Conclusion

The Conclusion is a brief analysis of how the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) both conceded to and fragmented the Chicano/Mexicano immigrant rights mobilizations facilitated in part by the CCR. Signed by a Republican, it was the first mass amnesty act revealing the influence of the human rights components of Chicano/Mexicano organizing that activists in San Diego had taken part in formulating beginning in the late 1960s. Yet the act also marginalized the abolitionist position of the movement, giving concessions by providing amnesty to a subsection of undocumented migrants, while further militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border. The chapter concludes with an analysis of two divergent responses by Chicano/Mexicano activists o the new law: those who invested their energies in politicizing and assisting undocumented migrants who qualified for the amnesty provisions of IRCA by working with immigration state mechanisms and other activists who continued to criticize the “carrot and stick” immigration policies and maintain the call to abolish immigration state apparatuses.

The Sheriff Must Be Obsessed with Racism!

Chapter 6 explores how Herman Baca and San Diego Chicano/Mexicano created the Committee on Chicano Rights (CCR) in 1976. These activists fought the San Diego Sherriff’s Department issued order for taxi cab drivers, under penalty of citation and fines, to report any of their clientele who they “feel” might be undocumented to their offices for apprehension in 1972. The San Diego Police Department, under the administration of San Diego Mayor (and future California governor) Pete Wilson, followed suit in 1973 by assuming the responsibility of determining resident’s legal status and apprehending the undocumented to assist the U.S. Border Patrol. This culminated in the founding of the CCR through the struggle on behalf of the family of a Puerto Rican barrio youth, Luis “Tato” Rivera, killed by a National City police officer.

He Had a Uniform and Authority

Chapter 2 explores the process in which some Chicano Movement activists in San Diego began to identify immigration as central to their struggles for self-determination and Mexican immigrants as part of their broadening notions of Chicano/a community. Furthermore, it highlights how this process beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s was greatly influenced by different forms of violence emanating from the U.S. Border Patrol, Customs’ agents and local law enforcement in the San Diego Border region. By focusing on the perspective of undocumented and Mexican-American women who spoke out against Border Patrol and Custom Agent’s perpetration of sexual violence, unauthorized strip searches and other cases of harassment and brutality the chapter outlines how race, legal status and gender organized both border policing activities and Chicano Movement activist’s formulations of a transnational, “Raza Sí, Migra No” identity and politics.

Abolishment of the INS/Border Patrol

Chapter 8 analyzes Chicano/Mexicano processes of asserting independent solutions to the immigration crisis by convening the space for grassroots organizers from throughout the U.S. to participate in a radically democratic practice of decision making. On April 11, 1981 the CCR reconvened a number of the 1,000 grassroots activists who had participated in the National Chicano Immigration Conference the year before to hear the voices of several survivors of migra brutality and remember those that did not survive the abuse of militarized immigration policy. The chapter argues that through the tribunal the CCR demonstrated an alternative practice of belonging, challenging the legitimacy of immigration policy by calling for its abolition. Furthermore the National Chicano Immigration Conference, held in 1980, was a process in which activists, community members and advocates collectively constructed solutions to the immigration crisis from the perspective of the transnational Chicano/Mexicano/Latino community.

Delivering the Mexicano Vote

Chapter 5 continues the story begun in chapter 4, when a split between Chicano Democrats and Chicano/Mexicano immigrant rights activists leads to the exodus of the latter from the statewide MAPA organization to the seemingly more radical politics of La Raza Unida Party, an ethnic third party effort. The chapter explores how this moment led to debates between various factions of the California La Raza Unida Party through which San Diego Chicano/Mexicano activists participated from roughly 1970-1975. Community activists in San Diego LRUP facilitated an approach in between a persistent narrow nationalism that, despite rhetoric otherwise, deemphasized the noncitizen migrant experience and struggled to embrace the diverse political positions within the ethnic Mexican community. San Diego Chicano/Mexicano LRUP organizers maintained engagement with the diverse ethnic Mexican community in their registration efforts, as they continued to learn about the limits of voting strategies in their mixed-legal status community.

For Those Families Who Are Deported and Have No Place to Land

Chapter 3 intervenes in the larger scholarship on CASA (The Center for Autonomous Social Action), a national Chicano Movement organization based in Los Angeles, by being the first analysis of its San Diego chapter called CASA Justicia. It reveals CASA Justicia as a significant political space that introduced younger Chicano Movement activists to elder organizers who had struggled against the deportation regime in earlier decades. CASA’s offering of legal and social services to immigrants suffering the perils of undocumented legal status unleashed a wave of migrant agency – that infused Chicano Movement ideological narratives with – and influenced the mostly Mexican-American administrators of CASA to a point where their own identities shifted. Migrants infused their narratives about the way border enforcement policies were an intensely repressive presence in their day-to-day lives determining their ability to be present in their familial relationships, to provide sustenance and economic well-being, and to freely move about.

Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?

Proceeding from the ideas held within a well-known poster art by Chicana artist and activism Yolanda Lopez, chapter 7 explores how the CCR rose to international prominence by criticizing President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 proposal to further militarize the border (alongside a limited amnesty) while calling attention to an announcement by the infamous Ku Klux Klan who planned on implementing a Border Watch Program to assist the Border Patrol in apprehending migrants. Focusing on the years 1977 to 1979, this struggle revealed that the nationalization of the immigration issue led to a widening notion of Chicano/Mexicano transnational community from beyond the borderlands in relation to other Latino communities throughout the country and beyond the context of the U.S. to further engagement with Mexico and Mexican civil society.

The First Time I Met César Chávez, I Got into an Argument with Him

Chapter 4 continues the exploration of intense debate within Chicano Movement circles over the immigration issue through analysis of differing positions among Raza Sí, Migra No activists and Chicano Democrats who were deeply influenced by the popular United Farm Workers (UFW). Beginning with the story of an early 1970s meeting where Herman Baca met UFW leader and emerging icon, César Chávez, the chapter outlines how the first encounter led to “heated” disagreement between Baca alongside his mentor Bert Corona, and Chávez over their relationship to undocumented workers. The manner through which Chicano/a immigrant rights activists debated these Chicano Democrats is explored through Baca’s debates with his former ally, San Diego Assemblyman Peter Chacón, over California legislation that sought to address the problem of undocumented immigration. This legislation, the Dixon Arnett Bill, was debated among Chicanos/as and others from 1970-1972 before, during and following its passage in 1971.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the main ideas, people and preceding history of the deportation regime, Mexican American activism, and outline of the book chapters. It explains what led the small print shop owner Herman Baca, and his mentors Bert Corona and Soledad “Chole” Alatorre, to project the Chicano movement toward immigration issues. The chapter then explores how the development of racial capitalism—from the acquisition of indigenous land, the use of a system of chattel slavery, and recruitment of displace migrant workers—formed the basis for a deportation system of immigration in the U.S. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the chapter themes that will be shared throughout by exploring a brief history of struggle among ethnic Mexican activists in the United States for immigrant rights from the 1930s through the 1980s.

Historical Rights in the Territory

Chapter 1 reveals the history of Mexican-American immigrant rights organizing in San Diego and larger Southern California at the intersection of ethnic and labor politics from 1924 to 1968. This chapter reveals that Chicano Movement struggles against the deportation regime are part of a longer duree of Mexican-American social movements across generational divides. The chapter begins by exploring the enactment of the Border Patrol and the invention of the “illegal alien” category in 1924 to detail how it came to primarily target the ethnic Mexican population. The chapter then follows the immigrant rights activism of ethnic-based labor movement organizations, primarily the Congress of Spanish-Speaking People, an encounter that convened antiracist labor activists, many members of the Communist Party, and trade unionists from affiliates of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and 40s.