Joseph Nevins - Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A work such as this is always a collective effort in the sense that the information, analysis, and images within are the outgrowth of many conversations and the exchange of ideas, experiences, and feelings with countless individuals over many years. At the same time, such an endeavor, given the time commitment involved and the resources needed to carry it out, requires myriad forms of help from friends and colleagues.

In that regard, we thank the many people who provided invaluable support, guidance, or inspiration at different stages of this project, without whom in a collective sense we would have never completed this work. They include (and are not limited to): Shizuko Aizeki; Mona Ali; Roxane Auer; Kirti Baranwal; Alex and Anne Caputo-Pearl; Guadalupe Castillo; Margo Cowan; Garry Davis; Timothy Dunn; Mark Ellis; Isabel Garcia; Ruthie Gilmore; Gerry Hale; Scott Handleman; David Hernandez; Monica Hernandez; Roberto Hernandez; Kirsten Isaacson; Julia Ishimaru; Tore Kapstad; Scott Kerr; Scott Kessler; Yuki Kidokoro; Kim Komenich; Max Leeming; Serge Levy; Rick Miller; Enrique Morones; Richard Nevins; Nict Ordoez; Jos Palafox; Nancy Peluso; Laura Pulido, Eugene Richards; Ted Robertson; Kat Rodriguez; Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith; Kevin Rudiger; David Runsten; Dereka Rushbrook; Mark Salzer; Elizabeth Sammons; Fred Seavey; Aarti Shahani, Subhash Kateel and the members of Families for Freedom; Claudia Smith; Sam Speers; Michelle Vignes; Michael Walsh; Michael Watts; Layla Welborn; and Ray Ybarra. At the same time, we extend our appreciation to the following organizations in southern Arizona and countless individuals associated with them for helping and teaching us in so many ways, and for their ongoing work: Derechos Humanos, No More Deaths, the Samaritan Patrols, Humane Borders, and Casa Maria/The Catholic Worker.

A number of individuals generously took the time to engage the project and provide critical feedback on different aspects of it. For that, we express our deep appreciation to David Bacon, Frank Bardacke (and Pam Sexton for connecting us to him), Lian Hurst Mann and Eric Mann and the Labor/Community Strategy Center, Amitava Kumar, and Joe Rodriguez. Lydia Savage and Tyrone Simpson both read the entire manuscript and gave invaluable feedback, generously taking time out of their busy lives and sharing their critical insights. Special thanks goes to Michael Velarde at Vassar College; he pored over the manuscript multiple times and provided all sorts of constructive criticisms and helpful ideas, while also assisting with research and production matters. Thanks as well to Elizabeth Graves for assistance with research.

In addition, we express our appreciation to people who generously shared their time in providing specific pieces of information, analysis, or materials. Among them are Ral Delgado-Wise, Joe Heyman, Miguel Moctezuma Longoria, Rick Macken, Bruce Parks, Eric Peters, and Ken Verdoia.

Thanks to Adam Harju and the Imperial Valley Press for allowing us to include one of his photos in the book. Thanks as well to Zoltn Grossman for sharing his cartographic skills and making the maps we use.

During our visits to Juchipila, Zacatecas, many people generously welcomed us, and provided information and analysis. Among those we would like to thank are Doa Chole (Soledad) and family, the late Don Florentino Gallegos, Don Salvador Esparza, Hugo Horacio Hernandez Jauregui, Martn Lopez, and Profesor Ral Lpez Robles. We extend a very special thanks to (the late) Jos Luis Arellano and Elvia Bauelos Lara, as well as to their extended families, for their warm hospitality and friendship.

The book would not have been possible without Jackie Murillos support and willingness to open her home and heart to us from the beginning of the project. We are profoundly grateful to her and the members of the extended Murillo and Gallegos families, especially Jess and Vicky Gallegos, Tino Gallegos, Alejandra and Jorge Rodrguez, Doa Maria Rodrguez, and Jackie and Julios sons, Andrew and Julio Jr.

Anthony Arnove, our agent, was enthusiastic about the book from its earliest stages. We are most grateful to him for his selfless work on behalf of this endeavor, for his solidarity, and for helping us to find an appropriate publisher.

It has been a great pleasure to work with Greg Ruggiero, our editor at City Lights Books. We thank him for his patience, support, and excellent work in bringing the book to fruition. Thanks also to Stacey Lewis for her enthusiasm for, and active commitment to, promoting the book, to Stewart Cauley for designing the cover, and to Gambrinus for designing the text.

We are also very appreciative for the financial assistance from Vassar Collegein the form of two faculty research grantswhich were of great help in paying for research trips to Arizona, California, and Juchipila, Zacatecas.

Finally, we thank our parentsHiroko and Shin Aizeki, and Carol Nevinsfor their support throughout this project, and for a list of things so long we do not even dare to start it, and our daughters, Amina and Sayako, for the joy, laughter, love, and richness they have brought to our lives.

Mizue Aizeki and Joseph Nevins

Poughkeepsie, New York

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX C

APPENDIX D

AUTHORS NOTE ON LANGUAGE

In writing this book, Ive struggled with what to call people, how to categorize them. Terms such as illegal immigrant, for example, effectively criminalize individuals for entering or residing in a country without the sanction of the national government, while privileging the perspective of the state. In the contemporary political climate, illegal has become for many a code word for ethno-racial hatred toward unwanted migrants. For such reasons, whenever I use the term illegal in relation to migrants or immigration, I put it in quotation marks. More typically, I use terms such as unauthorized.

Regarding ethno-racial distinctions, I sometimes use the term nonwhite. While it is far from ideal to utilize a term to describe people by what they are not, it sometimes serves as an effective shorthand given the diverse ethno-racial composition of particular areas at specific times. More important, in discussing places like Southern California in the 1880s and early 1900s, nonwhite is appropriate given that the primary social divideas dictated by the regions political eliteswas that between people who were deemed to be white and those who were not. Indeed, white was the effective equivalent of American.

If, during the time period mentioned above, racial categories were clearat least rhetoricallythose of citizenship were less so. People of Mexican descent born in the territory annexed by the United States through its war with Mexico, for instance, wereby the terms of the treaty that ended the conflict in 1848U.S. citizens. Nonetheless, local, state, and federal officials rarely accorded them the full rights and privileges of such citizenship in the many decades that followed. Instead, they often perceived and treated all people of Mexican descentregardless of citizenship statusas, at best, second-class inhabitants of what had become the United States. As such, the term Mexican was typically applied to the entire Mexican-origin population without any distinction made between those who were U.S. citizens and those who were not. Thus, in much of the literature I draw upon for this book, the citizenship status of the specific people of Mexican ancestry in question is often not clear. (This is also true for other ethno-racial groups such as people of Japanese ancestry.) Although the process of distinguishing between Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens of Mexican descent was a gradual one, World War II and its aftermath seem to be a time of marked change. As such, I use the term Mexican for all people of Mexican descent until the World War II era, while employing Mexican-American when appropriate in discussing the post-World War II period.