Our history connects us to now
For centuries, colonization, border and militarization, racism and violence, and environment destruction have made the Rio Grande Valley Delta a sacrifice zone. Sacrifice zones are defined as areas with a high amount of environmental extraction and economic divestment, and are typically areas that are predominantly people of color.
During the 1960s, Americo Paredes, born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, brought to light research of the Texas Ranger violence and corrido tradition in South Texas as a form of resistance. His writings helped inspire the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, which uncovered histories of violence and injustice, and revealed patterns in U.S imperialism and violent treatment of Mexicanos and Nativos in the United States. Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers organized strikes and boycotts against major mass agricultural industries and fought for the rights of farm workers, and against toxic working conditions. The United Farm Workers made their way to South Texas, founding LUPE, the Raza Unida Party would be formed here, and Latinos would win critical seats in South Texas government. The Chicano Movement of the 1960s would inspire and ignite Mexican Americans to look into their roots and history, in order to keep fighting for justice.
For Rio Grande Valley Delta Civil Rights History — look at (Website)
We are in a critical moment in present history. We are in the middle of a movement in the Rio Grande Valley Delta: a moment where we see the clear intersections between race, class, and the environment. This movement is about defending our inherent right to inhabit this land and our right to protect it against environmental destruction.
*Foundational concepts to keep unpacking
Agribusiness, labor, and deportation go hand in hand.
In the United States, official history reiterates how Mexican immigrants have been consistently exploited both as cheap labor and scapegoated for many of the country's economic shortcomings. In the book, Migra, Kelly Lytle Hernandez, writes about how border patrol surveillance historically intertwines with agribusiness. The Border Patrol was established during the expansion of mass agriculture in 1924, and it became, since its inception, an agency that wanted to control the labor of the Mexican migrant by instilling fear and threat of deportation. (13, Migra) During the Great Depression (1929–1939), U.S Americans blamed Mexican immigrants for their lack of work. A mass deportation military-like action called Operation Wetback deported and displaced about 2 million Mexicans that included US born and US naturalized Mexican Americans. Paradoxically, this action occurred parallel to the Bracero Program (1942-1964), a US-Mexican bi-national initiative that recruited Mexican workers, all male and without their families, on short-term contracts in the U.S. which brought more than 4.5 million Mexican laborers to work primarily in Texas and California. Consequently, US Immigration policy has been shaped around the need for labor. (6, How Race is made in America)
Our work to unlearn the official history does not stop in learning about erased Texas history or even US history. Learning the untold history of U.S imperialism and expansion into the Global South and the rest of the world will help explain the current social landscape of the Rio Grande Delta.
2. The U.S Empire was founded on stolen land and resources, the destabilized governments, and violent killing and displacement of people
In Harvest of Empire, Juan Gonzalez cites US imperial intervention in Latin America as the reason for mass migration to the United States. The United States hunger for expansion rooted in colonization and Manifest Destiny led to the continuation of greed, stealing of land, and expansion of U.S investments in Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other Latin American countries into the early 20th century. The US government intervened and backed violent dictatorships in Latin America. As a pay-back, these regimes protected U.S investments, destroyed democratically elected governments, increased disparities between rich and poor, and opened the doors to more U.S exploitation of natural resources. Domestically, in South Texas, we see the bleeds of Anglo land theft through the U.S intervention of Mexico and expansion of U.S investments in Mexico, marginalizing rural indigenous communities and rural agricultural workers. We see this further bleed into neoliberal policies of free trade, continuing to displace and uproot people and exploit natural resources (10, Harvest of Empire).
A Spanish propaganda drawing published in La Campana de Gràcia (1896) by Manuel Moliné criticizing U.S. behavior regarding Cuba. Upper text (in old Catalan) reads: "Uncle Sam's craving", and below: "To keep the island so it won't get lost".
If Latin America had not been raped and pillaged by U.S. capitalism since its independence, millions of desperate workers would not now be coming here in such numbers to reclaim a share of that wealth; and if the United States is today the world’s richest nation, it is in part because of the sweat and blood of the copper workers of Chile, the tine miners of Bolivia, the fruit pickers of Guatemala and Honduras, the cane cutters of Cuba, the oil workers of Venezuela and Mexico, the pharmaceutical workers of Puerto Rico, the ranch hands of Costa Rica and Argentina, the West Indians who died building the Panama Canal, and the Panamanians who maintained it. (10, Harvest of Empire, p. ?)
3. Imperialist neoliberal and free trade policies continue to exploit people and the earth
In the mid twentieth century, the U.S started moving large manufacturing enterprises (maquiladoras) to other countries, especially in Latin America that began the U.S project of “free trade” policies. The U.S tentacles worked on agreements with neighboring nations to lower their high tariffs, then closing domestic factories in order to open them in Latin America. (10, Harvest of Empire) Beginning in 1965, manufacturing shifted to Mexico and maquiladora factories started to be built along the Mexican side of the US/MX border. U.S goods were produced way cheaper in Mexico and U.S. corporations’ could evade paying higher wages to domestic labor workers, taxes, and environmental laws as these factories were located on foreign soil, regardless if they were just a few hundred yards away from the US Mexico Border. The maquiladora jobs sparked mass internal migration in Mexico toward the north. People moved north from rural towns to the maquila factories that would primarily hire women. Men who joined these women as their partners, often could not find work, and would have to migrate further north into the United States. As a result of these migrations, the population in many border towns like Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo, or Matamoros grew exponentially creating a challenge for these cities that did not have the infrastructure to house that large population. In addition, these factories created contamination, and polluted the area and further polluted the Rio Grande River. (10, Harvest of Empire)
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to establish a free-trade zone in North America was signed in 1992 by Canada, Mexico, and the United States and took effect on Jan. 1, 1994. NAFTA immediately lifted tariffs on the majority of goods produced by these nations. At that point, Mexico was in the middle of an economic crisis that dramatically devalued the peso. The economic crisis was the effect of President Carlos Salinas’s open-door policy towards U.S investments. (Harvest of Empire) On the same day that NAFTA took effect, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) launched a protest uprising in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. The uprising gathered international attention, and 100,000 people protested in Mexico City. NAFTA policies affected millions of Mexican rural and poor corn agricultural workers, an important dietary food at the heart of Mexican culture. With the reduction of the U.S./Mexican import/export tariffs meant small farmers were affected and could not compete with the mechanized mass agricultural system of the United States. As a result of NAFTA, the US cheaper, pest-resistant, genetically modified (GMO) corn entered Mexico markets.
NAFTA caused more mass migration north, displacing indigenous people from rural agricultural areas, and widening the gap between rich and poor. NAFTA doubled the amount of maquiladora workers and worsened environmental conditions in Matamoros and Brownsville. Colonias and maquiladoras embody the bleeds of the histories of capitalist pratices and neoliberal policies … environmental exploitation and racism along the border. Workers needed spaces to settle and colonias became those places. Colonias are small lots of 1950s agricultural lands, sold without any of the required basic infrastructures (drainage, electricity, sewage or potable water), located outside of towns. Colonias were sold by anglos who not only profited but also maintained the Mexican workers clearly separated without receiving any of the required cities’ public services. In 2008, with one of the strongest recorded natural disasters in the RGV, Hurricane Dolly affected colonias the most. (From Crisis to Change Curriculum)
As industrial mass agriculture became the economic base, toxic pesticides were used for large scale farming. This caused farm workers and their families in proximity to the farms to suffer from health issues. In Mission, Texas, a large number of cancer cases were recorded after the Hayes-Sammons Warehouse operated between 1945 and 1968 housing commercial pesticides. Today, some colonias are located near rental Pioneer farms, who produce unhealthy, GMO crops and harmful pesticides. (From Crisis to Change Curriculum)
References:
6, How Race is made in America
9, Inventing the Magic Valley
10, Harvest of Empire
Links:
ADD LINK (From Crisis to Change Curriculum)
ADD LINK (LNG Report).
https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-making-of-the-magic-valley/
https://www.cameroncountytx.gov/economic-development-demographics/
