Mexico: Sui Generis
Once again, I cannot find at home a great article I happened across at work —this one about Mexican demography. But, until I find it, have a look at this article by Richard D. Vogel. It is suitably socialist and anti-American in its examination of our history, but it explains something about why Mexican immigration is its own thing and cannot be compared to any other group of immigrants:
Two elemental factors have affected the history of Mexicans in the U.S.: first, unlike both the African American and Native American people, they have had sanctuaries — the borderlands of the American Southwest and Mexico itself — places to recuperate from the relentless exploitation and regenerate, and, second, their labor power remains essential to American capitalism. These two factors have saved the Mexican people from the dismal fate of so many Native and African Americans.
That first factor is correct: Mexico’s eventual reconquest of the American Southwest is a demographic certainty because of the law of propinquity. But the second factor is not uniquely Mexican. Or does Vogel mean to suggest that the labor of black and Native Americans is no longer ”essential” to our capitalist system? Maybe he meant “cost-effective,” instead.
(Oh, and Vogel basically makes the story of the independence of Texas into that of a huge land-grab for slave-owning Anglo-Americans —because, as we know, anything that is not American or Texan enjoys inherent moral superiority, which, as we also know, is not to be understood as romanticizing or whitewashing the nature of Mexico’s own racist and classist history— but it’s still a useful essay.)
