Assignment #7

This week, we will focus on current immigration policy reform, such as the federal and California DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act. You have 4 readings for this week, two of which are examples of how the DREAM Act can prevent undocumented youth from being deported, and the other two discuss the implications of the DREAM Act.

1. Former undocumented immigrants tell stories from the Heartland
2. San Francisco student deportation to Peru on hold
3. California DREAM Act
4. Federal DREAM Act

Questions to think about in your response:
-What do you think should happen to undocumented youth, who were brought over to the United States by their parents when they were young? Should they be deported because they are not here legally, or should they be allowed to stay?
-What are advantages and disadvantages that you can identify in the DREAM Act?

Spring Break is over... where do we go from here?

We came back from our spring break trip a little over a week ago, and I feel so blessed to have shared this experience with my amazing participants.

The Roots Factory

Friendship ParkHaving fun while working in a community garden for Casa Familiar

After eating lunch near the beach

Making crosses with Border Angels to remember those who have died crossing the border

The border, as seen in the desert near Jacumba

With Congressman Bob Filner at the Freedom Riders exhibit
Thank for making this semester so rewarding!

Where do we go from here? We will be spending our last few DeCals connecting the issues learned so far to the Berkeley campus by focusing on undocumented students in higher education and current immigration policy reform. Last week, we had an AB540 student share with us his story of being an Asian undocumented student in the United States and struggles he's faced. This week, we will discuss the DREAM Act and how it provides a path to citizenship for undocumented students.

Assignment #6

Los Tigres del Norte

As we gear up for our trip to San Diego and Tijuana, we will spend our last DeCal talking about the musical culture of the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly narcocorridos as "an everyday form of resistance and symbolic emulations of power for Mexican American youth" (cited from Guadalupe Manriquez, a participant from spring '10).

Your two readings are:
1. Immigration Blues: Onward and Upward with the Arts, by Alec Wilkinson
2. Immigrant Songs

Your assignment is to share a song that is relevant to the readings and/or exemplifies the kind of music discussed in the articles. For example, you could find a YouTube version of "Contrabando y Traicion" and play a 1-2 minute snippet for the class. (Please be prepared to provide a brief translation if your song is in Spanish.) The goal of this assignment is to find a song that represents the border, either because it's from that region (like norteno music) or speaks directly/indirectly to an issue related to the U.S.-Mexico border. Please use the "Immigrant Songs" article to help you in this process, as there are several songs and artists listed at the bottom.

In your comment, please post 1-2 paragraphs in response to the articles, as well as list the song that you will be sharing with the class. Questions to think about:
-How familiar are you with narocorridos?
-If you have listened to them before, what types of themes are portrayed in these songs?
-If you have not, what was a take-away point for you from the article?

8 days!

Assignment #5

This week we are excited to welcome a guest speaker, Garrett Brown from the Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network. As taken from their website, here is a description of the organization:

The Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network is a volunteer network of 400 occupational health and safety professionals who have placed their names on a resource list to provide information, technical assistance and on-site instruction regarding workplace hazards in the 3,000 "maquiladora" (foreign-owned assembly) plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Our goal has always been to build the capacity of workers and their organizations to understand occupational health and safety issues and to be able to speak and act in their own name to protect their health and to exercise their rights. Our activities have included providing information and trainings to workers, plant-wide health and safety committees, and to community, human rights and professional associations; technical assistance to workers filing complaints under international trade agreements; and technical information for grassroots organizations monitoring the performance of transnational corporations and government health and safety agencies in the global economy.

By talking with Garrett, we will continue our discussion of the role of womyn in maquiladoras and how we can move toward achieving social and environmental justice in exploited systems of labor. To prepare for class, please read these two pieces:

1. Environmental Justice Case Study
2. NAFTA's 10 Year Failure to Protect Mexican Workers' Health and Safety

In your blog response, please list at least 2 questions that you would like to ask Garrett after watching Maquilapolis last week and engaging with this week's reading. Your questions can relate to his work, anything that was unclear from the film, or new trains of thought that the articles led you to.

2 more DeCals!! Get excited!!

Midterm presentations

It's midterm season!

We will have midterm presentations during March 9 and March 16. You are required to read and present on a book in any format that you choose (role play, Powerpoint, video, diorama, art project, etc.) to share with the class what you have learned.

These are suggested books that offer a more in-depth look at immigration and issues related to the border. I have chosen both fiction and non-fiction books and tried to present a range of authors and topics for you to choose from. All of the books listed below can be found in the Berkeley libraries. However, you are not limited to this selection and if you find a book that you think is relevant to the course, please let me know.

Into the Beautiful North, Luis Alberto Urrea
"Nayeli is a young woman in the poor but tight-knit coastal Mexican town of Tres Camarones who spends her days serving tacos and helping her feisty aunt Irma get elected as the town's first female mayor. Abandoned by her father who headed north for work years before, Nayeli is hit with the realization that her hometown is all but abandoned by men, leaving it at the mercy of drug gangsters. So Nayeli hatches an elaborate scheme inspired by The Magnificent Seven: with three friends, she heads north to find seven Mexican men and smuggle them back into Mexico to protect the town. What she discovers along the way, of course, surprises her."

Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders, Alicia Gaspar de Alba
"In a genre populated with strong women, Gaspar de Alba's Ivon Villa stands out as unforgettable. A visiting professor at an L.A. college, Ivon is smart, beautiful, and gay. She and her partner, Brigit, decide to adopt a baby from Mexico, and Ivon travels to her native El Paso to see the child. On the plane, she reads an article about the murdered bodies of more than 100 women found in the desert outside Juarez. The crime wave hits home when the mother of the baby she was to adopt becomes one of the victims. Then Ivon's little sister, Irene, goes missing after an evening in Juarez. With the help of her cousin and a nervous priest, Ivon desperately searches for Irene while dealing with their accusatory mother and corrupt border patrol officers."
[I highly, highly recommend this one. It's long, but a page-turner!]

Lives on the Line: Dispatches from the U.S.-Mexico Border, Miriam Davidson
"Less well known than the Tijuana-San Diego border, the dividing line between the twin cities of Nogales, AZ, and Nogales, Mexico, nevertheless constitutes an important border crossing. Davidson's informative, journalistic account of this rapidly changing region depicts this boundary as a microcosm of what is happening along the U.S.-Mexican border as a whole. Telling the tragic stories of five people and their families living in these border cities, she highlights the socioeconomic, public health, and political problems that have developed as a result of NAFTA and the increased enforcement of migration laws. The author details the large, destabilizing migration to border cities from Central and South Mexico; the lack of adequate urban planning, resulting in densely populated slums; the growth of urban youth gangs; and the large increase in crime and drugs. She also shows how inconsistent and overzealous enforcement of immigration laws has exacerbated already serious social and political problems in these communities. Davidson balances her expos with some positive news: NAFTA-related economic growth as well as increased acceptance by the U.S. and Mexican governments of the two countries' interconnected futures."

Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America's Desert Borderlands in the New Era, John Annerino
"It is America’s killing field, and the deaths keep mounting. As the political debate has intensified and demonstrators have taken to the streets, more and more illegal border-crossers die trying to cross the desert on their way to what they hope will be a better life. Dead in Their Tracks is a first hand account of the perils associated with crossing the desert on foot. John Annerino recounts his experience making that trek with four illegal immigrants—and his return trips to document the struggles of those who persist in this treacherous journey. In this spellbinding narrative, he takes readers into the 'empty quarter' of the Southwest to meet the migrant workers and drug runners, the ranchers and Border Patrol agents, who populate today’s headlines."

The Devil's Highway: A True Story, Luis Alberto Urrea
"So many illegal immigrants die in the desert Southwest of the U.S. that only notorious catastrophes make headlines. Urrea reconstructs one such incident in the Sonoran Desert, the ordeal of sun and thirst of two dozen men in May 2001, half of whom suffered excruciating deaths. They came from Vera Cruz; their so-called guide came from Guadalajara. Jesus Lopez Ramos was no master of orienteering, however, just an expendable bottom-feeder in the border's human-smuggling racket. Tracing their lives and the routes to the border, Urrea adopts a slangy, surreal style in which the desert landscape shimmers and distorts, while in desiccated border settlements criminals, officials, and vigilantes patrol for human cargo such as the men from Vera Cruz. The imaginative license Urrea takes, paralleling the laconic facts of the case that he incorporates into his narrative, produces a powerful, almost diabolical impression of the disaster and the exploitative conditions at the border."

Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant, Ramon Perez and translated by Dick J. Reavis
"The history of the United States in large part is a history of immigration, an immigration of working class peoples. Usually documented by sociologists, economists and other social scientists, that history becomes sanitized, devoid of the sweat, toil and tears of real people's lives. Here, now, is an unexpected document from the very hand of a laborer whose trials have been even more burdensome, for he works in the United States illegally. Here is his odyssey through the United States, his endless trail of menial jobs, his indignities, his humor and optimism as well. Perhaps this will help us understand the intelligent, persevering, hard-working human beings we usually take for granted as they wait on our tables, clean our houses, pick our fruits and vegetables."

The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, Jimmy Breslin
"A work of conscience that travels from San Matías Cuatchatyotla, a small dusty town in central Mexico, to the cold and wet streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this searing exposé chronicles the life and tragic death of an illegal immigrant worker, along with the broader issues of municipal corruption and America’s deadly and controversial border policy. In November 1999, an accidental death at a Brooklyn construction site made headlines because the developers had major fund-raising ties to the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But the dead man’s name went all but unmentioned in the press coverage. The story behind Gutiérrez’s death is one of corruption, bad politics, and indifference to people whose lives are perceived not to count. With the issue of Mexican immigration and border policy taking center stage in our national debate, Gutiérrez’s story takes on even more relevance. The account of his flight, his desperation in a foreign and hostile country, and his needless death at the hands of unscrupulous forces should be a wake-up call to us all."

Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail, Ruben Martinez
"The U.S.-Mexican border is one of the most permeable boundaries in the world, breached daily by Mexicans in search of work. Thousands die crossing the line and those who reach "the other side" are branded illegals, undocumented and unprotected. Crossing Over puts a human face on the phenomenon, following the exodus of the Chávez clan, an extended Mexican family who lost three sons in a tragic border accident. Martínez follows the migrants' progress from their small southern Mexican town of Cherán to California, Wisconsin, and Missouri where far from joining the melting pot, Martínez argues, the seven million migrants in the U.S. are creating a new culture that will alter both Mexico and the United States as the two countries come increasingly to resemble each other."

Enrique's Journey, Sonia Nazario
"In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States. When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade. Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. Years pass. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go find her. With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother’s side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope–and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States."

Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez, Marjorie Agosin and translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman
"Over the past decade over 350 women around the city of Juárez, Mexico, have been raped and murdered. The remains of these brutalised young women continue to be found scattered in the parched desert, vacant city lots, and roadside ditches. Others are never found. In 'Secrets in the Sand,' Agosin through her words and images invites her readers to bear witness to the reality that the grieving families of the disappeared and murdered young women face every day. As a poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosin has dedicated her life's work to the search for justice and human dignity."

Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana, Norma Iglesias and translated by Michael Stone
"Published originally as La flor mas bella de la maquiladora, this beautifully written book is based on interviews the author conducted with more than fifty Mexican women who work in the assembly plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. A descriptive analytic study conducted in the late 1970s, the book uses compelling testimonials to detail the struggles these women face. The experiences of women in maquiladoras are attracting increasing attention from scholars, especially in the context of ongoing Mexican migration to the country's northern frontier and in light of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This book is among the earliest accounts of the physical and psychological toll exacted from the women who labor in these plants. Iglesias Prieto captures the idioms of these working women so that they emerge as dynamic individuals, young and articulate personalities, inexorably engaged in the daily struggle to change the fundamental conditions of their exploitation."

Please comment below with the book you would like to read and make sure you have not chosen a book that another person has already selected.

Happy reading! :]

Assignment #4

This week we are going to be talking about the role that womyn play along the border, and the intersectionality of race, gender, and class. Specifically, we will be looking at the Juárez femicides, and how U.S. companies have capitalized on and exploited Mexican female bodies, through the establishment of export companies known as maquiladoras and recently, the naming of make-up after these industries. We will be watching the film Maquilapolis in class to learn more about the lives of the womyn who work in these factories.

Your readings for this week are:
1) Ursula Biemann's "Performing the Border: On Gender, Transnational Bodies, and Technology"
2) MAC Rodarte make-up named for Juarez is not pretty
3) An International Tribute, With Love, to Women Killed in Juarez

There is also a blog associated with the art project dedicated to the Juárez murders, located here. It includes pictures of the artwork mentioned in the third article.

Please respond with your thoughts on these readings, including what struck you the most from reading about the horrific mutilations of womyn, and similarities that you see between exploitation of labor in Mexico and in the United States. Other questions to think about:
-Biemann mentions "the entanglement of the female body with technology and image production" (pg. 101). What are examples of this "entanglement" that you have seen in the media? Feel free to includes links to pictures or commercials.
-Did any pieces from the Juárez art project stand out to you? What did you like about it?
-What was your reaction to reading about the MAC make-up with names like "factory" and "del Norte"? What does that say about the commodification of not only labor, but also how womyn are implicated in the oppression of other womyn?

3 more DeCals til spring break!! Are you ready?! :]

Assignment #3

After the past two weeks' discussion on the history of the border, we are moving on to examine how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has contributed to the construction of a border between the United States and Mexico. Specifically, we will look at how NAFTA has led to the rise in drug cartel activity and related violence, and how these issues affect our trip.

Your 3 readings for this week are:
1) Happily Ever NAFTA, a series of articles that present conflicting views on how effective NAFTA has been in fulfilling its promises
2) In the Fight for Immigration Reform, Don't Forget About NAFTA
3) http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war (Pick ONE article from this LA Times series on Mexico's drug war and in the comments section, please list which article you have chosen to read, so that people do not double up.)

In your blog response, feel free to talk about anything that stood out to you from the readings. Questions to guide your thoughts:
-Were you familiar with NAFTA before you read these articles? What did you know about it? Have these articles changed your perception of NAFTA and what "free trade" means?
-How has NAFTA created further inequalities between the United States and Mexico?
-Are you surprised by the multitude of articles from the LA Times on Mexico's drug war? After browsing through them, has your opinion on whether we should cross the border changed? If it has not changed, how has this new information informed your perspective?

Also, please enjoy this video/parody of NAFTA.

Assignment #2

This week, we will be having a tri-DeCal with two other Alternative Breaks trips - Central Valley, which is focusing on migrant labor, and Arizona, which is focusing on immigration in Arizona. We will also be welcoming a guest speaker, Professor Alex Saragoza from the Ethnic Studies Department. Our theme for the week is past and current immigration policy and how these policies have contributed to creating a physical and figurative border between the U.S. and Mexico, between nativism and other-ness.

To that end, our readings are Chapter 2 of Joseph Nevins's Operation Gatekeeper, and this fact sheet on SB1070. Please respond to these readings by posting a 1-2 paragraph answer in the comments section of this entry.

In your response, you may point out anything that stood out to you from the readings and how they relate to your lived experiences. You may also use these questions to guide you:
-What political and socioeconomic contexts gave rise to Operation Gatekeeper and SB1070?
-What similarities/differences do you see between these two acts?
-How has the image of Tijuana as a city of "vice"and "sin," particularly during the Prohibition era in the United States, created and reinforced the idea of a border and of Mexico as a foreign country?

Your response is not limited to these questions by any means, but they can serve as a starting point to guide your thoughts.

Assignment #1

This week, we will be focusing on the history of the U.S.-Mexico border and how various immigration laws have resulted in an increasing militarization of this area. To prepare for class, please refer to this interactive timeline.

Read through the timeline and then in the comments section of this post, pick one of these 8 events to research and present on (briefly) in class:
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
1921 & 1924 Immigration Act
1942 Bracero Program
1953 Operation Wetback
1964 Border Industrialization Program
1965 Immigration Act
1996 Immigration Reform & Control Act [not listed in timeline]

In addition, print a picture that you think is representative of your chosen event. For example, if I chose to research the North American Free Trade Agreement, I might choose this picture to demonstrate how the U.S., Mexico, and Canada are fighting over production and trading rights:

Two other (short) articles I would like you to read for class are:
Mexican Violence Deters U.S. Colleges
Mexican immigrant beaten to death by U.S. Border Patrol

We will discuss these articles further in class, but for now, think about these questions:

Based on your various readings, what are some reasons why U.S. policy favored more liberal immigration laws at some points and more stringent laws at other points in history?

How has the militarization of the border created an “other,” privileging not only racial status but citizenship status as well?

This year, we are excited to be taking a brand new group of participants to the U.S.-Mexico border!

And they are...
Krista Kracher
Iliana Ponce
Hannah Bichkoff
Leila Carranza
Valerie Passano
Ana Reyes
Araceli Vazquez

We had our first DeCal last week and talked about what each participant is looking forward to most on this trip. Some responses were:
-the process that undocumented people have to go through in order to become "legal"
-meeting young children affected by current border issues
-dialoguing with Border Patrol officers, growing as a person, learning from the group
-the maquiladora industry and NAFTA
-experience the border first hand because the media often generalizes the immigrant experience
-seeing the complexity of the border first-hand
-speaking to people who live by the border and recognizing our own privilege

With these thoughtful responses, this semester is definitely going to be amazing!

We did it!

Tomorrow we embark on our last decal of the semester. Words cannot describe how amazing and rewarding this experience has been.

We will make scrapbooks in class and then we are happy to have HECTOR CARDENAS, from the Goldman School of Public Policy, come and give a talk about U.S. Mexico relations and the future of immigration reform. From the GSPP website:

While he was still in the PhD program, he started The Ergo Group, a policy and technology consulting firm that specializes in bringing the digital age to government agencies and thus helping them to do more and better things for more and more people. He has worked at The Ergo Group since 2000 on projects with the Mexican federal government and with state and local governments in the US. He is the president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Mexico Talent Network and serves on the California Business Advisory Board of Nacional Financiera (Mexico’s development bank). He is back at GSPP to teach a course on US-Mexico relations.

Anyone interested in watching the film, LA MISSION, sometime soon? It comes out in theaters this Friday, and Benjamin Bratt wants us to go:

Dear Friends,

It is with great pride in the efforts of literally hundreds of people
that we write to tell you that our film La MISSION will have its
national theatrical release beginning April 9th.

La MISSION pays homage to the neighborhood and people we grew up around,
and captures the vibrancy, cultural pride, flavor a...nd sound of this
ever-evolving barrio. At the center of the story is Che, an old school
reformed bad boy and single father who has dedicated his life to raising
his 18 year-old son. Jess is a UCLA-bound honors student who is hiding
a deeply-held secret from his macho father: he's gay.

La MISSION doesn't pull any punches. It takes a hard look at some of the
prevailing attitudes that still thrive and do damage within our
communities. But La MISSION also celebrates the humor, the sense of
pride, and the passion for life that exists alongside the everyday
struggles.

Opening weekend attendance is critical. The box office totals determine
the life expectancy of the film, including its afterlife on DVD. If
you, as we do, want to see more films that are authentically
representative of our experiences and our communities, we urge you to
support independent filmmaking by showing up at the theaters and buying
tickets. It's the only message exhibitors understand--they only run
films that will bring in large crowds.

Please check our website (www.lamissionthemovie.com) and also become a fan of
La Mission on Facebook. There you will find details on what cities and
theaters we are playing in, plus photos and information on the film and
its crew.

Thanks for supporting independent cinema, and a heartfelt thanks from us
for your support of La MISSION.

Power to the people!

Peter and Benjamin

American Dream or American Nightmare?

For these last two weeks, we would like to focus on life after the border. We are finally here... and is it truly the American Dream? Perhaps decades ago, life could have been prosperous for any immigrant, documented or undocumented. Now there are reports that with the economic crisis, remittances are down, immigrants are going back home, and the amount of people attempting to cross the border has dropped. Life is hard enough for the undocumented immigrant in the U.S. Most are unable to drive, to work, or to gain access to fair wages and social services such as health care. Yet, during our Spring Break, we worked with organizations such as Casa Familiar, and the Latino film festival, who have demonstrated that despite the furious discussion on immigration, Latino's have developed their voice and have established themselves well.

It seems that this American Dream is no longer a dream for higher wages and a better living. It is a dream for the right to identity. Read this article from the BBC, "U.S. Latino's are finding a voice." The immigration reform dilemma is affecting those without documents. But what about Latino's who are documented? What does immigration reform mean to them? Should they care? Also, what does something like the 2010 Census mean for the Latino community? This LA Times article "Univision promotes the census to Latino audiences" should help you ground some answers to this question.

Please respond to these two articles after this post.

The Border Crossed Us, 3/20-3/26

Immigration Explorer

Great job with the blog responses everyone. You've contributed some great input to the material we've looked at.

Here is an "Immigration Explorer," compiled by the New York Times. Adjust the date at the scroll bar towards the top, and select Mexico as the country. You will see the fluctuation in the Mexican population over time, specially around the 1920s. What events could these fluctuations be attributed to?

NY Times Immigration Explorer

Drugs, Violence, and the Militarization of the Border

Last week, we continued our discussion of maquiladoras and ended with the screening of Maquilapolis. To finish off this discussion, we are pleased to invite guest speaker Garrett Brown, coordinator of the Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network.
From their website:

The Maquiladora Health & Safety Support Network is a volunteer network of 400 occupational health and safety professionals who have placed their names on a resource list to provide information, technical assistance and on-site instruction regarding workplace hazards in the 3,000 "maquiladora" (foreign-owned assembly) plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. Our goal has always been to build the capacity of workers and their organizations to understand occupational health and safety issues and to be able to speak and act in their own name to protect their health and to exercise their rights. Our activities have included providing information and trainings to workers, plant-wide health and safety committees, and to community, human rights and professional associations; technical assistance to workers filing complaints under international trade agreements; and technical information for grassroots organizations monitoring the performance of transnational corporations and government health and safety agencies in the global economy.

We hope you can bring your questions from the film and our class discussions for Mr. Brown.

This week, we would like to discuss drugs, violence, and the militarization of the border. The TWO readings are Narcovirus by Alma Guillermoprieto and Stage of Siege by Denise Dresser. If you took the course The Southern Border, you may have read these articles. Denise Dresser discusses the "militirization of Mexico." This following quote was taken from another reading:

"The growing military presence at the border is a "low-intensity warfare against immigrants."

How do you think this "militarization of the border" has come to affect immigrants? This changes the security and drug discussion to one about social justice and human rights. Think about projects like Operation Gatekeeper and the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Currently, the Obama Administration is still following Bush's plan to build "The Great Wall of Mexico," as some have coined it. There have even been talks of bringing U.S. troops to the border. This NYTimes article sheds some light on the current immigration and security discussion in politics. Also think about our discussion with Michael Dear and his images of the border to answer this question. Post your response on this blog.

In class, we will be watching some video clips from the documentary project, "The Wall" and try to connect two different perspectives on this issue.

Gender, Health, and Environment

Following up on the discussion on NAFTA, we will be looking at the maquiladora industry more in depth, with a focus on gender roles, health, and environmental degradation. For your reading assignment, there are two articles to read. The first is "Women, Migration, and Household Survival Strategies: Mixtec Women in Tijuana," by Laura Velazco Ortiz, from the book Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. This reading is important as it gives insight on the rural populations that migrate to the border, which includes indigenous groups like Mixtecs. In contrast, the film we will be watching in class presents a different group of women working in the maquiladoras. These women come from urban areas around Mexico and are generally more educated and skilled, as the article will mention.

The second reading is an "Environmental Justice Case Study," which provides an introduction to environmental issues around the maquiladora industry. This article mentions the case of our community partners in Tijuana (Metales y Derivados), which also appears in the film.

Please respond with a blog comment to these readings, either one or both, with a paragraph after this post. Are there any questions that you still have after these readings?

Midterm Books

For the midterm, we ask that you choose a book from the following list. Each book is a work of non-fiction that serves as a more personal account of life at the border or the life of immigrants and will aid you to undestand the issues that we study academically. On the day of the midterm, come prepared to present your book and what you've learned with this personal account of the US-Mexico border. Hopefully you can find the book in the library or at a bookstore. If you find another memoir that you would like to read, please let us know so we can check it out. Please COMMENT below with the book you'd like to read - do not choose a book another person has already selected. Thanks, and happy reading!

Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail
Ruben Martinez

Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders With America's Illegal Migrants
John Annerino

Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America's Desert Borderlands
John Annerino

The Devil's Highway: A True Story
Luis Alberto Urrea

Enrique's Journey
Sonia Nazario

Journey of Hope, Memoirs of a Mexican Girl
Rosalina Rosay

Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant
Tianguis Pérez, Dick J. Reavis

Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border
Luis Alberto Urrea

Undocumented in L.A.: An Immigrant's Story
Dianne Walta Hart

Lives on the Line: Dispatches from the U.S.-Mexico Border
Miriam Davidson

The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez
Jimmy Breslin

By The Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border
Luis Alberto Urrea, John Lueders Booth

Politics, Economics, and Transnational Power

This week we will transition from history into contemporary and multidisciplinary issues around politics, economics, and transnational powers. Some of these issues have been a result of history. For example, NAFTA went to efect in 1994 as a development of neoliberal president Carlos Salinas. Even physically, the way the border looks has been a result of political events and actions, such as Operation Gatekeeper. Politics and economics are largely interrelated with society and migratory patterns, and from southern mexico, to the the northern border, effects are noticeable. We will discuss why people migrate in the first place, a major factor being the economy and the rise of free trade and biotechnology. The communities that we will be visiting during our trip are representations of these political and economic processes whose inhabitants rely on maquiladoras for work and are for the most part newcomers from around Mexico.

Your reading for this week is Happily Ever Nafta, a collection of four articles of commentary on the North American Free Trade Agreement. After this reading, what are your thoughts on NAFTA and in what ways has the border region been shaped by this trade agreement? You can answer this question or COMMENT with any other sort of response, about a paragraph in length. Another idea is looking for current articles on the progress of NAFTA. Where are we today? What is the future of NAFTA? This article might be beneficial to understanding NAFTA's background and provide a simple introduction to the assigned reading, in case you are new to NAFTA.

Histories of the Border

Next class, we're very lucky to have guest speaker Michael Dear. Professor Dear is a newly-appointed professor of City and Regional Planning at the College of Environmental Design. He completed a multi-year 4,000-mile trip along the U.S.–Mexico border and uses this experience to reflect on the current and future status of the line between the two countries. We are hoping that Professor Dear will provide his personal insight on past and present events of the border.

To prepare for this discussion, have a look at this assigned reading handed out last Wednesday. This reading will give you a very brief break down of what the current Mexico-U.S. relationship looks like. Mexico history and U.S. history are heavily intertwined and the border is surely a result of hundreds of years of political, economic, and social processes between the two countries. Notice how even this introduction notes the importance of history.

In addition to this reading, check out this PBS timeline. Pick an event and come to class prepared to tell us a little about it. We recommend looking at outside resources. We hope that you will be able to connect this event to the reading: Can you trace any effect this event has had on present border issues or U.S.-Mexico relations? Why is this event important for us to know?

Please do not choose the NAFTA 1994 event, as we will be talking about this in the following class, though of course, your input is more than welcome then!

COMMENT after this post with your event of choice, in order to avoid people doubling on events, if possible, before Sunday.

This assignment is due Wednesday, February 10th.

SYLLABUS

This is a link to the course syllabus, including our community partner list and tentative itinerary.

We will keep it updated, so check back occasionally.