics at the church became evident.
With a new pastor at Holy Cross, who knew little of past tensions with groups like Dignity or the bilingual masses, the parish council approached the new pastor with their concerns regarding the bilingual mass. During a parish council meeting in the fall of 1996, the council and the pastor came to an agreement to eliminate the bilingual masses at Holy Cross. Father David did not even speak Spanish, so celebrating a bilingual mass was inconceivable. “The pastor was caving,” Father Bruce admitted, “but there must have been some more pressure coming from the parish council or from other people at Holy Cross to move him in that direction.”35 Father Bruce, who at the time was in Berkeley, heard secondhand what came next. Through deliberations, the parish council and Father David agreed that on October 13, he would stand in front of the
33 Phelps, Black and Catholic, 35; Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 258. 34 Bavinger, interview. 35 Bavinger.
184 congregation and inform them that the following weekend, mass would be celebrated at one in the afternoon, and that the mass would be solely in English. “The people had gotten word that this was going to be announced at this mass,” Father Bruce remembered. “So they got the cameras and newspaper people there, and they had planned to make a very dramatic exit from Holy Cross at that point.”36
At the end of the service, as Father David began making the announcement of mass changes, a “brief but heated discussion in Spanish” ensued, which culminated in the Spanish-speaking parishioners of Holy Cross approaching the sacristy and reaching for the Our Lady of Guadalupe statue that stood there.37 The statue had been imported years before from Mexico, a beautiful wooden carved figure that the Spanish-speaking parishioners funded themselves to display at their church in North Carolina. Now, sensing they were losing the church they once called home, many of the Latino members walked out of the church, some in tears, and carried with them the one thing that did belong to them: their statue.38
In advance of their staged walkout, the Latino Holy Cross members had informed reporters from The Herald-Sun, a daily newspaper based in Durham that covered news from across the Research Triangle region, that they would be staging a protest at the close of the services on October 13. Reporters witnessed the remarks in the
36 Bavinger. 37 Kammie Michael, “Catholic Church to Drop Bilingual Mass,” The Herald-Sun, October 14, 1996. 38 Michael.
185 church and rushed outside to capture the moment when the walkout began. The next day, the story and accompanying photograph made front page news. The photograph shows a woman, carrying the statue of the Virgen de Guadalupe, as another young woman sits on a step, looking up at her. Other Latino men, women, and children are pictured, filing out of Holy Cross as if in a procession behind the statute. The Holy Cross walkout remained in headlines for weeks to come.
With so many requests for public comment, the Holy Cross parish council released a public statement, in which they reaffirmed their church’s mission to emphasize “an African American cultural approach to Catholicism.” While “Holy Cross has become an increasingly diverse parish, we see the need to retain that which is fundamental to our foundation, the African American culturally based mass. We plan to more aggressively address cultural diversity in the programming of Parish activities.”39
The intention, according to Father Barry and the parish council, was to bring people together into the larger community, but the broader oral and written discourse still emphasized animosity and discord.
Reverend Carl Kenney, president of Durham Congregations in Action, an interdenominational and interracial organization to which Holy Cross belonged, lamented the situation that occurred at Holy Cross, given African Americans’ trajectory in the United States and US South. “It is tragic when African Americans who have been
39 Michael.
186 traditionally oppressed, do the same kind of thing that was done to them,” Kenney said.
“[The Hispanics] need to be received, loved and embraced and not denied their place in the body of believers.” Kenney also wanted to avoid “the impression that African
Americans are insensitive to Hispanics.”40 By claiming that African Americans were oppressing Latinos, just as blacks once had been oppressed, and wanting to avoid appearing “insensitive” to Latinos, Kenney seemed to suggest in his coded language that the Holy Cross incident was one of racial oppression, and that African Americans needed to recognize it as such.
While newspaper accounts emphasized racial tensions between the two groups as a critical component leading up to the walkout, articles also delved into the nuances on both sides of the debate. Father David Barry, the pastor at Holy Cross, insisted to clamoring journalists that the move was intended to foster a sense of unity among the growing multiethnic community at the church. Though there was certainly a significant group of Latino parishioners who walked out of Holy Cross, Father Barry assured, others remained in the congregation and applauded Father’s announcement. “I honestly do believe this is going to be a work of unity,” Father Barry told The Herald-Sun.41
The Holy Cross walkout became the critical news story outside of North Carolina in some national publications. Two days after the walkout, USA Today included the
40 Flo Johnston, “Mother Church to Offer Durham Bilingual Mass: Immaculate Conception Adds Ministry for Area’s Spanish-Speaking People,” The Herald-Sun, October 16, 1996. 41 Michael, “Catholic Church to Drop Bilingual Mass.”
187 walkout as the only North Carolina news update for the week. The blurb detailed how
“Holy Cross Catholic Church, known for its efforts to attract black members, has angered some of its Hispanic members by dropping a bilingual Sunday afternoon service,” which Latinos saw as an “effort to push them out.”42 With little context, the story read as another tale of victimization and discrimination from the US South.
Other North Carolina newspapers outside of the Triangle region also picked up the story and focused on the Latinos who walked out of the church. The Star-News, a daily newspaper from Wilmington, is the state’s oldest newspaper in continuous publication and covers Pender, New Hanover, and Brunswick counties, the state’s most southeastern regions. Describing conversations with former members of the Holy Cross community like Ana Polanco, the article detailed how Holy Cross had been the only
Catholic parish in Durham to offer a bilingual mass, which had led Polanco to reach out to her Spanish-speaking community. “That is why so many people come here,” Polanco told the Star-News. “We have invited so many people here.”43 Several counties and nearly three hours away, Wilmington and its surrounding communities read in the Star-
News’ the story of the abrupt end to a bilingual mass that presumably would leave many
Latinos in Durham without a place to worship. Its publication so far away might also have served to draw attention to the influx of Latino immigrants and alarm citizens of the potential conflicts that could ensue in communities across the state.
42 “Across the USA: News From Every State,” USA Today, October 15, 1996. 43 “Hispanics Leave as Church Drops Spanish Mass,” StarNews, October 15, 1996.
188 Within days, The News & Observer, the regional daily newspaper serving the greater Triangle area based in Raleigh, North Carolina, also reported on the walkout at
Holy Cross, situating race at the crux of the incident. “Black, Hispanic cultures clash at
Durham church,” read the headline of the story, printed just two days after the walkout.
“They made this decision so suddenly,” Gloria Quintanilla, one of the parishioners who took part in the walkout, told an N&O journalist. “And they made it without asking any of us. We were so disappointed.”44 Unlike previous stories on the walkout, this N&O article was the first to describe the event at Holy Cross as a conflict, its headline underscoring the oppositional and perhaps even combative nature of the event.
A few days later, the N&O published an article contextualizing the walkout with
Durham’s history of segregation, downplaying the idea of conflict and examining instead the long, nuanced trajectory of black Catholics and their struggles in the US
South. After all, African American Catholics in Durham and in the surrounding counties had been neglected during the days of segregation, encouraging Jesuit priests to establish Holy Cross in 1939. As one of only a few remaining African American Catholic churches in the region, Holy Cross stood as a triumph against the challenge of integration and was a refuge and sanctuary for black Catholics in the Triangle. Decades
44 Ben Stocking, “Black, Hispanic Cultures Clash at Durham Church,” The News & Observer, October 15, 1996.
189 later, it was the Latinos—the fastest growing minority group—who lacked a spiritual home in the Tar Heel state, and at least since 1987, had found one within Holy Cross.45
Latinos who spoke to the Spanish-language press of the Durham area, La Voz de
Carolina, did so with more candor than they had with the English-language presses of the region. A biweekly paper, La Voz published its special report on the Holy Cross walkout in its second October issue. An unnamed Latina leader from the area and participant in the walkout told the press that “the resolution of the [parish] council of this church is inoperative and racist.” They were never consulted, she continued, and their opinions or feelings were never considered. Having walked out of the church, the
Latinos wrote and signed a petition that they presented to the then Vicar General of the
Catholic Diocese in Raleigh, Rev. Jerald Lewis, who promised along with Teresa Soto, director of Hispanic Ministry, to find a peaceful solution to this problem.46 The Diocese vowed that the Latino communities’ worship and language needs would be met.
Within days, religious and Durham city leadership were convening meetings to discuss the walkout on October 13, hoping to quell lingering tensions and bring about amicable and peaceful solutions. On Thursday, October 17, just days after the walkout,
Rev. Lewis convened a meeting with the Holy Cross parish council—composed of ten
African American members and two white members—and church officials from Raleigh
45 Stocking, “Changing Times Divide Durham Congregation: Church Struggles to Serve Latinos, Remain True to Blacks.” 46 Luis Arturo Alvarenga, “Cancelan Única Misa En Español En Durham,” The News & Observer, October 16, 1996.
190 to see if they could reach a cordial resolution. Though only three Hispanic parishioners had been asked to attend the meeting, at least eight attended. Unfortunately, the first meeting brought about no such agreement, so the participants parted, hoping some time and distance might prove generative.47 They scheduled a meeting for October 23, praying that they would soon find a peaceful agreement.
That same day, news broke that members of the Durham Human Relations
Commission (HRC) also were monitoring the walkout and would be discussing the event at their November 12 meeting. Established on October 7, 1968, the HRC emerged as a response to the racial strife in Durham between its black and white residents. The
HRC’s primary responsibilities would be to work on eradicate discrimination and to develop an atmosphere in the city conducive to good human relations. Joe Bowser, chairman of the HRC’s board in 1996, confirmed to The Herald-Sun that he was following the issue. “It appears from what I have read that [the Hispanics] did not get a fair shake,” Bowser said. “The Human Relations Commission is a body that wants to see and will make every effort to see that everybody is treated humanely in this community.”
Bowser hoped the Diocesan officials and parish council would find a solution soon, without the commission’s intervention. For their part, the commission already had begun working with their counterparts in Raleigh and Orange County to learn how to best meet the needs of Latinos when such incidents occurred. Stephen Russell, the
47 Flo Johnston, “Holy Cross, Hispanics Hope to Settle Differences Tonight,” The Herald-Sun, October 23, 1996.
191 commission’s board representative for Triangle-wide conversations, also shared with
The Herald-Sun the commission’s desire to be proactive and perceive problems within the community before they escalated. “Our focus at this point…is not to be political about the immigration issue, not whether we want more in the community,” Russell said, “but to acknowledge the fact that the communities are changing.”48
Editorials published in local Durham newspapers provided some insight as to how some community members understood the Holy Cross walkout. Presumably a
Durham resident, Stacey Humphreys wrote to The Herald-Sun on October 20, stating that the walkout from Holy Cross had unnerved her. In her article, Humphreys wondered
“[w]hat good is a church that touts diversity but that is essentially two churches in one building?” Humphreys contended that “[i]t is wrong to take something from one group to appease another, or to dilute the very thing that makes Holy Cross unique so much that it doesn’t matter anymore.”49 For Humphreys, the walkout and its consequences would have been avoided had more emphasis been placed on educating Latinos on traditional black Catholic traditions and vice versa. According to Humphreys, promoting understanding was key to demystifying the supposed differences between the groups and encouraging unity.
48 Flo Johnston, “Relations Panel Monitoring Mass Walkout at Holy Cross,” The Herald-Sun, October 17, 1996. 49 Stacey Humphreys, “One Church, or Two?,” The Herald-Sun, October 20, 1996.
192 For other Durham community members, the Holy Cross walkout was not much of a surprise. Writing to The Herald Sun on November 9, Mindy Fraiser expressed sadness and solidarity with the Latino community. In the letter “History repeats itself,”
Fraiser wrote,
I am saddened but not surprised to read of the continuing controversy at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Durham. The Hispanic community should take some solace from the knowledge that a similar incident occurred in Holy Cross in August 1992. However, the group that was ousted in that episode was a Catholic gay and lesbian group called Dignity.
Fraiser went on to explain the history of the Dignity group, which had used the
Holy Cross facilities on Sunday evenings for private mass celebrations for several years when suddenly the parish council informed them that they could no longer continue their worship services. “The language the council used to explain its reversal was the same as that being used in the current incident involving the Hispanic community,”
Fraiser wrote. Though not doubtful that the Latino community would find a welcoming church community, Fraiser remained “saddened that Holy Cross has evidently not learned much in the four years between the Dignity incident and this Hispanic controversy.”50 Ironically, Fraiser ignored that the Dignity group’s departure from Holy
Cross also had marked the formal introduction of the bilingual mass at the parish.
Both the LGBTQ community and the Latino community felt that they had been ousted from their spiritual home, and these claims — while incomplete — did affect
50 Fraiser, “History Repeats Itself.”
193 how religious and city officials approached the incident. Even as far away as California,
Father Bruce remembered reading Fraiser’s opinion piece in the newspaper.
Summarizing Fraiser’s thoughts, Father Bruce reiterated her message: “Well we know what’s going on at Holy Cross because the same thing was happening to us. We got kicked out of there too, and now it’s the Hispanics.”
4.3 Honoring the Black Catholic Experience
Father Bruce Bavinger, the pastor who had initiated the bilingual mass at Holy
Cross, knew there were deep emotional reasons why the black Catholic community of
Durham was reticent. “There was also this tension too that Holy Cross was not really an
African American parish, but that it was just the parish where you just send all of these people that don’t fit into some other place, “ Father Bruce noted, “so that made it a doubly hard thing for African Americans to bear.”51 At about the same time that bilingual services began at Holy Cross, a new movement was emerging within the
African American Catholic Church on a national scale that celebrated a new consciousness about being black, Catholic, and proud.52 According to Father Bruce, who has predominantly ministered in African American parishes throughout his career, black Catholics during that time went from having no black bishops to having more than ten across the country. African American Catholics would organize annual
51 Bavinger, interview. 52 Moore, “Dealing with Desegregation: Black and White Responses to the Desegregation of the Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, 1953.”
194 meetings where participants would explore music, liturgies, and mechanisms they could employ to highlight African American history and bring it into the Catholic Church.53 “It was kind of hard to juggle that with losing what they thought was their identity as a black Catholic Church and it becoming just a place that people use for their masses, and the black Catholics were also a group that just happens to use Holy Cross, and that didn’t feel very good,” Father Bruce said. “So those were all kinds of feelings that were hard to fight.”54
The fear that Holy Cross would lose its special character as an African American parish was justified in North Carolina. The Diocese of Raleigh, which then included fifty-four counties in the eastern half of the state, established several black churches during segregation. Though Catholic’s embrace of integration theoretically brought communities together, in practice it allowed white congregations to absorb black churches in the state.55 By 1996, Holy Cross in Durham was one of only four predominantly black churches in a diocese of 87 churches. For long-time parishioners of
Holy Cross, that theirs was a predominantly black parish was both historically and spiritually significant. “The other churches were just a little too cold for us,” said Ronald
Patterson, a black parishioner of Holy Cross for nearly thirty years, to a N&O journalist.
53 For a history of how this occurred in Durham, see Douglas Shadle, “Black Catholicism and Music in Durham, North Carolina: Praxis in a New Key” (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006). 54 Bavinger, interview. 55 Powers, Tar Heel Catholics, 377; Bavinger, interview.
195 “You just didn’t feel like anybody wanted you there.”56 Holy Cross provided a space of welcoming and warmth for Catholics like Patterson, who felt and often were excluded from other white churches.
Holy Cross was an African American Catholic church not only in words, but also in actions. Holy Cross was dedicated to evangelization, and members of the congregation especially reached out to African Americans in other denominations to share with them the Catholic faith, which had long eluded blacks in the United States.57
Gospel music during the service and traditional African cloths that draped the altar were just a few of the symbolic touches that made all the difference to parishioners like
Patterson and his family. Patterson worried that if Holy Cross lost its heritage as an
African American church, like so many others, black Catholics would “disappear from the face of the Earth.”58 Members of Holy Cross’s parish council understood this desire to uplift the church’s African American lineage; for a community that had endured such systemic oppression in the US South, the black Catholic community of Durham claimed
Holy Cross as an African American Catholic church as testament to their freedom and independence.
56 Stocking, “Changing Times Divide Durham Congregation: Church Struggles to Serve Latinos, Remain True to Blacks.” 57 Bavinger, interview; “About Our Parish,” Holy Cross Catholic Church, http://holycrossdurham.org/15. 58 Stocking, “Changing Times Divide Durham Congregation: Church Struggles to Serve Latinos, Remain True to Blacks.”
196 Despite attempts by church leadership to imbue the church with an African
American identity, Holy Cross’s Latino membership during the 1990s outwardly challenged this character. By 1996, it was impossible to ignore the Latino community who attended mass at Holy Cross, since they accounted for thirty percent of the parishioners. Because most of the Latinos did not speak English, they could neither attend a monolingual English mass nor share in conversation with their African
American counterparts. Unlike the English mass at Holy Cross, the bilingual mass featured traditional songs from Mexican Catholic tradition and guitar music, while a statue of the Virgen de Guadalupe—purchased by the Latinos and imported from
Mexico—was displayed. When the parish council voted to eliminate the bilingual mass, they were fighting against the perception that, within the same religious home, existed two parallel communities; this was completely contrary to what the leadership desired in their church. “They fought very hard to get this church,” Fred Boadu, a member of
Holy Cross’s parish council, told an N&O reporter. “And if they want to maintain it, they ought to be able to.”59
Latinos who walked out of Holy Cross insisted they never intended to gain control over the church’s identity; quite the contrary, they told reporters that they had embraced African American culture. Ann Marie Villasana, a parishioner who walked out of Holy Cross and was married to a Mexican man, showed N&O journalists a First
59 Stocking.
197 Communion class celebrating, children smiling widely. Though the students were mostly Latino, Villasana told reporters, they performed a traditional African dance during their first communion mass, and everyone loved it. “We want to share cultures,”
Villasana, who also taught religious education at Holy Cross, told the reporter. “I guess they feel like we’re taking over, but that was never our intention.”60 While African
Americans were perhaps only affirming their own sense of place and belonging through their support for English-only masses, Latino migrants who marched out of Holy Cross on that October day asserted they were “kicked out.”61 Other parishioners like Jose Luis
Zapata, who had attended Holy Cross since the introduction of the bilingual mass, recognized language access as the key factor. “We’ll go wherever they have a mass in
Spanish,” Zapata told the N&O reporter. “There are many of us who don’t understand
English.”62
The complications that arose in Durham were symptomatic of much larger tensions facing the Catholic Church in North Carolina. Unlike any other time in the
Church’s history, the Catholic Church was facing unprecedented growth in the Tar Heel state, due not only to the significant influx of Latin American immigrants, but also to relocating Northerners who settled to work in the Research Triangle Park (RTP).63 The
60 Stocking. 61 Gloria Quintanilla and Ernesto Quintanilla, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, April 26, 2015. 62 Stocking, “Changing Times Divide Durham Congregation: Church Struggles to Serve Latinos, Remain True to Blacks.” 63 Powers, Tar Heel Catholics, xii; Leoneda Inge, “Standing Room Only At NC Catholic Churches,” WUNC (Durham, NC: WUNC, March 29, 2013); Rebecca Tippett, “Religion in North Carolina:
198 church, in its attempts to meet the needs of transplanted Catholics from within and outside of the United States, had to confront modes of worship that were quite distinct from their US and Southern traditions. This, of course, was true only of the pastors in
North Carolina who welcomed these newly arrived Spanish-speaking migrants; other
Catholic priests were uninterested in engaging these migrants and opted instead for the transplanted Northerners.
“Catholic welcome of Latinos uneven,” an N&O article published on October 25, detailed the discrepancies with which North Carolina clergy handled the influx of
Spanish-speaking parishioners. While about a dozen churches from the eastern region of the state embraced the Latino newcomers, welcoming them into every facet of church life, others ignored this new community and focused efforts on attracting the northern arrivals. “Hispanic ministry is kicked like a football from parish to parish, based on the local pastor’s interest or lack of interest,” said James Garneau, a former pastor of Our
Lady of Guadalupe in Newton Grove. “We’re more comfortable dealing with white people from the North than brown people from the South.”64
Though the Catholic population in North Carolina did not even reach one percent of the population prior to the 1990s, the influx of Northerners and Latinos ensured that by the end of the decade, more than 300,000 Tar Heel residents were
Southern Baptists Dominate, Catholicism and Non-Denominational Affiliation Rising,” Carolina Demography (blog), June 2, 2014; Lindsay Ruebens, “The Catholic Boom in North Carolina: A Priest’s Perspective,” Endeavors, June 7, 2011. 64 Yonat Shimron, “Catholic Welcome of Latinos Uneven,” The News & Observer, October 25, 1996.
199 Catholics.65 To meet this unprecedented growth of more than 50 percent, the Church was constructing new churches and schools and trying to minister to the needs of its new community base. The new membership of North Carolina Catholics, however, could not have had more disparate experiences. On the one hand, an affluent white population had moved from northern states to settle in North Carolina amid the state’s technology and industrial boom and broadening white collar employment opportunities. On the other hand, working-class, Spanish-speaking migrants flocked to the rural parts of the state to work in agriculture or meat and poultry processing, or they settled in cities and worked in restaurants, hotels, or construction.66
It might have been Latino immigrants’ status as working-class people that also exacerbated tensions between African Americans and Latinos. Though class lines did tend to be fluid in Durham, the city was renowned for its black middle class. Durham had a reputation as being the center for the black bourgeoisie. The success of the North
Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the largest financial black institution in the world, allowed for a number of surrounding African American-owned businesses to flourish. These significant accomplishments were facilitated by ongoing negotiations between the black middle class and white power brokers. As a result, a de facto social order emerged—especially during the Jim Crow era—that maintained the racial
65 Powers, Tar Heel Catholics, xi. 66 Furuseth and Smith, Latinos in the New South, 46–47.
200 hierarchy of the US South: whites financially supported the business endeavors of
African Americans, who in turn guaranteed peace and deference.67
For the most part, Holy Cross parishioners belonged to this educated, middle- class black elite of Durham, who since the Civil Rights Movement had, in their own way, fought for their rights and interests. Though the black bourgeoisie often has been criticized for complacency and accommodationism, historian Christina Greene challenged these ideas in her work on women’s organizing during the Civil Rights
Movement in Durham. For example, Greene argued that black women’s organizing was class based, with middle-class women promoting a more formal style of organizing, among them church groups, literary societies, and social clubs.68 The parish council’s decision to terminate the bilingual mass was part of a longer history in which middle- class blacks fought for recognition and belonging amid what they felt was a challenge to their existence as a black Catholic parish.
While the desire to ensure Holy Cross remained a black Catholic church was crucial for longtime parishioners, on another level it also might have been an attempt to maintain the socioeconomic identity of the church. For the most part, the black Catholic community of Holy Cross tended to be of higher socioeconomic standing than the black population in general. Working-class Latino immigrants, most uneducated and from
67 Christina Greene, Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 8–9. 68 Greene, 7–8.
201 rural Mexico, threatened the church’s—and its parishioners’—fidelity to a particular reputation within Durham as bourgeoisie blacks.
Clashes deriving from cultural and class differences were not isolated to individual parishes like Holy Cross, but rather were part of broader issues threatening the role of the Catholic Church within the Latino community in the United States.
Catholic priests, unlike many Latino immigrants, were predominantly white and educated. While thirty percent of Catholics in the United States were Latino during the
1990s, only five percent of the nation’s 49,000 priests spoke Spanish, and only four hundred priests were born in Latin America. In North Carolina, a Catholic priest never had been required to speak a foreign language. By the 1980s, however, the Diocese of
Raleigh required all newly ordained priests to spend a summer in Latin America and learn enough Spanish to be able to celebrate mass. Though 80,000 Latinos lived within the Raleigh diocese, only a fraction attended one of the thirty-eight Spanish-language services offered on Sundays at Catholic churches. For men who had mostly lived privileged lives, some clergy felt overwhelmed and forced to learn a new language to minister to a group that was so culturally different from them. For some pastors, it became easier to just feign ignorance. “We’ve got some pastors who will tell you there are no Latinos living in their area,” said Joe Vetter, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic
202 Church in Southport. “But you drive around and see them and you know the pastor’s wrong. He just doesn’t hang out where the people are.”69
While the Catholic Church was scrambling to respond to this new population, other churches already had responded. Estimates at this time suggest that at least 60,000
US Latinos left the Catholic Church each year, opting instead to join Protestant or charismatic churches.70 Because other denominations were aggressively reaching out to
Latinos, only about two-thirds of Latino immigrants remained Catholic upon crossing the border.71 A pointed example of the dramatic shift in Protestant church demographics was among the congregation of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in East Durham. A 93- year-old church with a dwindling membership, St. Andrew’s was at risk of closing its doors, but a new community came to reinvigorate its almost abandoned sanctuary.
While those present to worship in late May 1993 joined in the singing of a nineteenth- century British hymn, Latino immigrants were joyfully singing Spanish cantos just weeks later. Each Sunday, an emerging Spanish-language Catholic Episcopal community was making St. Andrew’s their home.
69 Shimron, “Catholic Welcome of Latinos Uneven.” 70 Andrew M. Greeley, “The Demography of American Catholics: 1965-1990,” in The Sociology of Andrew M. Greeley (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1993). 71 Since the 1970s, the percentage of Catholics in Mexico—and across Latin America—also has dropped significantly, while Protestant denominations have been on the rise. See “Religion in Latin America: Widespread Change in a Historically Catholic Region,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project (blog), November 13, 2014; “IX Censo General de Población - Michoacán”; “Censo de Población y Vivienda” (Ciudad de México: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 2010).
203 The leadership of St. Andrew’s also knew they had to nurture and support the needs of these newcomers to maintain their commitment to the church. In addition to new worship services, the minister at St. Andrew’s—with support of surrounding
Catholic churches—launched an ecumenical center aimed at serving the broader and growing Latino community in Durham, where organizers and activists could meet to establish programming and actions in support of these Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Martha Clark-Boothby, St. Andrew’s pastor, recognized the deficiencies in Durham’s outreach. “This area is ill-equipped to deal with the Hispanic community right now,” she said to a News & Observer journalist. “We’re just beginning to wake up to the fact that we need more people who speak Spanish.”72
Just as St. Andrew’s was opening its doors to the Latinos of Durham, other
Christian denominations also saw potential in proselytizing to these Spanish-speaking immigrants. On September 1, 1993, the Jehovah’s Witnesses initiated a new Latino congregation to serve immigrants in the Triangle, while Baptists had planned for Latino congregations to serve folks in North Durham and Carrboro.73 “We have an aggressive campaign of starting new churches,” said Bill Boatwright, a spokesman for the Baptist
State Convention, the largest denomination in North Carolina. “If we go into a place that speaks Spanish, we’ll start a Spanish church.”74 The state convention counted fifty-eight
72 Alison Jones, “St. Andrew’s Episcopal Reaches Out to Newcomers: Old Church Reborn with a Hispanic Fold,” The News & Observer, September 15, 1993. 73 Jones. 74 Shimron, “Catholic Welcome of Latinos Uneven.”
204 Spanish missions within the state, some that were independent Latino Baptist churches, while others were Bible fellowships or prayer groups within existing churches. Unlike
Catholic churches, protestant and independent churches were not bound by structural hierarchies that dictated how they could engage with the Latino community. Protestant laity established health clinics and assisted Latinos in finding employment, all the while sharing their religious faith and traditions. For Latino migrants who had left their home countries feeling discontent with the Catholic Church and its teachings, it was these personal and intimate relationships that led migrants to convert to Protestantism. For many, it had been the Protestants—not Catholics—who had facilitated Latinos’ adaptation to their new North Carolina surroundings during this critical period of population growth.
Though the Catholic Church had previously been much more evangelical in its early outreach efforts to Latino migrants, especially during the 1970s, the walkout from
Holy Cross represented a greater concern that many Catholic pastors in North Carolina shared. Joe Vetter, then pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Southport, maintained that the church was now more concerned with maintenance than evangelism. “We’ve become too institutional,” Vetter said to the N&O. “We’ve turned in on ourselves too much.”75 Though the diocese had gone to great efforts to mend the damage that resulted from the Holy Cross walkout, meeting with the Latino leadership and hearing their
75 Shimron.
205 grievances, the Spanish-speaking community no longer trusted in Holy Cross’s leadership nor felt welcomed by their congregation.
Appearing in the same publication where La Conexión covered the cancellation of the Spanish mass at Holy Cross, the editors of the biweekly paper published an opinion piece by Maurilio E. Vigil, Professor of Political Science at New Mexico Highlands
University in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Vigil penned his letter as a response to Arizona’s attempt in 1996 to pass a statewide English-only law, linked in part to the presence of
Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrants living in the state. English-only laws, Vigil argued, infringed upon people’s freedom of speech, especially those who belonged to language minorities in the United States.76 The Latinos who marched out of Holy Cross that day, like Ana Polanco, discussed their sense that Spanish was no longer welcome at Holy
Cross. Speaking with journalists, other former Latino Holy Cross parishioners felt that the termination of the bilingual mass was part of a greater effort to push the Latino community out of the church. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that the editors coupled the two articles within the same paper, but with growing anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiment brewing across the United States, the editors might have been foreshadowing a critical shift with regard to national sentiments regarding Latino immigration and settlement.
76 Maurilio E. Vigil, “Por Que El ‘Inglés Solamente’ Infringe La Libertad de Expresión,” La Conexión, October 16, 1996.
206 4.4 Community and Institutional Support to the Forefront
The Latino community who walked out of Holy Cross sought refuge and solace at El Centro Hispano, a non-profit organization in Durham that at that time was the only advocacy and organizing agency for these newcomers to the region. Though Latino migration to North Carolina in the 1990s was growing dramatically, services or businesses that catered to Latinos and their language needs still were few and far between. At that time, El Centro was located on Liberty Street, just blocks away from the
Albright neighborhood where Latino immigrants had settled. Housed in an abandoned
Episcopal church, El Centro was a collaborative project between Episcopal and Catholic
Churches to serve the most basic needs of Latino immigrants to the area.77 When the
Latino Catholic community left Holy Cross, it was to El Centro where they could voice their concerns to a group of people that they knew would both understand them and advocate on their behalf. “People came and shared everything that was happening,” then director of El Centro Hispano Ivan Parra remembered about the Holy Cross walkout. “That they had kicked them out, that they had disrespected them.”78 Migrants recounted to Parra and the other staff members anecdotes about sitting in the back pews of the church because they felt unwelcome closer to the altar. However, the Latinos felt that during visits from Bishop Gossman, the black ministers made a spectacle of
77 Pepe Caudillo, “El Centro Hispano de Durham: Entrevista Con Iván Parra,” La Conexión, July 21, 2000. 78 Iván Parra, interview.
207 uplifting Latino membership and the conviviality of communities at the church. From what he understood, Parra believed that the Latinos and African American members of
Holy Cross shared the space a duras penas, or with hard-hearted pains. The El Centro staff, recognizing they had been the first organization to learn about the walkout, knew they would have to be strategic and tactful as they worked with the community toward finding a solution.
The familiarity that Latino migrants had with El Centro Hispano led many to ask why they could not celebrate their religious services there, since El Centro was housed in an Episcopal church that was not in use. For the El Centro staff, they knew their role would be dually complicated. On the one hand, El Centro was a publicly funded community organization, so they had to be careful to support the people while not commenting or offering opinions on the situation at Holy Cross. On the other hand, while El Centro was indeed housed in an abandoned Episcopal church, Latino migrants struggled to see the difference between that building and a traditional Catholic church.
However, there was another Catholic church in Durham with brand new leadership, and the Latino Catholics did not wait long before they were knocking on those doors, seeking a place to call their spiritual home.79
A new group of Catholic ecclesiastics made their way to the Southeast just as people from across the United States and Latin America settled in the Tar Heel state.
79 Iván Parra.
208 Friars from Holy Name Province, the largest of seven provinces in the United States belonging to the Order of Friars Minor, sought to expand their reach from their base in
New York City to the US South.80 In 1996, Bishop Gossman asked if Holy Name Province would take over the leadership and charge of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Durham, whose pastor was leaving. Father David McBriar, who had been pastor at St.
Francis of Assisi in Raleigh for nine years, and Father John Heffernan became the clerical ministers at Immaculate Conception, just as Latinos a few miles away were walking out of Holy Cross.
4.5 The Franciscan Friars in Durham
On the front page of The Herald-Sun on Wednesday, October 16, an article broke the news that Immaculate Conception (IC), the mother church of Catholic congregations in the Durham area, would begin ministering to Latinos by holding a bilingual mass within the parish in upcoming weeks.81 Led by Franciscan friars, IC was just miles away from Holy Cross, and the parish had a community of priests who had the language skills to serve the community. Even before settling in Durham in July of 2006, Father David
McBriar had shared with Father John Heffernan that Durham had a growing Latino community, which to Father John—a young priest who spoke Spanish and had worked previously with a Puerto Rican community in New York City—seemed like hinting for
80 “Holy Name Province,” Holy Name Province, accessed July 19, 2017, https://hnp.org/. 81 Johnston, “Mother Church to Offer Durham Bilingual Mass: Immaculate Conception Adds Ministry for Area’s Spanish-Speaking People.”
209 the implementation of a Hispanic ministry. Though no plans were enacted or developed, the opportunity to minister to the Latin community would present itself soon after their arrival.
Though there was a growing Latino community in Durham by 1996, Father John rarely encountered Latinos in his first months in Durham. “We hadn’t been there all that long,” Father John remembered. “I don’t have any recollection of running in to any
Latinos at all at that point. Until they came, I don’t even remember thinking about it. I guess I just thought, ‘well, some day we’ll start having a mass in Spanish and start asking people if they’re interested’.”82 Having settled in Durham in July 1996, the friars did not even have to go out in search of Latinos; they came to them.
The Latino families who had walked out of Holy Cross initiated conversations with the pastor of Immaculate Conception, Father David, asking him if the parish would be willing to celebrate a bilingual mass for the Latino community. Father David, however, knew that there was far more to establishing a relationship with the Latino community than just the celebration of mass. IC would need bilingual staff to attend to the needs of these new parishioners, and they would need to raise money to make sure people answering phones at the parish could answer and direct phone calls from
Spanish speakers. The friars would not only have to celebrate a bilingual mass; they also would have to attend to the needs of the Spanish-speaking community.83 For their part,
82 Heffernan, interview. 83 Father David McBriar, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, April 16, 2015.
210 both Father David and Father John were mindful of the Latino leadership, worried that if they as friars committed a misstep, the Latinos would notify the local press just as they had done with the walkout at Holy Cross. The friars understood the Latinos’ righteous anger, but they also wanted to make sure they were tactful.84
The friars were both new to Immaculate Conception and to Durham, so they sought the advice of the staff at El Centro Hispano, who they recognized as the mediators for the Latino, Spanish-speaking community. Parra and his staff were happy to support anything that could best solve the problem for the families with whom they worked, but Parra reiterated again the center’s neutral position on the matter.85 With
Bishop Gossman’s permission from the diocese, and gladly accepting El Centro’s assistance, Father David began the process of discerning how Immaculate Conception could welcome a Spanish-language religious community into their English-language church.
Before any measures were made to welcome the Spanish-speaking community into Immaculate Conception (IC), Father David and his fellow friars had to gauge their parishioners’ feelings and questions about what the integration of Latinos into their parish would look like. Father David, with the assistance of Parra, organized two meetings at IC. Current parishioners were asked to attend, as well as the Latino
Catholics who had walked out of Holy Cross, to engage in an open discussion about
84 Heffernan, interview; McBriar, interview. 85 Iván Parra, interview.
211 moving forward with a combined church. Father David and Parra wanted to demonstrate to the IC parishioners that the Durham Latino community was a good one,
“that they were people with a strong faith, that they were hardworking people, and nice, and were not going to harm the church.”86 For the parishioners of IC, it was important to understand why the Latino Catholics were searching for a spiritual home within their church. Father David and Parra avoided scandalous accounts or gossip by highlighting only that the Spanish community needed a new place to worship, and the pastor and fellow friars hoped the IC community would accept to open their doors to their Spanish- speaking neighbors.87
For residents of Durham like the IC parishioners who had rarely — if ever — encountered the Latino immigrant community, an open forum with a question and answer session allowed people to raise doubts that caused some tension. Of 120 attendees, only about one-third were Latinos. “It was mostly the American community trying to decide to integrate the church,” Parra remembered.88 When Parra says
“American community,” he—like other immigrant and ethnic people—in fact is referencing the white community, of IC who held many misconceptions of the Latino immigrant community.89 Questions like Do they pay taxes? and Are they illegal? came from
86 Iván Parra. 87 Iván Parra. 88 Iván Parra. 89 For more on the ways in which American is correlated with white, see Thierry Devos and Mahzarin R Banaji, “American = White?,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88, no. 3 (2005): 447–66.
212 those gathered and seemingly had little to do with their integration into the IC community. Others wondered if the Latinos would bring their children to mass only to cry and make disruptions. The nature of the questions made the Latino community feel uneasy and unwelcome, but Father David and Parra did what they could to assuage their concerns.90 As the first meeting came to an end, a second session was scheduled to continue the discussion; both the pastor and the Latino community would be better prepared.
At the second reunion at Immaculate Conception, it was Father David’s messaging that earned the attention of those present. Though he always had a calm and somber demeanor, Father David often surprised those in the audience by his contemplativeness and perspective. “Sometimes it even looked like he had fallen asleep,” Parra said, “and one thought, Ooh, the father has fallen asleep, but then suddenly boom,” Parra said, clapping his hands, “he would open his eyes and share some powerful messages!”91 Father David reminded his congregation, as well as the one formerly from Holy Cross, that the Catholic Church, across the world, was only one and it recognized no differences among the people. While neither Father David nor his fellow friars needed the congregation’s approval for the church’s integration, they did hope to have the support of the people for the long road ahead. With the congregation’s
90 Iván Parra, interview. 91 Iván Parra.
213 ultimate approval and acceptance, plans moved forward to welcome the Spanish- speaking Catholic immigrants in Durham to Immaculate Conception Catholic Church.92
Though news reports stated that bilingual masses would begin at Immaculate
Conception in October or November, the friars remembered that the actual start date of the bilingual masses at Immaculate Conception probably was sometime in December
1996. By the end of the year, the news coverage of Immaculate Conception church focused on the “big plans for Mexico’s biggest feast day.” With no mention of the walkout, nor that this would be the first celebration of its kind at Immaculate
Conception, the article highlighted how Latinos across the Triangle and the state were planning parades, festivals, and religious services to celebrate La Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. In Durham, the procession and mass celebration were planned on the feast day, December 12.93
For Father John, the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe was an exciting experience that introduced him to this Mexican cultural practice and to the Durham
Latino community. While Fathers David and John had understood about one hundred or so parishioners had attended Holy Cross, that December a few hundred participated in the Our Lady celebrations at Immaculate Conception. Father John laughed as he remembered that first procession. “It was a wonderful celebration, and I got through it,”
92 Iván Parra. 93 Ben Stocking, “Big Plans for Mexico’s Biggest Feast Day,” The News & Observer, December 7, 1996.
214 Father John said. “People started jumping up and yelling,” he paused, laughing, “Viva
Guadalupe! They almost knocked me over!” he laughed. “I just really had no experience with these things. It was funny but everybody was very grateful and we started to make some friends.” It was after the December 12 celebration, the friars believed, that bilingual masses began at Immaculate Conception, every Sunday at five in the evening.
Looking out at the worshippers from the altar, Father John initially projected about fifty attendees. It seemed to him that that number of worshippers doubled each passing week.94
The addition of the Latino community to Immaculate Conception was not so unlike their experience at Holy Cross, all things considered. The friars did not remember complaints from either community, but they also made sure not to impose on or ask sacrifices of the English-speaking parishioners. For the most part, the friars believed their IC congregation was happy to do the outreach. Even so, there was probably not much direct engagement between the white and Latino communities. “I don’t think we achieved an awful lot, or knew how to make that happen,” Father John said. “We still don’t. I don’t know if it happens any place.”
Across North Carolina, parishes struggled with how to meet the needs of their parishioners. Though Holy Cross had a dramatic walkout, other parishes also faced tensions and power dynamics that challenged the organizing structure of the parish. In
94 Heffernan, interview; McBriar, interview.
215 predominantly white parishes, two seemingly parallel congregations existed, divided primarily along the lines of language and ethnicity. While the white community attended English-language services, Latinos attended masses celebrated in Spanish. In these parishes, parishioners shared the same church home but rarely were in each other’s presence. Other churches, like Immaculate Conception, worked hard to create a single community, celebrating separate English- and Spanish-masses, but bilingual services for feast and holy days and holidays that brought the congregation together. Of course, creating an intercultural church required more than just the celebration of mass.
These churches worked to bring Latinos into the parish’s decision-making bodies and encouraged their white counterparts to respect their viewpoints. Even among these churches, only a small number have a parish council that represents both communities;
Immaculate Conception’s parish council does.95
4.6 Latinos and African Americans in the Bull City
It was nearly impossible to understand the Holy Cross walkout without inextricably linking it to other emerging incidents and concerns arising throughout
Durham. By December 1996, the Latino community was being increasingly targeted, becoming victims of several burglaries, sexual assaults, and armed robberies.96 Banks at
95 Susan Ridgely Bales, “Sweet Tea and Rosary Beads: An Analysis of Southern Catholicism at the Millenium,” in Religion in the Contemporary South: Changes, Continuities, and Contexts, ed. Corrie E. Norman and Donald S. Armentrout (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 199–200. 96 Amanda Garrett and Ben Stocking, “Thieves Prey on Hispanics in Durham,” The News & Observer, January 1, 1997; Amanda Garrett, “Police Plan Special Effort to Deter Attacks on Hispanics,” The News & Observer, January 24, 1997; Amanda Garrett, “Durham Hispanics Band
216 the time did not allow customers to open savings or checking accounts without a valid
Social Security Number, which forced many undocumented migrants to stash money away under mattresses, in concealed places across their apartments, or to carry large amounts of money on their person.97 Local newspapers focused on the attacks, with headlines like “Thieves prey on Hispanics in Durham” emphasizing the criminals’ targeted efforts.98 When the offenders’ identities were revealed, and the majority happened to be young African American men, the sense that African Americans were intentionally targeting and victimizing the Latino community was only exacerbated. As fears grew, Latinos sought spiritual guidance and refuge at their church, Immaculate
Conception.
To many Latino immigrants, the crimes against them seemed to firmly demarcate their social relationships even outside of the church. “It was seen, as one might say, like the whites were the ones who helped and liked them,” Parra said, “and the black people were the ones who attacked and robbed them, or the ones who
Together against Crime,” The News & Observer, January 30, 1997; Amanda Garrett, “Police Anticipate Arrests in Crimes Targeting Hispanics,” The News & Observer, January 28, 1997; Amanda Garrett, “More Crimes against Hispanics Are Being Reported,” The News & Observer, September 6, 1997; Amanda Garrett, “Shooting Raises Concern over Violence Directed at Latinos,” The News & Observer, June 20, 1997; Amanda Garrett, “Police at Odds with Hispanic Group after Meeting to Establish Better Ties,” The News & Observer, February 11, 1997; Ben Stocking, “Latinos Seek to Curb Violence against Them,” The News & Observer, July 3, 1997. 97 Banks would eventually allow Latinos to open bank accounts without a social security number. See Ben Stocking, “Banks Taking Latino Immigrants’ Needs into Account,” The News & Observer, April 7, 1997. 98 Garrett and Stocking, “Thieves Prey on Hispanics in Durham.”
217 competed for jobs.”99 After all, Latino immigrants had settled in predominantly low- income African American neighborhoods in Durham, which was where the crimes had occurred. Living in the Albright neighborhood only deepened Latinos’ suspicions, mistrust, and prejudices.
The perception that whites viewed Latino immigrants more favorably than
African Americans was not uncommon. In her work in eastern North Carolina, sociologist Helen Marrow also found that Latino respondents articulated more positive relationships and receptions from whites than from African Americans. While the structural factors such as class, geographies of interaction, and population size probably played a role, citizenship and immigrants perceived “foreignness” also was a factor through which Latino respondents articulated their sense of external discrimination.
Marrow shows, however, that perhaps the most important factors in describing this perception are immigrants’ own antiblack stereotypes and whites’ preferences for immigrants over African Americans.100 Both of these emphasize a racial distancing from blacks and blackness that has been pervasive throughout Latin America and the United
States.
With these negative encounters, organizations like El Centro Hispano increased efforts to reach out to Latinos and African Americans and build solidarity and unity
99 Iván Parra, interview. 100 Marrow, “‘The White Americans Have Always Been Very Friendly’: Discrimination, Racial Expectations, and Moral Hierarchies in the Black-White Binary.”
218 among communities. El Centro Hispano collaborated with an African American family who donated a month’s salary to help the families who had been victims of burglaries and assaults. To help quell fears and concerns, El Centro invited African American allies to meet the Latino community in their community center. Even so, to Parra, El Centro’s director, it seemed their concerted efforts were no match for the seemingly daily newspaper coverage of burglaries or the continuing rumors about the city that “the gang that was stealing were blacks.”101
Amid continued burglaries and assaults, talks of forming a credit union emerged. El Centro Hispano gathered dozens of immigrants and city officials in huge community forums where those who had been victims of burglaries were able to voice their concerns, as well as their hesitance to seeking police protection. When a gentleman present suggested that what they needed to do as a community was form a credit union,
Parra was doubtful. “Yeah right,” Parra said, remembering what he said to himself. “We can’t even have a Hispanic Center, and now we’re going to form a bank.” Despite
Parra’s incredulity, in June 2000, after years of planning, fundraising, and outreach, the
Latino Credit Union opened its doors on 201 W. Main St., in what was an abandoned
Wachovia Bank location.
The wave of Latino immigrants to the Bull City during the 1990s had not only altered the religious landscape in Durham, but it had also transformed the way social
101 Iván Parra, interview.
219 and financial interactions were executed day-to-day. The walkout from Holy Cross was just the first of crucial incidents that forced Durham and its people to confront the growing and inevitable permanence of a new racial and cultural group. “It was like one thing was connected to the other,” Parra said. “It was almost magical.”102 These events forced social organizations, churches, and Durham city officials to get involved and deal with a Latino community that was no longer transient, but permanent and settled, and all the intricacies involved in mitigating antagonistic emotions and behaviors. Even so, it seemed to Parra that the reception from white Americans was—at least on the surface— positive. “We were like the best in the state, the Latinos,” Ivan Parra said. “Uff, we were like the new thing here.” The magic ended abruptly as the millennium set in. The tragic
September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York City led to anti- immigrant sentiment across the United States, and for Latinos in North Carolina, it meant that “our honeymoon had ended.”103
4.7 Confronting Anti-Blackness as a Decolonization Strategy
Sitting in his office eighteen years later, on April 16, 2014, Father David McBriar remembered some of the events from the Holy Cross walkout differently than they had occurred. For one, he believed Father Bruce still had been leading the church when the walkout commenced, not remembering it was indeed another pastor who had arrived in his place. Father David suggested that the walkout occurred because of the change in
102 Iván Parra. 103 Iván Parra.
220 mass time, from four to one in the afternoon, which would have been inconvenient for the working-class Latinos. While a change in mass times did accompany the end of the bilingual mass, comments by parishioners in dozens of newspaper reports reveal that all agreed the walkout was driven by the desire for language justice; the end of the bilingual mass, for many, symbolized they were no longer welcome at Holy Cross. Even so, Father David warned not to make “too much of this Holy Cross/Immaculate
Conception thing.” He warned to avoid the “sensationalism” of the walkout and its legacy. When asked if there was a racial aspect to it, he did not disagree. “Sure, but when I say racial, here again, you have to be very careful,” Father David said. “You’re on quicksand to say the African American community ejected the Latino community. They were unhappy though with it, and they didn’t have the resources to provide for it.”104
On the other hand, Immaculate Conception did have the resources to provide for the community, and so they did.
The Jesuit priest who initiated the Spanish masses at Holy Cross also believed that the walkout was indirectly a racial issue. “To say you want Holy Cross to identify as a black Catholic church is kind of a racial statement, you know,” Father Bruce Bavinger said. Years later, the parish modified its mission statement to declare itself historically
African American, which allowed for the presence of a more diverse community.105 Even so, “they still wanted to have the character of it being a black church, rather than just
104 McBriar and Ramírez, interview. 105 “About Our Parish.”
221 being a building that they happened to be able to use.” Proposing a counterfactual,
Father Bruce considered that if he had not been Spanish speaking, it probably never would have been an issue. “And, as I say, was I Spanish speaking?” Father Bruce said, laughing. “Just barely.”106
The reticence of the Catholic priests to define the Holy Cross walkout as a racial issue underscores the role that white actors had in the incident. To label it as such would be to admit that there existed structural racism within the Catholic church and its organization that must be addressed and confronted. Instead, the priests decided the problem was about resources and services, so the “bandaid” was to move the Spanish- speaking community to a church where their needs could be met, to be sure, but where the nuances and roots of the Holy Cross walkout also could be ignored. While Holy
Cross could continue to be a historically black Catholic church, its pastors would continue to be white. Latinos would make Immaculate Conception their spiritual home, but for many parishioners of Immaculate Conception, the debate of whether theirs was two churches or one would endure.
While the Holy Cross walkout has been narrated and remembered through terms that emphasize racial conflict and discord between an African American Catholic and
Latino Catholic community, the narratives ignore the white actors that allowed for these dynamics to occur. The walkout was constructed as an incident between two already
106 Bavinger, interview.
222 marginalized groups of Catholics of color divided by language, ethnicity, and immigrant status. On the one hand, black Catholics in the US South who continue to fight for recognition and representation within a broader religious and racial community. On the other hand, an immigrant group whose legal status and racialization also renders their being in the United States as vulnerable and unstable. Yet implicated in both of these stories are continuous and interlocking historical and social structures of whiteness that have governed how the interactions these Catholics of color on a variety of scales, from global forces (Catholicism, migration, etc.) to quotidian spiritual practices (language of mass, church leadership, etc.). The heritage of racism in the US South and Mexico and lived racism in the present must inform how we examine questions of “racial division” as a phenomenon that is created, rather than something that is.
The parishioners’ desire to maintain the black identity of Holy Cross should not be understood as reactionary or oppressive. As anthropologist Gary W. McDonogh has argued, “the points of difference between those who are black and Catholic and those who are either black and Protestant or white and Catholic have combined to create strong communities of survival.”107 Black Catholics have endured enslavement, segregation, and historical erasure. They have been culturally ostracized and systematically oppressed within the religious institution where they have placed their
107 McDonogh, “Constructing Christian Hatred: Anti-Catholicism, Diversity, and Identity in Southern Religious Life,” 75; Gary W. McDonogh, Black and Catholic in Savannah, Georgia (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993).
223 faith. Theirs is a resiliency to survive and thrive amid changes that seem to threaten their identity. At the crux of the Holy Cross incident is not interracial distrust or animus, but rather the irony of the southern Catholic church, which has attempted to move toward a more unifying consciousness without confronting its anti-black history and legacy that continues to mediate relationships between black Catholics and Latino immigrant
Catholics in the South.
224 5. Black and Brown Labor Struggles in the Tar Heel State at the Turn of the Century: “Yes We Can! Sí Se Puede”
On a cloudy and rainy Thursday morning in December 2008, workers gathered in front of a storefront, anxious and nervous about the day’s events. As cars zoomed past on the adjacent highway, men and women wearing bright yellow t-shirts emblazoned with “Union Time! Yes We Can! Sí Se Puede,” shuffled and waded about in the shallow puddles while they chatted about the day’s vote. The group consisted of pro-union African American, Latino, and a few white workers from Smithfield.
Employees at Smithfield Packing Company in Tar Heel, NC, cast their final ballots on
December 11, 2008, to decide whether or not they wanted to be unionized through the
United Food and Commercial Workers labor union, or UFCW. Before they set off as a group to the final count, the workers solemnly joined hands in prayer as the rain sprinkled overhead. Their chant, “What time is it? Union Time!” set off the day’s events.
After a fifteen-year struggle for labor, civil, and human rights, the workers decided it was, indeed, union time.
The coalition of laborers that emerged from that successful Smithfield campaign emerged at a critical time in North Carolina and US history and challenged long-held beliefs of interethnic conflict. The significant migration and settlement of Latinos in
North Carolina during the 1990s led many scholars to examine the relationship between
Latinos and African Americans as inherently conflictive. Incidents like the Holy Cross
225 Walkout, as well as the surge in crimes against Latino immigrants in cities like Durham, seemed to suggest that conflict and competition would continue to grow in North
Carolina. Latino laborers also were becoming more visible in rural parts of the state, working in meatpacking plants like Smithfield Packing.
Unlike Durham and other urban parts of the state, rural North Carolina provided a different social environment through which African Americans and Latinos interacted.
As sociologist Helen Marrow has shown, those living in the rural South have been the most isolated from the historic and contemporary migration of people, particularly
Latinos. African Americans have tended to live in much higher numbers in these rural regions of the state. These demographics served to maintain the American racial
“binary,” where “superordinate whites” were divided from “subordinate nonwhites” for decades.1 Latinos settled amid these structural racial and class conditions, ensuring that rural southern African Americans and Latinos found themselves within a competitive environment.2
The restructuring of the agricultural and industrial sectors in rural areas of the state during the 1990s strengthened the demand for low-wage labor, opening the way for Latino migrants. North Carolina’s poultry and swine industries flourished significantly, providing jobs in traditional livestock and field crops, while greenhouses,
1 Marrow, “Intergroup Relations: Reconceptualizing Discrimination and Hierarchy,” 53. 2 Marrow, 58.
226 nurseries, and Christmas tree industries also welcomed migrant labor.”3 As African
American workers transitioned from farm work into other sectors of labor, primarily poultry and other food processing industries, they confronted Latino laborers as direct competitors, especially in the wake of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the creation of H-2A and H-2B visas.4 Some African American workers sensed that
Latinos were coming in to replace their decades-long low-wage labor. These circumstances made it imperative for leaders to create a dialogue of unity and collaboration among the Latino and African American communities.
The logics of racism that have situated African Americans and Latinos as competitors also have led them to be positioned in conflict with each other. Sociologist
Regine O. Jackson has examined the relationship between African Americans and
Latinos in the South through the idea of “horizontal racism.” Used primarily as a rhetorical device, horizontal racism works to mask ongoing anti-black discrimination,
“especially as it relates to the racism that underscores economic competition between
African Americans and immigrants,” downplay white racism and its continued function in the contemporary moment, and normalize a new function of racism that defines
3 Torres, Popke, and Hapke, “The South’s Silent Bargain: Rural Restructuring, Latino Labor and the Ambiguities of Migrant Experience,” 47. 4 Griffith, “Labor Recruitment and Immigration in the Eastern North Carolina Food Industry,” 106; David Griffith, Jones’s Minimal: Low-Wage Labor in the United States (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Fink, The Maya of Morganton; Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food, Agrarian Studies Series; Variation: Yale Agrarian Studies. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
227 relationships between Latino migrants and African Americans.5 In other words, horizontal racism exists among people of color, all the while obscuring power relations and ignoring the racist and discriminatory practices of white employers.6
Using the Smithfield Packing strike in Tar Heel, NC, I show how leaders successfully challenged the existence of horizontal racism and organized black, Latino, and white workers. Union leaders worked with Smithfield employees to confront the ways white employers purposely structured their workspace to divide workers based on race and built trust and solidarity among workers through intimate gatherings, sustained conversations, and testimonies of shared historic experiences. Unlike those involved in the Holy Cross walkout in Durham, the labor leaders and Smithfield employees in Tar Heel committed to long-term and critical social justice and cultural awareness work to undo the work of racism in their workplace. What the long, arduous, and successful campaign in Smithfield demonstrated was that the relationship between
Latinos and African Americans was not inherently conflictive. African American and
Latino workers were purposefully organized in such a way within the plant so as to divide and create animosity between them. As each group learned about the other— their history, their cultural differences, their attachment to religion and family—the workers came to understand themselves as united in the same struggle.
5 Regine O. Jackson, “The Shifting Nature of Racism,” in Being Brown in Dixie: Race, Ethnicity, and Latino Immigration in the New South, ed. Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Lippard (Boulder, Colo.: FirstForumPress, 2011), 28. 6 Jackson, 38–51.
228 The coalition that emerged at Smithfield did so within the context of a workplace, which also was integral to their solidarity. In the previous chapter, even before the Latino community walked out of Holy Cross, the church services and ministries were divided based on language use, and they continued to be so even when the Latinos moved to Immaculate Conception. That the church was a social and religious space, one that did not require much time from the parishioners (or even any time), might have made the solidarity work there less demanding. Smithfield Packing was different. As sociologist Vanesa Ribas rightly argues, “work is where working-class people spend the majority of their waking hours, and it is the context through which different groups are most likely to encounter one another in structured and structuring ways.”7 It became imperative both for human rights and labor organizers that working- class African Americans unite with Latino labor migrants at Smithfield Packing. With the support of labor organizers and interfaith religious support, Latino and African
American workers recognized the constructed nature of their “racial conflict” and were able to declare that it was time: union time.
The establishment of the labor union at Smithfield Packing also emerged at a crucial moment of national anti-immigrant sentiment and immigrants’ rights organizing.
On September 5-6, 2001, President George W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente
Fox in Washington, DC, to discuss the future of the two countries’ relationship,
7 Ribas, On the Line, 9.
229 particularly with regard to free trade, migration, commerce, and drug trafficking. It also served as an opportunity to mend relations between the two countries, especially after legislation like Proposition 187 and similar efforts in other parts of the United States targeted Mexican undocumented immigrants. Just days later, however, the September
11 attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York City put a pause on relationship building with Mexico, and certainly halted any possibility of broad immigration reform.
The “War on Terror” provided a new framework through which to target and criminalize people living in the United States illegally.8 A growing immigrant rights’ movement, led by undocumented youth and adults, and supported by religious and social justice allies, confronted this swelling nativism. The organizing efforts at
Smithfield Packing were another facet of the broader immigrant rights’ movement and only were complemented by national and local actions; their success with
Justice@Smithfield marked a crucial victory for immigrant and labor rights.
5.1 A Slaughterhouse Hell: Tar Heel, NC
Within this era of economic, structural, and demographic change, Smithfield
Packing Company moved its operations to Tar Heel, North Carolina, a town about two hours south of Durham that in 1990 had a population of one hundred and fifteen.
During that decade, Tar Heel garnered national attention with headlines and newspaper coverage that delved deeply into the nature of the supposed African American-Latino
8 Chomsky, Undocumented, 192–94.
230 strife. New York Times reporters embarked on a yearlong examination of race relations at the onset of the new millennium in a series called “How Race is Lived in America.”
Times reporters focused on encounters between people, contending that relationships between groups were defined less by political action than by daily lived experiences.
While race ignited political debates, Times’ editorial staff and reporters recognized that race was rarely discussed in public. The sixth article in the series, “At a Slaughterhouse,
Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race,” captured the social construction of racial division and the struggle to dismantle it.9
The UFCW union organizers recognized early on that the purposeful and strategic division of labor within the walls of Smithfield was the greatest hurdle to overcome, and indeed, this became the focal point of Charlie LeDuff’s in-depth examination of the Smithfield Packing plant. LeDuff, a Times journalist who applied for and received a job at the Smithfield plant, recognized quite jarringly the division of labor. For LeDuff, the use of a knife became symbolic of one’s position on the plant’s hierarchy. Not everyone has to work with a knife,” LeDuff wrote. “Whites, blacks,
American Indians and Mexicans, they all have their separate stations.”10 At the top of the social strata at Smithfield Packing were the white supervisors and mechanics. Native
Americans might be supervisors, though the majority had clean, menial jobs. African
9 Charlie LeDuff, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race,” The New York Times, June 16, 2000. 10 LeDuff.
231 Americans and Mexicans, then, were left with the worst and dirtiest jobs at the factory.
Though Smithfield’s profits had nearly doubled since the turn of the century, wages remained flat, with most workers earning eight dollars an hour. As workers had left
Smithfield in search of better wages and working conditions, newly arrived Mexican migrants were hired in their place. “More than management,” LeDuff wrote, “the workers see one another as the problem, and they see the competition in skin tones.”11
The purposeful division of labor at Smithfield led the workers to self-segregate in other spaces, ensuring that two distinct groups never had to interact or engage with each other. In locker rooms and cafeteria halls, groups mostly kept to themselves. In his article, LeDuff described how the towns themselves clustered with a particular demographic, as white workers mainly travelled from Lumberton and Elizabethtown, blacks from Fairmont and Fayetteville, and Mexicans from Red Springs and St. Pauls in
Robeson County. Never having to interact with each other, the African American community became wary and suspicious of the new neighbors that they could neither understand nor get to know.12
Outside of Smithfield Packing, North Carolina’s changing demographics also were changing the way that services were being distributed. Robeson County was one of the poorest counties in North Carolina. According to the 1990 census, of the 100,000
Lumbee Indians, whites, and African Americans living in Robeson County, more than
11 LeDuff. 12 LeDuff.
232 one quarter of the population was living in poverty.13 Latinos began arriving during that decade, just as some American Indians and African Americans were finding better employment opportunities. In 1999, the US Census Bureau estimated that 1,000 Latinos were living in Robeson County. Locals, however, disagreed. “A thousand? Hell, there’s more than that in Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon,” said Bill Smith, director of county health services. Speaking with LeDuff in 2000, Smith and other officials estimated there were at least 10,000 Latinos living in Robeson County.14 The growing number of Latinos placed a strain on the public resources of an already struggling county and exacerbated tensions among locals.
The Smithfield plant forced some workers to confront each other in ways that only exacerbated the suspicion between them. As LeDuff captured in his analysis,
African American workers’ sentiments toward their Spanish-speaking counterparts were not only shaped by their presence and competition within the factory. Describing a scene in the hiring hall of the plant, where two women chatted in Spanish about their pregnancies, LeDuff described a young black man who had had enough. “His small town the next county over was crowded with Mexicans. They stood in groups on the street corners, and the young black man never knew what they were saying. They took the jobs and did them for less. Some had houses in Mexico, while he lived in a trailer
13 “Estimate of People of All Ages in Poverty for Robeson County, NC” (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990). 14 LeDuff, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race.”
233 with his mother.” Standing there, among these women and their language, to get a job nobody wanted, the young black man was furious. “This is America and I want to start hearing some English, now!” he screamed.15 A legacy of systemic oppression and racism had left this young black man feeling angry and bitter. In his perspective, a new racial group was settling and prospering in a place in which he had never had the opportunity.
Communication issues and lack of cultural translation created discomfort and suspicion among the groups inside and outside of the workplace. Because recent Latino migrants did not speak English, there was no way to create dialogue with the English- speaking African American community. “African Americans will assume when people are talking a different language that they are saying bad things about you,” organizer
Muhammad said.16 Things as small as one’s name also became a site of detachment.
Muhammad described how Jesús, a common name among Latinos, caused a negative reaction among some members of the black community. Though these misunderstandings could be deconstructed, neither community had the language skills to address the other. Muhammad recounted that unions in North Carolina initiated a campaign in 1999 of Spanish classes for workers. “We should start those classes again,”
Muhammad said.17
15 LeDuff. 16 Elizabeth Martinez, “Black & Brown Workers Alliance Born In North Carolina: Five Organizers Speak,” Z Magazine, October 2000. 17 Martinez.
234 Mexican workers were not without critique of their African American coworkers, which were largely based on common racist stereotypes of black workers. “Blacks don’t want to work,” Mercedes Fernández told LeDuff. “They’re lazy.”18 Conversations in the
Smithfield plant recounted stories of three Mexican men who were robbed and killed in fall 1999, allegedly by African American men. These narratives led Fernández to conclude that “blacks…live in the past. They are angry about slavery, so instead of working, they steal from us.”19 Competition, rivalry, and jealousy come through in
Fernández’s words, but readers also learn that Fernández is aware of the history of slavery in the US South and seemingly the role of African Americans during that time.
That Fernández believes African Americans remain “angry” is testament, though, to her misunderstanding the legacies of slavery or the historic, systemic, and continued subjugation of African Americans. And while Fernández has probably learned about slavery while living in North Carolina, her racial learning began in Mexico. The associations Fernández makes between blackness, fear, and laziness, are certainly learned, but these beliefs are part of an education with a long history of colonialism and racism within Mexico.
18 Martinez. 19 LeDuff, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race.”
235 5.2 Solidarity Struggles: Organizing Working-Class Labor in the Tar Heel State
Amid this history of negative confrontations and animosity, African American and Latino workers toiled side by side in fields and hog processing plants across North
Carolina. That poultry plants and agribusiness reigned supreme in North Carolina was no surprise to labor organizers working in the South. Right-to-work laws privileged owners’ rights and limited the rights of workers. In the construction sector and restaurants, workers often were not even paid the minimum wage. Organizers like
Saladin Muhammad, Chair of Black Workers for Justice and Lead Organizer of UE Local
150, understood the labor and wage structure in the Tar Heel state to be used strategically to maintain a submissive workforce. “We have to remember the South still constitutes an internal colony of this empire in many ways,” Muhammad said. “Both
Black and Latino workers are supposed to be docile.”20 Only through unionization could
African American and Latino workers ensure they had more protections and rights.
The prevalence of non-living wages, workplace abuse, and injuries did not discriminate among workers, which encouraged migrants to at the very least consider unionization. Just an hour northeast of Tar Heel was Mount Olive, NC, where the Farm
Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), AFL-CIO, had been supporting migrant farmworkers in their attempt to unionize in a right-to-work state. FLOC was founded in
1967 in the Midwest by Baldemar Velasquez, and by the late 1990s, was ready to take on
20 Martinez, 45.
236 employers in the US Southeast. FLOC members decided at their 1997 convention to
“organize the South,” with their target on Mt. Olive Pickle Company. In correspondence to supporters of FLOC, Velasquez conceded that “few organizing goals could be tougher,” especially given “that state, and that company’s opposition to unions, is legendary.” By September 8, 1998, more than 1700 workers had signed union cards
“despite all the dangers associated with signing a union card in North Carolina.”21 With the support of religious, labor, and community organizations across the state, FLOC launched a national boycott of the pickle company.
FLOC had previous experience confronting pickle companies and their unjust labor practices in other regions of the country. By 1986, FLOC had managed to organize workers toiling in the Ohio and Michigan farms of Heinz and Vlasic, Mt. Olive’s chief competitors. By the time FLOC launched its national boycott against Mt. Olive, they already represented thousands of workers on tomato and cucumber farms in Ohio and
Michigan, had succeeded in doubling wages for workers and had won workers recognition as employees rather than independent contractors, forcing growers to pay the employer portion of social security taxes, workers compensation, and unemployment insurance. FLOC also had negotiated better living conditions, higher
EPA standards, and had collaborated on establishing basic health care for farm workers
21 Baldemar Velasquez, “Invitation to a National Mt. Olive Co. Boycott Consultation in Durham, NC,” September 8, 1998, Joan Preiss Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
237 whose average life expectancy was twenty-five years less than the average American.
And when farm workers thrived, so too did growers. According to Heinz, which had a union contract with FLOC, cucumber productivity had increased forty percent among its Ohio and Michigan growers.22 Despite these positive outcomes, Mt. Olive refused to bargain with FLOC, arguing that the farm workers are employed by the growers, not by its company.23
Labor conditions on cucumber farms were not unlike those in plants like
Smithfield Packing. Mt. Olive Pickle Company of North Carolina was the largest pickle company in the South and the second largest in the nation.24 Even so, migrant farm workers employed by growers under contract with Mt. Olive routinely were paid less than the minimum wage, worked 12-hour shifts, and often were exposed to dangerous chemicals. In a 1999 report, the National Farm Worker Ministry described these workers as “virtually trapped at the camps” and kept “in a state of indentured servitude.” 25
The contracts that Mt. Olive held with their cucumber growers dictated almost every minute detail of the production process. Human rights activist and writer John J.
Dunphy wrote about the Mt. Olive boycott while spending time supporting a FLOC
22 “Highlights of FLOC Achievements: 1988-1991” 1991, Joan Preiss Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 23 Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, “Mt. Olive Officials Decline Invitation for Labor Discussions,” Press Release (Faison, NC, May 28, 1997). 24 John J. Dunphy, “Justice for Migrant Farm Workers,” American Writer, Winter 2002, Joan Preiss Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. 25 National Farm Worker Ministry (U. S.), Harvesting for Mt. Olive: A National Farm Worker Ministry Delegation Report (Chicago, Il: The Ministry, 1999).
238 organizer in the field. In his article, Dunphy described how the company contracts mandated growers to follow strict rules throughout cucumber production, from the seeds sown to the types of pesticides used. The contracts also specified how much Mt.
Olive Company would pay for the crops; growers would then pay farm workers accordingly. As Dunphy wrote, “the company clearly calls all the shots.”26
For FLOC organizers, a campaign targeting Mt. Olive Pickle Company would be the only way to ensure that other competitors—like Heinz or Vlasic—did not move their manufacturing headquarters to the right-to-work states of the US South. “Failure to unionize this giant,” Dunphy wrote of Mt. Olive, “would invite these companies to shift their operations south.”27 The rollout of the “Organize the South” campaign targeting farm workers in rural North Carolina was the only way FLOC could protect the rights already won for workers in the Midwest.
FLOC’s organizers realized early on in their North Carolina campaign against
Mt. Olive that the racial history of the US South left an intense legacy in the fields of the
Tar Heel state. Dunphy described an incident when FLOC founder and president
Baldemar Velasquez approached a grower, asking him how he could treat the migrant workers he employed so disgracefully. According to Dunphy, the grower seemingly replied to Velasquez without hesitation and shrugged. “It’s easy,” the grower said.
26 Dunphy, “Justice for Migrant Farm Workers.” 27 Dunphy; Associated Press, “Union Agreement Reached with NC Growers Association,” Evening Leader, September 17, 2004.
239 “They’re the new niggers.”28 Comments like these encouraged FLOC to create a social justice narrative linked to the African American community and the struggle for civil rights in the US South.
One critical component of FLOC’s campaign against Mt. Olive was to incite public interest precisely by linking the contemporary struggles of Latinos to the historic experience of African Americans in the US South. On February 2, 2000, members from
Black Workers for Justice, NC Public Service Workers’ Union UE Local 150, FLOC, and the Asociación de Trabajadores Latinos de North Carolina (ASTLANC)—the Latino Workers
Association, met in Raleigh, the state’s capital, to discuss the creation of a coalition of
African American and Latino communities. The representatives noted in their meeting that “discrimination in employment in North Carolina, throughout the South and in the larger society, affects African Americans and Latinos in similar ways.” Across the state, low wages, poor working conditions, and discrimination in housing, education, and social services, were common difficulties among both communities. Because of these shared experiences, leaders of these organizations argued that “African Americans and
Latinos should be allies in the fight against discrimination, for economic and social justice on the job, and for democracy and political power in their communities.”29
Joining together, the organizers created the “African American / Latino Alliance” to
28 Dunphy, “Justice for Migrant Farm Workers.” 29 “African American/Latino Alliance Formed,” February 2000, Joan Preiss Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
240 work together against the labor and social injustices that both communities faced. The leaders recognized, however, that there was significant internal work to be done within the communities before they could unite as a powerful force.
Among the organizers, a concern prevailed about tensions and misconceptions between the communities that could thwart any chances for a coalition and therefore weaken each community’s ability to be successful in their struggles. The competition for low-wage jobs in North Carolina seemed to purposely pit Latino and African American workers against each other, consequently building tensions between them. With a growing Latino community competing for jobs against the descendants of slaves, who had been the South’s cheap labor force for more than a century, it became imperative for community leaders and organizers to combat divisions and build alliances both within and outside of the workplace.
In July and August of 2000, Elizabeth Martínez—co-founder of the Institute for
Multi-Racial Justice, a resource center in San Francisco that helped build alliances among peoples of color—interviewed five organizers working in North Carolina who shared their experiences of building this difficult, historic, and necessary coalition. Within the workplace, the labor organizers saw the greatest animosities emerge from the poultry industry, where jobs were most likely to be filled by members from the Latino immigrant community and African Americans. “There is not a lot of tension in
241 agriculture…because blacks don’t ‘own’ those jobs,” Muhammad said.30 Indeed, whereas Mt. Olive farmworkers faced labor injustices, struggles among workers were rare because most were Latinos. At Smithfield Packing, a poultry industry, tensions between African American and Latinos abounded.
The main issue inside of the poultry plants was the employers’ divide-and- conquer strategy, according to Alyce Gowdy Wright, director of the North Carolina
Occupation Safety and Health Project (NCOSH) in Durham, a nonprofit workers’ advocacy group. Latinos who spoke English proficiently were taken off the line and used as spies. Bosses deliberately pitted workers against each other to capitalize on their vulnerabilities. African American workers often were threatened with termination and replacement by Latinos if they did not meet expectations. NCOSH and ASTLANC worked to combat this problem directly, engaging with workers and challenging these workplace abuses.31
Latino migrant workers in the Tar Heel state often faced distinctive challenges that prevented them from joining a social justice organization. Organizers knew many
Latino workers in North Carolina were scared of complaining or condemning abuses because they were undocumented. Ajamu Gordon Dillahunt, Research and Education
Director of the American Postal Workers Union and also a critical founder of the African
30 Martinez, “Black & Brown Workers Alliance Born In North Carolina: Five Organizers Speak,” 45. 31 Martinez, 45.
242 American / Latino Alliance, discerned the need for African Americans to understand what Latinos’ legal status in the United States meant and how it affected the larger struggle for labor rights. According to Dillahunt, it was the responsibility of black workers to understand how being undocumented left migrant workers vulnerable to abuses both within and outside of the workplace. Supervisors and managers could exploit undocumented workers on the job, while local and federal law enforcement threatened immigrants’ very being in the United States. “If that makes them afraid to speak up,” Dillahunt said, “then the undocumented status is a problem for Black workers too because it makes them unable to build an effective workplace organization.”32 Outside of the job, Latino workers could be racially profiled for “driving while brown,” Dillahunt said, which could put them in danger of deportation. Legal status was an additional issue that all workers needed to confront. The only way to build a successful coalition among workers was to raise awareness among workers that their struggles were linked, and their fight was one.
Muhammad’s organization, Black Workers for Justice, argued that organizing the workers through labor unions was the only way to ensure progress in a right-to- work state with a historic and deeply rooted racist system. “Unions cannot by themselves lead workers to freedom,” Muhammad said, “but they can begin to challenge the system and expose the factors that cause us problems.”33 In 1999, hundreds
32 Martinez, 46. 33 Martinez, 47.
243 of Guatemalan workers at a Tyson poultry plant executed a labor strike, but because they lacked support from their African American counterparts, and statewide support in general, they did not win any major concessions from the corporation. Muhammad and the other Alliance leaders knew that by mid-century, the Latino population in North
Carolina, and in fact across the country, would be large enough to ensure that whites no longer would have an absolute majority. If the coalition could unite African Americans,
Asians, and Latinos in North Carolina, they could become a powerful majority in the Tar
Heel state. “But numbers without a program won’t do it,” Muhammad said. “We must be organized.”34
Initial efforts to bring African American and Latino workers together demonstrated that the road to establish unity would be long. Working in communities,
Alyce Gowdy Wright shared how “we’re still at the point where blacks sit on one side of the room and Latinos on the other.”35 Gowdy Wright, a self-described biracial and “out- lesbian” woman, understood this was a new experience for many workers and patiently worked through the discomfort. Education became a critical way of breaking through the isolation. Sharing a first-hand account, Gowdy Wright told the story of a Latino worker who came into her office. She noticed that his truck, parked outside, was adorned with a Confederate flag. When she questioned his motivation, he shared with her that the flag made him feel accepted, perhaps because the flag’s proximity to
34 Martinez, 47. 35 Martinez, 47.
244 whiteness made the Latino man feel included in the dominant group. Instead of condemning the Latino worker, Gowdy Wright and her Latino colleague Armando took the opportunity to teach the worker about US history. “We explained what the flag meant,” Gowdy Wright said, “and he understood that for many people it was unacceptable.” Gowdy Wright did emphasize, however, that it was important that
Armando also was present, so it was “not just a black woman” sharing how the
Confederate flag was offensive; that Armando was relatable and considered a member of the same group as the Latino worker allowed the lesson to be understood.36
Organizers like Carbajal and Muhammad also found it was not uncommon for
Latino workers they confronted to identify with the white society as a survival tactic, because of their vulnerable and liminal legal status. While Carbajal and Muhammad could engage the workers to teach them of the shared struggles between communities, they could not mitigate the effect of cross border communications. Even before migrants departed their homelands, Carbajal and Muhammad noted, they were advised by those already living in North Carolina to “watch out for the blacks, they will rob you.”37
Widespread reports of burglaries and assaults not only polarized the immigrant and
African American communities in North Carolina. In Mexico, a country where whiteness had been historically privileged, these reports had created within sending
36 Martinez, 47. 37 Martinez, 46.
245 communities an imaginary of blackness that raised alarm, suspicion, and overall understanding of African Americans as aggressors and a community to avoid.
Even though an interracial coalition would be difficult, the Alliance leaders were encouraged by other efforts in North Carolina. For example, Black Workers for Justice
(BWJ) had supported FLOC’s major campaign targeting Mt. Olive’s systemic abuse of its workers, acknowledging the shared history of African Americans in this struggle. A farmer who had a contract with Mt. Olive to grow pickles unknowingly reiterated to a
FLOC organizer the importance of an African American-Latino alliance in the US South.
“You don’t know where you’re at buddy,” the farmer said. “You’re in the south. The north only won that war on paper. We’ve never given up our slaves.”38 In response,
FLOC launched a national boycott in the Spring 1999 of Mt. Olive pickles, with the enthusiastic support of black community organizations like the BWJ. But for leaders like
Muhammad, the impetus to support the Latino workers’ movement was not only because their experience was linked to slavery. “Migration has been an issue before and after slavery for African Americans, who have moved from the south to the north,”
Muhammad said. “The right to migrate freely is real, and there are important lessons in that.”39 Organizers like Muhammad purposely linked the African American and Latino experiences through a vocabulary of slavery, oppression, and migration. The historic,
38 Martinez, 46. 39 Martinez, 46.
246 transnational processes that both had propelled and limited the movement of black and brown peoples created a point of solidarity in the US South.
FLOC organizers were tactful in creating a base and building solidarity with other organizers and labor struggles in the Tar Heel state. As North Carolina experienced rapid population growth and industry development, labor unions and their representatives recognized the opportunity to potentially organize successfully in a right-to-work state. In 1998, members of six labor unions, and employees discriminated against by their employers because they exercised their right to unionize their workplaces, met in Goldsboro—a city just twenty-two minutes from Mt. Olive—to discuss statewide unionization efforts. Employees gathered to share stories of harassment, threats, and intimidation by their employers. “We are joining with FLOC, and other union members across the country, to call attention to the many ways in which our rights as citizens are being violated by employers on a daily basis,” James
Andrews, president of the NC State AFL-CIO, wrote in a press release. “[M]uch as the right to vote was once denied to African Americans through threats and intimidation, the right to organize in the workplace is denied to employees across the state and the country every day.”40
40 NC State AFL-CIO, “North Carolina Workers to Discuss Employer Abuses of the Right to Organize Unions,” Press Release (Raleigh, NC, June 22, 1998), Joan Preiss Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
247 Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the labor union organizing the Smithfield poultry workers in Tar Heel, NC, participated in the gathering and in subsequent actions organized by FLOC as part of a greater movement to unionize the South. In 2002, FLOC organized an action in Goldsboro at the doors of a local grocery store, Food Lion, to ask the manager to join in their national boycott of Mt. Olive pickles. Among the FLOC members, students, and community members picketing the store also were members of the UFCW.41 Two years later, twenty-five community, religious, social justice, and labor organizations joined FLOC in a protest and march through the streets of Goldsboro in support of amnesty, justice, and equality in the workplace and community. Members of UE 150, one of the founding organizations of the African American / Latino Alliance, and representatives from the UFCW also participated, standing alongside their immigrant counterparts and demanding justice for all workers.42
FLOC’s successful boycott of Mt. Olive set a precedent for labor organizing and coalition building in North Carolina. On September 16, 2004, FLOC reached a settlement with Mt. Olive Pickle Company, after a boycott that lasted half a decade. With the win also came a laundry list of “firsts” for FLOC and the predominantly Mexican men who would be their new union members. More than 8,000 “guest” migrant farm workers in
41 “La Unión FLOC y Sus Simpatizantes Protestan Por La Venta de Pepinos de Mt. Olive Pickles,” La Conexión, December 16, 2002. 42 Pepe Caudillo, “Protesta y Marcha Por Los Derechos de Los Inmigrantes,” La Conexión, February 17, 2004.
248 North Carolina became the first such workers in the history of the United States to win union representation and a contract. It would be the largest union contract in North
Carolina’s history, a landmark victory in the right-to-work state. The agreement also marked the first time that an organizing campaign by farm workers had been recognized by a major food distributor in North Carolina.43 In a press release published that day, farm worker José Hernández Coronado understood the enduring legacy of the moment. “Right now, we do it for ourselves and for our families in Mexico, but we also sign this contract for the future generations who will come in the coming years,”
Hernández Coronado said. “Until victory, we are brothers in the fight.”44
Perhaps unlike any other labor campaign in North Carolina, FLOC’s victory at
Mt. Olive benefited from the sense of brotherhood that workers like Hernández
Coronado felt toward the other eight thousand farm workers in the struggle. And, certainly, it was perhaps not as difficult to attain as it would be in other movements. The farm workers FLOC would come to represent lived and worked under similar conditions, shared cultural traditions and language, and even hailed from the same
Mexican states. More than 8,000 migrants like Hernández-Coronado left their homes and
43 Associated Press, “Pickle Pickers Win Pact: Growers, Union Settle the Boycott,” Wilson Daily Times, September 16, 2004; Associated Press, “Union Set to End Pickle Boycott,” The Herald-Sun, September 16, 2004; Mike Charbonneau, “‘Pickle Pact’ Helps to Unionize Farm Workers: Farm Labor Committee, NC Growers Association Reach Deal to Help Migrant Workers,” September 17, 2004; Kristin Collins, “Mt. Olive Pickle Boycott Will End with Labor Pact,” News & Observer, September 16, 2004. 44 Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO, “Precedent-Setting Agreement Reached; Mt. Olive Pickle Boycott Over,” Press Release (Dudley, NC, September 16, 2004).
249 families in Mexico every year to labor in North Carolina’s crops for nine months.
Because of this separation, and coupled with their laboring and living conditions, those same migrants experienced similar types of physical, emotional and psychological trauma that accompanied their particular brand of work. In the fields, they could look to their colleagues and see familiar faces and hear familiar sounds. About an hour southwest of Mt. Olive, in Tar Heel, workers had little in common with each other besides their place of work.
Hernández-Coronado and his coworkers also were H-2A workers, which differentiated them from the majority of Mexican migrants who had settled in North
Carolina in the last decade. Hernández-Coronado and thousands of other new FLOC members benefitted from having legal presence to both live and work in the country, even if temporary. Their counterparts at the Smithfield Packing Company were mostly undocumented, which rendered them vulnerable in a variety of ways. At Smithfield
Packing Company, the United Food and Commercial Workers union would face an uphill battle trying to create coalitions not only with community and faith organizations, but among the workers themselves.
5.3 Justice@Smithfield: Attracting Latino Laborers
At Smithfield Packing in Tar Heel, as many as 30,000 hogs per day, oftentimes more, were processed in the plant during the 1990s. One morning, a woman was standing beneath the steel bars when they gave way. The woman was knocked senseless
250 as hog after hog fell around her. Co-workers witnessed the accident and rushed to help her. The supervisor, however, signaled for the workers to continue their assigned tasks.
As LeDuff recounted, “nothing stops the disassembly lines.”45
After witnessing the accident and their supervisor’s brutality, many African
American workers believed that unionization was the only way they could ensure their safety at Smithfield Packing, but they recognized that organizing the workers would be difficult. On the one hand, African American laborers knew that meatpacking plants had moved operations during the late 1970s from northern cities—where unionized workers had negotiated $18 an hour—to the South precisely because of the proliferation of right- to-work states. If they unionized, these African American workers believed, surely they could make more than the $9 an hour they were currently earning. 46 On the other hand, undocumented Mexican workers worried that union membership would reveal their status and work against them, especially since US unions had a history of being anti- immigrant.47 Still other workers actually were turned off by the fact that the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)—the union that had tried organizing Smithfield workers since 1994—had refused to take a stand on undocumented workers, especially
45 LeDuff, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race.” 46 LeDuff. 47 Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 96; Vargas, Labor Rights Are Civil Rights, 62–63; Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors, 197–99.
251 since many believed undocumented workers drove wages down.48 With such varied interests, Smithfield workers did not know how to even begin to approach the conversation of unionization among their coworkers.
These same workers also were convinced that they would surely be fired if caught forming a union. Worker intimidation by higher-level Smithfield personnel was common. In an unfair-labor-practice suit brought by the union in 1998, Sherri Buffkin, a white woman and the former director of purchasing, said in an interview that Smithfield
Packing management had kept a list of union sympathizers during the second union election in 1997. African American workers who had supported calls for a union were fired and replaced with Latinos, Buffkin assured. “I know because I fired at least 15 of them myself,” she said.49
The release of the Human Rights Watch’s report Blood, Sweat, and Fear in 2004 further detailed Smithfield’s purposeful attempts to undermine the unity between black and brown workers. Though the UFCW had brought Spanish-speaking organizers and attorneys to support the campaign, Smithfield had hired anti-union consultants to advise Latino workers, threatening them with deportation and claiming that the union was dominated by African American workers who were trying to attract Latino workers only to drive them out of the plant. The consultants told the opposite to African
48 LeDuff, “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die; Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on Race.” 49 LeDuff.
252 American workers.50 Under these tensions, Latino workers wanted nothing to do with the movement. The visibility of Latinos in North Carolina’s urban and rural centers and schools drew ire and introduced anti-immigrant legislation, policies, and English-only laws.51
Following the translation of the Human Rights Watch’s report into Sangre, Sudor, y Miedo, the Spanish-language press started documenting the problems at Smithfield
Packing and informing their readership about the purposeful deceit used to divide workers. The front page of La Conexión’s July 19, 2005, issue was the first time any
Spanish-language North Carolina newspaper featured any story on the labor struggle at
Smithfield Packing. The article recalled the meeting of labor activists, legislators, professors, Latino leaders, members of the community, and Smithfield plant workers themselves at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, a progressive Baptist church in Raleigh,
NC. Lance Compa, a lawyer and senior lecturer at Cornell University’s School of
Industrial and Labor Relations, as well as the primary author of Blood, Sweat, and Fear, shared with audience members the severe abuse faced by workers at the Tar Heel plant.
50 Human Rights Watch, “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in US Meat and Poultry Plants” (Washington, DC, 2004). 51 Sharon C. Singleton, “Discussion on Removal of All Foreign Languages, Ads, Displays, Signs or Notices on Beaufort County Property and Documents,” Regular Monthly Meeting (Beaufort County, NC, February 8, 2007); Jerry Allegood, “Not in English? Not in Our County, Beaufort Says,” The News & Observer, February 18, 2007; Associated Press, “N. Carolina County Votes for English-Only Signs,” Deseret News, February 17, 2007; Julie Meira Weise, “Skyscrapers and Chicken Plants: Mexicans, Latinos, and Exurban Immigration Politics in Greater Charlotte, 1990- 2012,” in Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the US South since 1910 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 179–216.
253 Compa addressed that though the report features a few different case studies, Smithfield was one of the worst. And the most jarring and revelatory testimony was given by
Manuel Plancarte, a Smithfield employee. Local police and plant police physically assaulted Plancarte and his son at the plant, going as far as to slash Plancarte’s son’s throat. “We were mistreated,” Plancarte told the dozens of folks at Pullen Memorial.
“Many abuses aren’t reported because the people are scared but we went to report it with the police because I am a citizen.”52 Plancarte’s story was just one of hundreds of stories of mistreatment and abuse at the Smithfield Plant. The presentation at Pullen
Memorial was to encourage the Board on Workers’ Rights to get involved in the case, but its publication in La Conexión ensured that the broader Latino community would learn about these tactics to divide and disenfranchise workers through threats and deceit.
Having failed twice to unionize workers, first in 1994 and then again in 1997, the
UFCW spent the next ten years employing new techniques to draw Spanish-speaking
Latino immigrants to their meetings. At union meetings, translators stood beside workers repeating in English what the workers tearfully described in Spanish as abuses they faced working at the plant. At larger gatherings, simultaneous translation was made available to workers, who wearing headphones could listen to and understand everything in their own language. Though language had been the cause of great
52 Cesar Castro, “Trabajadores de Smithfield Piden Justicia y Sindicato,” La Conexión, July 19, 2005.
254 consternation, as it made workers wary and distrustful of each other, being able to hear and relate to the plight of their Latino and African American counterparts demonstrated to the workers that their experiences were much more alike than they were different.
With the support of UFCW organizers, workers scheduled organizing sessions in towns and cities outside of the plant and during non-work hours. Spending time outside of the plant in their colleagues’ homes fostered in the workers a sense of community and intimacy that previously had been absent.53
By the mid-2000s, UFCW organizers had managed to garner worker support among both Latino and African American workers. The UFCW organizers demonstrated patience and commitment to cross-cultural communication and exchange, which became critical to the development of an interracial coalition. For their part, African American workers—about 20 percent of the workforce in 2006—recognized that only in solidarity with Latino workers could they fight for unionization.54 The Latino media spotlight also was on Smithfield Packing, with thousands of Spanish-speaking, immigrant readers in the Triangle empathizing with their struggle. Though Latinos mostly had avoided unionization discussions because of their vulnerability and for fear of losing their jobs, or worse, deportation, the UFCW and other workers had managed to show them that a united front could achieve real change. Outside the walls of Smithfield Packing, in North
53 Matthew Barr, Union Time: Fighting for Workers’ Rights, Documentary film, 2016. 54 Steven Greenhouse, “After 15 Years, North Carolina Plant Unionizes,” The New York Times, December 12, 2008.
255 Carolina and in fact across the country, Latino immigrants were taking up a similar struggle for their human rights.
5.4 Raising Consciousness Amid Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in North Carolina and Beyond
The political and sociodemographic changes in the state that allowed for black and Latino workers to create an interracial coalition also was faced with heightened nativism and anti-immigrant rhetoric that challenged their unity. Four years after the
September 11 attacks in New York City, national security and defense against terrorism became common tropes employed to defend the execution of immigration raids in densely populated Latino communities. As John D. Marquez has shown, Latinos increasingly have been targeted in the US South by legislation that allows for racial profiling, blurring the lines between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement personnel. Even though African Americans and their allies had fought hard against segregation and policing during the Civil Rights Movement, these policies were making a comeback, but this time, they were targeting folks who looked
“undocumented.”55
By early 2005, federal immigration officials executed immigration raids across the country. In March 2005, authorities detained 27 immigrants who worked in a maintenance plant for commercial airlines in Greensboro. Two months later,
55 Márquez, “Juan Crow: Progressive Mutations of the Black-White Binary,” 53; Chomsky, Undocumented, 98–112.
256 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested nine workers who worked in
Winston-Salem at an airplane maintenance plant that also offered services to the
Marines. In July, 48 undocumented immigrants were arrested at Seymour Johnson Air
Force Base in Goldsboro, where they were working on construction projects.56 In
October, eighteen workers were arrested as part of an immigration raid at a Durham factory that had a contract with the federal government. Just as in the raids held in
March, May, and July, the workers detained during this October raid did not work directly for the factory, but rather for a contractor that serviced the factory’s cleaning, maintenance, and cafeteria needs. At seven in the morning, just as the night shift had finished their work and the morning shift just had arrived to take their place, ICE agents arrived, arresting women and men from Mexico, Guatemala, Kenya, Togo, Israel,
Pakistan, and Gambia. Of those detained, most were women, and three of the workers were pregnant at the time. The ICE representative assured media that they had no suspicion that those arrested were terrorists, but the officials argued the workers could have been used by an outside party to leak classified information that they might find while cleaning.57 Another twenty-one workers were arrested on November 8 at Camp
Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in Jacksonville. That same day, two men—one Mexican, one from Senegal—were arrested at the international airport in Atlanta. The ICE
56 “Arrestan a Inmigrantes Hispanos En Base Aérea,” La Conexión, July 12, 2005. 57 “Detenidos 18 Latinos Durante Redada de 36 Inmigrantes En Empresa de Durham,” La Conexión, October 25, 2005.
257 representative argued that “they were threatening national security” because they
“could be vulnerable to exploitation by terrorists and other criminals given their legal status in the United States.”58
Amid deportations and anti-immigrant sentiment, North Carolina researchers undertook studies that reduced Latino immigrants to their economic contributions, demonstrating how scholars often fail to understand migrants outside of their place as workers.59 The wave of deportations and anti-immigrant sentiments that accompanied
Latinos’ presence led investigators to examine the economic impact of the burgeoning immigrant community in North Carolina. Sponsored by the University of North
Carolina’s (UNC) Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, the North
Carolina Bankers Association, and in cooperation with the Consulate of Mexico in
Raleigh, the study was authored by John D. Kasarda, Kenan Distinguished Professor of
Strategy and Entrepreneurship, and James H. Johnson Jr., Distinguished Professor of
Strategy and Entrepreneurship, as well as the Director of the Urban Investment
Strategies Center at UNC. Conducted over a period of 13 months, the authors found that nearly 601,000 Latinos had settled in the Tar Heel state by 2006, dramatically changing the state’s demographics and economy. Seventy-one percent of Latinos lived in the metropolitan areas surrounding Interstates 85 and 40, like Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham,
Greensboro, and Winston-Salem, and one out of every three new net workers in the state
58 “La ‘Migra’ Esta Pisando Duro En Carolina Del Norte,” La Conexión, November 8, 2005. 59 Ribas, On the Line, 124–27.
258 was Latino, laboring especially in agriculture and construction.60 Kasarda and Johnson presented their main findings at the 2006 Economic Forum at the Research Triangle Park in front of dozens of professionals, researchers, journalists, and community members.
La Conexión covered the presentation and the study’s main findings in their
January 10 edition for their Spanish-language and mostly immigrant readership. Taking up nearly two-thirds of the newspaper’s front page, the headline “Hispanics contribute
$9 billion to North Carolina economy” was juxtaposed to an image of a worker using a circular saw at a construction site. 61 In their presentation, the authors conceded that while such rapid immigration rates had both negative and positive impacts, the latter were much more pronounced. The prevalence of Latino immigrants—who were predominantly unskilled laborers—did tend to drive down wages, but the researchers argued it was not wholly a negative impact. “We found that industry after industry was surviving by hiring Latinos,” said John Kasarda, who served as the director of the Frank
Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise for 22 years. “This helps maintain the lives of managers, administrators, owners, and stockholders in North Carolina. This would disappear without the cheap labor.”62 Paola Jaramillo, the article’s author and a
Colombian immigrant, ended on a personal note, acknowledging that “while for some
60 Kasarda and Johnson, “The Economic Impact of the Hispanic Population on the State of North Carolina,” i. 61 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Hispanos Aportan $9 Billones a Economía de Carolina Del Norte,” La Conexión, January 10, 2006. 62 Jaramillo.
259 its bothersome, the truth is that our presence has brought more benefits to the state and its people than negative things.”63 For immigrants like Jaramillo who worked in Spanish- language media, reporting on investigations like these allowed her to drive a different and more positive narrative about Latino immigrants.
Though researchers agreed that Latino workers were in many ways reviving
North Carolina’s economy, local law enforcement and city officials continued to mount an aggressive campaign against immigrants that might be living in the country illegally.
Counties like Mecklenburg, which included the city of Charlotte, approved the 287g program, allowing local law enforcement to act as federal immigration agents. Those who might find themselves in the county jail for offenses from drunk driving, domestic violence, and theft, to driving without a license, would be subject to a review of their legal status. Law enforcement would have access to federal immigration records, allowing them to place into deportation proceedings anyone who was illegally living in the United States.64 While the county sheriff assured the new program was not anti-
Latino, the criminalization of the undocumented Latino immigrant community in
Mecklenburg County placed all Latinos in a vulnerable position.
As immigration raids continued targeting undocumented immigrants in North
Carolina as part of the “war on terror,” punitive legislation was introduced at the federal
63 Jaramillo. 64 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Aprobado: Indocumentados Arrestados Serán Deportados,” La Conexión, February 28, 2006.
260 level that sent ripples throughout the country, especially among those in the labor and immigrant rights movements. On December 16, amid this context of greater congressional concern over security and border control, the House of Representatives passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, also known as H.R. 4437. Among the bill’s provisions, it called for investment in border security, surveillance technology, and fencing; more cooperation between the
Department of Homeland security and local law enforcement, and harsher penalties for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. The bill also made living in the
United States without legal status a crime rather than a civil offence. Not only would an individual who committed an immigration violation be criminalized, but HR4437 also criminalized anyone who assisted undocumented people, including those who worked for social justice, religious, labor, or humanitarian organizations that might offer economic support, legal aid, or sanctuary to undocumented people.65
What ensued were among the largest mobilizations in the history of the United
States, and undeniably were the largest protests by Latinos in the United States.66 In
65 James Jr. Sensenbrenner, “H.R.4437 - Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005” (2005); Irene Bloemraad, Kim Voss, and Taeku Lee, “The Protests of 2006: What They Were, How Do We Understand Them, Where Do They Go?",” in Rallying for Immigrant Rights: The Fight for Inclusion in 21st Century America, ed. Kim Voss and Irene Bloemraad (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 7–8; National Conference of State Legislatures, “Summary of the Sensenbrenner Immigration Bill,” Immigrant Policy Project (blog), 2005. 66 Alfonso Gonzales, “The 2006 Mega Marchas in Greater Los Angeles: Counter-Hegemonic Moment and the Future of El Migrante Struggle,” Latino Studies 7, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 31.
261 February 2006, immigrants—undocumented and documented, young and old—joined immigrant activists and advocates on a cross-country march, making their way from San
Diego, CA, to Washington, DC. Along the way, the caravan made stops along major cities and towns to raise awareness of immigrants’ struggles in the United States.67 The organizers of the march selected Durham as one of the caravan’s stops, indicating that folks nationwide were taking note that North Carolina, and indeed Durham and other cities in the US South, were becoming critical immigrant destinations, and their immigrant communities critical protagonists, in the immigrant rights movement of the new century.
Though HR 4437 failed to pass in the Senate, the bill awakened a national movement for immigrants’ rights and widespread immigration reform. In April, peaceful marches again happened across the country. In honor of the Day of National
Action for Immigrants’ Rights, thousands marched in cities like Chicago, San Diego, and
Dallas, while immigrants and their allies in North Carolina also joined in the weekend of protests. Organizers in Charlotte promoted “a day without consumption,” while hundreds of others gathered in Winston Salem, Siler City, and Wilmington to take to the streets. Demonstrators donned white t-shirts as symbols of peace and carried American flags as they marched, the shirts and flags becoming staples of the immigrant rights
67 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Marchando Por Los Inmigrantes: La Marcha Nacional Por El Inmigrante Estuvo En Durham y Llego a Washington Pidiendo Reforma Migratoria,” La Conexión, February 21, 2006.
262 marches of 2006.68 In the face of such anti-immigrant hostility and fear of the other, organizers hoped these national symbols would appeal to the citizenry’s Americanism.69
The main action, A Day Without Immigrants, took place across the country just a couple of weeks later. The march’s goals emphasized the inextricable relationship between the labor and immigrants’ rights movements, and the date the marches would be held nationwide had a particular resonance with workers throughout the world.
Known in the contemporary era as International Workers’ Day, May 1 originated in
Chicago as commemoration of the Haymarket Riots of 1886, and has since celebrated labor protest and workers’ rights. As scholars Irene Bloemraad, Kim Voss, and Taeku
Lee have shown, the theme of work and economic contributions of migrants became a critical framing mechanism.70 By linking the immigrant rights movement with the labor movement, the organizers emphasized the immigrants’ place as workers and contributors to the American economy.
The labor movement itself was having its own cultural awakening. Though labor unions mostly had been anti-immigrant throughout the twentieth century—with some exceptions—the 2000s marked a drastic change with regard to their stance on immigration. Reformers in the labor movement pushed for more pro-immigrant and
68 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Las Voces No Se Silencian: Miles Marchan Por Reforma Migratoria,” La Conexión, April 11, 2006. 69 Bloemraad, Voss, and Lee, “The Protests of 2006: What They Were, How Do We Understand Them, Where Do They Go?",” 6. 70 Bloemraad, Voss, and Lee, “The Protests of 2006: What They Were, How Do We Understand Them, Where Do They Go?",” 8.
263 pro-undocumented policies across the board. In 2003, the Hotel Employees and
Restaurant Employees International Union successfully convinced the AFL-CIO to change its course with regard to its immigrant stance and instead embrace their cause.
Together, these unions organized the “Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride” in the fall of
2003, which carried hundreds of undocumented workers from 101 cities around the
United States to Washington D.C., where they lobbied for immigrants’ rights, as well as to New York for rallies to garner support.71 A study by attorney, author, and activist
Randy Shaw even argues that the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in the fall of 2003 helped to establish the coalitions and lay the groundwork for the 2006 marches.72
While “A Day Without Immigrants” originally called for immigrants to skip work, school, and refrain from spending money—with the intent of demonstrating immigrants’ buying power and how vital they were to American industries—organizers and supporters across the country and in North Carolina soon realized that the day’s activities had to be more flexible and meet the needs of the immigrant community. In
North Carolina, just as in many other US states, employers could legally fire employees without reason or prior notice. For those in North Carolina who could not afford to lose a job, particularly those whose vulnerability was increased by their legal status, they
71 Steven Greenhouse, “Riding Across America for Immigrant Workers,” The New York Times, September 17, 2003, sec. U.S. 72 Randy Shaw, “Building the Labor-Clergy-Immigrant Alliance,” in Rallying for Immigrant Rights: The Fight for Inclusion in 21st Century America, ed. Kim Voss and Irene Bloemraad (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 82–100.
264 could participate in “A Day Without Immigrants” through evening vigils, rallies, and concerts.73
Thousands in North Carolina joined in protests and rallies across the state in honor of “A Day Without Immigrants.” In Burlington, at least one thousand people attended a rally in which they decried the criminalization of undocumented immigrants and called for broad immigration reform. Immigrants and allies, dressed in white t- shirts, held signs that read “Slavery was the law. The law was wrong. The law was changed.” Just as in earlier years, immigrant rights activists in North Carolina linked the experience of contemporary immigrants to that of enslaved African Americans. Other signs emphasized “Hispanic buying power” in North Carolina, reminding North
Carolinians just how intrinsic immigrants were to the state’s economy.74
Even if the May Day actions had a more symbolic than economic affect, they demonstrated the widespread immigrant presence in North Carolina and their migrant consciousness. Nearly 30,000 immigrants and allies participated in the May Day actions across the state.75 As anthropologist Hannah Gill has argued, “for many North
Carolinians observing these rallies, the fact that the state’s Latino population had grown faster than in any state in the nation from 1990 to 2000, or that North Carolina has more
73 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Las Caras Del 1 de Mayo,” La Conexión, April 25, 2006. 74 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Abrebocas Al Primero de Mayo: ‘Jornada de Libertad y Justicia,’” La Conexión, May 2, 2006. 75 “Más de Un Millón de Latinos Salieron a Las Calles,” La Conexión, May 9, 2006.
265 agricultural guest workers than any other state, might have been a surprise.” 76 For their part, working in restaurant kitchens, on farms, or in factories, Latinos had lived unobserved in the Tar Heel state.
Amid their own labor movement, Smithfield employees also participated in the
May Day actions. Weeks before May 1, members from the Catholic Church, union organizers, and community allies had begun organizing their local actions. In an ironic twist, Smithfield Foods, as well as at least two other firms, donated funds to offset the march’s cost. The Smithfield plant in Tar Heel announced that the plant would be closed on May 1 to complete repairs, a surprise in a plant known for never closing. On May
Day, more than 5,000 immigrants, among them hundreds of Smithfield employees, packed into cars and made their way from their trailer homes to the Robeson County fairgrounds. From there, they marched three miles to the Lumberton City Hall with banners that read “We are not criminals” and “We only want to work.”77 Nothing of the sort had ever occurred in Lumberton, a sleepy Southern town with anti-immigrant local representatives. Immigrant workers had come out of the shadows, despite their legal status, to act and protest for their rights as workers and immigrants.
As Irene Bloemraad, Kim Voss, and Taeku Lee have argued, the 2006 protests were remarkable in part because they focused on, and were in large part led by, people
76 Gill, The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina, 3. 77 Mike Ely and Linda Flores, “Strike at Smithfield: Workers Under a Changing Sky (Part 2: The Struggle Erupts),” Revolution, January 28, 2007, #77 edition.
266 who lacked rights as systems within the political system they challenged. Most studies of formal politics, the scholars contend, take for granted the citizen-actor with rights who acts independently, as a voter, or as part of a coalition. “Those who are foreign- born, particularly those without citizenship and especially those without legal residence, are absent from standard, institutional accounts of political engagement,” and also tend to be absent from studies of social movements.78 In North Carolina, the participation of such a significant number of undocumented immigrants in the marches demonstrated that a powerful migrant consciousness was emerging in the state and across the country.
Building on the momentum of the immigrant rights marches and the labor struggles throughout the state, local activists began to promote the idea that a working- class, multicultural movement was possible. Using La Conexión as a way to attract
Latinos living in Durham, local leaders promoted their community-building events. For two days, June 17-18, 2006, activists from North Carolina and across the southeast would gather in Durham to discuss the problems that plagued and worried Latino and
African American communities. Experienced organizers wanted to discuss how immigration affected labor in the state, and they wanted to discuss how Hurricane
Katrina laid bare various social inequities in New Orleans. The goal of the workshop was to foster collective knowledge and exchange among Latino and African American communities invested in labor and social justice issues while drawing attention to their
78 Bloemraad, Voss, and Lee, “The Protests of 2006: What They Were, How Do We Understand Them, Where Do They Go?",” 6.
267 shared experiences and struggles. “We want to make a call to the entire African
American and Hispanic community to take advantage of this space and raise their doubts and opinions about situations that we live daily,” Emma Blose told journalists from La Conexión.79 By organizing these solidarity spaces, activists were drawing from labor organizers’ tactics in addressing multicultural solidarity through labor and class experiences.
5.5 Union Time: Taking on the Smithfield Packing Company
With this interracial coalition established, Latino and African American workers participated in direct actions that agitated the administration of Smithfield Packing.
National media outlets like the Associated Press and The New York Times continued to cover the actions at the plant, certainly encouraging the North Carolina Spanish- language press to follow suit. “Protests continue,” read a headline in a late November
2006 issue of La Conexión.80 Hundreds walked out of the Smithfield plant on two consecutive days—November 15 and 16—to protest the labor abuses workers faced for years from their employers and work conditions. A spokesperson for the plant, however, argued that the walkout happened in response to Smithfield’s firing of several dozen employees whose names did not match their social security numbers. Latinos did make up about two-thirds of the workforce at the Smithfield plant, but other workers argued
79 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Activistas Buscan Crear Conexiones,” La Conexión, June 13, 2006. 80 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Continúan Las Protestas: Trabajadores de Smithfield Foods Salieron de Nuevo a Las Calles,” La Conexión, November 21, 2006.
268 that their discontent also was based on years of injuries and harsh working conditions.81
Following the two-day strike, and after negotiations between Smithfield and UFCW representatives, the previously fired employees were allowed more time to resolve the problems caused by the “no match” social security numbers.82 Even though the workers were allowed to return to the plant, organizing efforts continued that addressed the broader grievances of the workforce.
On Martin Luther King Day, January 15, 2007, thousands of Latino and African
American workers refused to go to work, recognizing the day as a national holiday that was both important to the African American community and that represented the basic principles of human and civil rights. Meeting at a Baptist church in Fayetteville, Latino workers expressed their sentiments toward the company’s policies. “The plant’s leadership asked the workers which holiday they preferred, Martin Luther King or
Easter, and it’s as if they were making us choose between Jesus and the American leader,” Smithfield worker Martín Suárez told a La Conexión journalist. “For religious and political purposes, they should give it to us.”83 Latino and African American
81 Steven Greenhouse, “Hundreds, All Nonunion, Walk Out at Pork Plant in N.C.,” The New York Times, November 17, 2006. 82 Jaramillo, “Continúan Las Protestas: Trabajadores de Smithfield Foods Salieron de Nuevo a Las Calles”; Catherine Komp, “Spontaneous Strike Forces Smithfield to Change Policy,” The NewStandard, November 27, 2006. 83 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Continúan Las Protestas: En Honor a Martin Luther King Cientos de Trabajadores Salieron a Las Calles,” La Conexión, January 16, 2007.
269 workers’ refusal to work on MLK Day was symbolic of the recognition that theirs was a solidarity struggle, and that this was no longer a story of “we” and “them,” but of “us.”
In the following days, however, directed efforts to undermine the multicultural coalition were executed through immigration raids in trailer parks where Latino immigrants resided. On January 24, twenty-two workers from the Smithfield plant were arrested by Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) agents, captured in real time through the documentary “Food, Inc.” In addition to these raids, Smithfield representatives warned that they again would examine workers’ social security numbers and warned that as many as 570 workers could be fired within the year, with twenty to sixty workers fired per week, so as to not disrupt production. Following this announcement, labor, religious, and civil rights leaders gathered a press conference in mid-February, to express their solidarity with the 5,000 Smithfield workers and the more than 500 Latino and African American workers who had been victims of physical and psychological abuse and threats from their supervisors.84
Even with this community support, by February’s end, Smithfield Packing had lost 300 Latino employees. This massive loss of workers was probably the result of the company’s threat in early February to terminate workers based on no-match social security numbers. Some of the employees mailed in their resignation letters and received
84 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “570 Trabajadores Serían Despedidos de Smithfield Packing: No Termina Calvario de Trabajadores Latinos En Smithfield,” La Conexión, February 13, 2007; Julia Preston, “Immigration Raid Draws Protest From Labor Officials,” The New York Times, January 26, 2007.
270 their final paychecks and compensation for vacation days not taken; others—like those who in November 2006 had received “no match” letters—said nothing and never returned to the plant. The extent to which the social security numbers had been analyzed also was uncertain. UFCW organizers knew that more than two thousand
Smithfield employees still laboring at the plant were Latinos, and many of them were undocumented.85 Their futures at Smithfield, and in North Carolina, were uncertain.
As pressure mounted, African Americans, ecclesiastics, and civil rights organizations came together stronger than ever to support publicly Smithfield workers in Tar Heel. Even before the immigration raids and mass firings, religious organizations and their leaders had played a critical role in the campaign to organize workers at
Smithfield Foods. “Justice@Smithfield” had garnered the support of the United Church of Christ and Catholic leaders across the state. African American Protestant churches also became increasingly involved, building from the tradition of civil rights organizing to promote immigrants’ rights advocacy as a continuation of that struggle. Reverend
William Barber, president of North Carolina’s National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) addressed hundreds of Smithfield workers in Williamsburg, Pennsylvania, just before the workers were set to protest outside of a
Smithfield Foods’ shareholders meeting on August 3, 2007. Inside of a church, and in the tradition of Southern black preachers, Reverend Barber spoke to the congregation, full of
85 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Tensa Calma En Smithfield,” La Conexión, February 27, 2007.
271 Smithfield workers and black parishioners. Reverend Barber and the NC NAACP committed their support for the Smithfield laborers and their calls to unionize, imploring Smithfield representatives to address the issues and arrange for a fair union vote. “Stop dividing black and Hispanic,” Reverend Barber said, recognizing Smithfield leadership’s purposeful strategy to promote division and animosity among workers based on their race.86 Reverend Barber, as well as the larger immigrant rights movement, recognized that this maneuver of dividing workers was intended to obstruct black- brown coalitions. Their goal by 2007 was to ensure that Latino and African American workers remained in solidarity within the movement.
Taking notes from labor organizers, activists and community leaders outside of the Smithfield plant also wanted to bridge the broader divide between the African
American and Latino communities. Local community activists exalted shared life experiences in North Carolina as the common thread that linked Latino and African
American communities. In 2008, Durham’s Department of Human Services promoted their one-day community-building conference in La Conexión’s August 7th edition.
Leaders would gather four days later at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham to encourage better and more foundational relationships between African American and
Latino communities. Established in 1975, the Hayti Heritage Center, promoted cultural understanding through events, activities, and programs, that preserve the heritage and
86 Barr, Union Time.
272 embrace the experiences of Americans of African descent. Speakers like Richard G.
Womack, then assistant to the AFL-CIO president, would address the common needs of the communities and discuss the ways legal status affected one’s ability to find employment or decent housing. By attending, organizers promised that participants would be given the tools with which to better understand their communities and neighbors, in the hopes of creating a more positive and enriching Durham. “We hope that our participants find in the conference a light of hope that will help them overcome the common obstacles they encounter on a daily basis,” Peña said. “We want people to go home with ideas they can use to improve their quality of life and that of their neighbors.”87
As cross-cultural conversations across the state continued, inside Smithfield
Packing, the company’s leadership finally agreed in late October 2008 to allow workers to vote for or against unionization with the UFCW. The final negotiations stipulated that the UFCW would agree to cease their direct action campaign against Smithfield
Packing if the company allowed open union elections in their plant. After two failed unionization attempts, the first in 1994 and then again in 1997, and more than a decade of organizing workers, establishing interethnic workers’ coalitions, and collaborating
87 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Estrechando Lazos: Conferencia Para Lograr Mayor Entendimiento Entre Comunidad Latina y Afro Americana,” La Conexión, August 7, 2007.
273 with community, social justice, and religious groups, close to 5,000 workers would decide the fate of the Justice@Smithfield campaign.88
On the evening of December 11, 2008, Smithfield workers and UFCW organizers met at a banquet hall while they waited for the results of the union election. The two-day election process gathered a total of 3,920 votes from a group of 4,600 eligible voters, and as each vote was tallied, seemingly one vote against the union for each vote in favor, the workers who had been organizing with UFCW waited nervously. When the final vote came in, revealing how close the election had been, it was joy that erupted from the
Smithfield employees. Two-thousand forty-one workers (52 percent) voted in favor of the union, while 1,879 (48 percent) voted against.89 Workers emphatically embraced each other, tears freely streaming down their faces. Coworkers held each other up as some workers nearly fainted from their sobs. UFCW organizers unabashedly shouted, releasing their excitement. Gathered in a circle, workers—English- and Spanish- speaking, white, black, and Latino—chanted “Sí Se Puede” until giving way to celebratory hugs. Speeches in both English and Spanish by workers and UFCW organizers recounted their long struggle and exalted their solidarity and strength. On the dance floor, workers and their families followed the rhythms of the merengue and salsa music playing in the background.90
88 Paola Andrea Jaramillo, “Sí a Sindicato de Trabajadores,” La Conexión, October 29, 2008. 89 Greenhouse, “After 15 Years, North Carolina Plant Unionizes.” 90 Barr, Union Time.
274 The UFCW’s victory in Tar Heel, NC, was unprecedented for where it occurred and for the kinds of workers it came to represent. After all, in 2008, North Carolina had the lowest rate of union membership at 3.5 percent, compared to the national membership average of 12.4 percent.91 The triumph was all the more significant because immigrant Latinos, many without legal status, had been engaged and welcome members of the campaign and would now be represented by the union. On July 1, 2009, about six months following the election results, UFCW Local 1208 was founded.92 Since then, workers have voted to renew their UFCW membership, demonstrating the enduring success of the organizers and their solidarity. UFCW Local 1208 continues to exist in Tar
Heel, representing nearly 4,000 workers, and their union members’ expertise has been called upon by other workers in North Carolina desiring to follow in their footsteps.
5.6 Transborder Awakenings
The 2000s also ushered in a critical moment of immigrant consciousness. The draconian legislation proposed in Congress and local anti-immigrant efforts forced
Latino immigrants to confront the reality that they were being racially profiled and criminalized, and that their presence in North Carolina was—even in the most rural corners of the state—no longer ignored on the local, state, or national levels. For those
Latinos who participated in the state’s labor struggles, public demonstrations in 2006, or
91 Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Members in 2008,” Press Release (Washington, DC, January 28, 2009). 92 The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union, “Local 1208 Members Ratify First Contract with Smithfield in Tar Heel, N.C.,” July 1, 2009.
275 cross-cultural community conversations, the cultural awareness and education they received encouraged their sense of unity and solidarity with the African American experience in the US South.
The point of racial fracture for Mexican immigrants at both Holy Cross and
Smithfield Packing during the 1990s and 2000s had not been indigeneity but rather the confrontations and negotiations with blackness and whiteness. The heightened immigrant consciousness that emerged from the labor struggles and popular demonstrations, however, led local immigrant leaders to delve deeper into the nuances of their identities, as well as those of other Mexican immigrants. The front page of La
Conexión’s April 17, 2007, edition displays a photograph of an indigenous woman, the image taking up the entire middle column of the section above the fold. “Indigenous
Latinos of the State,” the heading of the photograph reads, “between neglect and discrimination.” According to the article, the 2000 Census had reported 4,500 indigenous
Latinos from Mexico and Central America called the Tar Heel state their home. Juvencio
Rocha, himself a Mexican immigrant from the state of Veracruz and president of the
Association of Mexicans in North Carolina (AMEXCAN), argued that the actual number was much higher, nearly thirteen thousand.93
The article presented the story of María, a Mexican immigrant from a Mixteca community in Oaxaca. María told the reporter that she and her family decided to leave
93 Jaramillo, “Indígenas Latinos Del Estado: Entre El Olvido y La Discriminación.”
276 their indigenous community in 1994 to work in agriculture in the United States, but upon arriving in North Carolina, they suffered a great deal due to “exploitation and discrimination from our own race.” Discrimination against indigenous peoples, María affirmed, began in Mexico. She remembered being bullied by her classmates in school for speaking Mixteco—her native language—and, for this reason, refrained from teaching her children the language in the United States. The family’s ability to speak
Spanish had eased their transition to life in North Carolina. Even so, María lamented that with the loss of language also came the loss of culture. Ending the article, the journalist addressed how the struggle for survival among indigenous Latino migrants can often be much more difficult than that of their non-indigenous counterparts. “The language barrier—English and native—the loss of customs and traditions, and the constant discrimination lead María to once in a while ask herself, was is worth it?”
This heightened awareness of the racial nuances of Mexican—and Latino— identity was inextricably linked to the growing consciousness among Mexican citizens that racism with regard to its indigenous and Afro-descended populations was pervasive. Following the Mexican census of 1990, scholars began critiquing the government’s use of language as the sole indicator of indigeneity, recognizing that stigma and discrimination had in many ways forced language loss. In 1992, the Mexican government reformed Article 4 of its constitution, establishing the country’s “cultural
277 plurality and rights of indigenous peoples.”94 For the first time in the country’s history, the 2000 Mexican Census did include the question of “autoclassification,” allowing people to self-identify as indigenous; however, this question was not in the universal census, but on a limited sample of 2 million homes.95
The awakening among Mexicans regarding the nuances of racism and indigeneity was in fact a transborder phenomenon. While indigenous peoples’ struggle for autonomy and self-governance forced the Mexican government to recognize their existence, this movement had reverberations across the border. As Mexican immigrants in North Carolina also were developing a consciousness about their own racialized identifications in the new century, those from indigenous communities recognized that there’s was a particular racial identity that was finally gaining attention. The next two decades would demonstrate just how connected these transborder indigeneities became among the P’urhépecha of Cherán.
94 Jorge Alberto González Galván, “Reforma Al Artículo 4 Constitucional: Pluralidad Cultural y Derecho de Los Pueblos Indígenas,” Boletín Mexicano de Derecho Comparado 1, no. 79 (January 1, 1994). 95 Valdés, Hernández Bringas, and Chávez Galindo, Los indios mexicanos en los censos del año 2000.
278 Conclusion
Each October since 2011, cheranenses in North Carolina have been organizing and celebrating their saint day festival. Raising an estimated $30,000 for the extravaganza, hundreds from across North Carolina and surrounding Southeastern states flock to the “Fiesta Patronal de Cherán,” honoring Francis of Assisi, a Catholic saint venerated for his austerity and commitment to humble communities. St. Francis of
Assisi, of course, is also widely recognized in contemporary Catholic circles, as Jorge
Mario Bergoglio took on his name to become the Vatican’s 266th head of state, Pope
Francis––the first Pope of the Americas. The saint day commemoration now in Wendell originally was celebrated in Mexico. Given this festival’s new geography, cheranenses are forging a sense of place in rural North Carolina through the re-creation and performance of these religious traditions and celebrations.1
While cheranenses in North Carolina assert part of their P’urhépecha identity through these performances, some cheranenses who stayed behind argue that migration eradicated P’urhépecha identity. Even though P’urhépecha culture had endured in
Mexico centuries after colonial rule, the greatest threat to indigenous peoples and their cultural survival was migration to the United States. Living and working in the United
States, it was impossible for cheranenses’ identifications not to be transformed by the relationships and people they encountered. Whatever “indigeneity” cheranense
1 To see and read more about this celebration, visit https://goo.gl/p5i1nJ
279 migrants tried to recreate in North Carolina, some back home assured it was no longer legitimate.2
The emigration of cheranenses to the United States has left visible traces on
Cherán’s landscape, but it also has transformed the crucial elements of their indigeneity—dress, language, customs, and communal life. While the authenticity of
“indigeneity” cannot be measured, the sense of loss that results from migration is palpable on the geographic and physical landscapes and cannot be undone. While this sense of loss and negation is characteristic of sending communities, there is a feeling of urgency in Cherán to eradicate the need to emigrate because of its threat to their existence. Without indigenous bodies in Cherán to preserve the P’urhépecha traditions and cultural practices, the underlying fear is that Cherán will become but another mestizo Mexican town, disconnected from its ancestral roots. Migration and its effect on the P’urhépecha community of Cherán takes on new meaning with regard to questions of nation, belonging, race, and citizenship, as this global phenomenon of movement comes to have local reverberations that ripple across borders. “Cherán” has become a physical and imagined place that exists across the United States and Mexico in a multitude of forms.
Working across the fields of history, critical ethnic studies, indigenous studies, and diaspora studies, my dissertation demonstrates how migrants adapt racial and
2 Pedro Jiménez Ceja, interview by Yuridia Ramírez, November 2015.
280 ethnic identifications as tools of empowerment to confront intersecting systems of colonialism and racism. Throughout the dissertation, whiteness played a critical role in the structuring of racial hierarchies across borders, a racial category that also is in flux, constructed and reconstructed across space and time. As Agustín Lao-Montes and
Mirangela Buggs have shown, “processes of nationalization of memory, language, and identity are reflected in nationalist narratives in which white, male, Euro- and mestizo-
American elites are assumed to represent national and regional subjecthood, while subaltern racial others (blacks, Indios, Asian-descendants) are marginalized or virtually erased from national imaginaries.”3 Part of the nationalist project in Mexico has been to negate the existence of racism so as to continue the historical erasure of indigenous and
Afro-descended peoples. Those in Mexico who have favored whiteness have perpetuated a “possessive investment in colonialism” that has placed Europe as the place where material goods and desirable physical traits should be obtained.4 My research provides one particular example of the way whiteness is also privileged in
Latin America and works to subjugate indigenous communities.
North Carolina also was critical part of this story. The lasting legacy of racialized hierarchies of value were rearticulated through the presence of vulnerable and racialized
3 Lao-Montes and Buggs, “Translocal Space of Afro-Latinidad/Critical Feminist Visions for Diasporic Bridge Building,” 393. 4 Sonia E. Álvarez, “Introduction to the Project and the Volume / Enacting a Translocal Feminist Politics of Translation,” in Translocalities / Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Américas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 3.
281 immigrants. In North Carolina, whiteness was constructed and reconstructed as a means to negotiate the transforming landscape, especially with regard to African American upward mobility and Latino settlement. From workplaces to religious institutions, race management – a term coined by David R. Roediger and Elizabeth D. Esch – became a crucial way to order society and establish racial and social hierarchies.5 Race management ensured that white Americans remained in positions of power throughout the twentieth century, while African Americans and Latino immigrants were relegated inferior and often in competition with each other. In both discourse and practice, in the
Catholic Church in Durham and the workplace at Smithfield Packing, white actors mediated confrontations between African Americans and Latinos to perpetuate a myth of inevitable conflict. This model of African American-Latino competition and conflict is contingent upon whiteness and its power to manage and structure our world. We cannot separate our analyses of indigeneity or blackness without also examining the work of whiteness.6
Throughout this work, P’urhépecha migrants confronted a multitude of borders even before they migrated from Cherán. In Mexico, P’urhépechas faced racial and ethnic boundaries that separated them from other Mexicans, a consciousness that in the United
5 David R. Roediger and Elizabeth D. Esch, The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 11. 6 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).
282 States either perpetuated P’urhépechas’ cultural difference or made them invisible amid other Latino migrants. Once in North Carolina, P’urhépecha migrants transcended class and economic boundaries as they became workers in agricultural production, construction sites, or service industries. Though P’urhépechas in Cherán were accustomed to a community based on communal interests, familiarity, and camaraderie, in North Carolina P’urhépechas were confronted with a society that privileged independence and personal gain.
Legal status and legalization did become a point of departure among migrants, even within indigenous communities. Cheranense migrants, especially those with legal status, came to employ US racial, ethnic, and class hierarchies into their discursive and real actions. Not unsurprisingly, legal status afforded many indigenous peoples opportunity for mobility not accessible to their undocumented counterparts. These
P’urhépechas could return to Cherán for their saint day festival in October, Day of the
Dead rituals in November, or the Corpus Christi celebrations in the summer. In publicly demonstrating their enduring links to their hometown and willingness to return and participate in their community’s most important traditions, migrant cheranenses accrued cultural legitimacy and reaffirmed their belonging. Legal status also afforded migrant cheranenses the opportunity to labor in higher paying jobs. Comfortably in the middle class, P’urhépechas with legal status often established homes on both sides of the border and displayed material wealth through the purchasing of goods, sponsoring their religious festivals, or investing in their sending communities.
283 A new line of inquiry among scholars who examine Latino indigenous communities and indigenous migrants have begun to employ the framework of settler colonialism to their analyses. Originally introduced by anthropologist Patrick Wolfe in his study of Australia, the term was predominantly applied to describe Anglophone imperial projects.7 These scholars contend that the central tenants of settler colonialism— dispossession and elimination—were not exclusive actions in British colonialism, but rather central also to Spanish and Portuguese colonial projects. This new wave of scholarship aims to challenge these geographic barriers and promote through their work a hemispheric dialogue of indigenous struggles.
A hemispheric dialogue about indigenous struggles is all the more urgent given the global criminalization and vilification of immigrants and the violence enacted upon indigenous communities. In 2016, the #NoDAPL movement defending indigenous lands on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation garnered national and hemispheric attention as millions witnessed the vicious attacks on the thousands of peoples defending the land, known as water protectors. Though national media outlets avoided coverage of the protest, YouTube videos, international media, and alternative political media outlets— like Democracy USA—filmed incidents between water protectors and law enforcement that included attack dogs, police in riot gear, and the use of military equipment. In freezing weather, police even deployed water cannons upon the nonviolent protesters,
7 Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London: Cassell, 1999).
284 garnering mainstream media attention.8 Indigenous peoples from across North and
South America, as well as other parts of the world, made their way to North Dakota to show their support and stand in solidarity as a global community of indigenous citizens.
By employing the frame of settler colonialism, scholars are not attempting to detract from the rich work on North American indigenous peoples; on the contrary, this research attempts to bridge a scholarly divide that has existed not between the experiences of indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, but between studies of
North American indigenous communities and those of indigenous Latin Americans.
Though the work on settler colonialism is moving toward a broader geographical application, researchers on Latino indigenous communities are pushing the scholarship to more fully capture the Global South.9
8 Derek Hawkins, “Police Defend Use of Water Cannons on Dakota Access Protesters in Freezing Weather,” Washington Post, November 21, 2016; Alan Taylor, “Water Cannons Used Against Dakota Pipeline Protesters,” The Atlantic, November 21, 2016; Sara Lafleur-Vetter and Jonathan Klett, “Police Blast Standing Rock Protesters with Water Cannon and Rubber Bullets,” The Guardian, November 21, 2016. 9 Castellanos, “Introduction: Settler Colonialism in Latin America”; Nájera and Maldonado, “Transnational Settler Colonial Formations and Global Capital”; Baron Pineda, “Indigenous Pan- Americanism: Contesting Settler Colonialism and the Doctrine of Discovery at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues,” American Quarterly 69, no. 4 (December 21, 2017): 823–32; Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita, “Rethinking Settler Colonialism,” American Quarterly 66, no. 4 (2014): 1039–55; Floridalma Boj Lopez, “Weavings That Rupture: The Possibility of Contesting Settler Colonialism Through Cultural Retention Among the Maya Diaspora,” in U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance, ed. Karina O. Alvarado, Alicia I. Estrada, and Ester E. Hernández (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2017), 188; Shannon Speed, “Structures of Settler Capitalism in Abya Yala,” American Quarterly 69, no. 4 (December 21, 2017): 783–90.
285 While my dissertation does not employ the frame of settler colonialism, it does posit a particularly interesting line of inquiry for a study on Mexican indigenous communities in North Carolina. The productive tensions that emerge from studying the
P’urhépecha community in relation to North Carolina indigenous peoples allow us to recognize the colonial present and the ways in which that migrants—both indigenous and non-indigenous—perpetuate settler colonial logics through migration and settlement. Though indigenous peoples in both the United States and Mexico have survived similar experiences of discrimination, historical erasure, and exclusion, indigenous Mexicans upon their migration to the United States unintentionally participate in settler colonial logics that perpetuate the erasure of US native populations.
In some ways, because Mexican indigeneity is often rendered invisible in the United
States, these Mexican indigenous settlers might even privilege from blending in more seamlessly with the Mexican immigrant community, even if as labor migrants they often are racialized and criminalized as suspected undocumented workers.10 Settler colonialism allows for a more nuanced understanding of racial regimes that are in flux within and across borders. Future studies should examine these productions and re- productions of racialized hierarchies—and their instability—so as to confront the ways indigeneity is always contingent on time and place.
10 Nájera and Maldonado, “Transnational Settler Colonial Formations and Global Capital,” 816– 18.
286 My work also urges a more complex form of racial politics that is sensitive to the complexities of our current moment. Latino historians are starting to examine the heterogeneity that exists not only among Latinos, but also among individual nationalities, like Mexicans, to more fully honor historical erasure, oppression, and marginalization. By examining indigenous identification in Mexico as a racial category, this research posits possibilities for decolonizing the immigrants’ rights movement and imaginaries through a direct confrontation with the colonial and historic legacy of racism that underpins and haunts its narratives, tactics, and interventions.
Studies like mine are integral in reshaping the ways in which we work toward just immigration reform and scholarly practices of decolonializing the academy. My attention to marginalized voices in the historical record, especially indigenous peoples, position them not simply as the terrains on which my theorizing takes place, but rather as theorists in their own right, deploying their own critical and nuanced political agency and ancestral knowledge. I work to more fully demystify the academy’s approach to the struggles of peoples of color and embrace decolonial practices of knowledge. By demonstrating that indigenous peoples are active and equitable contributors to the political processes of nations, the production of knowledge, and the nuance of racial formations, my work honors ancestral ways of knowing and being and acknowledges the possibility of a different present and future.
287 Works Cited
“60 Años Con Los Pueblos Indígenas.” Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de Comunidades Indígenas, 2008.
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“X Censo General de Población y Vivienda 1980 - Michoacán de Ocampo.” Lengua Indígena. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 1980.
“XI Censo General de Población y Vivienda - Michoacán de Ocampo.” Lengua Indígena. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 1990.
317 Biography
Yuridia Ramírez received her PhD in history from Duke in May 2018. A
Wisconsin native, Yuri is an historian, interdisciplinary scholar, and a community organizer, driven by intimate connections to both migration and racism. Comfortably in the womb when her mother crossed the border, Yuri was born in Chicago. Her father applied for legal permanent status through the Immigration
Reform and Control Act and later also applied for her mother and brother. Even so, Yuri was acutely aware that other close family members were undocumented. In 1992, Yuri and her family moved to a small town in rural Wisconsin, where theirs was the only family of color in town.
Yuri’s doctoral work in racial and indigenous histories, as well as in diasporic communities and decoloniality, have informed her organizing efforts. She has organized in refugee and immigrant communities in both Minneapolis and Durham, working primarily with students and their families to think critically about racism, violence, and injustice, while developing a vision for a collective community. As an oral historian whose parents have been factory workers for thirty years, Yuri has personal experience with and an intellectual commitment to rural migrant workers and their families.
Yuri holds a B.A. in history and journalism from the University of Minnesota and an M.A. in history from Duke University.
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