After spending only one week along the US/Mexico border, I feel like I have come back with an incredible amount of new knowledge. I had the greatest experience and I learned so much. However, I also learned just how complicated all of the issues surrounding the border are and that there absolutely are no black and white answers or solutions. I am overwhelmed by the complexity of it all but also inspired to learn more and stay involved in bringing justice to all people.
Our first day in Arizona, we met with a woman named Lupe Castillo. Lupe is a border activist and teaches history at Pima County Community College in Tucson. She spent a couple of hours giving us a brief history of the border to prepare us for the rest of our week. All of us think of the United States as developing from the east to the west, and view the area of Arizona as the "southwest" or "the rockies," looking only at how it relates to the development of the United States. However, this area was around long before the United States and was a part of Mexico: it was "el norte" or "the north." Santa Fe, New Mexico, which previously belonged to Mexico, was actually established even before the settlement of Jamestown.
The US/Mexico border is just under 2,000 miles and has divided so many communities all along its length. As the United States began incorporating Texas, it began a momentum of taking over the land that is now California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Mexico was losing so much of their land so quickly to the US, they saw no option but to form a treaty with the US; they wanted to preserve at least some of their land before they lost it all. In order to protect their southern lands from further takeover, they signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In Mexico, this is known as "The North American Aggression," signaling the bitter feelings toward the oppression of the United States. Mexicans who were living north in the area that became separated by the border were forced to become United States citizens or be sent down south. They didn't want to lose their heritage and join American culture, but most of them didn't have a choice; they were deeply rooted in their land. They had been occupying this area before the United States even existed. They had to stay to keep their land rights.
As industrialization and agriculture increased, there was a great demand for more laborers in the workforce. European immigrants were staying mostly in the east, so there was still a need for workers in the south. Since the Chinese Exclusion Acts were enacted in 1882, the US could not bring in Chinese to do the work. The logical place to get workers seemed to be from Mexico. The US began going into Mexico and recruiting workers to come back and work. Mexican workers were convenient for the US because they were easily disposable; they could use them for their labor, but push them back out with legal means as soon as they were no longer needed. We can see a pattern of workers being brought in when the labor demand is high, taken advantage of, and deported when they are no longer needed. Take a minute to look at this interactive map that details the pattern of immigrants coming in and out of the US:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html
On the top right hand corner you can choose to either view it as percent of the population or as number of residents. Slide the bar to see the time between 1910 and 1920. During this time when industry was booming and many people were away fighting in World War I, the demand for labor was very high, as indicated by the high number of Latin Americans on the map. Then if you slide the bar over to 1930, you can see the effect that the Great Depression had on immigration. All the workers who had moved their lives over here were pushed out and sent back to Mexico. If you then move over to 1940, you can see that the immigration picked up again. This was during the time of World War II, and once again, much of the workforce was away at war. Thus the United States began recruiting workers from Mexico again; During WWII, between 3-4 million workers were imported from Mexico. The United States was able to use their power to take advantage of Mexican workers and use them at their convenience, only keeping them as long as they "needed" them. Then in 1994, with the implementation of NAFTA (I will talk more about this later), the border was open for the flow of market and goods, but not for labor. Trade was happening freely, and small farmers in Mexico who were already struggling could no longer compete with the powerful American corporations.
This is just a little background and history on the border that helped set the stage for what we learned all week. More to come very soon!!
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