Protections on Private Property

During the Carlos Salinas de Gortari administration the technocrats and the president rushed to amend the 1917 Constitution to "protect" private property ownership from the threat of expropriation of land. Communal property - ejidos - were out of control according to the technocrats and their US counterparts in business, and that stripping the state of the power to seize private property was a way to guarantee US investment in Mexico. In the United States, they argued, private property is sacrosanct. Well, unless...

Oil companies blazing a trail across the mid-western United States to build an oil pipeline are threatening private land owners with eminent domain to force the sale of land. And who is doing the bullying? TransCanada - the Canadian oil giant that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas. Caray. Up the road in Montana the legislature is trying to pry federal land out of the hands of the US government so that they can offer the property up for the use of mining and oil companies. I suppose that during this 100 year celebration of the Mexican Revolution that US land owners get a firsthand exposure to the bullying that brought about the rebellion of their southern neighbors.

The stripping of community land as well as private land from the hands of small agriculturalists and the public is no new story. I suggest to readers in Montana and Nebraska the fine titles of Thread of Blood, by Ana Maria Alonso, We Come to Object by Arturo Warman, and David Correia in the Radical History Review on the Gorras Blancas of New Mexico and the loss of land in that state (Issue 108, Fall 2010). I guess they'll have something to read after they've been kicked off their farms - well, during that fifteen minute break at the Motel 6 where they'll work making beds for the pipeline workers passing through town.

Mary and Her Disgusting Blogging

Mary Scriver over at the Prairie Mary blog has a great essay this week about the complexity of race and indigenous identity in relation to ideas of "disgust" and "disgusting." Well connected to the Piegan of the Rocky Mountain front of Montana in towns like Heart Butte and Browning, Mary is a great observer of how Indians are portrayed and "dealt with" by the local white population. You can't help but read Mary's thoughts and think of the treatment of the Tarahumara in Chihuahua or the poor indigenous beggars in Mexico's cities. Says Mary of the ways people use to talk about "dirty Indians":

Today’s civilized people do not use such words. They come from hierarchal [sic] assumptions based on the European empires, particularly the English, who used stigma to control their subject countries. But contemporary Native American people must still emphasize their professional, educated, and meticulously conventional qualities in order to get respect. Even the school children respond to the advertising-driven obsession with cleanliness, not smelling, “proper” clothes and other appearance markers that are meant to prevent disgust.

I like Mary's blog because it does a great job of reminding me of the similarities between Latin America and the United States. And while the ideas are there, you get a bit of Foucault in Mary's post without having to put up with his language - a real bonus! At any rate, the following passage certainly reminds me of the situation for the indigenous in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas:

In the practical world, a stigmatized person is thought to deserve punishment for the original sin of being dark-skinned or poor. A couple of decades ago an enrolled Blackfeet drunk (oh, disgusting!) pestered around a bar until the bar owner simply shot him dead. The tribal people started out being indignant but pretty soon they drifted back to the bar, saying that the drunk asked for it with his disgusting behavior. Times have changed. Not long ago three brothers who liked violence picked out what they thought was a likely victim in the parking lot of a bar at quitting time: a drunk Indian ranch hand. But in the middle of their melee, another Indian -- a tribal council member and his wife -- tried to stop it, so the fun-lovers turned their fists and boots on them. The interveners were not powerless. They knew how to use the law. The brothers are serving jail time. But even the tribal council member was accused of the disgusting practice of hanging around in a bar until closing time.

I blogged about this incident of Mexican brothers beating Montana Indians and using the phrase "dirty Indian" while doing it in 2009.

Why Latin America: A Personal Reflection

My students always ask. Every semester. Without fail. They all want to know how I became interested in Mexico and Latin America. So, here is an incredibly self-indulgent response to my students on why I chose to make Latin America part of my life.

My interest in Latin America developed while I was living in the San Gabriel Valley of LA and East LA, fresh out of Montana and a year of college. Sure, some people take time off of school and go to Europe to find themselves. I ended up in LA.

At first my new neighbors represented the exotic other: the plucked and plucky cholas, the vatos with the shaved heads and the dickies, the old men that talked about Chihuahua and tried to teach me norteño swears, and, of course, the food. It was Edward Said writ small, mestizo style. Then I met a guy from El Salvador with screwed up thumbs - from where he had been hung up all night after breaking a curfew. I may have been from Montana, but I had never had my head in the ground. I knew my country sponsored what went on in his, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to throw up or scream. I guess I did nothing, which is what most of us do.

After that, the similarities came fast and furious. Plates of barbacoa and tacos de chivo drew out conversations about the goats I had raised for milk and meat on our small farm in Montana. Small, for Montana, at almost 200 acres; a respectable rancho for some of the folks I met from Oaxaca and Guerrero. Growing up I'd worked packing mules, bucking hay, building fence, janitorial, car part sales ... all the jobs that helped keep me in St. Vincent DePaul's (and at times K-Mart's) finest, and ones that connected me to the rural people I met turned urban service workers. Conversations with Chileans about mining and smelting connected them to the mines and smelters of my own state - the home of the great Anaconda that had strangled both our families and had led us all to new homes. At the end of the day, I found myself having more in common with the migrants from Latin America than I did with the middle-class Anglo families that I rented rooms from.

When I returned to Montana I couldn't shake the memories of the people I'd met. I connected to classes on Latin America, solidarity groups and movements - the usual suspects. Frankly, I've never been sure if all of those activities to try and "save" Latin America ever did much for Latin America, or if it did more for our own consciences. I knew that we were programmed to a particular response to "save" the other when one solidarity group brought campesinos and free trade zone workers - yes, real campesinos - for us to talk to. For good reason it felt like a zoo or a circus, and I certainly had to question all that we were up to. Latin American Ishis on display - trying desperately not to share his fate. I grew up a campesino. My father lost his job to free trade. Did I need to see these brown faces to avoid looking at my own story?

And so before me, I thought, were two paths: one to look at Latin America as the kitschy exotic playground for my escape from anglolandia or, the destitute child of poverty crying for my saving graces. Ever at the periphery - first as escape or second as pleading subaltern - I had come to an inability to see two continents as human.

With time and travel, I learned to drop both of those paths. Mexico, and Latin America in general, have become something of a home. I know I don't "get" everything that goes on, and I know better now that the region needs nothing from me except to be a good neighbor - a thing that we all need from each other. At times that might mean I need to get involved with a cause (neighbors help each other out), and at times it might mean I need to keep my yap shut. But at the end of the day, there are no pretexts or fantasies about our co-existence.

I've found that probably the best thing I could do was to try and help other folks in the United States develop an appreciation of Latin America (an understanding might be too tall of an order for the class room), not as a place that needed saving or as a place to play out escapist fantasy, but as a region of "carne y hueso" with creative and intelligent ways of navigating the vagaries of this world. So, students, the next time you ask me why, I'll invite you to know more, and then you'll understand - but only for yourself.

Mountain West Hispanics: Class... and Race.

In 2009 Stephen Harwood thought he had the perfect scapegoat. On their way to Montana from Yakima, Harwood was shot and his girlfriend murdered by, he claimed at the time, a "hispanic hitch hiker." However, in the ensuing investigation police realized his tale didn't quite hold water, and it turns out Harwood was the killer.

Tales of racial scapegoating in the United States are nothing new. In the American south and northeast blame has been laid on generic Puerto Rican, African American, and generally Afro-Caribbean immigrants for decades if not centuries. The southwest is no stranger to the imagined Hispanic killer trope, for sure. But the pacific north west and mountain west? I think we have here one example of the clear convergence of three factors: Mexico's image in the media and the associated political hysteria, increased migration to the northwest, and urban legend.

As the number of Hispanics in the northwest continues to grow (faster in Washington and Idaho than in Montana), the sensational hysteria of political media seems to be influencing perceptions of Hispanics in the area. As a teen, I recall migrant sugar beet pickers, cherry pickers, and potato pickers being seen as hard working individuals that made agricultural life affordable. Between we teenagers and migrant workers, farmers in Montana were able to keep labor costs low in a profession that has a 10% or less profit margin. By contrast, a recent Bozeman Chronicle article hints that things are changing.

Millions of immigrants are "changing the character of this country," said Paul Nachman, a Bozeman retired physicist and one of the most outspoken critics of migration in Gallatin County. "We are importing an underclass, importing poverty."

In California, where he lived for nine years, Nachman said illegal immigrants are a great burden on the state budget, schools, prisons, welfare system and emergency rooms. They have created large enclaves where Spanish is the main language. Many more jobs would be available, he said, if they went home.

I don't mean to say you could not find overt racism in the northwest - try being Native American in Spokane or Billings. But I do mean to say that increased migration has increased the problem - and I don't mean Hispanics, I mean folks from places with large Hispanic populations that come with discriminatory baggage in place (like Nachman). For example, see the current Christian Exodus movement. At any rate, it makes it possible - and I would add more frequent - for people to lay down ideas like the western tale of the killer hitchhiker on top of the tale of the violent Latina/o. Urban legend meets political hysteria.

And finally, the thing that really stood out for me from Nachman's comment was his shot at the "underclass" in his comment. Montana has the 17th highest poverty rate in the United States, and comments like Nachman's reek of the sort of elitist class divisions that can and do split the state. But I would also point out that it is easy for Nachman to ease into this division, not only coming from California, but also going to Montana. As I mentioned, discrimination against Native Americans in the state and region is at intolerable levels, and I should also add (no surprise to historians, economists and anthropologists) that Montana's reservations see 20% or higher poverty.

In the end, I would like to think that westerners are better than the sort of discrimination in both class and race we see in such pronounced ways in the south or east, but I think patterns established with Native Americans reveal that it is just not going to be the case - but I don't think it has to be the case. Certainly, I think there needs to be far greater outreach to Hispanics in states like Montana as well as to the Anglo population so that westerns can do what they do best - adjust and change. And frankly, considering the outward migration of the sons and daughters of the west's farmers, Hispanics may be the demographic future of the survival of agriculture in the west.

ARCO's Sneeze: Thirty Years Ago in a Global Economy

Thirty years ago Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO) announced the closing of the Anaconda copper mines in Butte, Montana, and the metals smelting facilities in Anaconda and Great Falls, Montana. The great Anaconda - the mighty copper company that was once a local company but became part of the Rockefeller Empire - it seems had reached too far. ARCO, of course, purchased the Anaconda company only in 1977 after it had experienced nationalization in Chile and Mexico. Unfamiliar with copper mining, it made bad investment after bad investment all while squeezing labor in its coils (which drove strike after strike). Indeed, my father's only claim to fame was being photographed by the local paper in 1979, the Great Falls Tribune, as he picketed ARCO leaning up against his 67 Buick Special.

And that, I think, is my point today. Globalized corporations have the power to reach across oceans and bring together markets and maximize profits, but they also tie together labor in a way the labor (outside of the internationals) has no idea about. Miners in Butte - especially in the increasingly conservative unions - had little understanding of how they fueled an empire that reached into the heart of South America and squeezed out the life blood of labor there with brutal practices. Workers in Chile had little understanding that their nationalization would create a spiral in prices and stocks that would pull the legs out from underneath a poor, extractive area on the other side of the globe. And of course, you can be sure that the owners in the middle weren't flipping burgers at Mickey D's when the smoke cleared. In fact, ARCO went on to become a subsidiary of BP, today dragging its feet on cleaning up the mining mess in Butte (the largest in the US) while simultaneously fixing oil prices in Russia, abusing human rights in Azerbaijan, dumping oil on the ground in Alaska, and paying paramilitaries to assault farmers in Colombia with weapons purchased for them by US tax dollars.

It is the industrial-sindical zen of globalization, I suppose. Link us all together and an angry doctor from Argentina, a greedy executive from New York or London, a slightly kooky Chilean socialist, and a broken family from Montana all fuel each other's dreams ... and nightmares.

Like it is Market Driven...

An extra dose of snark today.

So, Mexicans immigrate to the United States because Mexico stinks and they want to come to the US and simultaneously take jobs / live on unemployment while not having to live in Mexico while turning the US into Mexico. *sigh* Living in Texas I get to hear all sorts of perceptions about immigration.

Meanwhile, back in Montana, the Center for the Rocky Mountain West appeared in an article in the Missoulian and, shock of shocks, they point out that immigration is a product of supply and demand in the labor market. I am sure all Latin America specialists, business people, and workers are completely baffled by this concept. At any rate, it is a nice article from the Missoulian.

Back From the Great Northern Frontier

Secret History fell silent for a few weeks while I attended to some family business and recreation in the north. Issues of Latin America were never far, however.

I spent some time chatting with a cousin who works with Latino students in the heart of spud country about the ridiculousness of Idaho's English only position as well as the excellent performance of her Mexican-American students. As Idaho children increasingly take their two week "spud picking" break from school to go on trips to Disney Land and (yes) Cabo, Mexicans have filled in the gaps - and have kept rural Idaho from depopulating as its children flee for more cosmopolitan climes.

I see that West Yellowstone has increasingly become a seasonal place of work for African American and Latino workers and less and less High School and College Students of the Montana / Idaho white middle class. Given ten years I think we will see Montana following the pattern of Colorado and South Dakota and teen farm labor will be replaced by Latino farm labor. A short visit to the Blackfoot rez will bear that out, where hip-hop Pikuni teens with names like Garcia and Gomez participate in drum circles and other cultural celebrations.

As it has always been, the hope of the population of the US west relies on cheap labor. From the time the hydraulic drill was introduced into hard-rock mining to today, the US West is a colonial endeavor in need of labor to fuel the extractive profit of its existence - be it the extraction of minerals and ag products or the inexpensive service of tourist industries.

Hate Crimes, Indigenous Style?

Prairie Mary, whom I used to read with far more frequency before the baby was born, has posted an interesting note about a bar fight just off the Blackfoot reservation in Cut Bank, MT. Sez Mary:

The narrative: Three brothers, not Indians but possibly with some Mexican blood, liked to fight and had been drinking all evening. At closing time, 2AM, they chose as their victim a hired hand, a Native American single guy who was mild-mannered and well-liked, but not very good at self-control or social smarts, esp. once he was drunk. They picked a fight with him and all three began to beat on him. When he went to the ground, they began to kick.

A Native American county commissioner came out with his wife, saw what was happening and decided to intervene. At first he just remonstrated, saying he was going to call the police. (He had a cell phone.) So the brothers began to beat him and took him down. His wife tried to help but she, too, was shoved and sent flying. By that time enough people were there that the brothers thought they should get scarce.

But the county commissioner, a handsome and resourceful man from a strong rez family chose to make an issue out of it. He tried to press charges, saying it was a “hate crime” because the men were shouting phrases like “dirty Indian.” The white county attorney refused, saying that it was NOT a hate crime, just a fight as usual.

Read the whole post.... (A great discussion of race and class.)

Indigenous folks in the United States and citizens of Mexico (and the empire before it) have had close ties for generations. Nevertheless, I don't think most Anglos think about those ties - at least not since we quit making Westerns - and perhaps many U.S. Americans of Mexican descent don't either. Last semester one girl gasped when I said that we were going to talk about the right of those of indigenous descent in the United States, but that we were not yet going to focus on people who self identified as being descended from one of the Latin American nations. She raised her hand and said that she had never thought of herself and U.S. Native Americans having anything in common.

Anywho, a couple things struck me about this post from the talented Prairie Mary:

1) The county decision not to call it a hate crime. In Latin America if you have a few mestizo guys whooping up on a guy shouting "Indio sucio," I don't think anybody would think twice about calling it a racially motivated crime. Of course in Guerrero or Oaxaca you might just call it the police.

2) The fall back position that this was just a standard bar fight for the area. You know, all those hot-blooded folks like fightin' anyway. (***Please note that last sentence was written dipped in irony and dripping with exasperation***)

The Great Falls Tribune had an article on the incident, but what I liked most about that post was the comment of one of the readers. To find an "impartial" jury they moved the trial to the extreme NW corner of the state - the Lilliest portion of the state bristling with militia members, drugged up vets, and white supremacists (at least it was 15 years ago). Violence in Latin America, indeed.

Mex Mont, or Really Good Beef for those Tacos

Bozeman (MT) Daily Chronicle had a nice (in some ways) article on the presence of Mexican labor in the resort town of Big Sky and in the Bozeman area in general. I was struck by a couple of things.

1) When the author asks why hispanics are not coming to Montana in large numbers, the fall-back answer is "the weather." I'm not sure what sort of magic happens between the winters of Denver and the winters in Bozeman, but it certainly isn't anything that makes Montana winters more brutal. The real story here is jobs, and recognition that Mexicans won't move to where there are no jobs is key to understanding immigration. If it was about weather, Toluca would be depopulated, as would most places in the high sierra from EdoMex to Chihuahua.

2) The similarities that the migrants described when talking about Montana compared to Mexico: beautiful mountains, small towns, farms and ranches, and that rural "lifestyle" that dominates the area. That is perhaps why I like western and south eastern Mexico State so much.

3) The emphasis on the rejection of the presence of Mexicans. This rejection, I would very much be willing to bet, is one not only based in competition for jobs, but also with the indigenous appearance. Montana is an interesting place racially. Never segregated for African Americans, it is a brutally racist place for Native Americans. Indigenous in appearance, Migrants from central and southern Mexico are most certainly running into that same wall. In all fairness, however, as a Montana-born person living in exile in Texas , people from anywhere ***cough cough California*** are generally not welcomed.

4) The "uninviting" nature of the state based on the ability of the ICE folks to enforce laws. I would aver that there is more going on to ICE effectiveness in Montana than just a lower population. ICE can apparently do their job without fences and internal checkpoints.

And finally, I was blown away how yesterday many of the Montana news sources made a big deal out of the busting of 6 Mexicans tied to Pharmaceuticos Collins, a company in GDL supplying chemicals for (wait for it).... meth. Again, we have a local example of how the consumption of drugs in the far-flung corners of the United States ties this nation to drug cartels and it is doubtful we will ever start taking drug uses seriously as a health issue.