When Central American families and individuals arrive to the United States fleeing war and extreme poverty caused by U.S imperialism and contemporary capitalism deconstructed in Raúl Delgado Wise’s The Migration and Labor Question Today: Imperialism, Unequal Development, and Forced Migration, very few welcome them with open arms. It is far more probable for them to be antagonized and dehumanized by Americans whose lineage traces back to families that also migrated to North America and who feel wrongly threatened. For instance, Donald Trump’s assumption of Salvadoran youth to be inherently aggressive and labeling of MS-13 gang members as “animals who will be out of here (the U.S.) quickly” is a direct attack towards the Central American community. Moreover, Central Americans are often subjects to prejudice influenced by colorism and are excluded from progressive efforts of the Mexican American/Chicanx subculture in the U.S. I argue that for those who exist in the margins of Latinidad such as people of an indigenous background and/or Central Americans, it results in ostracism, …show more content…
The utter enormity of deaths, disappearances, torture and human rights violations against Central American migrants in Mexico continues to be one of the most unrecognized crisis in this hemisphere. The likelihood of Salvadoran women being raped, forced into sexual trafficking by gangs and drug lords, and/or losing their lives riding on freight trains in Mexican territory discussed in Leisy J. Abrego’s On Silences: Salvadoran Refugees Then and Now is a byproduct of the greedy alliance Mexico has formed with the United States to decrease central american migration and in return stimulate better negotiations. A connection can be drawn to George Lipsitz’s warning against a culture being driven to jeopardize the fate of another in pursuit of white acceptance in The Possessive Investment in
In Sueños Americanos: Barrio Youth Negotiating Social and Cultural Identities, Julio Cammarota studies Latina/o youth who live in El Pueblo, and talks about how Proposition 187, the anti-immigrant law, is affecting Latina/o youth in California (Cammarota, 2008, p. 3). In this book review, I will write about the two main points the author is trying to get across. The two main points I will be writing about are how Proposition 187 is affecting the Latina/o community, and about how Latina/o youth are copping in the El Pueblo barrio. Afterward I write about the two main points the author is trying to get across, I will write a brief description of the author and write about the author’s strengths and weaknesses.
The author of Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman, grapples with the United States’ economic relationship with their neighbors to the south, Mexico. It also considers, through many interviews, the affairs of one nation. It is a work held to high esteem by many critics, who view this work as an essential part in truly understanding and capturing Mexico’s history. In Mexican Lives, Hellman presents us with a cast from all walks of life. This enables a reader to get more than one perspective, which tends to be bias. It also gives a more inclusive view of the nation of Mexico as a whole. Dealing with rebel activity, free trade, assassinations and their transition into the modern age, it justly captures a Mexico in its true light.
A leading American historian on race, policing, immigration, and incarceration in the United States, Kelly Lytle Hernandez’s Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol tells the story of how Mexican immigrant workers emerged as the primary target of the United States Border Patrol and how, in the process, the United States Border Patrol shaped the history of race in the United States. Migra! also explores social history, including the dynamics of Anglo-American nativism, the power of national security, and labor-control interests of capitalistic development in the American southwest. In short, Migra! explains
Hence, in the first portion of Doty’s article, she offers further support of her arguments by relating the phenomena of biopolitics and biopower through referencing racially motivated legislation such as Operation Gatekeeper, Operation Safeguard, Operation Rio Grande, the Secure Border Initiative and California’s proposition 187 (2011, p. 604). Specifically, she includes a poignant statement, “The unauthorized migrant becomes socially undesirable, and ultimately one who can be killed without consequence” (2011, p.607). Similarly, in the Vice News film, Storming Spain’s Razor-Wire Fence: Europe or Die, we witness this sentiment from the doctor who is captured on film stating, “they don’t deserve it”, when asking the film crew why they were providing water and food to the injured migrants who were beaten after crossing the border (DIRECTOR, YEAR, 11:08). Furthermore, this writer has witnessed the harsh treatment of migrants first hand, on a trip to the Dominican Republic in 2006, where the horrific treatment of the Haitians by the Dominicans is upsetting. Many of these Haitian migrants were severely disabled women who held babies in their arms as they begged for money on the streets of San Felipe de Puerto Plata, after fleeing areas of poverty stricken and corrupt Haiti. To say I was saddened to see the treatment of these migrants is an understatement, it was deeply disturbing. I witnessed them being kicked and spat on as Dominican’s walked by them. Thus, witnessing this inhumane treatment compelled me to ask one of the locals why this happens, which they explained that the Dominicans feel the migrants are unworthy and view them as “less than dogs” because they bring crime and disease to the Dominican
Martinez, Oscar. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1994), 232.
When contextualized by historical precedent, does the ethnographic method expose the contrasted emotions that migrants have felt as inhabitants of Mexico and the United States? In historian Deborah Cohen’s first book entitled Braceros! Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar U.S. and Mexico, readers follow the voyages of the Mexican-born men who chose to leave their homeland for the United States as agricultural laborers in the so-called Bracero Program between 1942 and 1964. Throughout her historiography, Dr. Cohen’s credentials as a dedicated investigator of U.S. and Mexican socioeconomic policies manifest themselves in her findings. Currently, Dr. Cohen is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri
Montoya, Margret E. "Masks and Identify," and "Masks and Resistance," in The Latino/a Condition: A Critical Reader New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Ngai, Mae M. 2004 “Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America” Publisher: Princeton University Press.
Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, N.J. [u.a.: Princeton Univ. Press, 2004. Print.
Like previous American expansion, American imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was motivated by desire for new economic gains and improvements. However, the social justification, diplomatic and military approach and geographical aspect of imperialist expansionism varied greatly from previous American growth. Therefore, American expansionism underwent more change in this period than continuity.
Imperialism in America At the turn of the century, America and the views of its people changed. Many different ideas were surfacing about issues that affected the country as a whole. The Republican Party, led by William McKinley, was concentrating on the expansion of the United States and looking to excel in power and commerce. The Democratic Party at this time was led by William Jennings Bryan, who was absorbed in a sponge of morality and was concerned with the rights of man.
The injustice surrounding the Indigenous populations in Mexico and Central America began with the Spanish colonies in the sixteenth century, and the struggle for their land and constitution rights has been an ongoing battle for hundreds of years. The indigenous people take up a large part of the population in Mexico and Central America. (See Table 1; Graph 1 below). Indigenous people make up of over 16 percent of the Mexican population, and over 66 percent of the population is indigenous in Guatemala. The historical reality of the indigenous peoples in Central America has been one poverty, eviction from their land, political violence and mistreatment at the hands of the police and army, and exclusion of government policies.
In The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail, Oscar Martinez comments on the injustices that occur while migrating from Central America. Central Americans are forced to leave their countries in fear of the inevitable consequences. The systematic abuse Central Americans endure while migrating is founded on that fear which results in more repercussions for migrants. The psychological effects of migrating is used by Martinez to give insight on the atrocities that happen in Central America. The corruption involved while migrating in Central America is against human rights and should be brought immediate attention internationally. Martinez uses the experiences of migrants to expose Mexico’s passivity on the subject and to expose readers’ to the hard truths that occur while migrating.
What would it be like to wake up everyday knowing you would get bullied, mistreated, and/or abused just because of where you were born? Discrimination still exists! “Discrimination remains and there is an increase in hate crimes against Hispanics, Latinos and Mexican-Americans, as one of the perceived symbols of that discrimination, the U.S.-Mexico Border Fence, nears completion. Instead of pulling together in these difficult times, we may see a greater polarization of attitudes” (Gibson). But why are hate crimes increasing towards Latin and Hispanic aliens and what types of discrimination are occurring against them? Understanding violence towards the Hispanic and Latin alien is divided into three main classes; the difference between legal and illegal aliens, the attacks and effects, and the point of view of different people towards aliens.
There were two different time periods where Imperialism occurred. The first wave of imperialism, called the 'Old' Imperialism, lasted from around 1500 - 1800. The 'New' Imperialism lasted from around 1870 - 1914. The three main differences that we will discuss today are the differences in economics, politics, and the motive behind all of this.