Race, Region, and Mexican Migration Since 1980 by Yuridia Ramirez Department of History
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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