Chicana/o Cyberpunk after el Movimiento (original) (raw)
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In 1994 California’s legislature introduced Proposition 187 and called it the “Save Our State” initiative to prohibit undocumented immigrants from using health care services, public education, and other social services through citizenship screening. Though the law was only in effect for three days and was never enforced, it demonstrates an entire state’s willingness to target a subset of the population that is purpose was to separate Hispanics socially, economically, and physically from the white population. Scholars recognize two theories on the popularity of the law: either people voted in favor of it because they were, at least to a degree, racist; or that people voted for it because of nativism and racist fears of criminals. The purpose in this paper is to identify other factors that contributed to the initiative’s popularity to broaden future discussions. A television reelection ad in ‘94 by then-governor Pete Wilson demonstrates that the motivations to approve this law did ind...
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This essay examines California's Proposition 187 as a paradigm of the contradictions engendered by new postnational social formations. On the one hand, most—if not all—advanced postindustrial democracies in Western Europe, the United States, and now even Japan, have developed an “addiction” to easily exploited foreign workers to do the jobs the Japanese call “the three K jobs” (for the Japanese words “dangerous, dirty, and demanding.”) On the other hand, in the context of a transnational malaise, new immigrants have become the focus of powerful anxieties—economic, demographic, and cultural. This essay concentrates on the social contexts generating these new anxieties in light of a psychocultural theory of “the need for strangers.”
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Millions of people across the United States took to the streets in spring 2006 to protest repressive immigration legislation, demand just immigration reform, and seek justice in daily life. This article has two aims. First, we seek to intervene in the popular immigration debate, which denies racism and claims to be concerned only with law-and-order. Second, we analyze (im)migration politics in relation to national racial formations. That is, racialized immigration policies do not exist apart from a racially stratified citizenry. We rely on the concept of social death to trace state policies of immigration and criminalization as key sites in interracial and transnational struggles against racism and for justice and liberation. Thus, we seek to elucidate possibilities for anti-racist alliances and social change. We conclude with a discussion of the ways in which we see the immigrants rights movement connecting with other struggles for social justice, and the implications that concepts of national racial formation and social death have for the movement against global apartheid.
2010
This dissertation would not have been possible without the support given to me by my family, my professors and colleagues. This collective effort began with the inspiration given to me by my grandparents, Charles Patiño, Julia Patiño, and Reynalda Martínez who gave me my first history lessons through telling the stories of their lives as Chicanas/os and Mexicanas/os in Jim Crow Texas. I thank my mother, Linda Patiño, for convincing me that I was to do nothing less than go to college. I thank my sister, Linda Patiño Amador, and her family for reminding me how good I had it on my most trying days writing this dissertation as she beat cancer. I thank my brother Charles for showing me that you gotta take it day by day. I thank my new grandparents, Lito and Lita, Natividad and Juana Hernandez, for supporting me and inspiring me. I never forgot when Lita told me "You will do good mijo" when I first moved to San Diego. I thank my new parents, Jim and Martha Sheldon for always being just a phone call away when things got rough. I thank the Loeras, cousin Paul, Rick, Ramona and Little (now not so little) Ricky, Jack (Tio Joaquin) and Rosemary, Tía Mary, Troy, Stacy, Kimbie and Alfonso for coming to rejuvenate us during their visits. I especially thank Uncle Oscar and Aunt Lupe along with Sally and Jean Taramura, Annie Almazan, and Mary Hughes for opening their homes to us and making us feel close to family. I also thank the Patiño's in Montebello, especially Robert and Linda, Suzie, Charlie and Kathy, and Jeanette for welcoming us to their homes and making us feel at home in Southern California. In San Diego, I thank Liz Rodríguez, Michael Bernal and family for coming into our lives and forming the basis of our San Diego family. I thank the Baca family for viii welcoming me into their homes. Thanks to all the West Mesa families that we shared our lives with and watched our kids grow up. There is not enough room on the page to fully thank all our family and friends for the all the little things, from a few bucks for groceries to watching our kids, that made this possible. My experience at UCSD was an amazing and unforgettable experience, largely due to the prolific mentors that surrounded me. To Luis Alvarez, who I met in my hometown in Houston and journeyed with to his hometown of San Diego, your mentorship encouraged me to think courageously and independently, challenging my ideas when I most needed it while respecting my own perspective. The single-most important mentor relationship that I formed when coming to UCSD was with David G. Gutíerrez. Dave taught me to see the migrant experience beyond simply an addition to Chicana/o history, but as a fundamental shift in our understanding of democracy, citizenship and struggle. Furthermore, he challenged me to dig through my work to find what my own politics were and as such, define myself in the academic world in the face of forces that seek to confine us. In relation to developing my own political identity, Danny Widener always encouraged me to maintain and further develop the relationship between activism and scholarship. Lisa Lowe was a gracious and engaged mentor. Working with Professor Lowe reminded me of the passion and joy that the world of ideas and its connections to struggle was. Similarly Nayan Shah was an example of scholarly excellence who challenged me to flesh out the gendered constructions of race and class as a way to maintain a critical approach to all social categories as mechanisms of power. I also thank UCSD professors Roberto Alvarez, Natalia Molina, Nancy Kwak, and Rachel ix Klein for engaging my work. I feel especially grateful for being surrounded by such prolific scholars. I also want to thank my colleagues for building an intellectual community of support and solidarity. In particular I thank my cohort, Gloria Kim and Alicia Ratteree for the support that got us through those first years; Jesus Perez,
California History, 2020
understanding of Native peoples as worthy of having rights to their lands and livelihoods. Lowry contends that, in Thompson's discussion of the "Wild Indian," she "attempts to cope with this rhetorical problem by separating ordinary Yurok people-that is, the Yurok mainstream-from a tiny fraction of much maligned and marginalized Yurok whom she referred to as being 'wild' " (57). Lowry suggests that Thompson strategically framed Yurok villages as "civilized" places, and as the opposite of the "the wilderness" where "wild Indians" lived, to underscore that Yurok villages were places of sophisticated culture and society. Through her rhetorical strategies, Thompson implied that Euroamericans were truly the uncivilized "wild" ones and that they were strangers in Yurok land (66). Overall, Indigenous Rhetoric and Survival in the Nineteenth Century: A Yurok Woman Speaks Out is a noteworthy contribution to the field of rhetoric, with relevance to other fields as well. I appreciate how Lowry situates herself as a non-Native scholar and the effort she makes to underscore Thompson's relevance and impact on contemporary Yurok life. Lowry's book is highly accessible in terms of length and content and should be considered a companion text for anyone who reads Thompson. Educators who teach To the American Indian could also enrich their curriculum by including Lowry's work as an additional perspective on Thompson's invaluable writings.
Immigration Politics in California's Inland Empire
Since 2005, local governments in southern California’s Inland Empire region have attempted to pass various types of immigration regulation. I examine several cases from this region that symbolize the contemporary national debate on immigration in the U.S. Using a conceptual framework derived from a body of work by critical geographers on immigration, I argue that geography is integral to the construction of immigration politics and policy. Specifically, I use the concepts of spatial targeting and discursive production of scale to understand how local and national immigration politics and policies fit together. Thus, I compare the local case studies from the Inland Empire to national immigration politics and policies. I discuss the Bush administration immigration policies, immigration bills passed in the U.S. Congress since 2005, and their constitutive arguments. I conclude that the contradiction between liberal trade and restrictive immigration policy, which has frustrated the implementation of immigration reform at the national level and has opened the floodgate to local immigration reform initiatives, is creating a complex topography of regulations and enforcement. This new geography of rights and citizenship is a process of spatial targeting whereby local immigration regulations have taken the place of national immigration reform. Like other critical geographers, I argue that these local resolutions to the contradictions of the U.S. neoliberal state allow for the continuation of the current status quo of a flexible labor market made up of undocumented workers with contingent rights.
Angelazo_1992 LA Uprising_Latino Politics_ch02.pdf
The events that rocked the city of Los Angeles on May of 1992 opened a new chapter in race relations in the United States. These events became a metaphor about what is ailing U.S. society. The United States is not a society neatly divided into black and white Anglo-Saxon worlds, it is a shattered glass whose pieces represent the various racial and ethnic groups that strive to become a part of the “mainstream.” The mainstream is the concrete fulfillment of the materialistic “American dream.” Its realization, in the concrete lives of the myriad of the majority of the communities of color communities that make up the United States, is becoming increasingly elusive. Despite expectations to the contrary, the Los Angeles rebellion did not create a significant change in attitudes toward one of the root causes of racial/ethnic antagonism in Los Angeles. A survey carried out by UCLA professor, Lawrence Bobo, (1992) following the events, indicated that social barriers to mobility were still not seen as the main culprits for high poverty levels among minorities. The worldviews of Latinos and blacks were relatively similar in that 76% of blacks and 68% of Latinos felt that “social barriers” in some sense “caused” higher poverty amongst these groups. On the other hand, only 50% of Anglos and 57% of Asians feel that social barriers were to blame for poverty levels. In fact, only 61% of Anglos and Asians feel that more spending to assist Latinos and blacks is necessary to resolve poverty levels. These attitudinal levels were not changed significantly by the events in Los Angeles (Mandel, 1993). The “two nations” the Kerner Commission talked about in the 1960s is still present in the southern California social landscape. Two worlds and two perspectives: one an individualistic understanding of social ills held by whites, and one a more systemic, institutional perspective that shapes the understanding of communities of color.