Halfway into the book of Cacho showing the tensions, ideas, and divisiveness that has happened between Black and Latin@ communities, i'm reminded about the instance in class where Dr. Shoaff asked why it was that those of us that feel like/are second-class citizens are not fighting alongside those who have no citizenship and are fighting to obtain it. As someone who has been to immigration protests and marches with the CIW (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) and LUPE (La Union del Pueblo Entero - Cesar Chavez' organization) that dealt with everything from farmworker rights to wage theft to basic human rights for the undocumented, it isn't too hard for me to understand why many African Americans do not see this fight as their own. My best friend, Yvette, works for LUPE and is a Chicana who has educated me on these experiences and situations. I met her in my early twenties when I was just beginning to learn about Black history, Black feminism, and power structures, and colonialism. Being women of color, anti-racism and feminism have been inextricably linked, and while we both learned about Black struggles, she informed me on the Chicano struggle, and racism, sexism, and colorism within Latin@ communities. Alongside bell hooks and Audre Lorde, we were reading Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (who is actually from the same place Yvette is from - the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas). I can recall her asking me once whether I had any association with immigration. And I remember not having anything of personal experience to link with my idea of immigration - I'd had maybe one or two Latin@ friends in school (I believe the population in my hometown was less than 5%), but besides that I only drew a blank. It was as foreign and unrelated to me as that of Korean adoptees. If she weren't my best friend and weren't so involved in the struggle, I question whether I would be as involved and as knowledgeable about the situation as I am presently.
On one level, it's ignorance about the situation and willful ignorance on another (that's their issue, not ours...). I'd like to believe that if more African Americans knew that by any stretch of the imagination, what happens to farmworkers on a daily basis would be considered slavery, many more would feel a connection to it. On another level, however, I think the distancing of our communities has to do with the larger structures playing us against one another. When two groups are competing for a job, neither one of them is going to ask about the benefits, risks, or salary of the job in question. Cacho highlights this nicely by showing the issues inherent within the idea that "they take jobs that no one else wants" without asking why no one else wants them, and questioning the corporations that make these jobs as opposed to those seeking employment. As Cacho showed, African Americans have learned that we don't have rights, simply by being human - we have to fight for them, and do so continuously. With this idea underlying our experience, it isn't a surprise that many African Americans feel as though they have to aid in the degradation or dehumanization of undocumented individuals and communities; that we have to fight against immigration. Many a times, it may have very little to do with color, seeing as how many African Americans also distance themselves on various levels from other Black immigrants (from the Caribbean or Africa). I think Cacho really brought to light how inherently dehumanizing it is to have to fight or struggle for your rights and how doing so - whether successful or not - solidifies the personhood hierarchy of those who do not have to fight for their rights (i.e., whites, and the hierarchies within that as well - those that had to fight for whiteness and those who did not) and those who do (people of color, immigrants, women, non-Christians, queer, poor, etc.). The respectability politics that also manifests itself from these hierarchies of personhood become even that much more problematic.
A point I though linked well with our previous readings was the idea of one have the choice to stay and the privileges within that stance. In discussing the devastating effects of NAFTA and DR-CAFTA on Central American and Caribbean populations, economically forcing many to search for basic sustainment outside their borders, she says "...the coercion was so powerfully felt that in Oaxaca, Mexico, indigenous communities are organized around the right to not migrate, demanding 'el derecho de no migrar'. ... These populations have been denied the right to stay home." (p. 123-124). The point that Kim made in Adopted Territories of certain individuals (or economic classes) have the privilege to stay in Korea, while others wish they'd had the opportunity parallels and clarifies exactly how staying home is a privilege for some.
I posted a video of a Monica Mendoza performing a spoken word piece about women farmworkers and their (all too common) experiences of sexual assault in fields and off. Hopefully, for some who are not as knowledgeable about what farmworkers go through in the fields (picking the majority of the nation's fresh produce while being paid in crumbs, if it all...), it brings certain issues to light. I think for feminists, for anti-racists, and for those who are generally for reforms or the complete demolition of the system, immigration should be a major topic of discussion due largely to the fact that they are so invisible in many instances. And when people are invisible, and they are of color (and more so...and they are women), they are extremely vulnerable to physical and sexual violence and various levels of exploitation. Their voices are the least heard and the most silenced.
I went to visit Yvette in March of this year for a short time. The Valley, situated right on the border is full of checkpoints going north and border patrol around the southern tip. The extreme militarization that continues to escalate has been a source of violence and disruption for quite sometime now. While I was there, an investigation was underway in which a checkpoint officer who'd "caught" a woman and her teenage daughter trying to leave the valley took the two women back to his home, raped them and slit one's wrists. The daughter escaped and went to the police, and was able to send help back to save her mother. Upon finding out, the checkpoint officer committed suicide before being arrested. Upon hearing this, the question I had was why was it not reported when he took these two women in his car after getting off work? Why did this not raise suspicion with his colleagues? Why is there no protocol for what to do with undocumented individuals when stopped at checkpoints and why was it not followed in this instance? Furthermore, if this situation caused no alarm with his colleagues, how many other undocumented women has this man taken back to his home? How many women have been taken back by other officers (the majority of which are men)? Had it not have been such a gruesome scene, would it have caused any uproar? And why do situations like that rarely make the national news? All of these loaded questions further show how personhood, as Cacho interrogates, has literally been taken away from people and even their deaths mean nothing.
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