Chicano Studies 168 Lecture 2 Dr. Raúl Moreno Campos UCSB Agenda Mexican Communities in the U.S. Southwest at the Turn of the 20th Century Immigration to the U.S.: Then and Now The History of Illegality, the Racialization of Mexican Labor, and the “Revolving Door” of U.S. Immigration Law and Mexicanos I. By the dawn of the 20th century, the once sovereign, and often wealthy, Mexican families and communities of the former Northern Mexican territories had been largely dispossessed, brought under U.S. rule, and placed within the lowest rungs of its racial regimes. One central dimension of this change, therefore, was the marginal status that Mexicanos had come to occupy in the U.S., and the manner in which, despite being native to these lands, they ultimately became thought of as “foreigners” and “illegal aliens”, to be looked upon with suspicion and subject to various forms of state-sponsored violence. By the middle of the 20th century, Mexican social segregation and political marginality, and the use of Mexicanos as disposable labor, was firmly entrenched and widespread- indeed, these conditions became some of the central issues of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s. I. How did Mexican communities come to be thought of as “foreign”, and what was the historical process by which Mexicanos came to be thought of as “iconic illegal aliens”? In particular, how did Mexicans become the primary target of U.S. border patrol after its formation in 1924? In turn, how did this racialized and regionalized method of border enforcement shape race in the U.S.? I. Throughout the Southwest, the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo were not kept- in particular guarantees of rights of citizenship and protection of property for Mexicans Ex. California Land Act of 1851- flagrant violation of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Led to exhausting and expensive legal battles (land rich, cash poor) I. As Lytle Hernandez (2010) points out, a variety of techniques were used to acquire land rights from Mexican landholders Violence, genocide reservation system- used against indigenous populations by Spaniards (1st conquest)- pg. 22 Fraud, debt payment (legal battles), marriage- used for Mexicans (Ibid.) The decline in wealth for wealthy Mexicans, led to a decline in political clout, and consequently a marked decline in social status. Ex of Ventura county- by 1900, 80% of Mexicans were at the bottom of social strata (Cf. Almaguer) I. Dramatic shift to agro-industrialist model 1902- Newlands Reclamation Act in the West- funding of irrigation projects made large scale farming possible. 1920- West largest and most profitable agricultural producer in the nation 31 million acres of crops valued at $ 1.7 billion in California and Texas alone. This rapid expansion depended on a cheap farm hands- where to get them? I. The case of CA Late 1800s- growers relied on Chinese and (to some extent) Indian labor. Growing nativism (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882)- li ...

1. Chicano Studies 168
Lecture 2
Dr. Raúl Moreno Campos
UCSB
Agenda
Mexican Communities in the U.S. Southwest at the Turn of the
20th Century
Immigration to the U.S.: Then and Now
The History of Illegality, the Racialization of Mexican Labor,
and the “Revolving Door” of U.S. Immigration Law and
Mexicanos
I.
By the dawn of the 20th century, the once sovereign, and often
wealthy, Mexican families and communities of the former
Northern Mexican territories had been largely dispossessed,
brought under U.S. rule, and placed within the lowest rungs of
its racial regimes.
One central dimension of this change, therefore, was the
marginal status that Mexicanos had come to occupy in the U.S.,
and the manner in which, despite being native to these lands,
they ultimately became thought of as “foreigners” and “illegal
aliens”, to be looked upon with suspicion and subject to various
forms of state-sponsored violence.
By the middle of the 20th century, Mexican social segregation
and political marginality, and the use of Mexicanos as
disposable labor, was firmly entrenched and widespread-
indeed, these conditions became some of the central issues of

2. the Chicano Movement in the 1960s.
I.
How did Mexican communities come to be thought of as
“foreign”, and what was the historical process by which
Mexicanos came to be thought of as “iconic illegal aliens”?
In particular, how did Mexicans become the primary target of
U.S. border patrol after its formation in 1924?
In turn, how did this racialized and regionalized method of
border enforcement shape race in the U.S.?
I.
Throughout the Southwest, the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo were not kept- in particular guarantees of rights of
citizenship and protection of property for Mexicans
Ex. California Land Act of 1851- flagrant violation of Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Led to exhausting and expensive legal battles (land rich, cash
poor)
I.
As Lytle Hernandez (2010) points out, a variety of techniques
were used to acquire land rights from Mexican landholders
Violence, genocide reservation system- used against indigenous
populations by Spaniards (1st conquest)- pg. 22
Fraud, debt payment (legal battles), marriage- used for
Mexicans (Ibid.)
The decline in wealth for wealthy Mexicans, led to a decline in
political clout, and consequently a marked decline in social

3. status.
Ex of Ventura county- by 1900, 80% of Mexicans were at the
bottom of social strata (Cf. Almaguer)
I.
Dramatic shift to agro-industrialist model
1902- Newlands Reclamation Act in the West- funding of
irrigation projects made large scale farming possible.
1920- West largest and most profitable agricultural producer in
the nation
31 million acres of crops valued at $ 1.7 billion in California
and Texas alone.
This rapid expansion depended on a cheap farm hands- where to
get them?
I.
The case of CA
Late 1800s- growers relied on Chinese and (to some extent)
Indian labor.
Growing nativism (Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882)- limited
availability of workers.
Resistance to Black migrant workers
Japanese 1891-1900- resistance in various CA cities,
particularly SF.
Gentleman’s agreement (1907)- curtailment of Japanese
immigration
Spanish American War (1898)- Filipinos and migration (ended
in 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act)

4. I.
The case of CA
Growers desired temporary, cheap, and marginalized workers
that would come and go with the harvests.
As Lytle Hernandez points out: “It was within this context that
California agribusinessmen developed a dependence upon
Mexican laborers…”
By the mid 1920s, 80-95 % of 80,000 migrant farm workers in
CA were Mexican
I.
Racialized ideas of Mexicans as “docile”, quiet, and diligent.
Similar reliance in Texas (by 1920s, local farmers estimated
that 98% of farm workers in South Texas were Mexicans).
Agrobusinessmen sent labor contractors to Mexico in early
1900s to encourage Mexicans to cross into the U.S.
Similar strategy would be later used in the Bracero Program
(1942-1964).
Between 1900-1910- over .5 million border crossings
Porfiriato (1876-1911), and then Mexican Revolution (1910-
1920)- contributed to migration
I.
By 1920, more than 1 million border crossings by Mexican
nationals.
U.S. Congress launches a new era of migration control laws in
the U.S.
In is in this context that the tightening of immigration laws, the
creation of Border Patrol, and the concept of “illegality” are
born.
But first, we turn to a history of immigration to the U.S.

5. II. Immigration to the U.S.
While immigration to the U.S. today is often racialized and
framed by the discourse of criminality, the process of
immigration is a long-standing and defining feature of U.S.
society and history.
Four main epochs and patterns of immigration in the U.S.
1) 17th to late 18th century (ca. 1600 to 1790s) European
colonization
2) 17th to early 19th century (ca. 1620-1808) transatlantic slave
trade
3) 19th century to early 20th century (ca. 1830s to 1920)
European and Chinese immigration
4) Post 1960-Present (Latin America, SE Asia)
II. Immigration to the U.S.
European immigration to U.S. in 19th to early 20th century
driven by a variety of different factors
Famine, war, job scarcity, persecution, economic opportunity
1850-1930: 5 million Germans (1880s)
1840s- 1920s: 4.5 million Irish
1850-1880s over 350,000 Chinese (mostly concentrated in CA,
Gold Rush)
1880- 1920s: 25 million immigrants (“Great Flood”) from
Eastern and Southern Europe

6. II. Immigration to the U.S.
The growth of political machines, as well as manufacturing
business interests in the expanding industrial centers of the East
Coast- and after the 1910s, the Midwest- found in these newly
European arrived immigrants an malleable electorate and ideal
(tractable) labor pool.
Such a “warm welcome” by political machines and the business
sector was not shared by the interests of American labor.
For “white Americans”, these millions upon millions of
immigrants represented a threat to the protection of their status
and wages.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
Immigration led to multiple anti-immigration laws, the first in
the history of the U.S.
But it is important to understand that the concepts of race and
citizenship have been historically conflated in the U.S.
1790 Nationality Act:
First statue in the U.S. to codify immigration Law, restricted
naturalization out “any alien, being a free white person”
(implied that black folk, women, Asian, and any other
immigrants deemed “non-white” could not become U.S.
citizens.
Racial requirement for citizenship remained firmly in placed
until at least the passage of the 14th amendment.
Even Native Americans remained excluded until Indian

7. Citizenship Act of 1924
It was not until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
that all racial and gender discrimination in naturalization were
explicitly prohibited by federal law.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
By the 1920s, multiple quotes restricting European immigration
were instituted in U.S. immigration law.
Sound familiar?
Indeed, David Roediger’s work demonstrates, evidence from
laws, court cases, formal racial ideology, social conventions,
and popular culture in the late 19th and early 20th century, that
these European immigrants were placed “above” Black folk, but
“below” White folks in the racial hierarchy.

8. II. Immigration to the U.S.
Chinese Exclusion Act 1882
Emergency Quota Act of 1921- 3% set the “National Origins
Formula”
Immigration Act 1924-
banned immigration from Asia and restricted immigration to an
annual quota 2% of foreign born persons of each nationality
residing in the U.S. according to the 1910 census.
By 1927, restricted immigration from all countries to 150,000
Explicitly included provisions barring immigrants who by virtue
of race could not become naturalized U.S. citizens (aimed
specially at Japanese, SE Asians, etc- in effect expanded
Chinese Exclusion Act.)
Labor Appropriations Act of 1924-Border patrol established
Emergence of the concept of “illegality”
II. Immigration to the U.S.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
Governs immigration and naturalization
Removed racial distinctions by abolishing the “alien ineligible
citizen” category from US law
Set up “preference system”
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Cellers Act)
Repealed formulas of 1921 and 1924 Acts
Created the preference system that we are familiar with today
(relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, as well as
professionals and other individual with specialized skills)
However, at the same time it set up for the first time in U.S.

9. history quotas for immigrants from the Western Hemisphere.
In particular, these changes would affect Latino migrants.
II. Immigration to the U.S.
Why?
While the 1964 Act made it possible for increased “legal”
immigration from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, it brought
Latino immigration under numerical limits for the first time.
Ex. Set a quota of 20,000 annual for Mexico, although
permanent residents seekers from Mexico were at 50,000
annually through the 1950s.
Termination of bracero program (1942-1964), despite the
continued reliance on Mexican labor.
Whole groups of migrants from Mexico and Latin America,
whose entrance would have been legal prior to 1965, now
suddenly became “illegal”
II. Immigration to the U.S.
This would only intensify given what was to come in the 1970s
and 1980s.
Why?
Two principal reasons:
1) U.S. direct and indirect military and political interventions in
Latin American countries at the onset of the Cold War, and
intensifying during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
2) U.S. Economic policies, particularly neoliberal free trade
agreements, beginning in the Reagan period.
To these we turn to next…

10. III.
By 1900, given the growth in nativist sentiment in U.S.
Congress, and consequent restrictions in traditional labor pools
utilized in agro-production, Mexicans became the primary
source of farm labor in the U.S. Southwest.
80-95%+ of farm labor from CA to TX comprised by Mexicans
1910- 500,000 inspected entries
1920- 1 million inspected entries
Mexican government and intellectuals (ex. Manuel Gamio)
favored migration-economic, political, and cultural imperatives
1920s- dawn of era of immigration control
Mexican population in U.S. Southwest in the thousands between
1850-1900. By 1930, 1.5 million Mexicans living north of U.S.
Mexico border (10% of Mexican population)
III.
1921 and 1924- Quotas
1924 Labor Appropriations- birth of Border Patrol
U.S. Congress had adopted a limited “whites only” policy-
National Origins Act (banned all Asians, northern and western
Europe, 965 reserved for Europeans)
Southwestern employers fiercely objected- depended on
Mexican workers.
Did not want permanent settlement, however. Mexican workers

11. thought of as “Birds of passage “
Notion that Mexicans are impermanent
III.
But by late 1920s, many had bought homes, started families,
churches, newspapers, etc.- raising a new generation of
Chicanos
Immigration enforcement buttressed ideologically by the
concept of “criminality”- racialization of Mexicans, regardless
of immigration status, as “illegal”- suspect non-citizens.
Criminalization of Mexicans long standing history dating to
Anglo-settlement
III.

12. III.
1830s-1870s- Mexican resistance to Anglo settlement and
violence led to the rise of the “Mexican banditry” discourse.
Hunting down of Mexicans by authorities (e.g. local sheriffs),
mobs/posses, gangs, Texas Rangers, and U.S. Army
Ex. Joaquin Murrieta
The “social bandit” emerged both within the context and as a
response
Lynching common-place: 1848-1928, 547 recorded cases, but
perhaps many more.
Ex. Juana (Josefa) Segovia- 1851, Downieville, CA
III.
From “bandido” to “illegal”: The politics of migration control
that emerged in the 1920s created a new category of criminality
for Mexicans- that of the “illegal alien”
Immigrant detention- new form of human caging created amidst
the anti-Chinese hysteria of the 1880s-1890s- obscure but
indisputable white supremacist practice
1896 first migrant detention center – also the year of the Plessy
v. Ferguson (The Supreme Court that Gave you Jim Crow, court
that gave you immigrant detention)
Today, immigrant detention is the most thriving sector of the
carceral landscape in the U.S.)

13. III.
Example: Overview of incarceration in CA (ca. 1850s-1950s)
1850s-1880- Native Americans (ex. Garbielino nation)
1880-1900- poor white migrants who lived in homosocial
communities nearly 100% of prison population in CA
1900-1910 Mexican rebels in exile in U.S.- 1000s of “malos
Mejicanos” arrested across the U.S. Mexico borderland-
Mexican government in collaboration with U.S. authorities,
including LAPD s( 1907Ricardo Flores Magon- Mexican
intellectual and organizer- seminal intellectual for the Mexican
revolution)
1929-1950s- Mexicanos
1960s- present Black and Brown
III.
Arch of conquest and settler colonialism (extraction,
exploitation, but primarily land- new, permanent, reproductive,
and racially exclusive society- homogenization- basic thrust of
social relations and institutional practices
Incarceration since the early days of U.S. occupation:
Criminalizing-caging- Purging , removing, containing, erasing,
disappearing- and otherwise containing indigenous peoples and
marginalized populations
So not just profiteering and labor control- but elimination.
III.
Settler campaigns to remove Mexicans from the U.S. led to their

14. permanent caging
As Mexican population surge, so too did the politics of
incarceration tied to immigration control.
Immigration Act of March 4, 1929
Senator Coleman Livingston Blease
Suggested criminalizing entry.
“Unlawfully entering the U.S. after deportation made a federal
felony, punishable by $1000 fine and/or two years in prison
Publicly championed lynchings
Notion of control- crime designed to impact Mexicans in
particular
III.
Escalating conflict between nativists in U.S. Congress and agro-
businessmen who demanded unfettered access to Mexican labor
1 million lawful entry in 1920.
Many unlawful entrees (kerosene baths, ports of entry far
apart)- cross without permission
Rapid criminalization- by the end of the 1930s, 44,000
prosecutions- 85-99% Mexicans
In 1930- federal penal system small (only three federal prisons)-
expansion of the penal system.
Creation of new prisons La Tuna- full within 3 months
LA County filled to capacity by mid 1930s

15. La Tuna, est. 1932
La Tuna, Tucson Az.
Terminal Island, est. 1938 (photo ca. 1955)
III.
From El Paso to LA, federal prison system (and prisons in
general) expanded in the 1930s as a result of politics of
immigration control designed primarily to cage Mexicans
Forced removals in 1930s- between 600,000- I million
Mexicanos taken into Mexico (over 60% U.S. citizens)
Nativist sentiment directed against Mexicans during Great
Depression (economic contraction- large labor pool)
III.
WWII- labor shortage due to war effort (expansion of economic
production; war effort – shortage in labor supply)

16. Solution
: Bracero Program (1942-1964): joint program U.S. Department
o Labor, State Department, INS
Bracero- from Sp. brazos (arms)
5 million contracts in 24 states- largest “guest-worker” program
in U.S. history
1948-1964: 200,000 braceros admitted annually
III.
Favored
Utilized by growers to undercut the organizing efforts of farm
workers
Maintenance of low wages.
III.
In WWII, used as prisons for Japanese-Americans who refused
to go to interment camps- recycling of carceral institutions

17. Authorized- and presumably controllable pathways-
1954 Operation Wetback- Anti-Mexican sentiment and result of
nativist resentment at rampant corruption of growers who
bypassed immigration bureaucracy and preferred to hire
undocumented workers; Mexican American resentment at
migrant laborers,
Official Border Patrol statistics as high as over 1 million
removals (figure probably closer to 300,000 Cf. Lyttle
Hernandez, 173)- led to the expansion of INS and immigration
control (surge in number of hires, etc.)
III.
“Revolving Door” system of immigration and the concept of
illegality.
Operation Wetback was about establishing the Border Patrol’s
and INS power over immigration control.
Control and consent
Admit controllable labor pool during economic expansion and
labor supply, expell labor pool during economic downturns and
surplus labor supply.
Illegality utilized as a method of control

18. Chicano Studies 168
Dr. Raúl Moreno Campos
UCSB

19. Student Learning Objectives (Weeks 1-2)
Readings Weeks 1: Almaguer (2018)
Readings Week 2: Ruiz (2009), introduction and chapter one.
I. Overview and central thematic preoccupations of Chicana/o
History.
Understanding of what history is (inquiry)
Understanding of the interplay between structure and agency in
the shaping of historical processes.
Understanding of the term “Chicana/o”, and the distinction to
“Hispanic” and Latina/o”
Central structural forces that have shaped Chicana/o history
Central themes in Chicana/o history
Student Learning Objectives (Weeks 1-2)
II. The Mexican American War of 1846-1848
Background of the Spanish Empire and the “first colonization”
Understand the centrality of racial difference to Spanish
colonial administration and society
Understand the concepts of limpieza de sangre, castas, and
mestizaje in the context of colonial Mexico
Background of U.S. imperialist expansion and the economic,
political, and ideological reasons behind the war of 1846-1848

20. with Mexico.
The “second colonization” and the origins of Chicano peoples.
Understand the concepts of race and racialization.
Student Learning Objectives (Weeks 1-2)
IIIII. The Legacies of the War
Economic, political, and social marginalization
The creation of early Chicana/o communities
Agenda
Chicano Studies and Chicano History: Central Thematic
Preoccupations
Racial Fault Lines: Conquest, Colonization, and the making of
Chicanos in the U.S. Southwest
The Legacies of 1848
I.

21. Basic Framing
History (Gr. historia “ a learning or knowing by inquiry”-
generally entailed an account of one’s inquiries, record,
narrative. Derived from historein “inquiry” )
Sense of narrative record and relation of past events.
Entails
1) Process of examination into past events and the narrative of a
record
“The archive”- vast array of documents, artifacts, oral
narratives, etc. that comprise a record
2) Understanding of change and continuity over time
I.
3) Structure and Agency
“[Human beings] make their own history, but they do not make
it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances
chosen by themselves, but under circumstances existing already,
given and transmitted form the past.” – Karl Marx
Agency- volition and the power to think and act independently
and freely in order to shape experience and life history
Structure- set of existing complex of social relations, forces,
and institutions that synergistically shape (or limit, constraint)
thought, behavior, choices, and overall life histories of people

22. I.
The central task of narration, as storytelling, is a principal
component of how we make sense of the world around us.
Implies relations of power and interests involved in the creation
of disciplines as ordered bodies of knowledge
Eminently political
At the outset, therefore, we must ask: if we are concerned with
Chicano history, what then is the task at hand?
1) Who are the Chicana/o peoples?- the definition of a
collectivity is a historical process in itself, and it is not self-
evident.
2) What forces have shaped the individual and collective life
trajectories and everyday lives of Chicana/os, and what is the
change and continuity in these processes?
3) Given the above, what are the central thematic
preoccupations of Chicana/o history, and what is their political
praxis, in particular in reclaiming and reframing the histories
that have been erased by the colonial enterprise?
I.
A word about words…
1) Who are Chicana/os?
Chicana/o is, preeminently, a nation (group of people) and a

23. political identity defined by:
A) The self-awareness of Chicanos people’s rich Pre-Columbian
history/culture, and a shared history of struggle against
European and U.S. colonialism.
Entailed exploitation, impoverishment, and marginality.
B) An emancipatory praxis for the self-determination of the
native peoples of the Americas, particularly Mexican-
descendant populations in the U.S. Southwest.
Chicana/os- and by extension Mexican and Mexican-descendant
populations, are native to the U.S. Southwest.
II.
Mesoamerica
Trade networks (Pueblo people imported macaws and other
precious items from Central America; Mexica Empire and CA)
Linguistic evidence: Uteo-Aztecan family
New political emancipatory project recognizing historical and
political commonalities

24. I.
“Chicanismo draws its faith and strength from two main
sources: from the just struggle of our people, and from an
objective analysis of our community’s strategic needs. We
recognize that without the strategic use of education, and
education that places value on what we value, we will not
realize our destiny…For these reasons, Chicano studies
represent the total conceptualization of the Chicano
community’s aspirations that involve higher education.”
-Plan de Santa Barbara (Drafted here at UCSB in 1969;
blueprint for the development of Chicano Studies across the
nation)
I.
“At this moment, we do not come to work for the university, but
to demand that the university work for our people” – Jose
Vasconcelos
In addition, Chicanismo has a broad conception of the Chicano
nation, the bronze People of the Sun. As El Plan de Aztlán
remarks:

25. “We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are
justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows,
and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds,
water the fields, and gather the crops, not to the foreign
Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers in the
bronze continent.” Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, 1969, Denver,
Colorado
I.
How does this contrast with other terms used to define
collectivities of Latin American descent within the U.S.?
Hispanic (Lt. hispania – Roman name for the Iberian peninsula):
Term derived during the Nixon administration that was intended
to homogenize Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S.
Hegemonic- previous use “Spanish origin”
Problematic- homogenizing, imposed by U.S. Gov and
semantically tied to Spain
I.
Latina/o: derived from the French l’Amerique Latine, coined
from the 18th to 19th centuries, particularly reign of Napoleon
III, to denote the peoples of the Americas united by a common

26. use of romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese).
French political project of cultural contestation vis-à-vis British
Empire
Regions of the former Spanish colonial world adopted the name
as part of national identity in 19th and 20th centuries an
cultural distancing from Spain.
Latina/o is now used to define populations of Latin American
descent in the U.S. (includes Mexicanos)
All these terms have political implications
I.
2) What forces have shaped the individual and collective
everyday lives and historical trajectories of Chicanos?
While there is a wide array of forces and elements that have
shaped the dimensions of Chicana/o history, there a few our that
are particularly relevant
A) The “double conquest” and colonization
As noted Political Theorist Ray Rocco (2014) remarks “ the
reality of conquest and colonization defined not only the
political relations between Mexicans and the U.S. state
apparatus, but also the pattern of social relations between
Mexicans and the newly arrived but expanding population of
Anglos, particularly after the Mexican-American War of 1848.”
(Rocco 2014, 74).

27. I.
We cannot understand the quotidian reality of Chicanos without
understanding these processes and their legacies
Indeed, as noted Chicana law Professor and critical race scholar
Laura Gomez has pointed out, the region and peoples that now
comprise the U.S. Southwest underwent two colonizations:
Spain (e. 1500s-1821)
U.S. (1848- Present)
I.
B) “Manifest Destiny” and political and economic imperatives
of U.S. westward expansion
Heavily driven by the expansion of slave plantation economy
Ideologically buttressed by the vision of the U.S. as a “white
nation” in a “civilizational mission”
(Ex. Immigration and Naturalization Act 1790- restricted
citizenship to “free white persons”, effectively baring Native
Americans, Black folk (despite some states laws granting
suffrage to free Black folk), and later Asians)
Basis for the imposition of white supremacy on non-white
populations

28. I.
White supremacy: not just merely “color prejudice”, but the
unnamed political system that has made the modern world what
it is today (Charles Mills).
“…A social and political order of domination and subordination
that systematically generates and upholds inequalities of wealth,
power, and prestige by privileging racialized whiteness over and
above all categories of racial identity.” Nicholas De Genova,
2007
I.
C) US Capitalist Development and attendant regimes of labor
and population controls
Development of U.S. productive forces- agriculture and industry
Relegation of Mexicanos to menial and expendable labor force
Development of “immigration enforcement” and citizenship
regimes to manage racialzied labor markets
Creation of “guest worker” programs to supply cheap labor
since the early 20th century
Ex. Bracero Program (1942-1964)
“Revolving-door” nature of U.S. immigration law

29. I.
D) US racial regimes
Jim Crow segregation
Marginalization and exclusion
Definitions of belonging as normative basis for all rights claims
and politics
I.
3) Central thematic preoccupations Chicana/o Studies and
Chicana/o History:
Mesoamerican Prehispanic origins and civilizations
European colonialism (legacies of Spanish conquest- colonial
subjects and post-colonial societies)
Mestizaje (hybridity, liminality, nepantla; but also mestizo
nationalism and indigenismo)
U.S. Colonialism and Imperialism

30. I.
Central thematic preoccupations Chicana/o Studies and
Chicana/o History:
Racialization, otherness, and marginality
Popular political organization and resistance (e.g. El
Movimiento and CA popular organizations).
Migration and transnationalism
II. Racial Fault Lines
Historical Antecedents: “The Empire on Which the Sun Never
Sets”
The territories that comprise the Southwestern U.S. were first
colonized by the Spaniards in the early 16th century.
Dawning in 1492, the Spanish Empire was the most powerful in
the globe by the mid 16th c., stretching from Madrid to Manila.
Perhaps the most egregious case of genocide in the history of
mankind (70 million+ indigenous people decimated by the
conquest; Ex. Aztec empire at time of conquest in 1521 approx.
5-6 million; by end of 16th c. less than 1 million )
Indigenous population of the Americas had dropped by 80% at
the end of the 16th century

31. II. Racial Fault Lines
II. Racial Fault Lines
Spain/s early imperial ambitions driven by two primary
objectives: spices and specie
From 12th to 17th century, spices constituted the most
profitable and dynamic element of European trade
Why?
A) Culinary uses- delight, social fashion and prestige)
B) luxury commodity- Spices were expensive ex. In 15th
century England, it took nearly 5 days of a master carpenter’s
wage to buy a lb. of cloves, nearly 3 days to buy a lb. of pepper.
32
II. Racial Fault Lines
Specie (gold and silver)
Why? Desire for precious metals as money (precious metals
universal medium for payment in all commercial dealings in the

32. early modern period)
Ex. Spanish silver utilized as form of payment in the entire
Spanish colonial world, North American British colonies,
Western Europe, South Pacific and trade ports to China and Far
East.
Unfathomable wealth extracted from what is today Latin
America- between 1503 and 1660 alone, 185,000 kg. of gold
and 16,000,000 kg. of silver (3x greater than entire European
reserves; does not count contraband to China, the Philippines,
and Spain)
Todays dollars $8.3 billion in gold and $7.8 billion in silver
33
II. Racial Fault Lines
34
II. Racial Fault Lines

33. However, land and human labor became just as important- and
perhaps even more profitable.
Production of a whole range of commodities, food, and raw
materials that sustained Europe and led to European population
growth and expansion.
Result: establishment of forced and tributary systems of labor
(Ex. Economienda system, hacienda system, racial slavery)
Required a logic for their justification: Civilizational discourse
steeped in religion
35
II. Racial Fault Lines
Indeed, as the conquest progressed, Christianization under the
Catholic faith became the main justification for empire.
Tied to the legacies of Spanish unification under Fernando II de
Aragón and Isabel I de Castilla.
Reconquista and expulsion of the “Moors” and Jews from Spain
(1492)
Limpieza de Sangre and beginning of modern period: racial
state.

34. 36
II. Racial Fault Lines
Limpieza de sangre (Portuguese: Limpeza de Sangue) “purity of
blood”: was a concept developed in early modern Spain and
Portugal (15th c.) that was closely linked to the development of
ideologies of national unification after the reconquista. These
ideologies centered not only on ideas about cultural authenticity
(religion and customs) but also ancestral lineage as a way to
authenticate members of these nascent nation-states and write
their historical narrative and myth of founding
Reconquista and the expulsion/conversion of Jews and Muslims
from the Iberian peninsula.
Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions focused not only on
religious practice but also on lineage, “purity of blood”
Lineage used to determine ability to become part of various
powerful civil and political organizations (public and
ecclesiastical office)
Concerned with religious matters, but also saturated by
discourses of virtue and chastity.

35. 37
II. Racial Fault Lines
The central logic behind limpieza de sangre is reflected in the
development of the sistema de castas in the Spnaish colonies
during the 16th century
Management of the colonies’ social order on the basis of
categories of descent.
How and why did a concept dealing manifestly with religion
shape racial thinking in the Americas?
Not solely an Iberian preoccupation: interrelated nature of
discourses of purity of blood in Iberia with racial discourses in
the American colonies
Mediated by religion and linked to ideas of lineage, legitimate
birth, and honor
Legacies shaped Latin America’s notions of race, regional and
national identities, and a long-standing cultural preoccupation
and obsession with lineage/bloodlines.
See: Martínez, María E. 2008. Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza
de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.

36. 38
II. Racial Fault Lines
Historically, the sistema de castas was developed as a way to
account for the colonies’ racial diversity.
Used to manage labor systems and structure the hierarchies of
the Spanish colonial world.
It was primarily a porous system of racial classification based
on a person’s proportion of Spanish blood.
Three important components: Christian bloodlines, Spanish
ancestry, skin color
Secularization and dynamic interaction with class
Spain posited as having a single caste (race): Homogeneity
(sameness) constructed as a defining feature of colonial centers.
Heterogeneity (diversity) externalized as a characteristic of the
colonies. Race mixture, and by extension racial “Otherness”,
posited as a defining feature of the colonial condition.
39
II. Racial Fault Lines
Categories used in baptismal registries

37. Castas paintings were didactic/instructive documents
Ambiguities and paradoxes
Processes of resistance and negotiation beyond the colonial
system’s imposed racial categorization.
Some categories based on skin color are still used today in state
documents, even if they are no longer used in official census
records (Ex. Salvadoran birth certificates used skin color
despite the fact that racial/color categories no longer used in
national censuses).
40
II. Racial Fault Lines
41
II. Racial Fault Lines

38. 42
II. Racial Fault Lines
43
II. Racial Fault Lines
44
II. Racial Fault Lines
45

39. II. Racial Fault Lines
46
II. Racial Fault Lines
47
II. Racial Fault Lines
The social, economic, and political legacies of this conquest had
a profound effect in the future development of these territories.
Change and continuity in social relations, economic production,
and organization of former colonial societies.
The Spanish empire crumbled in the first decades of the 19th
century.
By 1821, the colonies in the Americas had declared their
independence, led in particular by powerful criollos, mestizos,
and in some cases mulatos.
For instance, Vicente Guerrero, a leading General during

40. Mexico’s War for Independence, and the first Black president of
the Mexican Republic. You can see his picture in the next slide.
48
II. Racial Fault Lines
49
II. Racial Fault Lines
By the eve of Mexican independence (1821), the Spanish crown
had developed a complex society in the northern frontier of New
Spain
Premised on a system of missions, pueblos, and haciendas.
These territories, part of the areas known as Alta Cali fornia,
Nuevo Mexico, and Texas would now grapple with a new
colonization- from the U.S.

41. 50
II. Racial Fault Lines
The War of 1848 and colonization of the southwest
Aggressive U.S. territorial expansion between 1800-1819; ex.
Louisiana Purchase 1803; 1819 aggression in Florida and
“annexation”
1819- Adams-Onis Treaty- after U.S. invasion, Spain cedes
Florida, in exchange U.S. renounced any claim to Texas.
However, Euro-American settlers continued to attempt to
colonize Texas since the 1810s.
51
II. Racial Fault Lines
Motives for War of 1848
1) Colonization of new lands ripe for the expansion of
plantation slavery (land and labor).

42. 2) Profiteering by a few at the expense of others who were
violated in the process (denied their lands, language, culture-
various forms of cultural expression and modes became no
longer acceptable and illegitimate)
3)Economic refuge from panic of 1819- new economic
opportunities opened by westward expansion.
Violence, appropriation, expropriation
52
II. Racial Fault Lines
The Spanish crown gave Moses Austin permission to settle in
Texas in 1819.
After independence in 1821, the Mexican government gave his
son Stephen Austin permission to settle.

43. Led to the settlement of over 20,000 colonists (who did not
have permission to cross into Mexico), many of whom were
fleeing from the Great Depression of 1819.
Brought 2,000 slaves, and did not intend to follow Mexican
laws that interfered with their property rights (Mexico had
outlawed slavery in 1829)
Dawn of populism and Jacksonian era.
54
II. Racial Fault Lines
Did not follow Mexican law over the abolition of slavery,
despite being permitted to stay.
Did not honor agreement to covert to Catholicism.
Jackson and his populist rhetoric of westward expansion
exacerbated tensions.
Mexico prevented further Euro-American immigration after
1830.
By 1835, the native Mexican population of Texas was 5,000,
compared to nearly 30,000 Euro-American colonists.
Austin declared war and independence for the Republic of

44. Texas
Many in the U.S. saw the war as a despicable affair promoted by
slaveholders and land speculators.
55
II. Racial Fault Lines
1835-36- hostilities erupt as Mexican troops march to Texas to
defend Mexican territory against the aggressions of S. Austin,
who had declared war.
Mexican troops triumph, but battles became a rallying cry for
U.S. intervention in favor for the colonists.
1845- Mexico and U.S. plunged into war over disputed
territories.
U.S. pop 17 million = 3 million slaves in 1840s- compared to
Mexico’s 7 million total pop.- unbalanced war.

45. 56
II. Racial Fault Lines
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (came into force July 4, 1848).
Article IX : made for the provision of full rights of citizenship
for native Mexicans remaining in the conquered territories;
protection of property rights, language and cultural rights.
Eventually not honored (by the 1870s)
Imposition of a new racial order, that had to be adopted to the
legacies of the old Spanish colonial order
57
II. Racial Fault Lines
Displacement of once powerful Mexicanos (Californios), who
were initially given honorary white status, and later placed in a
subordinate position.
Mexicans social displacement and subsequent subordinate racial
status- reinforced by migrations of the late 19th and early 20th
century.
Contestation of Mexican’s meaningful and full access to rights
of citizenship continues to this day- struggle over belonging

46. 58
II. Racial Fault Lines
Why was 1848 important?
As almaguer states: “The conquest of Western America through
the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848 forged a new pattern of
racialized relationships between conquerors, conquered, and the
numerous immigrants that settled in the newly acquired
territory” (1)
Aside from the economic imperatives, colonial enterprise
ideologically driven by:
1) White Supremacy (Cf. De Genova definition earlier in the
lectures)
2) Manifest Destiny: widely held 19th century belief that it was
the providential (God defined) destiny of the U.S. and Anglo-
Americans to colonize North America from coast to coast.
3) White Man’s Burden: A hemispheric (continental) expansion
of the ideology of Manifest Destiny used to justify imperial
conquest as a “civilizational” mission to be carried out by the
U.S.
(Cf. Almaguer, pg. 13)

47. 59
II. Racial Fault Lines
Broadly, three main groups (in the case of CA and the former
Northwestern Mexican territory):
Native American nations indigenous to these territories.
Native Mexicanos (who were descendants of both Spaniards-
who initially conquered the Southwest in the early 1500s
through the 1700s- and indigenous groups).
Immigrants (Chinese, Japanese, Black folk)
60
II. Racial Fault Lines
What is racialization? How is it different from race?
Race: initially developed as a concept for the purposes of
human classification in the context of European colonial
expansion from the 17th to the 18th centuries, and was based on
alleged physical characteristics/traits of different groups of
mankind. Race, however, does not have any basis on biology.
Rather, is a preeminently ideological construct which indicates

48. a socially conferred status defined by prevailing power relations
in a specific historical and social context. (Cf. Almaguer, pg. 9)
61
II. Racial Fault Lines
Racialization: an historically specific, ideological process that
involves the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially
unclassified relationship, social practice, or group (Cf.
Almaguer 3)
“[Racialization] constitutes a configuration of social, culture,
and political processes by which specific perceived visible
differences are imbued with racial significance and meaning
than then are incorporated in a racial hierarchy both within the
macro-level of economic, state, and cultural institutional
structures, and within…[everyday] experience and relations that
take place…in civil society” (Rocco 2014, 71).
62

49. II. Racial Fault Lines
Racialization thus involves:
Categorization- creation of new category or relationship based
on alleged or perceived physical (even cultural) characteristics.
Creation of social/political meaning for new
category/relationship
Culture constitutive of this process- not merely reflexive (think
of how popular culture shapes our knowledge of race, class,
gender, sexuality- in sum, the politics of difference)
Extension of that meaning to the category, thus creating
meaningful patterns in social relationships and politics.
63
II. Racial Fault Lines
Why was 1848 important? (continued)
By the end of the 19th century/early 20th century, the ultimate
racialization of Mexicanos as “non-white,” racially inferior, and
thus unfit for formal political and social inclusion (citizenship)
into the U.S., and their resultant marginalization and relegation
to the status of menial laborers is one of the primary legacies of
1848.
Racialization of Mexicanos aa “mongrel race” and as perpetual

50. foreigners-
Tied to exigencies of colonizer’s material interests and
ideology.
Contestation (struggle) for emancipation, self-determination,
and recognition (inclusion) rages to this day.
64
II. Racial Fault Lines
Aftermath of 1848- Southwest (Centers CA, AZ, TX, NM)
Dynamic interplay between economic, political, and social
forces.
1) Economic (material) interests shaped:
Central imperatives for conquest
Social-property relations afterward- landed/wealthy agro-
industrial and commercial elite vs. dispossessed wage earners
2) Political forces (domination- force)
Legislatures, courts, coercive apparatuses function to create the
hierarchies necessary for social control
Racialization process a key feature of domination

51. 65
II. Racial Fault Lines
Social/Cultural forces (creation of “common sense” and
“consent”)
Socialization according to the imposition of a new social order,
world view, value system, etc. (think of what was acceptable to
learn and what not to learn, how to talk, what language to use,
how to dress, how to worship, etc)
Intellectual justification
Cultural buttressing- prevailing values, norms, etc…(important
role that culture plays in the racialization process)
Naturalization of imposed order and hierarchies
66

52. II. Racial Fault Lines
Thus, racialized categories and identities served to protect
economic interests of new Anglo elite and established social
order.
But it is not to say that race “mapped” neatly onto class.
Rather, as Almaguer states there was an “Affinity between
material interests of whites at different class levels and racial
ideologies that simultaneously structured the new Anglo-
dominated society in California.” (3)
Simultaneous interaction of structural (material factors) and
ideology that shaped the new hierarchies and social order of
CA.
67
II. Racial Fault Lines
Privileged social status of conquerors (Euro-Americans/whites)
Result of struggles with Mexicans, Native Americans, others
over:
1) Land ownership
2) Labor-market positions
Struggles over these two things- direct consequence to the
development of CA white-supremacist discourses.

53. 68
II. Racial Fault Lines
Comparative racialization and class: the case of the Mexican
rancheros in CA.
Mexicans- initially granted white status under U.S. regime as a
consequence of previous Spanish colonization (Christianity,
social status and skin color of elite- sistema de castas)
Particularly true of the rachero landed elite
Ranchero gentry given land grants by the Spanish crown (and
later Mexican governments) in Alta California (now CA)
beginning roughly in the late 18th century to 1821, Mexican
period- 1821-1846.
About 588 grants totaling over 8.85 million acres of land during
this period
69

54. II. Racial Fault Lines
Devoted to cattle raising, not agro production.
Rancheros came from relatively humble origins- Spanish
soldiers or administrative officials- “new money”- flaunted their
wealth as a reminder of their social status. (Cf. Almaguer,
chapter 2, esp. pgs. 52-53)
Seen as unproductive, thriftless spend drifts by protestant Euro-
American colonizers in the mid 19th century.
After 1848- squatting on Mexican ranchos by Euro-American
colonizers led to multiple tensions and court battles over land
claims
Land claims frequently rejected by CA courts under U.S. rule-
rancheros lost their lands, mainly in costly legal battles.
70
II. Racial Fault Lines
However, throughout the southwest another strategy of
cementing U.S. colonial rule was employed- Euro-American
settlers marrying into the powerful Mexican families (similar
strategy employed during Spanish colonial period)
Led to cementing of influence, access to land and wealth from
old rancheros.

55. By the 1870s to late 1890s- most rancheros had lost their lands.
White status declined, particularly with Mexican immigration in
the late 19th century.
Even more so for working classes that depended on wage labor
Rancho system’s land use patterns still recognizable in CA,
lending their name to its main cities (along with the missions)
71
II. Racial Fault Lines
How did other groups fare?
Indians- considered fundamentally “savage” and “unchristian”-
decimated through a variety of policies- relegated to the bottom
of racial hierarchy.
Asians- seen as fundamentally non-white- used as laborers, later
banned (Chinese Exclusion Act)- seen as “half civilized”
Blacks- seen as “half civilized” but racially inferior (legacies of
racial slavery)
Long historical trajectory- economic and political advantage of
some groups over others as a result of the dynamic interplay

56. 72
II. Racial Fault Lines
Complicated “white-black binary” of U.S. race relations.
Case Study: Ventura County.
After 1848- military occupation and disposession
Only 12 of the original 20 land grants for racheros in Ventura
County upheld in CA courts 1950s-1970s.
Anglo settlers used legal intimidation to make Mexican elite
part with estates in the 1860s and 1870s (Thomas A. Scott-
former Assistant Secretary of War under A. Lincoln).
Acquired Rancho Ojai, Rancho Simi, Rancho Las Posas, and
several others- eventually owned 230,000 acres of best farmland
in Ventura County by the late 1870s.
Economic and political erosion of Rancheros in Ventura County
73
II. Racial Fault Lines
Growth of agro-industry
Citrus (Santa Paula) and sugar beets (Oxnard)
The development of agro-industry did not mean new
opportunities

57. Racial status played an important role in the economic
opportunities for Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Native
Americans, and Europeans in Ventura Co.
Upper class structure overrepresented by Europeans from 1860-
1900 (pattern continues to this day)- Anglo immigrants
monopolized farming, professional, low white-collar, and
skilled job strata (Almaguer 100)
As of the early 1870s forward, “the overwhelming majority of
Mexican, Native American, and Chinese men were employed as
“day laborers” and the lowest stratums of the unskilled working
classes.
74
II. Racial Fault Lines
By 1880, nearly 60% of the Mexicans in Ventura County held
unskilled jobs, another 10.9 % listed as farm laborers
“In sum, more than two thirds of Mexicans remained
concentrated at the bottom of the capitalist –dominated [and
racialized] class structure” (Almaguer 102)
This only increased by 1900: 47.6 % of Mexicans became farm
laborers, 29.7% unskilled laborers, 77.35 at the lowest strata of

58. the working classes by 1900.
In the meantime, white supremacy would only intensify- by the
1920sm Santa Paula, seat of citrus growing in Ventura Co. had
become one of the national hubs of the KKK.
75
II. Racial Fault Lines
76
III. Legacies
Economic
Loss of nearly 50% of Mexican territory
Loss of immense oil reserves eventually found in Texas and CA.
Loss of some of the most fertile and arable land on earth (CA).
Relegation of Native Americans and Native Mexicanos to the
lowest economic strata
Socio-political
Racialization of Mexicanos as perpetual foreigners- exclusion

59. from formal belonging
Political domination and marginalization
Relegation to menial farm hands and day laborers.
To the legacies of these processes, and the making of Chicanos,
we turn to next…
77
Thepublishergratefullyacknowledgesthegenerous
supportoftheHumanitiesEndowmentFundofthe
UniversityofCaliforniaPressFoundation.
Migra!

60. AMERICANCROSSROADS
EditedbyEarlLewis,GeorgeLipsitz,PeggyPascoe,GeorgeSánchez,
andDana
Takagi
Migra!
AHistoryoftheU.S.BorderPatrol
_____
KellyLytleHernández
UniversityofCaliforniaPress,oneofthemostdistinguisheduniversit
ypresses
intheUnitedStates,enricheslivesaroundtheworldbyadvancingscho
larshipin
thehumanities,socialsciences,andnaturalsciences.Itsactivitiesare
supported
bytheUCPressFoundationandbyphilanthropiccontributionsfromin

61. dividuals
andinstitutions.Formoreinformation,visitwww.ucpress.edu.
“SupermanEsIlegal,”byJorgeLerma,©Copyright1979byPeerInter
national
Corporation. International Copyright secured. Used by
permission. All rights
reserved.TranslationbyAlexandNinaHidalgo,inLarryR.Juchartz,
Elizabeth
A.Stolarek,andChristyRishoi,eds.,AmericanDreams (New York:
Pearson
Longman,2009),227–29.
Epigraph photo: “Superman” and Friends: A Mexican immigrant
awaits
deportation, circa 1953. U.S. Border Patrol (McAllen, Texas)
Official
Photograph,FileNo.48–
7.CourtesyoftheNationalBorderPatrolMuseum—El
Paso,Texas.
Aversionofchapter4appearedearlierandisreprintedwithpermission
ofThe
Regents of the University of California from Aztlán: A Journal
of Chicano

62. Studies 34 (Spring 2009), UCLA Chicano Studies Research
Center. Not for
furtherreproduction.Versionsofchapters6and8appearedearlier,co
pyrightby
the Western History Association. Reprinted by permission. The
article first
appearedas“TheCrimesandConsequencesofIllegalImmigration:A
Cross-
Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943–1954,”
Western Historical
Quarterly7(Winter2006):421–44.
UniversityofCaliforniaPress
BerkeleyandLosAngeles,California
UniversityofCaliforniaPress,Ltd.
London,England
©2010byTheRegentsoftheUniversityofCalifornia
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
http://www.ucpress.edu

63. Hernandez,KellyLytle.
Migra!:ahistoryoftheU.S.BorderPatrol/KellyLytleHernandez.
p.cm.—(Americancrossroads;29)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-520-25769-6(cloth:alk.paper)—ISBN978-0-520-
26641-4(pbk.:
alk.paper)
1.UnitedStates.ImmigrationBorderPatrol —History.2.Mexican-
AmericanBorderRegion—History.3.Illegalaliens—Mexican-
American
BorderRegion.4.UnitedStates—
Emigrationandimmigration.I.Title.
JV6483.H452010
363.28’50973—
dc222009039563
ManufacturedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
19181716151413121110
10987654321
This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post

64. consumer waste,
recycled,de-
inkedfiber.FSCrecycledcertifiedandprocessedchlorinefree.Itis
acidfree,Ecologocertified,andmanufacturedbyBioGasenergy.
Formymother
becauseyoutaughtmetowrite
Formyfather
becauseyouinspiremetotakeontheworld
Formybrother
becauseyouteachmethatchangeispossible
Formyhusband
becauseyouarebeautiful
Formychildren
becauseIloveyou

65. [Spoken]It’sabird!
It’saplane!
Noman,it’sawetback.
[Sung]Hecamefromthesky,butheisnotaplane.
HecameinhisspaceshipfromKrypton,
Andbythelooksofhim,he’snotAmerican.
He’ssomeonelikeme—undocumented.
Sothemigrantshouldnotwork
Becauseeventhoughithurts,Supermanisanillegal.
He’sajournalist,andIamtoo;
Hedidn’tserveinthearmy(whatabum!)
Heiswhite,hasblueeyesandiswell-formed;
I’mdark-skinned,chubby,andshort.
ButinmyhomelandIalreadymarched
WiththecoyoteIpaidwhenIcrossed.
Hedidn’tserveinthemilitary
Hedoesn’tpaytaxesandhewantstopassjudgment

66. Hedoesn’thavediamondsoralicensetofly.
I’llbethedoesn’tevenhaveasocialsecuritycard.
WeneedtokickSupermanoutofhere
Andifit’spossible,sendhimbacktoKrypton.
Whereistheemigrationauthority?
What’sthenews,Mr.Racism,inthenation?
ForallIknowtheydon’tfinehimforflying
Butonthecontrary,theydeclarehe’sSuperman.
JORGELERMA,“SUPERMANISANILLEGALALIEN”
CONTENTS
ListofIllustrations
Acknowledgments
MapoftheU.S.-MexicoBorderRegion
Introduction

67. PARTONE:FORMATION
1.TheEarlyYears
2.ASanctuaryofViolence
3.TheCalifornia-ArizonaBorderlands
4.Mexico’sLaborEmigrants,America’sIllegalImmigrants
PARTTWO:TRANSFORMATION
5.ANewBeginning
6.TheCorridorsofMigrationControl
7.Uprising:AFarmers’Rebellion
PARTTHREE:OPERATIONWETBACKANDBEYOND
8.TheTriumphsof’54
9.“TheDayoftheWetbackIsOver”
Epilogue

68. Notes
SelectedBibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES
U.S.BorderPatrolofficersneartheCalifornia-Mexicoborder,1926
BorderPatrolboatcirclestheS.S.VeracruzonleavingPortIsabel,Tex
as
Mexicandeporteeswaitinaholdingareaforapprehendedaliens
Mexicanguardssupervisedeportees,circa1952 –53
MexicansmugglersbeingquestionedbytheMexicanBorderPatrol
AboatliftconvoyarrivesinPortIsabel,Texas,1954

69. MexicanfarmworkertryingtojumpontoMexicansoilwhileevading
Mexican
borderguards
Mexicanfamiliesawaitingdeportation,circa1954
UndocumentedMexicanworkersboardingbusesfordeportation,195
4
TABLES
1.PrincipalactivitiesandaccomplishmentsoftheU.S.BorderPatrol,
1925–
1934
2.PrincipalactivitiesandaccomplishmentsoftheU.S.BorderPatrol,
1935–
1944
3. Immigrants deported, immigrants departing voluntarily, and
Mexican
immigrantsreturnedtoMexico,1925–1975
4.PrincipalactivitiesandaccomplishmentsoftheU.S.BorderPatrol,
1945–

70. 1954
5.PrincipalactivitiesandaccomplishmentsoftheU.S.BorderPatrol,
1955–
1964
6.PrincipalactivitiesandaccomplishmentsoftheU.S.BorderPatrol,
1965–
1974
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Itwasonlywiththelove,support,andgenerosityofacommunityofsch
olars,
activists,archivists,friends,andfamilythatIwasabletoconductthere
search
anddeveloptheideasattheheartofthisbook.Todomybesttothankthe
mall,I
muststartwiththisbook’soriginsintheyearsthatIspentvolunteeringi
nthe

71. migrantcampsofNorthernSanDiegoCounty.Iwasjustateenagerthen
,but
ReverendRobertoMartínezandOsvaldoVencorofLaCasadelosHer
manos
allowedmetoparticipateintheirworkwithundocumentedfamiliesan
dlaborers
livinginthecanyons.RepresentingLaCasa,Ididalittlebitofeverythi
ng.Year
afteryear,Roberto,Osvaldo,thestaffofLaCasa,andcampresidentscr
eated
spaceformetocontinuecontributinginwhateverwayIcould.Ithankth
emfor
theopportunitythattheyaffordedmetoparticipateinthelives,struggl
es,and
occasionaltriumphsthatwereoftenoverlookedastheStateofCaliforn
iaslid
towardthepassageofProposition187inNovemberof1994.
As I worked in the camps, I took courses from George Lipsitz at
the
UniversityofCalifornia–
SanDiego.Georgemademewanttobeascholar,and
in the past fifteen years I have looked to him as a model of
intellectual
excellenceanddexteritymatchedbyadeepreservoirofpersonalcom

72. mitmentto
thepursuitofalifebetterlivedandaworldbettermade.Georgeaskedal
lthe
rightquestions,heallowedmetostumble,andhealwayspushedmetod
ojusta
littlebitbetterbecausetheinquiriesattheheartofourworkdemandand
deserve
it.Thankyou,George.
Asagraduatestudent,IhadthepleasuretoworkwithEricMonkkonen.
It
wasEric’spassionfor“cophistory” thatpushedmetosee
theBorderPatrol
fromanewperspective,tosearchinunexpectedplacesforevidenceoft
hepast,
andtotestnewmethods.AnditwasEric’sincrediblesenseofhumortha
tmade
melookforwardtoalifeinacademia.
ThisprojectneverwouldhaveleftthegroundwithoutMarianL.Smith,
the
historian of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service.

73. Marian
brokeredararecollaborativeagreementbetweenwhatwasthenImmig
rationand
NaturalizationService(INS)HistoricalReferenceLibrary,theNatio
nalArchives
andRecordsAdministration,andmyself,bywhichIassistedwithanon
going
indexing project of all INS files held at NARA. I thank David
Brown and
Cynthia Fox, who were overseeing the INS indexing project, for
graciously
allowingmetoworkinthestacks.Theopportunitytoparticipateinanin
dexing
projectwasaninvaluableexperience.Allofthestaffandarchivistsof
NARA
werehelpfulduringmysummeratthearchives,butIworkedmostclose
lywith
Suzanne Harris. Like Marian, Suzanne had an extraordinary
knowledge of
RecordGroup85;herassistancewasinvaluable,andhergenerousguid
ancewas
aconstantsupport.
Another crucial resource for this book was the National Border
Patrol

74. Museum (NBPM). The NBPM staff was kind, open, and
supportive upon
learningthatIwaswritingahistoryoftheU.S.BorderPatrol.IthankBr
enda
Tisdale and Kristi Rasura, in particular, for all of their
assistance and
conversation.IthankMikeKirkwood,whowasthendirectoroftheNB
PM,for
allowingmefullandunrestrictedaccesstoallofthemuseum’srecords,
photos,
andfiles.IamsurethatwetellverydifferentstoriesoftheBorderPatrol
’spast,
butthestaffoftheNBPMexemplifiedalevelofopennessandtranspare
ncythat
isuncommonforapolicehistoricalsociety.AlsoIthankthemanyBord
erPatrol
officerswithwhomIspokeduringmytripstoINSHeadquartersinWas
hington,
D.C.,
theNBPM,andthePublicInformationOfficerswhohavetakenmeon
toursoftheU.S.-
MexicoborderinTexasandCalifornia.GusdelaViñaandBill
Cartertooktimeoutoftheirbusyschedulestositdownandshar etheirth
oughts
withme about the history of the U.S.Border Patrol and their

75. experiences as
BorderPatrolofficersandadministrators.
My initial research in Mexico was facilitated by Antonio Ibarra,
Ariel
RodríguezdeKuri,andJaimeVélezStorey,whosogenerouslyintrodu
cedmeto
the Archivo General de México (AGN) and the Archivo
Histórico de la
Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (AHSRE). A fortuitous
partnership with
Pablo Yankelevich made it possible to enter and explore the
resources of
Mexico’sInstitutoNacionaldeMi gración.Icannotexpressenoughgr
atitudeto
Antonio,Ariel,Jaime,and,mostofall,Pablo,whosecriticalsupportal
lowedme
toconductresearchinMexicoandopenednewavenuesformyprofessi
onaland
intellectualdevelopment.
Numerous colleagues and mentors have generously read and
offered their

76. comments on chapters or articles derived from the manuscript.
They include
Ellen DuBois, Deborah Cohen, Michael Meranze, Erika Lee,
Mae Ngai, Eric
Avila, Scot Brown, John Laslett, Teresa Alfaro Velkamp, Roger
Waldinger,
Ruben HernándezLeon, Kitty Calavita, Benjamin Johnson,
Gilbert González,
Roger Lane, and Wilbur Miller. Robert Alvarez, George Lipsitz,
Steve Aron,
Naomi Lamoreaux, Natalia Molina, Geraldine Moyle, George
Sánchez, and
VickiRuizeachreadentiredraftsofthemanuscript.Theircomme ntsal
ongwith
the readers’ reports secured by the University of California
Press have
strengthenedmywritingandanalysis.
Iwanttoacknowledgeandthankthefollowinginstitutionsforthefinan
cial
supportthattheyhaveprovidedtomovethisprojectfromanideatoabo
ok:The
Mary M. Hughes Research Fellowship in Texas History of the
Texas State

77. Historical Association, the Institute of Global Conflict and
Cooperation’s
Graduate Internship in International Affairs, UC MEXUS, UC
MEXUS/CONACYT,theChicanoStudiesResearchCenterattheUni
versityof
California-Los Angeles, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies,
the Center for
Comparative Immigration Studies at UC–San Diego, the John
and Dora
Randolph Haynes Faculty Fellowship, the UCLA Institute on
American
Cultures,theUCLAAcademicSenate,UCLAIns tituteforResearcho
nLabor
andEmploymentMini-
Grant,UCLAInternationalInstituteFacultyFellowship,
UCLACareerEnhancementAward,andtheUCLADepartmentofHist
ory.
Remarkablegraduateandundergraduatestudentresearchershelped
withthe
completionof
thisbook:CarlosNiera,AnahíParraSandoval,PaolaChenillo
Alazraki, Jennifer Sonen, Morelia Portillo, Monika Gosin,
Adriana Flores,
Alfred Flores, Amin Eshaiker, Angela Boyce, Rachel Sarabia,

78. and Liliana
Ballario.
Finally,Ithankmyfriendswhohavelistenedtofarmorethantheirfairs
hare
ofBorderPatrolstories.Mygoodfriend,AngelaBoyce,conducted“e
mergency
research”onmybehalfinSanDiego.Myfather,Cecil,andmyAuntAli
ceeach
accompaniedmeonresearchtripstowatchovermysonswhileIworked
inthe
archives.They,alongwithallofmyfather’sbrothersandsisters,havea
lsobeen
a constant inspiration in their personal courage, devotion to
family, and
commitment tosocial justice.Mymother taughtme towrite.She
toldme to
listentothepreacher—notjustwhathesaysbuthowhesaysit—
toreadmore
JamesBaldwin,andtopracticetheartformofclearlyarrangingmytho
ughts.
Then,“Befierce,”shesaid.Sheisnolongerhere,butuntiltheveryends
heread

79. eachandeverydraftofmyschoolpapers.Inthehoursshespentlovingly
and
enthusiasticallyrevisingmywriting,shegavemeanenduringgift.An
dIthank
my husband, Sebastian, and our two sons, Isaiah and Solomon.
Isaiah and
Solomon are the remarkable force that, literally, get me up in
the morning;
Sebastiancarriesmethrough.
U.S.-
Mexicoborderregion,showingselectedcities,towns,anddeportatio
n
routes
Introduction
TowardtheendoftheGreatDepression,DCComicslauncheditsfantas
tictale
ofanorphanedinfantalienwhogrewuptobecomeanAmericanherona

80. med
Superman. The Superman saga begins with the young
superhero’s dramatic
arrival on earth. Just moments before the destruction of his
home planet,
Krypton,Superman’sparentsrockettheirinfantsontowardsalvationi
nKansas.
AdoptedbyachildlessbutmoralandGod-
fearingcouple,Supermanspendshis
earlyyearsasnothingmorethananaverageAnglo-
Americanboycomingofage
inruralAmerica.Butbeneathhisexternalappearance,heisdifferent .
Unlikehis
neighbors,Supermancanfly,meltsteel,andseethroughwalls.And,un
likehis
neighbors,Supermanisanillegalalien.
Thirty-
oneyearsbeforeSupermanlandedinAmericanfolklore,theUnited
States Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1907. This law
required all
immigrantsenteringtheUnitedStatestopassthroughanofficialporto
fentry,
submit themselves to inspection, and receive official
authorization to legally

81. entertheUnitedStates.Droppingfromtheskyandfailingtoregisterwi
ththe
U.S. immigration authorities, Superman entered the United
States without
authorization.AccordingtoU.S.immigrationlaw,theincorruptiblel
eaderofthe
JusticeLeagueofAmericawasanillegalimmigrant.YetthetaleofSup
erman
evolvedfreeofanyhintorconsiderationofhisillegalstatus.Surely,Su
perman
wasjustafantasyand,assuch,thecharacterandthenarrativewerenots
ubject
tothebasicrealitiesofU.S.immigrationrestrictions.Butinthesamey
earsthat
Superman’spopularitysoared,theUnitedStatesbecameanationdeep
lydivided
over the issue of illegal immigration. From Congress to school
boards,
Americansdecriedwhatmanydescribedasan“immigrantinvasion”a
ndaloss
ofcontroloverthecountry’sborders.Thesedebatesswirledaroundthe
issueof

82. unsanctioned Mexican immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
By the mid-
1970s,vigilanteswerepatrollingtheborder,and Congresswashostin
gexplosive
debates about how to resolve the socalled wetback problem. As
the issue of
unauthorized Mexican immigration rippled across the American
political
landscape,ChicanoactivistandsongwriterJorgeLermaaskedhis
listeners to
considertheironyofSuperman’senormouspopularity.“It’sabird.It’
saplane.
No man, it’s a wetback!” shouted Lerma. But few people took
note that the
iconicManofSteelwasanillegalimmigrant.
Lerma’s provocative interrogation of Superman as America’s
forgotten
illegal immigrant was a critique of the U.S. Border Patrol’s
nearly exclusive
focus on policing Mexican immigrant workers despite many
other possible
subjectsandmethodsofimmigrationlawenforcement.Establishedin
May1924,
the Border Patrol was created to enforce U.S. immigra tion

83. restrictions
comprehensively by preventing unauthorized border crossings
and policing
borderland regions to detect and arrest persons defined as
unauthorized
immigrants.WithAsians,prostitutes,anarchists,andmanyotherscat
egorically
prohibitedfromenteringtheUnitedStatesandwithamassiveterritory
topolice,
BorderPatrolofficersstruggledtotranslatetheirbroadmandateintoa
practical
courseoflawenforcement.Soon,however,intheU.S.-
Mexicoborderregion,
theofficersbegantofocusalmostexclusivelyonapprehendingandde
porting
undocumented Mexican nationals. Then, during the early 1940s,
the entire
nationalemphasisoftheU.S.BorderPatrolshiftedtothesouthernbord
er.Since
theendofWorldWarII,thenationalpoliceforce,whichhadbeenestabl
ishedto
enforceU.S.immigrationrestrictionsbroadly,hasbeenalmostentirel
ydedicated
topolicingunsanctionedMexicanimmigrationintheU.S.-
Mexicoborderlands.

84. With his song, Jorge Lerma offered a sharp criticism of the
racialization and
regionalization of U.S. immigration law enforcement. Superman
was an
undocumentedimmigrantwhoflewacrosstheculturallandscapebut,
cloakedin
whiteness,heescapedcapture,whileMexicansintheborderlands,reg
ardlessof
immigration or citizenship status, were subject to high levels of
suspicion,
surveillance,andstateviolenceasBorderPatrolofficersaggressively
policednot
onlytheU.S.-MexicoborderbutalsoMexicancommunitiesandwork-
sites.
This book tells how Mexican immigrant workers emerged as the
primary
targetsoftheU.S.BorderPatrolandhow,intheprocess,theU.S.Borde
rPatrol
shapedthestoryofraceintheUnitedSta tes.Itis,inotherwords,astoryo
fhow
anAmericaniconlosthisillegalityandhowMexicansemergedasthe“i
conic

85. illegalaliens.”1Framingthecontoursofthisstoryarethedynamicsof
Anglo-
Americannativism,thepowerofnationalsecurity,theproblemsofsov
ereignty,
and the labor-control interests of capitalist economic
development in the
American southwest. But this book unfolds at the ground level,
presenting a
lesser-known history of Border Patrol officers struggling to
translate the
mandatesandabstractionsofU.S.immigrationlawintoeverydayimm
igration
law-enforcement practices. When the working lives of U.S.
Border Patrol
officers are considered, and when the chatter of big men in big
debates in
faraway places is taken as the context rather than the content of
U.S.
immigration law enforcement, the Border Patrol’s turn toward
policing
unsanctioned Mexican immigration emerges as a process that
evolved in far
morecomplexandcontingentwaysthanindicatedbythemasternarrati
vesthat

86. typicallyframeourunderstandingofU.S.immigrationcontrol.Inpart
icular,this
bookexploresU.S.immigrationlawenforcementasamatterofstatevi
olencein
communitylife,unearthsthecross-
borderdimensionsofmigrationcontrol,and
explains the U.S. Border Patrol’s growth in the U.S.-Mexico
borderlands as
intrinsicallyembeddedintheexpansionoffederallawenforcementin
twentieth-
century American life. The community, cross-border, and crime-
control
dimensions of the Border Patrol’s development offer new
precision to the
analysisofhowimmigrationlawenforcementevolvedasasiteofracial
ization
and inequity in the United States. This book, therefore, digs
deep into the
expansivesocialworldofU.S. immigration lawenforcement
tochronicle the
makingandmeaningoftheBorderPatrol’sriseintheU.S.-
Mexicoborderlands.
Althoughthisisthefirstbookdedicatedtothehistoryo ftheU.S.Border
Patrol,manyscholarshaveperceptivelywrittenaboutthepoliticsofi

87. mmigration
control
thatshapeBorderPatrolpractice.TheworkofPeterAndreas,Joseph
Nevins, and Timothy Dunn in particular makes clear that Anglo-
American
nativism,risingconcernswithsovereigntyinaneraofeconomicintegr
ation,and
thelaborinterestsofcapitalisteconomicdevelopmentplaypivotalrol
esinthe
shapingofcontemporaryU.S.
immigrationlawandlawenforcement.2Daniel
Tichenor,DavidMontejano,KittyCalavita,MaeNgai,GilbertGonzá
lez,and
GeorgeSánchezhavepushedthisanalysisbackintimeandhaveconfir
medthe
influence of nativism, sovereignty, and labor control in the
design of U.S.
immigration control.3 In particular, these scholars emphasize
the significant
impactofagribusinessintheAmericansouthwestupontheearlyforma
tionof
U.S. immigration law-enforcement practices in the U.S.-Mexico
borderlands.
The Border Patrol, they explain, was established at a moment of
a dramatic

88. expansioninagriculturalproductioninthesouthwesternUnitedState
s.Toplant,
pick, and harvest the rapidly expanding acres of crops,
agribusinessmen
recruited seasonal labor from Mexico and rarely hesitated to
demand
immigration control practices that promoted their desire for
unrestricted
Mexican labor migration to the United States. But many
employers also
appreciatedwhatNicholasDeGenovadescribesastheemergent“dep
ortability”
of undocumented workers, because the threat of deportation
disciplined and
marginalized the Mexican immigrant labor force.4
Agribusinessmen kicked,
screamed,winked,lobbied,andcajoledforBorderPatrolpracticestha
tallowed
unrestricted access to Mexican workers while promoting
effective discipline
overtheregion’sMexicanoworkforce.5

89. This book shores up the notion that agribusinessmen and the
overall
demandsoflaborcontrolwithinthevor texofcapitalisteconomicdeve
lopment,
especiallyintheAmericansouthwest,significantlyinfluencedthede
velopment
of
theU.S.BorderPatrol.Establishedtomanagehumanmigrationacross
the
nation’s borders, the Border Patrol policed the corridor of
international labor
migrationbetweentheUnitedStatesandMexico.6Butacloselookatth
eBorder
Patrol’severydayeffortstoenforceU.S.immigrationrestrictionsrev
ealsthatthe
Border Patrol’s project in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands was far
from an
inevitable and unmitigated expression of the interests of
capitalist economic
development. Rather, Border Patrol practice was a site of
constant struggle.
Employers,immigrants,BorderPatrolofficers,bureaucrats,Mexica
npoliticians,
nativists, Mexican American activists, and many others battled
over the

90. translation of U.S. immigration restrictions into a social reality
in the U.S.-
Mexicoborderlands.Thisbookforegroundstheconstantstruggleinv
olvedwith
theBorderPatrol’senforcementofimmigrationrestrictions.
Totellthisstoryofstrugglerequiredmanyyearsofdiggingthroughbo
xes
storedingarages,closets,backroomsand,inonecase,anabandonedfa
ctory
wheretherecordsauthoredbyandwrittenabouttheU.S.BorderPatrol
havesat
undisturbedfordecades.Gainingaccesstorecordsthathadyettobeoff
icially
archived and/or properly indexed required the generosity of a
wide range of
peoplewhosupportedmyrequeststoliterallyunlockandunpackthehi
storyof
theBorderPatrol.Forexample,whenIbeganthisstudy,thevastmajori
tyofthe
BorderPatrolcorrespondencerecordsremainedlostinthestacksofth
eNational
ArchivesandRecordsAdministration(NARA),unseensincefirstarc
hived in
1957. With the expert guidance of the U.S. Immigration and

91. Naturalization
Service(INS)historian,MarianL.Smith,andthesupportofNARAarc
hivists,
DavidBrownandCynthiaFox,Iwasabletomoveoutoftheresearchroo
mand
into the NARA stacks to sift through the archival goldmine of
Border Patrol
memos, personnel files, field activity reports, and internal
investigations.7
Similarly,theNationalBorderPatrolMuseuminElPaso,Texas,provi
dedfull
accesstothestacksandsuitcasesofmaterialthatretiredBorderPatrolo
fficers
have donated to the museum over the years. Out of these boxes,
stacks, and
suitcasesemergedreamsofrecordsthathadyettoentertheofficialhist
orical
record.Thedetailedandcandiddocumentsof theofficersof
theU.S.Border
Patrol—
theirpoetry,theirmemos,theirletters,theirmemories,theirreports,a
nd

92. theirhandwrittennotes—
areatthecenterofthisbook’snarrativeandpresenta
complicatedportraitoftheBorderPatrol’sriseintheU.S.-
Mexicoborderlands.
First, Border Patrol correspondence records and oral histories
offer new
insight into the many ways that Border Patrol officers and the
border
communitiesinwhichtheylivedshapedthedevelopmentofU.S.immi
gration-
control practices. Revealing the community histories embedded
within the
makingoffederallawenforcementoffersacruciallyimportantperspe
ctiveupon
the complicated process of translating U.S. immigration law
into law
enforcement because, although higher authorities barked
mandates and
established a broad context for immigration control, Border
Patrol officers
typically worked on back roads and in small towns. There, they
made
discretionary decisions, compromises, and innovations that
intimately bound

93. Border Patrol work to community life while profoundly shaping
the
organization’s overall development. Most important, Border
Patrol officers
negotiatedhowtousetheauthorityinvestedinthemasU.S.immigratio
nlaw-
enforcement officers, engaging in daily struggles over their
unique police
functiontodistributestateviolenceinthepursuitofmigrationcontrol.
Atthe
intersectionoftheirlivesintheborderlandsandtheirauthorityasfeder
alpolice
officers, Border Patrol officers rationalized and prioritized their
mandate for
immigration law enforcement with regard to the social
anxieties, political
tensions,andeconomicinterestsinvestedintheoverallpoliceproject
ofusing
stateviolencetoestablishandmaintainsocialorderthroughmigration
control.
ThedevelopmentoftheBorderPatrol,inotherwords,isbestunderstoo
dasan
intrinsicallysocialandpoliticalprocessrevolvingaroundquestionso
fviolence
andsocialorderratherthanasasystemofunmitigatedresponsestocri

94. minalized
activity.
This book concentrates on the negotiations and contests over the
use of
violenceasitbecameembeddedwithintheBorderPatrol’sevolvingpr
actices.I
explorethisstoryatitsmostbasicleveloftheunevenstruggleamongof
ficers,
immigrants,andcommunitymembersovertheviolenceimplicittothe
projectof
controlling human mobility not only across the U.S.-Mexico
border but also
withinthegreaterU.S.-
Mexicoborderlands.Thisapproachtothehistoryofthe
BorderPatrol forwardsa texturedunderstandingofhowMexican
immigrants
emerged as the primary targets of U.S. immigration law
enforcement. For
example,duringtheBorderPatrol’searlyyearsintheU.S.-
Mexicoborderlands,
aregionwherethedeeplyrooteddivisionsbetweenMexicanmigrantl

95. aborers
andAnglo-
Americanlandownersdominatedsocialorganizationandinteraction
s,
BorderPatrolofficers—oftenlandless,working-classwhitemen—
gainedunique
entry into the region’s principal system of social and economic
relations by
directing the violence of immigration law enforcement against
the region’s
primarylaborforce,Mexicanmigrantlaborers.Stillforthemenwhow
orkedas
BorderPatrolofficers,theauthorityvestedinthemasfederalimmigrat
ionlaw-
enforcementofficersdidnotsimplymeanservicingtheneedsofagribu
siness.
Rather,italsofunctionedasameansofcommandingtherespectoflocal
elites,
demandingsocialdeferencefromMexicansingeneral,achievingupw
ardsocial
mobilityfortheirfamilies,andconcealingracialviolencewithinthefr
amework
ofpolicework.InthissocialhistoryofBorderPatrolpractice—
ahistoryofthe
violence emerging from the everyday politics of enforcing U.S.

96. immigration
restrictions—I argue that the U.S. Border Patrol’s rise in the
U.S.-Mexico
borderlands not only evolved according to economic demands
and nativist
anxietiesbutalsooperatedaccordi ngtotheindividualinterestsandco
mmunity
investmentsofthemenwhoworkedasBorderPatrolofficers.8
At the same time that the officers of the U.S. Border Patrol
shaped the
enforcementoffederalimmigrationrestrictions,theyalsopursuedth
eirspecific
mandateforU.S.immigrationlawenforcementbypolicingforeignnat
ionalsfor
crimes committed along a shared boundary. Border Patrol work,
therefore,
emanatedfromnationalmandatesandpivotedonlocalconditions,but
italso
unfoldedwithinaninternationalframeworkthatestablishedcross-
borderpolitics
andpossibilitiesforU.S.migration-
controlefforts.Thisbookdetailshowthe
BorderPatroltookshapewithinabi-
nationalcontextofthepoliticsandpractices

97. ofcontrollingunsanctionedMexicanmigrationalongtheU.S.-
Mexicoborder.
When I began research on this project, I did not fully appreciate
the
importance of the bi-national dimensions of migration control
upon the
development of the U.S. Border Patrol. The patrol is a national
police force
dedicated to enforcing federal immigration law, and I proceeded
with the
assumptionthatitswork,theenforcementofnationallawagainstunwa
ntedand
excluded outsiders, was the ultimate expression of national
sovereignty and
nation-
boundinterests.9Further,itsauthorityasanationalpoliceforcestopp
ed
attheinternationalborder.Theanalyticalimplicationofmyearlyassu
mptions
about
theboundednatureofU.S.BorderPatrolworkwasthat,whileIcould

98. examinethetranslationofnationallawandfederalpolicepowerwithi
nthelocal
contextsof theborderlands, thefinalandouter limitof
thedevelopmentand
deploymentofBorderPatrolpracticewouldbedefinedbytheterritori
allimitsof
thenation-
state.ButthemoredustyrecordsIread,themoreIcametorealize
that the Border Patrol’s rise took shape within a cross-border
context of
migrationcontrolalongtheU.S.-Mexicoborder.
The first traces I found of the cross-border influences upon U.S.
Border
PatrolpracticesandprioritiessurfacedintheU.S.BorderPatrolandU.
S.State
Departmentcorrespondencerecords.Hereandthere,memosfromU.S
.attachés
in Mexico and Border Patrol officers working along the border
referenced a
MexicanBorderPatrolwithintheMexicanDepartmentofMigrationt
hatworked
withitsU.S.BorderPatrolcounterparttopoliceunauthorizedborderc
rossings
alongtheU.S.-

99. Mexicoborder.IhadneverbeforeheardofaMexicanBorder
Patrol(norhadanyofthescholarsandarchivistswithw homIspoke)an
dwas
intriguedbythepossibilitythatU.S.BorderPatrolpracticesintheU.S.
-Mexico
borderlandsdevelopedinconjunctionwitheffortssouthoftheborder.
10Tolearn
more,IheadedtothearchivesinMexicoCity,whereIconductedresear
chat
Mexico’sArchivoGeneraldelaNación,ArchivodelaSecretaríadeRe
laciones
Exteriores, and the Hermenoteca Nacional. While
extraordinarily helpful in
terms of understanding the Mexican politics of emigration
control, these
archivesdidnotholdwhatIwashopingtofind—
therecordsoftheMexican
DepartmentofMigration.
Established in 1926 and known as the Mexican Department of
Migration
(MDM)until1993,theInstitutoNacionaldeMigración(INM)intheSe
cretaría
de Gobernación is responsible for enforcing Mexican
immigration law by

100. managing,facilitating,regulating,andpolicinghumanmigrationint
oandoutof
Mexico. The officers of the INM spend their days enforcing
immigration
restrictions against foreign nationals and managing the exit and
return of
Mexicancitizens.MuchofthehistoryofmigrationtoandfromMexico
during
thetwentiethcenturyisthusheldintherecordsoftheINM.WhenIfirst
began
myresearchinMexico,thehistoricalrecordsoftheINM,namely,there
cordsof
the Mexican Department of Migration, had yet to be officially
archived,
systematicallyindexed,orpubliclyreleased,muchliketherecordsof t
heU.S.
Border Patrol. But in collaboration with the INM and Professor
Pablo
Yankelevich of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e
Historia, we
launched the first indexing and research project at the Archivo
Histórico del
Instituto Nacional de Migración (AHINM). The archive was
housed in an

101. abandonedfactoryinMexicoCity.Manyoftheboxescontainedpapers
thathad
literallydisintegrated intoslush,butaboutfour
thousandboxescontainingan
estimatedfourhundredthousandfileshadsurvivedtheyearsofdisreg
ardina
forgottenandleakywarehouse.11
ThesurvivingrecordsoftheMexicanDepartmentofMigrationspeaka
gainst
the tendency to frame U.S. immigration control and border
enforcement
exclusivelyintermsofU.S.-
basedconcernsregardingsovereignty,laborcontrol,
and unwanted migration. South of the border, Mexican officers
attempted to
prevent Mexican workers from illegally crossing into the United
States and,
when politically possible, pushed and prodded representatives
of the U.S.
DepartmentofState,theU.S.ImmigrationandNaturalizationService
(INS),and
the U.S. Border Patrol to improve border control and to deport

102. Mexican
nationalswhobrokebothU.S.andMexicanlawbysurreptitiouslycros
singinto
the United States.12 Further, a constellation of records pulled
from U.S. and
Mexican archives trace how the rise of the U.S. Border Patrol in
the U.S.-
Mexico borderlands developed in partnership with the
establishment and
expansion of cross-border systems of migration control during
the 1940s and
early1950s.TheBorderPatrol’sdeepeningfocusonthesouthernb ord
erandon
personsofMexicanoriginevolvedduringthe1940s,ingreatpart,inres
ponseto
MexicandemandsandincoordinationwithMexicanemigration-
controlefforts.
Thisbook,therefore,complicatesnotionsthattheriseoftheU.S.Bord
erPatrol
istheproductofexclusivelyU.S.-
basedinterestsandmakesMexicoacrucial
partnerinthedevelopmentofmodernmigration-controlandborder-
enforcement
practicesintheU.S.-Mexicoborderlands.

103. To incorporate Mexican interests in and influences upon the
U.S. Border
Patrol,Itellthehistoryofthepatrolwithinthebi-
nationalcontextofmigration
control between the United States and Mexico. I narrate the
U.S.-Mexico
encounterimplicitwithinthisbi-
nationalhistoryaccordingtothecareerofU.S.
imperialism in Mexico. Between 1848 and World War II, U.S.
economic
imperialism in Mexico was aggressive, uncompromising, and
punctuated by
threatsofmilitaryinvasion.ButWorldWarIIshiftsinU.S.globalpow
erand
claimsbytheMexicanpoliticalandeconomiceliteforcedU.S.imperia
lismin
MexicotooperatewiththesupportandcollaborationofMexicanecon
omicand
politicalelites.13JohnMasonHartdescribestheneweraofU.S.imper
ialismin
Mexicoasonedefinedby“cooperationandaccommodation.”14Unde
rthenew
conditionsofU.S.imperialisminMexico,migrationcontroloperated
asasiteof
cross-

104. bordercooperationandaccommodation.UnderstandingU.S.Border
Patrol
practice as a site of cross-border negotiation and cooperation
(although still
shadowedbyanimbalancedrelationshipbetweentheUnitedStatesan
dMexico)
opensspaceforexploringthepivotalrolethatMexicoplayedindeepen
ingthe
Border Patrol’s focus upon the southern border and policing
undocumented
Mexicanimmigration,particularlyduringWorldWarII.
While unearthing such community and cross-border influences,
this book
stretches thedomainof theU.S.BorderPatrol fromits
familiarhomewithin
U.S.immigrationhistorytowriteimmigrationcontrolintothehistory
ofcrime
andpunishmentintheUnitedStates.ThehistoryoftheU.S.BorderPatr
olis
muchmorethanachapterinthestoryofMexicanlabormigrationtothe
United

105. States.Assuch,thisbookcentersuponexaminingtheentanglementof
Mexican
labor migration and Border Patrol practice, but it enters this
story from the
perspectiveofapolice forcecomingofage in twentieth-
centuryAmerica. In
particular,thisbookchartsthehistoryoftheBorderPatrolwithintheco
ntextof
theexpansionofU.S.federallawenforcementinthetwentiethcentury
.
WhenCongressfirstestablishedtheU.S.BorderPatrol,itjoinedasmal
land
relativelyweakcollectionoffederallaw-
enforcementagencies.15Notuntilthe
New Deal did Congress and executive authorities begin to part
with the
American tradition of local law enforcement by strengthening
federal crime-
control bureaucracies and expanding federal crime-control
powers. In its first
decades,theU.S.BorderPatrol,likeitsfederalcounterparts,wasasma
lloutfit
ofofficersworkingontheperipheryoflawenforcementandcrimecont
rolinthe

106. UnitedStates.Inthesedays,themandateformigrationcontrolmayhav
ecome
fromWashington,D.C.,butBorderPatrolpracticesandprioritieswer
eprimarily
localcreations.
During World War II and in the decades to come, federal
initiatives,
resources, and, at times, directives dramatically altered the
balance of law
enforcementandcriminaljusticeintheUnitedStates.Whilemunicipa
lpolice
forces continued to dominate patrol activities, World War II
internment and
border-
securityefforts,ColdWarconcernsregardingsaboteurs,the demands
of
civil rights workers for federal protection from local political
violence in the
Americansouth,and,mostimportant,theascentofdrugcontrolasanat
ional
program all pushed a hard turn toward nationalized systems,
discourses, and
projectsofcrimecontroli nthesecondhalfofthetwentiethcentury.Th
eU.S.

107. BorderPatrolbenefitedenormouslyfromnewinvestmentsinandconc
ernsabout
federal law enforcement. Overall funding increased, payroll
expanded,
technologies improved, and, most important, immigration
control was more
tightly linked to federal objectives ranging from domestic
security to drug
interdiction,namely,thoseconcerningtheU.S.-
Mexicoborder.Throughoutthe
secondhalfofthetwentiethcentury,therewouldbeexpansionsandco
ntractions
inBorderPatrolbudgets,buttheorganizationneverreturnedtoitsorig
insasa
decentralizedoutfitoflocalmenenforcingfederallaw.Inmanyways,t
heriseof
the U.S. Border Patrol in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands is a story
about the
expansion and consolidation of federal law-enforcement
capacities in the
twentiethcentury.

108. In detailing these many dimensions of the patrol’s turn toward
policing
unsanctioned Mexican immigration, this book sharpens our
understanding of
howU.S.BorderPatrolpracticeevolvedasaveryspecificsiteofraciali
nequity.
Immigrationcontrol,aslegalscholarsLindaBosniak,KevinJohnson,
andothers
argue,isnotsimplymatterofkeepingimmigrantsoutorlettingimmigr
antsin.
Rather, the U.S. immigration regime operates as a formal
system of inequity
within the United States because, beyond questions of basic
political
enfranchisement, various social welfare benefits are distributed
according to
immigrant status, and individual protections such as those
against indefinite
detentionarecategoricallydenied toexcludablealiens.TheU.S.
immigration
regime,inotherwords,operatesasadeeplyconsequentialsystemthat
manages,
shapes,andparticipatesintheinequitabledistributionofrights,prote
ctions,and
benefits between citizens and immigrants and among the various

109. immigrant-
statusgroupswithintheUnitedStates.16
Forunauthorizedimmigrants,theformaltiersofinequityembeddedw
ithin
the U.S. immigration regime are compounded by the fear of
deportation that
encourages unauthorized migrants to attempt to evade detection
by finding
safetyinzonesofsocial,political,andeconomicmarginalization.Sus
anBibler
Coutindescribesthesezonesofmarginalizationas“spacesofnonexist
ence”that
functionas“sitesofsubjugation”and“lociofrepression”bybothform
allyand
informally “limiting rights, restricting services, and erasing
personhood.”17
Similarly Mae Ngai defines illegal immigrants as “a caste,
unambiguously
situatedoutsidetheboundariesofformalmembershipandsociallegiti
macy.”18
Whetherunderstoodasamanifestationofnonexistenceorcaste,therel
entless
marginalizationsofillegalstatus,formalandinformal,transformpers
onsguilty

110. oftheactofillegalimmigrationintopersonslivingwithintheconditio
nofbeing
illegal.19
Yet being illegal is highly abstract in everyday life. Not only
are there
countlesswaysofbecomingillegal —
entrywithoutauthorization,overstayinga
visa, or violating the conditions of legal residency—but, as
Coutin explains,
“Theundocumentedgetjobs,rentapartments,buyproperty,gotoscho
ol,get
married, have children, join churches, found organizations, and
develop
friendships....Muchofthetime,theyareundifferentiatedfromthosea
round
them.”20 Without any precise indicators of the condition of
illegality, it is
difficult to identify unauthorized immigrants. However, with the
mandate to
detect,detain,interrogate,andapprehendpersonsforviolatingU.S.i
mmigration

111. restrictions, officers of the U.S. Border Patrol spend their
working hours
bringingbodiestotheabstractpoliticalcasteofillegality.BorderPatr
olofficers,
therefore, literally embody this site of political
disenfranchisement, economic
inequity,andsocialsuspicionwithintheUnitedStates.Thepatrol’s fo
cusupon
policing unsanctioned Mexican immigration assigned the
inequities,
disenfranchisements, suspicions, and violences of being illegal
to persons of
Mexican origin.21 In other words, as Jorge Lerma and many
scholars and
activists have noted, the rise of the U.S. Border Patrol in the
U.S.-Mexico
borderlandseffectivelyMexicanizedthesetofinherentlyandlawfull
yunequal
socialrelationsemergingfromthelegal/illegaldivide.22
U.S.immigrationcontroliswidelyrecognizedasasiteofracialinequit
y,but
thisbook’ssocialhistoryofBorderPatrolpracticeallowsformorepre
cisionin
identifying the targets of immigration enforcement while calling

112. for a more
expansiveunderstandingofhowmigrationcontrolintheborderlands
evolvedas
ofthestoryofraceintheUnitedStates.BorderPatrolcorrespondencer
ecords,
complaintfiles,andculturalartifacts—
cartoons,humor,autobiographies,andso
forth—reveal tacit distinctions of gender, class, and complexion
that Border
Patrolofficerspoliced.Asoneofficerlikedtojoke,theBorderPatrol’s
primary
targetwasa“Mexicanmale;about5′5″to5′8″;darkbrownhair;browne
yes;
dark complexion; wearing huaraches . . . and so on.”23 In the
1940s, Border
Patrolofficersexpandedthegenderprofileoftheundocumentedimmi
grantto
encompasswomenandfamilies,buttheircommitmenttoclass,compl
exion,and
national origins remained firm. Tracing the nuances of the
Border Patrol’s
targeted enforcement of U.S. immigration restrictions clarifies
dimensions of
gender,class,andcomplexionthatwererenderedinvisiblewhenoffic
erssimply

113. referred to their targets as “Mexican.” Class and complexion are
undeniably
slippery social categories, but this book’s focus upon the
unarticulated
discretionsofBorderPatrolpracticesrevealscrucialintersectionsofc
lassand
complexionthatshapedtheBorderPatrol’spolicingofMexicans.Toc
apturethe
complexion-inflected class specificity of these practices, I
introduce the term
Mexican Brown as a conceptual and rhetorical tool because,
regardless of
immigrationorcitizenshipstatus,
itwasMexicanBrownsratherthanabstract
MexicanswholivedwithintheBorderPatrol’ssphereofsuspicion.
Further, the nuances of policing Mexicans unfolded in
conversation with
questions,discourses,andstructuresdedicatedtoupholdingdistincti
onsbetween
blacknessandwhitenessintwentieth-
centuryAmericanlife.Fromthedaysof

114. JimCrowracialsegregationtotheexpansionoftheprisonsystem,theB
order
Patrol’s policing of Mexicans always drew degrees of logic,
support, and
legitimacy from black/white racial stratification. There is, in
other words, no
“beyond black and white” in the story of U.S. immigration
control, and it is
preciselytheblack-and-
whitedimensionsofpolicingMexicansforunsanctioned
migrationthatclarifyhowU.S.immigrationlawenforcementevolved
asastory
of race in the United States. This book therefore charts how the
black/white
divideshapedtheBorderPatrol’sMexicanizationofthelegal/illegald
ivide.24
Finally, the Border Patrol’s racialization of the legal/illegal
divide also
evolvedasabi-nationalformationofmigration-
controleffortsacrosstheU.S.-
Mexicoborder.TheparticipationofMexicanofficialsintheU.S.Bord
erPatrol’s
riseintheU.S.-Mexicoborderlandsrevealsthebi-
nationaldynamicsofpolicing

115. Mexicans in the United States. This story runs contrary to the
tendency to
interpret the transnational and international impact upon U.S.
race relations,
particularlyinthepost—
WorldWarIIera,asaturntowardprogressivereform
and liberation politics.25 This book, therefore, provides one
example of how
anxietiesandinterestsfrombeyondU.S.borderscontributedtothehar
dening
rather than the dismantling of racialized social and political
inequities within
UnitedStatesafterWorldWarII.26
BythetimethatJorgeLermasanghissong,“SupermanIsanIllegalAlie
n,”
asongaboutrace,illegality,andinequalityinAmerica,theBorderPatr
ol’sturn
toward policing unsanctioned Mexican immigration in the U.S.-
Mexico
borderlands was already complete. The consequences of the
Border Patrol’s
unevenenforcementofU.S.
immigrationrestrictionsweresignificant,but the
reasons for it seemed simple and unalterable: Mexicans crossed

116. the border
withoutsanction,andtheBorderPatrol,inresponse,concentratedonp
olicing
unsanctionedMexicanimmigrationintheU.S.-
Mexicoborderlands.Yet,alltold,
the making of the U.S. Border Patrol in the U.S.-Mexico
borderlands turned
uponmuchmorethantheunsanctionedbordercrossingsofMexicanna
tionals.
Fromtheinterestsandconcernsofindividualofficerstothedemandso
fpolicing
thecorridorof international labormigration, thepatrol’s turn
towardpolicing
Mexican immigrants quite often had less to do with the men,
women, and
children who crossed the border and more to do with the
communities they
entered,thecountriestheycrossedbetween,andthementheyconfront
edalong
theway.27FromMexicoCitytoWashington,D.C.,downtothesisterci
tiesof
Brownsville,Texas,andReynosa,Tamaulipas,theU.S.BorderPatrol
createdthe

117. practices of U.S. immigration law enforcement at the vexing
crossroads of
communitylife,regionalinterests,nationalpolitics,andinternationa
lrelationsin
theU.S.-
Mexicoborderlands.Andfromtheexpansionoffederalpolicepowers
in the twentieth century to the shifts in the black/white divide in
modern
America, the U.S. Border Patrol’s steady rise is a history that
unfolded in
conversation with far more than the laws that the institution was
founded to
enforce.Therefore,bycarefullyexaminingthedustyandscatteredrec
ordofthe
U.S.BorderPatrol,thisbookprovideswhatAntonioGramscioncedes
cribedas
an “inventory” of the many “traces,” that is, a catalogue and
analysis of the
manyhistoriesthatshapedthemakingandthemeaningoftheU.S.Bord
erPatrol
intheU.S.-Mexicoborderlands.28
Thisbookisarrangedintothreechronologicalparts.Eachpartreprese
ntsone

118. ofthreegenerationsintheU.S.BorderPatrol’sfirstfiftyyearsonpatro
lbetween
1924and1974.Part1addressesthehighlyregionalandlocalperiodof
Border
PatroloperationsfromtheestablishmentoftheU.S.BorderPatrolon
May28,
1924,totheentranceoftheUnitedStatesintoWorldWarIIin1941.Cha
pter1
providesafoundationforunderstandingBorderPatrolworkintheseye
arsby
outliningthemandate,themen,andthebureaucracyoftheU.S.Border
Patrol
during the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter 2 tells the story of the
greater Texas-
Mexicoborderlands,whereaconcentrationoflocalmenhiredasU.S.
Border
PatrolofficersdirectedthedevelopmentofU.S.immigrationlawenfo
rcement.
Here, the patrol’s narrow enforcement of U.S. immigration
restrictions was
deeplyconnectedtothesocialworldinwhichtheofficerscameofageb
efore
they became officers of the state. Chapter 3 focuses on the
development of
BorderPatrolpracticesandprioritiesalongtheCaliforniaandwestern

119. Arizona
borderregions,whereBorderPatrolofficerstendedtobeoutsidersstr
ugglingto
rationalizethemanypossibilitiesforU.S.immigrationlawenforceme
nt.Here,
the shifting political economy of Mexican labor migration and
the fiscal
limitations of policing European and Asian immigration tilted
the Border
Patrol’sfocustowardpolicingMexicanimmigrants.Together,chapt
ers1,2,and
3 argue that, while immigration restriction was a national
phenomenon, U.S.
BorderPatrolpracticeinthe1920sand1930swasadeeplysocialprojec
tthat
was defined by highly regionalized interpretations of the
possibilities and
limitationsofU.S.immigrationlawenforcement.Chapter4headssou
thofthe
U.S.-
Mexicobordertoexplorehowthe1924consolidationinU.S.immigrat
ion
controlsparkedMexicaneffortstopreventMexicanworkersfromcom
mitting
thecrimeofillegalentryintotheUnitedStates.

120. Part2openswiththenationalizationoftheU.S.BorderPatrolduringW
orld
WarII,continueswithanexplorationoftheimpactofcross-
bordersystemsof
managingMexicanlabormigrationuponU.S.BorderPatrolpractice,
andcloses
with an examination of the opposition of agribusiness in South
Texas to the
delocalization of Border Patrol personnel, practices, and
priorities during the
1940s.Chapters5and6addresshowtheestablishmentoftheBraceroP
rogram
as a cross-border program for managing U.S.-Mexico labor
migration
transformed migration control along the U.S.-Mexico border:
bilaterally
managingtheimportationoflegalMexicanlaborintotheUnitedStates
provided
newpossibilitiesanddemandsforthebilateralmanagementofdeporti
ngillegal
Mexican labor out of the United States. Chapter 7 examines how

121. bilateral
migrationcontrolupsetBorderPatrolrelationswitholdfriendsandnei
ghbors,
namely, South Texas agribusinessmen accustomed to familiar
Border Patrol
officersenforcingfederallawaccordingtolocalcustomsandinterests
.Together,
Chapters5,6,and7demonstratehowthedramaticandcontesteddeloc
alization
ofU.S.BorderPatroloperationsactuallyintensifiedthepatrol’sconc
entration
uponpolicingunsanctionedMexicanimmigration.
By the early 1950s, the U.S. Border Patrol was embroiled in
crisis. The
South Texas farmers were in rebellion, and a constant upward
tick in U.S.
BorderPatrolapprehensionstatisticssuggestedthatthepatrolhadlost
allcontrol
alongtheU.S.-
Mexicoborder.Part3opensbyexamininghowtheU.S.Border
Patrol triumphed over the crises of consent and control in the
U.S.-Mexico
borderlandsandcloseswithananalysisofhowthepatrolproceededint
hequiet

122. years that followed. In particular, Chapter 8 demonstrates that
while Border
Patrolofficialsdeclaredthatanunprecedentedshowofforceduringth
esummer
of 1954 had ended the crises of control and consent in the U.S.-
Mexico
borderlands, it was actually compromise with farmers and a
retreat from
aggressivemigrationcontrolthatclosedtheso-
called“wetbackdecade”of1944
to1954.Chapter9offersanexaminationofthedramaticreimagination
ofU.S.
migrationcontrolafterthetriumphsof1954.Inparticular,subtlechan
gesinU.S.
BorderPatrolrhetoric,propaganda,andstrategiesalongtheU.S.-
Mexicoborder
reframedthepatrol’smissionfromcontrollingunsanctionedlabormi
grationto
preventing cross-border criminal activities, such as prostitution
and drug
trafficking.Intheseyears,thepolicingoftheunsanctionedmigrations
ofpoor
Mexican-bornworkers increasingly intersectedwith
thepolicingof thecross-
border trafficking of marijuana and narcotics such as

123. Mexicangrown heroin,
a.k.a.MexicanBrown.MyuseofthetermMexicanBrown,therefore,is
notonly
aconceptualandrhetoricaltoolthatcapturestheshadesofclassandcol
orofthe
peoplethatBorderPatrolofficerspolicedbutalsoanintentionalindica
tionofthe
entanglements of migration control with crime control and drug
enforcement
duringthe1960s,1970s,andbeyond.
This book closes at the dawning of the embattled decades of the
late
twentiethcentury,whentheU.S.BorderPatrol’smanagementofthepr
oblemsof
race,crime,andmigrationbecamealmostimpossibletodisentangle.T
heseyears
were marked by a steady escalation of border enforcement and a
dramatic
intensificationoftheraidsuponMexicancommunitiesintheborderla
ndsregion.
Insongandlitigation,JorgeLermaandagrowingnumberofChicano/a

124. activists
and immigrant rights advocates protested the impact of U.S.
Border Patrol
practicesuponMexicanscrossing into
theUnitedStatesandMexicans living
north of Mexico. Superman took to the skies and floated right
on by, Lerma
complained,butMexicanshadtocarryidentificationand,ifillegal,be
detained
or deported. Lerma identified “Mr. Racism” as the root of
Border Patrol
prejudicesanddiscretions.Whilethelegal/illegaldividefunctioneda
saracial
divide through the Border Patrol’s uneven enforcement of U.S.
immigration
restrictions, the racialization and regionalization of U.S.
immigration law
enforcementwasfarmorecomplicatedthanLermaimagined,andredu
cingU.S.
Border Patrol practices to Anglo-American racism masks the
strange but
powerfulnexusofmen,interests,choices,andchancesthat,despiteaw
orldof
otherpossibilities,ultimatelydeliveredtheU.S.BorderPatroltothep
rojectof