The Other Side of the Bracero Story with Irvin Ibargüen

0:14 Hi, everyone, This is Carmen and Christina and this is so known a podcast where we talk to professors. Ah no, it's a podcast, Yes, a podcast where we talk about lain American history. Sometimes it's horrible and deals with eavy topics like cracism, corruption, and genocide. But more than that, it's also about power, resistance and community. And today we had the chance the opportunity to talk to Urban Ibarguen, a professional historian born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is a history professor at New York University, where he teaches courses on US and immigration history. Urban's research proceeds from one question, what happens when we stop prioritizing how immigration impacts the United States and instead grapple with how sending states, transit states, and migrants themselves experienced it.

1:04 And we're talking with him about his first book, Caught in the Current Mexico Struggled to Regulate Emigration nineteen forty to nineteen eighty And what a fascinating conversation it was absolutely Yeah. I don't know, I think everyone needs to read this book. It I don't even think it was like because you know how some academic books like are too academic. Yeah, I didn't really feel like that. I had a good time reading it. I didn't have to I did have to look up some words, but it wasn't like other books where I'm reading it, I'm like, what the hell did I just say? It was easy to understand. Yeah, And if you're listening to this, like this topic is will interest you no matter what, Like there's you have to get this book, yes, and to us, we touch on some of these things in our conversation with Irvin, but the book touches and so much that we've talked about.

1:50 You know, obviously US imperialism and their demand for cheap labor, right, but also like during Mexico's grapple with emigration, right, they're also considering US imperialism in Central America and how that the optics of that and how they're you know, are they going to condemn us in intervention in Guatemala? Like things like that, which was super interesting to read about. Right, you could pull out a Bingo card and then like see what we've talked about, because you know what else popped up? That's what I was waiting for you to say, Si sem Travis, Yes Kissinger Kissinger who is actually on our bingo card. I think if he's not here, show me. But yeah, I definitely check that book out and hopefully you enjoy this conversation we have with urban. All Right, Hi everyone, this is Carmen and Christina.

2:40 Hi everyone, I'm Ervin Bargwin, professor of history at NYU. Yes, we have a professor with us today, Yes, profet. Well, let's just jump right into our topic. Irvin here is going to be sharing with us about his book Caught in the Current and Mexico's I guess struggle with immigration and all the stories involved with that. Yeah, broadly, I guess the story is does center the Mexican government, mostly because that's where I found new sources. You know, as a historian, basically we like we're really dependent upon what we find in archives and that sort of thing. So for me, the story really began in grad school. I went to the two hundred. Other than that, in Mexico City. I got to read all these memos and internal conversations that Mexican politicians were having in the forties and fifties and sixties about Mexican migration, and I was really surprised what I found there, Right, because kind of Usually the story is that, you know, Mexico is happy to see people go. Right, this kind of very signical interpretation, right, that the Mexican state uses it as a safety valve, right to release pressures related to unemployment and political turmo and that sort of thing. And so that's really colored the way I think historians and just the general public really thinks about places like Mexico.

3:53 Right. In some ways, Mexico is just kind of like a anchor for the larger way in which I think Americans think about the global South and developing world. Right, they basically think that these countries take advantage of America, right, that you know, America is like a dumping ground that the global South uses. Right. So you see this this theory, though it's academic theory, the safety about theory, it basically gets replicated by like Donald Trump, right where he says, you know, the shipthole country centers there their worst, right, that's basically the safety valut theory, just in like colloquial speaker. And so that's why I was so struck when I went to the archives and I noticed, actually that's not the full story, right, Yes, you do have this impulse within Mexico to release some of its population abroad because they anticipate that they can work in the US and gain higher wages and that sort of thing. But it's always a very careful kind of hedging process, right. They recognize it's kind of like a devil's bargain, right, like, yes, you know, yes we were able to send these people north, but then that exposes us to a variety of blowback.

4:50 And so in the book I talk about some of that blowback. You know. The first is that it creates kind of chaos internally with the Mexico because basically a lot of people Before you get to leave, you have to actually move within Mexico. You have to move from Central Mexico to north northern Mexico. And a lot of time, these northern Mexican towns are not ready for tens of thousands of people to just show up kind of unannounced, right, And so there's this kind of institutional lag where like some of these towns in northern Mexico they don't even have like a public hospital or anything like that and infrastructure to really receive migration and act as a staging ground for the international migration. The second big challenges of course that there does come a point where yes, you're sending people abroad, but then you're depleting your local industries, your national industries of labor.

5:31 Right. And of course the great irony is that in northern Mexico, basically the same crops that grow in southern California and Texas they grow also on northern Mexican side. Right, It's kind of one united geography. And so you know, throughout the forties fifty sixties, you see you know, oligarchs and corporations along northern Mexico basically complaining, right that this migration is a terrible idea because they could use that labor too. Right, It's not not just America that can use this quote unquote cheap labor. They will want a little bit of that too. Last, and the most important reason for the Mexican state really to be concerned with migration is that it creates a reputational damage, right, the ruling party of the pri part of it's kind of like, you know, claim to popularity is that it's supposed to be the champion of the average Mexican peasant.

6:17 Right. Of course, it's hard to claim that when you are sending people abroad to be abused in the United States, right, And so that ends up being kind of one of the main reasons why the Mexican state at times really has to kind of like reckon with the devil's bargain and say, you know, I actually, perhaps it may be in our best interest to experiments with countermigratory strategies, right to keep people at home rather than have them go abroad. And so the book basically goes into that the way in which Mexico basically sits on the fence throughout most most of the twenty twenty century sometimes kind of wanted wanting to dip their toe in this kind of realm of facilitating migration and then kind of getting scared right and pulling back right because that to me is actually the story, right, And ultimately, of course as a title gestures that they of course fail caught in the current.

7:01 Really it's meant to evoke the way in which, you know, it's not just American politicians that talk about migration that's flows that they can be controlled. We also see the same thing in Mexico, right. The discourse in the forties, fifties, sixties is to think about migration that's fluholes that can be directed internally, and they you know, the Spanish show gets really poetic with the language and all that sort of stuff, But basically it's the same image of the same fantasy of migration control, this idea that you can open it and close it and calibrate it however you want, whenever you want. Right. We know that that's the story on the American side, right, because we live it. You know, America is always like either going opening borders or closing borders and kind of like stuck in this perpetual pendulum. But the same thing happens in Mexico r and the same thing happens across the global salid Right, people basically change their mi Right, we just haven't allowed for that kind of variability because we have these kind of arrogant takes on the global South.

7:45 They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course they would just want people to leave. Well, yeah, sure, they want to at some point they entertain the possibility that that might be a mutually beneficial thing. But there are concrete moments right where the Mexican state again because it is an authoritarian state, because it is very concerned about its image, not because it actually cares about people, but just because it's concerned about it, right, does pull back. So that's again where I went into archives and I found you know, it's not that I looked for them, it's just they're really boxes and boxes and stuff. And so that's really what stood out to me. And again it's not just the Mexican state as a Mexican American. What struck me the most were the wide cross section of people across Mexican society. I'm talking about like labor organizations, peasants, syndicates, peasant organizations, competine organizations, business lobbies, all of which were like actively writing in the forties and fifties to the Mexican government laying out their blueprint for how they thought Mexico could solve the migratory crisis.

8:36 Right, These particular. Concern and effected communities, right felt that migration itself was this kind of humiliation, and so for that reason they often volunteered right their ideas. Right, I think I think that's a very interesting like the kind of policies that come out of that are suggestions to me were so fascinating, right because they were always very like, very concrete and very specific in their diagnoses of what was wrong with Mexico, like the pots themselves, they were kind of talking in general terms about, you know, we need to invest more in the fields and this kind of stuff would you expect, whereas the effect of the communities would be like, no, you know, we would stay if you know, if there was just less corruption inside the organization that redistribute to hetos, if you would just kind of speed up the paperwork and get us our heato, we would actually stay here.

9:17 You don't have to like do anything crazy. All you gotta do is literally just make sure that paperwork gets tout quickly, and we'll stay. Business organizations have their ideas. They say, you know, the problem that elicited Mexican migration is that so many Mexicans are involved in agriculture, and that's very seasonal endeavor, and so obviously in the off season they have to go abroad. So wouldn't it be great if we volunteer some of our fields in northern Mexico for like a year long kind of production. So they're talking about, for example, example, like having hend farms, hend farms that would produce eggs a year round. Because they thought the problem was less that it was less some kind of like huge chasm between the poor and the rich America and Mexico and more the kind of the seasonal rhythms of things, right, So they were like, how do we create a society that's permanently employed a year.

10:00 Long that way people don't have to go abroad. So anyway, that's what really kind of struck me is the fact that basically in the forty fifty sixties, I don't know today really, but like it's definitely the forty fifty sixties when this migration is first taking off and people still understand it as something that can be contained and malleable. They do have ideas about it. Now, of course, it's like, you know, there's like ten plus million Mexicans in the US, so you see less of that now. It's more about like how do we get the remittances bag and this kind of thing? Right, Like we're like too far gone, right, Aspa's so big that they can't there's no like plausible solution to the thing. Now, it's just a fact of life that this is how it's organized. There's no like solving it or you know, this is just kind of like we're in a completely different era.

10:40 But for me, that's what was fascinating, kind of going to this moment where there's still a moment of possibility in the world, right, and the moment of possibility for Mexico to structure itself in a way that will not lead to migration. But of course it doesn't come to pass for a variety of reasons. And you know, if you guys won't we can talk about concrete stories and that sort of thing. Yeah, it was super interesting to read about all the different ways that Mexico tried to, I guess, put a stop to out migration. It was the first time I really read something from Mexico's point of view in trying to deal with those things. I remember the first time I had seen something about it was when I was reading doctor Kelly leidol Ananda's book, and she talked about briefly about like Mexico trying to push for like patriotism and rallying like the citizens to come up with ways to get people to stay. And of course yearbook was so much more in depth about that, And yeah, it was interesting to see all the different ways that they they tried to deal with it, and ultimately it seems like from the eighties onwards kind of just relentive to out migration.

11:46 Yeah, I mean there's there happened books that like begin to dip their toes into the Mexican context, and then ultimately they always come up with this kind of conclusion that the Mexican government and largely Mexican society were kind of ambivalent about the migration. Right. You know, they recognize the boons, but they also kind of recognize the downsides. And you know that that's true as far as it goes. But what that doesn't capture is how like political tides intensify a particular moments, right. And again we know this from the American side, right, Like America is also a country that's ambivalent about immigration. Rightly, you know, some people want it, some people don't want But once you're living in it, you know that there are moments in which one of the two feelings rises, right, either the feeling of like, let's welcome the immigrants or the feeling more commonly, of let's give rid of all these immigrants.

12:31 Right, The same thing happens on the Mexican side. Right. There are concrete moments right where the pressure builds up internally such that people within Mexico and specialist politicians feel like they're pressure to act, they need to actually go out there and talk about publicly keeping people within Mexico. And so that's really on the first half of the book is building up to that first big moment where the Mexican state or the pri really kind of begins to sense and feel this kind of pressure emanating from the public. It comes from a variety of sources and reasons, or for a variety of reasons. Main one though, is that increasingly in the forties and fifties, there's all this kind of newspaper coverage both about the percelle migration and the undocumented migration that grows alongside with it, and all of it essentially compares in one way or another, this mass migration to being or dilutes this migration to being animalistic, right to the migrants being essentially beast of burden in the United States. You know, some of the newspaper headlines that caught my attention were like one that said, you know, Malo and Stasias, right, so you know, and these these are not like these are not like minor stories, and like page ten, this is like the front cover of like extensio laignon. And so this is how Mexicans are in their public discourse, right, This is like this is the Iran War of their there, this is like front and center, right, And by certainly by nineteen fifty three, nineteen fifty four, this is beginning to creep up even into popular culture.

13:45 Right. There's a movie that's made in ninety fifty three that's it releases the Delayed on purpose by the Mexican government because they think it's actually going to like undermine the reputation of the government. That one's called the Espadas Mahalas, Right, And this movie is the mahalas Is. The whole theme is, right, is a migrant being exploited by this guy, mister Sterling, Right, And in the end it's about how the migrant gets retribution on mister Sterling. By well, I don't want to spoil the movie, but I kind of watch it. Yeah, yeah. But then the point is that by this point in Mexican history, right, people are like, well, first of all, you can have a director or a screenwriter coming up with this story right about you know, migrant oppression and using violence as the kind of catharsists for that, and second of all, that the Mexican state is actually aware of this, right, that they're monitoring some of the cultural products and things. I actually know this, you know, this reflects poorly on US as a government managing migration.

14:34 Right. There's other fifty four as well, Beteran Fund that comes out with a song called Ganto the Brasero and this is kind of like this song, this is like very sad song that you could like imagine people drinking beers too, right, that's all about kind of the the sadness of being a bracero and how they're discriminated in the US. And so this more and more begins to kind of saturate people's public imagination about what the migration really is about. It also doesn't help the Mexican government that by nineteen fifty four, a lot of the in the Latin America, a lot of attention is on the US and its actions at Guatemala. There are a lot of rumors going on, right that the US is going to intervene in Guatemala to depose Cowater events. And so there's a lot of sense Its like a lot of these things and emotions are coming together in public discord right, people are basically asking the Mexican government, like, what are you going to do about this bully to the north that seems to be drawing on this labor suppwarding it not respecting the rights that are embedded in the Pracerio Agreement, the Guestsburger Agreement, not respecting undocumented workers, of course, and they're basic human rights.

15:32 And again, but in the context of this kind of broader US Latin American imperial relationship, that also kind of becomes front in center by nineteen fifty four, and so that's really when the Mexican government decides to kind of try to put an initial pause. On the migration. In ninety fifty four Genuar ninety fifty four. Particular, it closes the border gates at various points of exit that are shared with the United States. This sounds difficult in the abstract, it's actually not that hard in practice because it's not like there's not like a chaos when it comes to Mexican migration, at least in ninte fifties. It follows very predictable patterns and rhythms, and so by January nineteen fifty four, most people in Mexico that are migrating are headed to Mexicali, right because they want to partake in the lettuce harvest that's about to take place in the Imperial Valley in southern California. And so the Mexican government decides to zero in its efforts on closing the line there.

16:20 Right. Their arguments to Mexican migrants is that they can no longer sanction Mexican migration to the US because if people continue to go to the US there will be so many complaints but at the consular office that Mexico won't be able to handle it. Right, So Mexico very much takes this paternalistic ethos right. They're like, you know, we're going to take care of you, this sort of thing, and it asks migrants to just basically head back. Right. Of course, migrants don't. Many of them don't listen to that. Right. For as much as Mexico perceives them and the media perceives them as being oppressed, they value very much of their mobility. They just kind of want to go to the US and obtain their wages, especially because many of them had come from Central Mexico. So they're really betting on going to the US. To like you know, like recover their savings and kind of begin to build their economic resources. So they have very little patience for whatever the Mexican government is saying about. You know, uh, this is the one in the life some opportunity to change things in Mexico. Yeaha YadA. And the Mexican state does recognize this, right, they recognize that these promises of like impending reform are a little bit remote and abstract, So they send Governor Bradio Madonado bac California to talk to the migrants. The reason they send Governor Bradio Madalado is because he himself had been a migrant as a child, right, So they're like, so they the state recognizes that, like you know, actually they're sending like a you know what in Mexico City they call it like the Goadinas, like like this kind of like upper middle class white guy, uh, to talk to the to the to the to the presence.

17:36 That might not be a great idea, but they figured maybe if we send this guy there's like brown guy who's been in the US as. A child, maybe that will connect and make it click more with the migrants. So he does a bunch of stump speeches in Mexicali and admonishing the migrants, asking them to really consider that this is an actually tremendous moment in the history of Mexico where the state can finally like reflect on this process and like find a new way forward. Uh. In the book, I call it like a sovereign It's like it's like like almost like you never get this chance to actually stop Like I magine you can stop climate change for like five seconds and be. Like like you will never really think about this, guys. Yeah, yeah, you have like x period of time to like freeze this phenomenon, right and really see what are the best solutions you can possibly generate. Right. That's what makes Mexico at least argues right is transpiring here in nineteen fifty four. So a lot of it, a lot of the attention is at the border. They are also movements within Mexico away from the border itself to encourage people to stay at home. So, you know, various organizations, especially like prominent leaders within individual communities in Mexico, like church leaders, political leaders, business leaders. They basically formed these what they call citizen brigades where they go knocking door to door on the house, on the doors of every family in like un you cpo, and they're asking that they're basically try to have It's almost like they're canvassing, right, They're like knocking the door and they're like, yeah, you know, has anybody here migrated before? Would you please stop for like so, yeah, it's a real it's kind of like

19:07 a weird internal sensus, right that the Mexican state conducts in this moment. And so you know, in the context of all this kind of feeling out, the Mexican State also begins to form internally all these various plans for how to integrate migrants within the national sphere. You know, I found documents, really like very long documents pertaining to their idea to create a new permanent federal agency with the the Mexican government that would be permanently tasked. With reducing migration to zero over the long run. And they talk very plainly about how the migration is routed in economics. And they talk about, you know the importance. Of increasing subsidies to the helos and to competinos more generally. Uh, And they lay out plans even about like who they will get priority to. So they talk about you know, married men will get more points. They even develop a whole points system about you know, once we get these applications in who's going to go to the front of the line and this sort of thing. And ultimately this kind of all gets caught up or summarized in a slogan that President other photos Scortinas at the time comes up with, and that's Mexicans for the fields of Mexico.

20:05 Right, that's kind of his vision night. And so it's kind of like this magap moment, but like in reverse, right, right, Like Mexico's like, you know, we want to keep them in here. And again it's all rhetorical. It's like, yes, there are plans being made, and but to the microans there's like they're going, it's cast us in the sky, right, It's not to them, it's not necessarily something that has real teeth to it. Then, so far as they know the Mexican state, they know, I mean to your podcast point, they know the Mexican state as a corrupt state. The state that they have interfaced with up to that point is the state that for example will accept one of them, well, accept bribes for them to then go as service. Right, it's not the state. It's not this like utopic state that like somehow plans things and there's like revolutionary and you know, deliver social programs. That's not the state that they know.

20:47 So they're very they're very much cynical about like the possibilities of performing this particular moment. But be it as it may. Ultimately, you know, nineteen fifty four and this moment really unravels in Mexico, largely because the US does experience this as a threat, right, because again, you know, the US kind of has this kind of on and off again relationship with Mexican migrant labor, but in nineteen fifty four, it's definitely on a relationship. Right. They do need this microant labor to pick precisely those crops that I was referring to in the Imperial Valley, the lettuce crop, right. And the key thing, of course with letters as a form like a commodity, is that you can't just put that off, right, Like if it doesn't get picked. It just rots, right, yeah, and lose all that value. Right.

21:27 So like basically the US nineteen fifty four says it's like, you know, yeah, that's cute and all, but like we need these migrants to come here to pick this letters, right, irrespective of what you're talking about about once in a lifetime opportunity. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. But we as the Department of Labor need these migrants to come in because we have become accustomed to them. Right. By nineteen fifty four, there is just a deep not just even reliance, but entitlement to Mexican migrant labor. Right. The American state feels like those are their workers, right. And so again it's so fascinated to live in the present ERAa where they kind of disavow and we like they we are the victims of the migrants because they come up if you rewind to many points in this history, right, actually, you are doing everything in your power right to make sure that there is this kind of permanent relationship between the US and Mexican migrants. It's ultimately the decision that the Department of Labor arrives at in nineteen fifty four is to declare an open border.

22:20 Right. They say, any able bodied male, able and Williams to come to the United States is welcome to America. Right. And beyond this they wave kind of customary inspections at the border, so that won't do any health checks or anything like that. Famously, the preservers were like subject to like umigation with DDT and all kinds of stuff. The US basically says, none of that, just come through, Just come through with a warm body something. It's just so crazy to think about. Now. Yeah, yeah, they're like, forget page that. You don't got to do nothing. You just gotta show up here. Look Mexican talk Spanish, and you will you know, and we will let you in right to America to pick the lettuce crap. Right. And so this complete suspension right then of normal immigration protocol in this moment. That's what I mean about, like history is about moments. Right, this sets off like an emotional hysteria in Mexico. Like all the newspapers are like, oh my god, what's going to happen. It's like the way I'm describe it in the book is that they're basically descend into visions of like migratory apocalypse where they're like everybody's gonna leave because they're like, you know, who wouldn't, right, Like you know, they're opening the gates and like and you know, people, all the business leaders are a lot of bit prominent business organizations are like, yeah, no, this is the end of the Mexican economy. And at the time, actually the Mexican economy is doing relatively well in terms of like the macro terms. Yeah, they're like, this is the end of the Mexican miracles. It is like, you know, the positive trajectory of Mexico will be completely undone by this moment. And so that's that's a lot of the kind of the musings that emerge in Mexico in the aftermath of the open border. Ultimately doesn't turn out to be the case that all of Mexico leaves. You know, again, that's not as I mentioned earlier, even though politicians would ever you think otherwise. There is a structure to the system, right,

23:51 It's not just very a very massive system, but they're still structure to it. And so ultimately about like fifteen thousand people show up to make gali at that kind of the height of this this open border call. But those that do show up, they show up with every intention to cross that border, right, and so this basically becomes the final stand for Mexico. Right, Mexico has to. Decide how far will it go to actually police this internal decision to foment kind of rootedness within Mexico in particular, the question is, of course, you know, to what extent will rely upon violence, let's say, to keep migrants in, and ultimately the Mexican state does attempt to fight back against some of these migrants, I'll break up skirmishes between the about there's about two thousand soldiers stationed in Mexicali in this particular moment, and there's a lot of soldiers because that's.

24:35 A very small town. This is not like, this is not like New York City's I'm talking about, like, this is very small small town. So two thousand soldiers versus fifteen thousand microans basically what we get in this situation. And you know the result is that we are many injuries and up to one death as a result of these skirmishes that break out at the border. And this is really the moment where Mexico basically does a complete three sixty on its discourse and decide, you know, it can't actually continue with the project of keeping Mexicans in, even if it arguates for their own sake, or particularly if it's arguing it's for their own sake because there's just this basic disjuncture. Right. You can't say we're protecting people from being abused in the US while then you're killing them.

25:16 To stop them from keep them. It doesn't as they say, yeah, yeah, the optors were not good. So the Mexican state basically desists. And you know there's in the book there's these images of the micros. Then once they get to cross the open border, right, and the Mexican state steps to aside, and they're all just. Like cheering, and they're like, yeah, they're so happy that. Uh. I talk about the book. They experienced this as a moment of emancipation, right, which again kind of completely goes like, I mean, part of why I love the stories because it kind of goes against the way you usually think about the Brasels, right, Like, yeah, you're the kind of supremely exploited labor who have best find like silver linings in the US. Right, That's not what you see in this particular moment.

25:57 Right. They're like just so ecstatic to like take advantage of this moment to disregard this kind of internal push within Mexico as being essentially kind of like empty, right, uh, And to go based on what they knew to be true, that you know, the best way forward for them was to rely on themselves in each other. Uh. You know, you don't need one state or the other. You couldn't really buy into whatever one state or the other was selling at any given moment. Right. And so you know, of course, the kicker here is that these images end up producing a little bit of bad press on the American side because now that now the image on the US side is that the US doesn't have control over the border, right, uh, flooding in right. And basically the US tries. To like impose the system where they only allow five hundred people to come into America every day because that's all they need for their their lettuce crop. But the Mexican Marcans they don't respect that. They're like, you told the governments and now you're changing my mind. Uh and so so so they keep on jumping through and they just kids kind of chaos.

26:52 Uh. And so that's how we end up having a a new per salale program, right because basically both in the Mexico. Americas say, yeah, we kind of messed up with that. Right. Let's actually get it's a lot cooler, but we were just both kind of like you know, arranges migration and then you know, let them document the migration kind of happen on the side. And so that's finally how you get to back back to the per sale program. But not before you have this moment in ninety fifty four where Mexico really does go deep into the contemplation of political responses to migration, and most of all again even beyond like the political responses and like the mammos and all stuff, just that the emotional tide right had turned severely in this moment against migration right. But as a result of this situation, a lot of the kind of the newspaper coverage really begins to shift when it comes to migrants, Like literally in the days after this, once it is all done, they begin to refer to the migrants as filth right, as people who have you know, spin upon their nation right, because against they're coming off this emotional take.

27:47 A betrayal to like you're leaving your country. Yeah exactly, they're like, we thought we were finally kind of going to make some headway on this, and now it turns out that these migrants are just like here for the quick book and like you know, they answer the metaphor they use that they into the siren call of the US right, that they're lowed by the siren call of the American dollar. Uh, and that sort of thing. That's so interesting because I don't I don't know why they just popped in my head, but says that Travis had like the same view about the up. In the book. Oh yeah, I only read part of it because I've been sick, but yeah, that was just thinking this whole time. These are like the words that our Travis, we're saying they only care about making a quick. Bug, they only want to make money. But it's like, well, yeah, they're trying to We all need money, yeah, to survive.

28:31 Yeah, I mean, it's it's I mean, I think I think that many. I mean, we're entirely entering like counterfactual territory, and I can't really entirely of mics, but like, I mean, I think many of them would have been disposed to entertain some of these calls for political reform. It's again just that the Mexican state, and in fact, some of the people that do write to the Mexican government in this moment are precisely people who have migreated in the past, but they also have ideas about how to create perman So like there is this hunger for for political reform. It's just it's the PR is just not the believable vessel vessel for that change. In fact, like for example, and I believe I mean to be candid, I think that they were right, you know, like you know, when you have this Mexican's for Mexico program. Part of what the US the Mexican government does is that it offers migrants in Megali to be relocated to colonias, new colonias that they argue the pr I will support. I only found one group that actually are two groups that went on board with the with this plan for to be moved to a different part of Mexico instead of their Agraian settlement there the colonia with state support.

29:34 And I include the picture in the book. It's a group of like thirty. Or forty men and they're sent to Labasalli Fortia, which is basically a coastal town. And just the fact that they send them there tells you a lot about how the Mexican States planning is right, because they send them there because there's water nearby and so they're like, we'll be back here one day, we promise with everything you need, like the seas. And the machine. In the meantime, just fish. But in the meantime, shower their fish there and like. So it's like and yeah, so like again like I don't know, I wasn't able to follow that story the way through, but like you know that that's not exactly like state support, right, Like yeah, like I don't know, I don't know what I would do with my I mean, I'm sure some of the markets figured it out, but like, what would I do if like the state drops me in this like it's not like they're from there, just drops you in this random place in black and argues that it's going to come back one day. Right, It just doesn't seem like the most reasonable thing to get on board with, especially because there are people back home right waiting on your dollars, right, waiting on contributions, and some people have been waiting there for quite a bit of time. It's not uncommon for people to be waiting at the border towns for like two three months for a contract. And so yeah, yeah, I can see why critics on either the American or the Mexican side would think the migrants are I guess the simple way this is like too more simple way to say this would be the think about them as being too much materialistic.

30:51 But you know, as you guys are saying, right, it's just the reality of things, right, Like a lot of times these microants moved even with investments from their family, right, like people would pawn earings or like sell mules. Like they're not just responding to themselves, they're responding to like a whole social organism, right that has like organized itself around this idea that you go out there and you come back with the with the good. You can't you can't come back and be like, oh, I actually know it turns out we sold our border for nothing because you know, actually the Mexican state promises that in five years, you know, it'll work out and there'll be economic opportunities that it just doesn't kind of isn't realistic. Having said that, though, I do think I do think it's important to highlight how the US completely ignores, right these political developments in Mexico, right, how it does have this brazen entitlement, even if even if it might have failed on its own terms, there is this point that the US kind of kills this moment.

31:37 This kills us in its crib, right, it doesn't really allow it to mature into anything kind of interesting or more fleshed out. And I do think we'd had to recognize that limitation, especially for Mexican politicians. Right, it's not like they're kind of coming up in policies with the freedom. I know, I call it a sovereign pause, but it's not really a pause. It's a very rushed pause. Right. They do feel this like America's breeding right behind them, being like, well, if you don't want those migrants, we want them, right, and so like there is a kind of pressure right that they are also kind of operating with it, and so I do think that led them to come up with policies that were not necessarily that well fleshed out and kind of. Like they had to rush because they were fighting against the allure of the American dollars. Yeah, yeah, they were.

32:18 They were just like, yeah, they were like fighting against a lure of the American dollar and the active actions of the American state, and so they were kind of just like, yeah, let's leave with the slogans, let's kind of let's try to win the battle over over the hearts first, and then we may maybe we can try to like win the rational battle over policy, right, But they really, actually, I would say, emphasize more of this kind of the the emotional valance of migration rate. Basically, the idea was nineteen. To four was you know, today I think us, you know, like the way is the way to like make your make Mexico is to just stay. And that's kind of really what they leaned on. Again, it turns out maybe not the greatest calculation, but that's kind of the calculus that the state seemed to have emerged in in nineteen fifty four.

33:00 They and they didn't have the time that is necessary to change an entire country to get people to stay. Like now we're seeing, you know, all these money for students, for the elderly, more programs, social programs in Mexico, and people are not leaving. I do all like they used too, because Mexico has done the work and they're still obviously improving. But that was not possible at the. Time, and so with people leaving as fast as they were, like it took time to get to Mexico where they are now. And with people like now returning instead of like leaving. Yeah, and it's it's it's. I mean, the there's a there's a compete Africa his name that made a joke about the border one time that like, by the time America's don't building, it'll be the Americans jumping over that border to get into Mexico.

33:50 Maybe there's something to that, right, but yeah, yeah, I do like that point that basically it's it's I mean, basically it took a changing of the guard in Mexico actually for those conditions to have rate, because the pri Is ruled eventually kind of came undone. And now we're living in a new era right under the Shamba, and you're seeing kind of these more policies that are more about kind of social welfare and this sort of thing, and a party that is not as kind of admired by a bad reputation. Uh So people are will not that everybody's willing to believe, but more people are willing to believe right that there will be this kind of long term sustainability behind the policies, that this will create kind of long term change and and and a lot of what helps is of course that some of these policies have been tried out before at a small level, Like you know, nobod I thought it was in charge of Mexico City, right, he implemented a lot of kind of.

34:33 Social work for programs. Uh. For example, aron like bring employment to elderly people. Right, So they have built in capital, like political capital, right. Like people people can believe them because they're like, oh, we saw you deployed this at a small scale of Mexico, but actually a huge small scale in Mexico City, and so we can believe how maybe you might like extrapolate that same experiment at national level. Right. The pri and the forties didn't have that, right. Actually, what they had was more the reputation of not living up to their promises. Right. So in particular, this is not living up to the ideals of the revolution and you know, redistributing land and this this sort of thing. Right. So a lot of it has to do with just the pr I lacks credibility in ninety forty, ninety fifties, right. I think the present president government, though it does have its kind of enemies and it's unpopular within certain spheres of society, has more of that kind of like good will of course, you know in ten twenty years with check in people.

35:24 The same place, right. But interestingly, part of I will find interesting is that none of usually those policies are not sold that as policies to stop migration, right like Mexico's migratory policy, and the present is more of like just like pray to God that Trump. Doesn't depport that many people. Like it's more of like it's more of like it just like if I stay quiet, yeah, like maybe they won't notice me. Like it's kind of like that, right, and you know, Shamebon talks about like you know this and you know, but it's very like it's more like discursive not rather than like policy wise, I think they give him like a bus ride back to the interior, this sort of thing. But again there's not kind of like. A robust vision of us try to integrate Mexican. Yeah, that's that's not kind of like the vision that their leading was at the moment.

36:14 It was also super interesting to read about, and we've been talking a little bit about it, like the migrants, like we tend to think of migrants as like you said before, like in a press group, but you talk a lot in the book about their agency and when they came together to write letters and campaign to like certain Mexican officials, and how they didn't fall for the I guess the Mexican government like trying to push them to stay because they were more familiar with the corruption of BED and they're like, we already know what the United States is, like, we already know what to expect, Like we tell each other, you know who to avoid and who to work for and whatnot, Like they I guess it was just really cool to see their agency highlighted in the book.

36:57 Yeah, they have they have their own again. People a lot of people are very dismissive, even people like within, like we have family members who are Mexican or migrants whatever. It's easy to kind of get misled by the idea that it's all unskilled labor. And it's kind of thing because basically micros had their own very like complex geography of like wages and crops and weather systems. So for them, it wasn't you wouldn't be useful to think about themselves as being flatly oppressed. Right for them, it would be useful to think, you know, which of these jobs is worse than the others. Actually that's how most people think, right, we. Don't go around thinking like in a way, we're all kind of oppressed parts of the working class, but we don't like you know that that that boss sucked and you know, I've never worked for her again, Like you know that That basically how the micros worked, right, Like they had kind of familiarity with specific foremen, like they hated Chicano foremen and that sort of thing.

37:44 Right, Oh, yeah, that was that was interesting to trade about. Like they said like the Chicanos and Mexican Americans were the worst to work for and they were like the most abusive. Yeah, they use that. That's not surprising their performance, like bullying on them to like you know, make themselves feel more American. That's but yeah, it goes down to like very concrete things like even like you know, in Texas it's like full of rattlesnakes there in the common fields as Like that's kind of scary, right, we don't really want to go there. The Imperial Valley is. Like one hundred and twenty degrees and the height of it really that's also somewhere we don't want to go. So to them is less about feeling bad about themselves about being braceros or guestsworkers, and more about being sagacious and smart about you know, where do you want to end up right and for how long? And you know, how do you get to the next opportunity, So that that's kind of more the registered what they lived in.

38:27 And so I think that's again another big part of the reason why they don't necessarily buy into the Mexican states paternalism in this moment, right, is that by their lives they don't need to be saved right. They need to be empowered, sure in some ways, but. Not saved right. And so I think that certainly goes a long way to explain that, and it also comes up later on, you know, after nineteen fifty four, the Mexican government doesn't quite give up on this idea of using migrants internally, as I talk about in the book, for about eight years from like nineteen fifty five to sixty three. Basically they create their own internal percero program, and they basically tell migrants that if they first picked two thousand kilos of cotton in northern Mexico or work for about twenty one weeks twenty one days in northern Mexico, whichever comes first, Uh, they'll be put into priority cues to leave as Bercero's right.

39:12 And so basically it's kind of like this kind of like blackmail as far as the micros are concerned, right, they're like. The work and then we get more work yea. And so yeah, they don't really take kindly to it, in particular because it's actually really hard to gather two thousand kilos of cotton in northern Mexico because the farmers there would often use the migrants for what was called buleo and cueleo is basically like the last, like the third round of cotton picking. Uh. And when so by the time they're doing this, there's like no cotton left on that stock, right, So it's a. Little bit cruel. It's like, yeah, go pick to that. It's not like these things are like flush and like you're seeing the pictures right when the kind of the cotton is like the cotton bulbous flush, they're basically like pick it starts like this, this is very hard to actually come up with that two thousand kilos, right, So they really experienced internal p SERL program as a very exploitive program.

40:08 In fact, it confirms their worst. Suspicions about the Mexicans stay right, which is that it doesn't actually really care about them. It's just kind of there to like protect itself and instrumentalize them or like exploit them whenever it can can figure out a way to do that. And so really kind of what ends up driving them into like full emotional repudiation, anger and rejection of this program is the fact that, especially once the program reaches its maturity around fifty nine and sixty, many of them begin to report that Mexico doesn't. Even honor this agreement. Right. They'll they will go there and work for twenty one days, they'll pick two thousand kilos of con and then they'll just get past, like they won't actually be sent to the US. Right. In fact, they begin to point out that the people being sent to the US are people who are paying bribes to the chief of the contracting center, right, And they're like they're like, oh, this is this is no program, this is just this is the same old Mexico.

40:54 This is the whole. Tedtal right, Like, this is like this is not this way what And so they they really kind of begin to mobilize in a very strong way they write. They write letters to like anybody and anybody who will listen to them. So they write to like. Uh, local local mayor govern the state governors, the federal government itself, specific people within the federal government. Like they start getting specific. Really, they start like breaking it down that agency is not responsible for this one might be. They begin trying to figure out kind of the map of Mexican politics, which I think is important, right, because that difference from the way in which we see the politics play out on the American side, where like, yes, occasionally there are these outbursts of political mobilization, but they're kind of like come and go where this is like a three year sustained campaign where they're basically writing, uh, and kind of trying to like find the different levels of the Mexican government because they feel somewhat empowered as being Mexican citizens, right, They're like, you know, we're not informant, and we're here in our country, right, and we are being exploited by our government. They reach their most success when they actually begin to reach out to the newspapers and tell their stories.

41:55 Uh. And I would say their their their their peak successes when they figure out that the move is to actually include the newspaper articles in the letters they write to the government because they're like, by the way, you know, you haven't answered my letter, but so so like whatever and so nota has picked up on the story and it's making the front pages there, so you might want to start taking look at this, and so like they generate they like in this kind of pre social media thing, right, they basically generating their own buzz around their own struggle uh in Mexico, and ultimately, through their pressure, the chief of the contracting center actually ends up being indicted by the state government of so for corruption and then that breaks out another whole story because he ends up running away to try to get away from the Dherty's and this whole thing.

42:40 So basically they they once again create this moment. Of embarrassment for the Mexican state, right where basically the farce of Mexico protecting migrants is kind of think kind of completely falls apart and all we see is yet again the Mexican State, or at least the kind of these subborted like the front lines of the Mexican State really just kind of engaging in this squeezing of migrant labor. And so basically by ninety Cen's two meet, the Mexican government decides to pull out of this, like to undo this internal program, tells the various farm operators in northern Mexico, if you figure that on your own right, that basically the memos they sent amounts to that. They're like, this is too much of a headache. We don't want to mess with these migrants, like they seem like too basically like too aware of not their rights, but like the letters, they're establishing the right to it's not that they have a right, is that they are establishing for themselves the right to exit.

43:27 Right taken for granted I think nowadays. But you know that is a right that these migrants had to fight for. Right. It's only you know, it doesn't become clear until you look at it from like a Mexican angle, right where you can see that there was this kind of friction for them to be able to leave. How did you look start looking into this, Like what what's for you to look into this? This history? Uh? Yeah, I started looking at his history because I had questions about my own family and my own past. You know, I grew up on the East Coast, and so unlike the West Coast, there wasn't in the nineties, at least, there wasn't much like knowledge about Mexican migration, right. I think in the West Coast, obviously there's much more like developed traditions around, like Chicago studies and this sort of thing.

44:11 There was none of that stuff in New York, right. It was all like in so far as that there was Latino stuff. It was like Puerto Rican studies and that sort of thing. You can't really transpose that blueprint onto the Mexican And so I had a lot of questions about. I had not a lot of quess I had one deep question about or not deep, but like one pressing question to me, uh, which was, you know, why are we here? Right? Like I always compared to like white peop because white people always have this questions like who am I right? Like, you know where I always talked for like Mexicans, at least again on this side of the country, it was always like why why are we here? Like because I didn't understand, you know, I think people obviously attribute quite a bit of like anti immigrant rhetoric to like Trump and the Republicans and all that stuff. But even in the nineties, like it wasn't like oh yeah, oh yeah, yah, yeah, it was pretty bad too, right, And I remember as a kid growing up, I was like, that has intense out here, like you know, these people really don't like Mexican, especially like you know, young kids are like particularly vicious, right, like any any likesm they can like perform, they perform it to like the nth degree. Right, And so that that's where where I grew up. That's the context I grew up and not understanding why we could be in the country where we as Mexicans are essentially like denigrated, right in my mind, just didn't calculate r it. I just carried that question for the longest time, right, like you know, how do I explain this this process? And so one of the subsidiary questions of that is like did the Mexican government.

45:30 Ever do anything about like. It seems like, you know, it would be like not that I want to be like if if I was president of Mexico, right, like I feel like they allow this. Yeah, I feel like that would be a top concern. But like, guys, we're losing like people, yeah, people are leaving, Like is it me? And so like, I was like, surely, like they must have been thinking about this right now. Obviously it turns out that you know, they weren't. They were thinking about it, not necessarily from those like emotional reasons or patriots patriot ism, more to kind of like protect themselves against political blowback and that sort of thing. But nonetheless, right, the question didn't lead me to that, to scratch that particular that that particularly right when I was in grad school, there was one newspaper was a newspaper article actually that did it for me because I was looking into this incident in nineteen fifty four and they was they were talking about a certain court in a state government in Mexico was talking about making emigration illegal. And so I was like, well, that's confusing illegal immigration. I've never heard of that, and so I was like, wait, somebody maybe wanted Mexicans to stay. And then I was like, yeah, so you keep asking questions, right, like yeah, why and why nothing happened?

46:38 Right, so it begins to add up into this kind of whole story, and. So that that yeah, yeah, basically one thing led to another, but it was very an organic question. And then like organic findings that these scraps because with history, all you get scraps, right, these scraps of like paper, these scraps of the newspapers that suggested to me, maybe there's a way bigger story. And it's probably even bigger story that I'm even telling, right, because so many things get lost, right, like you know, the conversations that people have, or like radio coverage. I didn't really get to tap into a TV coverage. I didn't really get to tap into it. I would be fascinated to see what was happening on those channels right about this this moment here, I just did the best one of what I had, because obviously the thing with Academa is very like like you know, the Mexican government is operating with like a time clock.

47:24 Me too, right, Like you know, yeah, I only have like three years of my program, and then like when you're a professor, you have a clock too. It's like you can't go down with all the rabbit holes. You pick the ones you can like organize the most compelling story around, and. That's kind of what you go with. But yeah, maybe I didn't get the full story. I'd love to see more. You know, people go go into the archives or like radio archives, TV archives, oral histories, even right to try to figure out this story. I just saw my job as kind of going out there and saying, there there is a story actually here, we're wrong. There's not just a story about Mexico willingly bleeding out all this population, right, that there's more of this kind of give and take, this tension between the US and Mexico that, of course we've long since forgotten, but it's fundamental to understanding why there is, in fact such a large Mexican population here in the United States. So, yeah, that was that big question I had and the way I approached it, and I'm just thankful, you know, it's I don't mean now so I can have different questions.

48:20 I do want to say it was super interesting to read the book, especially because our great grandfather was a bet he was Yeah, so I'm like reading it, I'm like, oh, I wonder if he was there. I don't know what years, Yeah, we don't know what year. Where should look at look at the pictures and like look close she. Did, and there was one man that kind of looked like him, and Christina, Yeah, it kind of looked like him, but I don't know where, like exactly, I know that. I don't even know if they were already in Halisco at the time. I don't think anyone. I don't think there were still yeah, and so yeah, I don't know where he went. Yeah, we know from that time period, is that he when our mom told him him she was leaving and her plan was to come to the US for a year and then go back.

49:05 That was her plan. And then she stayed like years later, she's still here. Yeah, here we are, Yeah, here we are. And then but he told her when she said that to him, he told her like, why do you want to go there? It's ugly or something like that, like something like it's not pretty there, like it sucks. Yeah, I think he said it was ugly. Yeah, so knows where he went. That's the same that I gain. I mean, as I got older, the question got like got it got only more intense, I would say, because you know, the more I went to Mexico as like a kid, I was like, doesn't seem that. Bad here, guys, like you know no, right? Yeah, I was like. You I could have been Mexican. Yeah, yeah, I feel like something was robbed for me, right, So the question only got deeper, Like the more I traveled to.

49:48 Mexico and that you get to know it. I mean, obviously we can't say really you know, yeah, our parents and grandparents generation, they had a whole different context, right that we lack, and they kind of just make decisions based on that. But yeah, yeah, definitely, as as I got older, and even even the more I go back now as an older person with kids, my kids and stuff like that, I see Mexico with the rosy eyes of an immigrant, right. Yeah, how Americans immigants away show up to America and they're like, they don't see anything back. They're like Trump that that don't matter, right, Like, all they see is the opportunity. That's kind of the same way I see Mexico a lot of times. And so it's why I kind of have this big question about you know, was there ever a moment in which it was possible to stay? And again, you know, it looks like there was a little moment, a little moment you know, for the reasons the book lays out didn't quite come to pass.

50:39 But thank you guys for having me here. It was great chatting with you guys. Maybe if I ever write a second book, I'll come back and you know, yes. We would before we go where can people get your buck? As well as like follow your work? You can follow my work. So my my faculty page on n Y you has all like my relevant projects and that kind of thing. You can also just type my full name ran the bargain dot Com. My phone name is not, but like my full name, I should change my name to that, right, Yeah, yeah, if you type that out right to find my my my ongoing projects.

51:20 I'm doing one on Guatemala migration, uh to Mexico. Okay, we'll have to have you back on for that. Then that's another topic that fascinates us, yes, right, which is you know, neighbors. With Yeah, okay. That was called the True North. That was about how America in the eighties wasn't the uh and North. There wasn't like America, right. Uh. It was actually kind of like very dynamically defined by these migrants. So they moved from like the Guatemala mountains to like the jungles of Chapas to like these Ara settlements. Right. They kept constantly kind of recalibrating their direction, often through and within Mexico. Uh. And so that's why it's called True North, and it's kind of it. Really it aims to be more like this dynamic history of how people like look for place and create place and that kind of thing, because I mean so many, so many immigrations are like they were from there and then they moved here, and it's kind of like this is kind of like very un uni directional thing or it's transnational, right, like they come here, but they still remain kind of tied back home, and so it loses that dynamism that I think we all, like anybody who knows any migrant or as part of a microan family knows that there's just so much dynamisms to it, right, even when we come to America, right where like moving from one neighborhood to the next and then yeah, you know right, that to me is the reality of migration, right, it's kind of constant mobility or people called micro mobility or whatever. But that that's kind of what I try to show, or I'm trying to show now that i'm writing, you.

52:35 Know, that second project. So yeah, yeah, I'll try to hurry. Up, and you know, yeah, thank you for having me, yes, thank you, And yeah, we'll put all that information in the show notes. And also we'll keep an eye out for True North. Yeah, I will send you also the email. It's sweet, perfect, Thank you guys. By Star As Known is produced by Carmen and Christine. Research by Carmen and Christina, edited by Christina. You can find sources for every episode at Estordia Unknown dot com and in our show notes. Creating the podcast has a lot of work, so if you want to help us out financially, you can do so by supporting us on Patreon at Patreon dot com. Slash Studio as an own podcast