History of Latin America
Week 14: Migration and Immigration

Lecture outline
Readings: **Quinones, "Delfino I"

 

On migration, neoliberalism/free trade, and human trafficking

The Wall Street Journal rediscovers the informal economy in the midst of crisis
Latinos in the U.S. meatpacking industry, from the Migration Policy Institute
Teenagers reflect on growing up between Chicago and Durango, Mexico, with their former fourth-grade teacher
The threat of Chinese labor to Central American maquiladoras
John Bowe interviewed by Jon Stewart, and on This American Life, "Competition," Act I 'Cowboys and Indians' (this time it's not Latin Americans, but Indian workers in Tulsa, OK). He wrote this story about Mexican and Guatemalan workers in Florida for The New Yorker.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers home page
Marine private Guy Gabaldon, the "pied piper of Saipan," a Mexican-American whose WWII story was told (but without reference to his ethnicity) in the movie Hell to Eternity
Marine lance corporal Jose Gutierrez, a Guatemalan migrant and one of the first soldiers to die in Iraq

Miscellaneous links of interest

Greg Grandin on U.S. foreign policy in Central America in the '80s and Iraq
Mexico quietly released the long-promised report on its own "Dirty War" in 2006
Great aerial photos of Mexico City!! (This is how the wealthy travel -- by helicopter taxi)