Author: David Spener
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801475894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Clandestine Crossings delivers an in-depth description and analysis of the experiences of working-class Mexican migrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they enter the United States surreptitiously with the help of paid guides known as coyotes. Drawing on ethnographic observations of crossing conditions in the borderlands of South Texas, as well as interviews with migrants, coyotes, and border officials, Spener details how migrants and coyotes work together to evade apprehension by U.S. law enforcement authorities as they cross the border. In so doing, he seeks to dispel many of the myths that misinform public debate about undocumented immigration to the United States. The hiring of a coyote, Spener argues, is one of the principal strategies that Mexican migrants have developed in response to intensified U.S. border enforcement. Although this strategy is typically portrayed in the press as a sinister organized-crime phenomenon, Spener argues that it is better understood as the resistance of working-class Mexicans to an economic model and set of immigration policies in North America that increasingly resemble an apartheid system. In the absence of adequate employment opportunities in Mexico and legal mechanisms for them to work in the United States, migrants and coyotes draw on their social connections and cultural knowledge to stage successful border crossings in spite of the ever greater dangers placed in their path by government authorities.
Clandestine Crossings
Author: David Spener
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801460395
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
Clandestine Crossings delivers an in-depth description and analysis of the experiences of working-class Mexican migrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they enter the United States surreptitiously with the help of paid guides known as coyotes. Drawing on ethnographic observations of crossing conditions in the borderlands of South Texas, as well as interviews with migrants, coyotes, and border officials, Spener details how migrants and coyotes work together to evade apprehension by U.S. law enforcement authorities as they cross the border. In so doing, he seeks to dispel many of the myths that misinform public debate about undocumented immigration to the United States. The hiring of a coyote, Spener argues, is one of the principal strategies that Mexican migrants have developed in response to intensified U.S. border enforcement. Although this strategy is typically portrayed in the press as a sinister organized-crime phenomenon, Spener argues that it is better understood as the resistance of working-class Mexicans to an economic model and set of immigration policies in North America that increasingly resemble an apartheid system. In the absence of adequate employment opportunities in Mexico and legal mechanisms for them to work in the United States, migrants and coyotes draw on their social connections and cultural knowledge to stage successful border crossings in spite of the ever greater dangers placed in their path by government authorities.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801460395
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
Clandestine Crossings delivers an in-depth description and analysis of the experiences of working-class Mexican migrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they enter the United States surreptitiously with the help of paid guides known as coyotes. Drawing on ethnographic observations of crossing conditions in the borderlands of South Texas, as well as interviews with migrants, coyotes, and border officials, Spener details how migrants and coyotes work together to evade apprehension by U.S. law enforcement authorities as they cross the border. In so doing, he seeks to dispel many of the myths that misinform public debate about undocumented immigration to the United States. The hiring of a coyote, Spener argues, is one of the principal strategies that Mexican migrants have developed in response to intensified U.S. border enforcement. Although this strategy is typically portrayed in the press as a sinister organized-crime phenomenon, Spener argues that it is better understood as the resistance of working-class Mexicans to an economic model and set of immigration policies in North America that increasingly resemble an apartheid system. In the absence of adequate employment opportunities in Mexico and legal mechanisms for them to work in the United States, migrants and coyotes draw on their social connections and cultural knowledge to stage successful border crossings in spite of the ever greater dangers placed in their path by government authorities.
Texas Crossings
Author: Howard R. Lamar
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477304444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 113
Book Description
“Texas is not a place, it is a commotion!” exclaimed one early visitor to the state, underscoring the mobility and “get-ahead” spirit that have always characterized Texas and its people. In these thought-provoking essays, Howard R. Lamar looks specifically at the “crossings” that have characterized Texas history to see what effect these migrations to and through Texas have had on Texas, the Southwest, and links between Texas and California. Originally presented in 1986 at the University of Texas at Austin as the first George W. Littlefield Lectures in American History, these essays explore a previously neglected aspect of the western story: the influence of Texans—and other Southerners—on the character and history of the southwestern states. Lamar discusses the many efforts to establish overland trails, and later railroads, to California and how those efforts were fueled by the gold rush era of 1849–1850. He traces the influence of immigrant Texans and the flourishing southern community in California, particularly during the Civil War years. He follows the twentieth-century migration of “Okies,” whose desire to settle and resume their agricultural lifeways clashed with Californians’ preference for migrant workers. And he reveals how the discovery of oil, not only in Texas but also in California, western Canada, and Alaska, continues to link these regions. Texas has always been a place that people pass through, going either east-west or north-south. Texas Crossings explains what brought the people to Texas and what they carried away with them to California and the West.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477304444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 113
Book Description
“Texas is not a place, it is a commotion!” exclaimed one early visitor to the state, underscoring the mobility and “get-ahead” spirit that have always characterized Texas and its people. In these thought-provoking essays, Howard R. Lamar looks specifically at the “crossings” that have characterized Texas history to see what effect these migrations to and through Texas have had on Texas, the Southwest, and links between Texas and California. Originally presented in 1986 at the University of Texas at Austin as the first George W. Littlefield Lectures in American History, these essays explore a previously neglected aspect of the western story: the influence of Texans—and other Southerners—on the character and history of the southwestern states. Lamar discusses the many efforts to establish overland trails, and later railroads, to California and how those efforts were fueled by the gold rush era of 1849–1850. He traces the influence of immigrant Texans and the flourishing southern community in California, particularly during the Civil War years. He follows the twentieth-century migration of “Okies,” whose desire to settle and resume their agricultural lifeways clashed with Californians’ preference for migrant workers. And he reveals how the discovery of oil, not only in Texas but also in California, western Canada, and Alaska, continues to link these regions. Texas has always been a place that people pass through, going either east-west or north-south. Texas Crossings explains what brought the people to Texas and what they carried away with them to California and the West.
Catarino Garza's Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border
Author: Elliott Young
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border rescues an understudied episode from the footnotes of history. On September 15, 1891, Garza, a Mexican journalist and political activist, led a band of Mexican rebels out of South Texas and across the Rio Grande, declaring a revolution against Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Made up of a broad cross-border alliance of ranchers, merchants, peasants, and disgruntled military men, Garza’s revolution was the largest and longest lasting threat to the Díaz regime up to that point. After two years of sporadic fighting, the combined efforts of the U.S. and Mexican armies, Texas Rangers, and local police finally succeeded in crushing the rebellion. Garza went into exile and was killed in Panama in 1895. Elliott Young provides the first full-length analysis of the revolt and its significance, arguing that Garza’s rebellion is an important and telling chapter in the formation of the border between Mexico and the United States and in the histories of both countries. Throughout the nineteenth century, the borderlands were a relatively coherent region. Young analyzes archival materials, newspapers, travel accounts, and autobiographies from both countries to show that Garza’s revolution was more than just an effort to overthrow Díaz. It was part of the long struggle of borderlands people to maintain their autonomy in the face of two powerful and encroaching nation-states and of Mexicans in particular to protect themselves from being economically and socially displaced by Anglo Americans. By critically examining the different perspectives of military officers, journalists, diplomats, and the Garzistas themselves, Young exposes how nationalism and its preeminent symbol, the border, were manufactured and resisted along the Rio Grande.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border rescues an understudied episode from the footnotes of history. On September 15, 1891, Garza, a Mexican journalist and political activist, led a band of Mexican rebels out of South Texas and across the Rio Grande, declaring a revolution against Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Made up of a broad cross-border alliance of ranchers, merchants, peasants, and disgruntled military men, Garza’s revolution was the largest and longest lasting threat to the Díaz regime up to that point. After two years of sporadic fighting, the combined efforts of the U.S. and Mexican armies, Texas Rangers, and local police finally succeeded in crushing the rebellion. Garza went into exile and was killed in Panama in 1895. Elliott Young provides the first full-length analysis of the revolt and its significance, arguing that Garza’s rebellion is an important and telling chapter in the formation of the border between Mexico and the United States and in the histories of both countries. Throughout the nineteenth century, the borderlands were a relatively coherent region. Young analyzes archival materials, newspapers, travel accounts, and autobiographies from both countries to show that Garza’s revolution was more than just an effort to overthrow Díaz. It was part of the long struggle of borderlands people to maintain their autonomy in the face of two powerful and encroaching nation-states and of Mexicans in particular to protect themselves from being economically and socially displaced by Anglo Americans. By critically examining the different perspectives of military officers, journalists, diplomats, and the Garzistas themselves, Young exposes how nationalism and its preeminent symbol, the border, were manufactured and resisted along the Rio Grande.
Crossing Waters
Author: Marisel C. Moreno
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 147732562X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421
Book Description
2023 Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize, Haiti/ Dominican Republic section (LASA) 2023 Winner, Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award, Caribbean Studies Association An innovative study of the artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the Caribbean islands. The first study to examine literary and artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean, Crossing Waters relates a journey that remains silenced and largely unknown. Analyzing works by novelists, short-story writers, poets, and visual artists replete with references to drowning and echoes of the Middle Passage, Marisel Moreno shines a spotlight on the plight that these migrants face. In some cases, Puerto Rico takes on a new role as a stepping-stone to the continental United States and the society migrants will join there. Meanwhile the land border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the only terrestrial border in the Hispanophone Caribbean, emerges as a complex space within this cartography of borders. And while the Border Patrol occupies US headlines, the Coast Guard occupies the nightmares of refugees. An untold story filled with beauty, possibility, and sorrow, Crossing Waters encourages us to rethink the geography and experience of undocumented migration and the role that the Caribbean archipelago plays as a border zone.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 147732562X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421
Book Description
2023 Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize, Haiti/ Dominican Republic section (LASA) 2023 Winner, Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award, Caribbean Studies Association An innovative study of the artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the Caribbean islands. The first study to examine literary and artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean, Crossing Waters relates a journey that remains silenced and largely unknown. Analyzing works by novelists, short-story writers, poets, and visual artists replete with references to drowning and echoes of the Middle Passage, Marisel Moreno shines a spotlight on the plight that these migrants face. In some cases, Puerto Rico takes on a new role as a stepping-stone to the continental United States and the society migrants will join there. Meanwhile the land border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the only terrestrial border in the Hispanophone Caribbean, emerges as a complex space within this cartography of borders. And while the Border Patrol occupies US headlines, the Coast Guard occupies the nightmares of refugees. An untold story filled with beauty, possibility, and sorrow, Crossing Waters encourages us to rethink the geography and experience of undocumented migration and the role that the Caribbean archipelago plays as a border zone.
Border Contraband
Author: George T. Díaz
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292761066
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Winner, Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation, 2015 Present-day smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border is a professional, often violent, criminal activity. However, it is only the latest chapter in a history of illicit business dealings that stretches back to 1848, when attempts by Mexico and the United States to tax commerce across the Rio Grande upset local trade and caused popular resentment. Rather than acquiesce to what they regarded as arbitrary trade regulations, borderlanders continued to cross goods and accepted many forms of smuggling as just. In Border Contraband, George T. Díaz provides the first history of the common, yet little studied, practice of smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border. In Part I, he examines the period between 1848 and 1910, when the United States' and Mexico's trade concerns focused on tariff collection and on borderlanders' attempts to avoid paying tariffs by smuggling. Part II begins with the onset of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, when national customs and other security forces on the border shifted their emphasis to the interdiction of prohibited items (particularly guns and drugs) that threatened the state. Díaz's pioneering research explains how greater restrictions have transformed smuggling from a low-level mundane activity, widely accepted and still routinely practiced, into a highly profitable professional criminal enterprise.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292761066
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Winner, Jim Parish Award for Documentation and Publication of Local and Regional History, Webb County Heritage Foundation, 2015 Present-day smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border is a professional, often violent, criminal activity. However, it is only the latest chapter in a history of illicit business dealings that stretches back to 1848, when attempts by Mexico and the United States to tax commerce across the Rio Grande upset local trade and caused popular resentment. Rather than acquiesce to what they regarded as arbitrary trade regulations, borderlanders continued to cross goods and accepted many forms of smuggling as just. In Border Contraband, George T. Díaz provides the first history of the common, yet little studied, practice of smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border. In Part I, he examines the period between 1848 and 1910, when the United States' and Mexico's trade concerns focused on tariff collection and on borderlanders' attempts to avoid paying tariffs by smuggling. Part II begins with the onset of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, when national customs and other security forces on the border shifted their emphasis to the interdiction of prohibited items (particularly guns and drugs) that threatened the state. Díaz's pioneering research explains how greater restrictions have transformed smuggling from a low-level mundane activity, widely accepted and still routinely practiced, into a highly profitable professional criminal enterprise.
Our 50-State Border Crisis
Author: Howard G. Buffett
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316476587
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
From one of America's most prominent philanthropists, an eye-opening, myth-busting new perspective on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Howard G. Buffett has seen first-hand the devastating impact of cheap Mexican heroin and other opiate cocktails across America. Fueled by failing border policies and lawlessness in Mexico and Central America, drugs are pouring over the nation's southern border in record quantities, turning Americans into addicts and migrants into drug mules -- and killing us in record numbers. Politicians talk about a border crisis and an opioid crisis as separate issues. To Buffett, a landowner on the U.S. border with Mexico and now a sheriff in Illinois, these are intimately connected. Ineffective border policies not only put residents in border states like Texas and Arizona in harm's way, they put American lives in states like Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont at risk. Mexican cartels have grown astonishingly powerful by exploiting both the gaps in our border security strategy and the desperation of migrants -- all while profiting enormously off America's growing addiction to drugs. The solution isn't a wall. In this groundbreaking book, Buffett outlines a realistic, effective, and bi-partisan approach to fighting cartels, strengthening our national security, and tackling the roots of the chaos below the border.
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316476587
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
From one of America's most prominent philanthropists, an eye-opening, myth-busting new perspective on the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Howard G. Buffett has seen first-hand the devastating impact of cheap Mexican heroin and other opiate cocktails across America. Fueled by failing border policies and lawlessness in Mexico and Central America, drugs are pouring over the nation's southern border in record quantities, turning Americans into addicts and migrants into drug mules -- and killing us in record numbers. Politicians talk about a border crisis and an opioid crisis as separate issues. To Buffett, a landowner on the U.S. border with Mexico and now a sheriff in Illinois, these are intimately connected. Ineffective border policies not only put residents in border states like Texas and Arizona in harm's way, they put American lives in states like Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont at risk. Mexican cartels have grown astonishingly powerful by exploiting both the gaps in our border security strategy and the desperation of migrants -- all while profiting enormously off America's growing addiction to drugs. The solution isn't a wall. In this groundbreaking book, Buffett outlines a realistic, effective, and bi-partisan approach to fighting cartels, strengthening our national security, and tackling the roots of the chaos below the border.
International Bridge Crossings Along the United States-Mexico Border from El Paso to Brownsville
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 520
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 520
Book Description
The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border
Author: Chad Richardson
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292739281
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Much has been debated about the presence of undocumented workers along the South Texas border, but these debates often overlook the more complete dimension: the region’s longstanding, undocumented economies as a whole. Borderlands commerce that evades government scrutiny can be categorized into informal economies (the unreported exchange of legal goods and services) or underground economies (criminal economic activities that, obviously, occur without government oversight). Examining long-term study, observation, and participation in the border region, with the assistance of hundreds of locally embedded informants, The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border presents unique insights into the causes and ramifications of these economic channels. The third volume in UT–Pan American’s Borderlife Project, this eye-opening investigation draws on vivid ethnographic interviews, bolstered by decades of supplemental data, to reveal a culture where divided loyalties, paired with a lack of access to protection under the law and other forms of state-sponsored recourse, have given rise to social spectra that often defy stereotypes. A cornerstone of the authors’ findings is that these economic activities increase when citizens perceive the state’s intervention as illegitimate, whether in the form of fees, taxes, or regulation. From living conditions in the impoverished colonias to President Felipe Calderón’s futile attempts to eradicate police corruption in Mexico, this book is a riveting portrait of benefit versus risk in the wake of a “no-man’s-land” legacy.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292739281
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Much has been debated about the presence of undocumented workers along the South Texas border, but these debates often overlook the more complete dimension: the region’s longstanding, undocumented economies as a whole. Borderlands commerce that evades government scrutiny can be categorized into informal economies (the unreported exchange of legal goods and services) or underground economies (criminal economic activities that, obviously, occur without government oversight). Examining long-term study, observation, and participation in the border region, with the assistance of hundreds of locally embedded informants, The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border presents unique insights into the causes and ramifications of these economic channels. The third volume in UT–Pan American’s Borderlife Project, this eye-opening investigation draws on vivid ethnographic interviews, bolstered by decades of supplemental data, to reveal a culture where divided loyalties, paired with a lack of access to protection under the law and other forms of state-sponsored recourse, have given rise to social spectra that often defy stereotypes. A cornerstone of the authors’ findings is that these economic activities increase when citizens perceive the state’s intervention as illegitimate, whether in the form of fees, taxes, or regulation. From living conditions in the impoverished colonias to President Felipe Calderón’s futile attempts to eradicate police corruption in Mexico, this book is a riveting portrait of benefit versus risk in the wake of a “no-man’s-land” legacy.
Crossing Borders
Author: Ali Noorani
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538143518
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
Advance praise from public figures José Andrés, Al Franken, Jonathan Blitzer of The New Yorker, and Russell Moore of Christianity Today. Find the moving stories of American immigrants and their journeys in Ali Noorani’s chronicle. In an era when immigration on a global scale defines the fears and aspirations of Americans, Crossing Borders presents the complexities of migration through the stories of families fleeing violence and poverty, the government and nongovernmental organizations helping or hindering their progress, and the American communities receiving them. Ali Noorani, who has spent years building bridges between immigrants and their often conservative communities, takes readers on a journey to Honduras, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, and Texas, meeting migrants and the organizations and people that help them on both sides of the border. He reports from the inside on why families make the heart-wrenching decision to leave home. Going beyond the polemical, partisan debate, Noorani offers sensitive insights and real solutions. Crossing Borders will appeal to a broad audience of concerned citizens across the political spectrum, faith communities, policymakers, and immigrants themselves.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538143518
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237
Book Description
Advance praise from public figures José Andrés, Al Franken, Jonathan Blitzer of The New Yorker, and Russell Moore of Christianity Today. Find the moving stories of American immigrants and their journeys in Ali Noorani’s chronicle. In an era when immigration on a global scale defines the fears and aspirations of Americans, Crossing Borders presents the complexities of migration through the stories of families fleeing violence and poverty, the government and nongovernmental organizations helping or hindering their progress, and the American communities receiving them. Ali Noorani, who has spent years building bridges between immigrants and their often conservative communities, takes readers on a journey to Honduras, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, and Texas, meeting migrants and the organizations and people that help them on both sides of the border. He reports from the inside on why families make the heart-wrenching decision to leave home. Going beyond the polemical, partisan debate, Noorani offers sensitive insights and real solutions. Crossing Borders will appeal to a broad audience of concerned citizens across the political spectrum, faith communities, policymakers, and immigrants themselves.
Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo: Border Cantos (Signed Edition)
Author:
Publisher: Aperture Direct
ISBN: 9781683950929
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
This project presents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer and performer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus since 2009--the latest installation in his ongoing series Desert Cantos, a multifaceted approach to the study of place and man's complex relationship to it. Misrach and Galindo have been working together to create pieces that both document and transform the artifacts of migration. Using water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol drag tires, spent shotgun shells, ladders and sections of the border wall itself, most of which were collected by Misrach, Galindo fashions instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which also use Misrach's photographs as points of departure. A unique melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter, the book includes several suites of photographs drawn from a number of distinct series or Cantos, some made with a large-format camera as well as an iPhone. The book contains a compilation of two dozen sculpture-instruments, graphic scores, instrument designs and links to videos of performances by Galindo.
Publisher: Aperture Direct
ISBN: 9781683950929
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
This project presents a unique collaboration between photographer Richard Misrach and composer and performer Guillermo Galindo. Misrach has been photographing the 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico since 2004, with increased focus since 2009--the latest installation in his ongoing series Desert Cantos, a multifaceted approach to the study of place and man's complex relationship to it. Misrach and Galindo have been working together to create pieces that both document and transform the artifacts of migration. Using water bottles, clothing, backpacks, Border Patrol drag tires, spent shotgun shells, ladders and sections of the border wall itself, most of which were collected by Misrach, Galindo fashions instruments to be performed as unique sound-generating devices. He also imagines graphic musical scores, many of which also use Misrach's photographs as points of departure. A unique melding of the artist as documentarian and interpreter, the book includes several suites of photographs drawn from a number of distinct series or Cantos, some made with a large-format camera as well as an iPhone. The book contains a compilation of two dozen sculpture-instruments, graphic scores, instrument designs and links to videos of performances by Galindo.