Raza Sí, Migra No - (Justice, Power, and Politics) by Jimmy Patiño (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

As immigration from Mexico to the United States grew through the 1970s and 1980s, the Border Patrol, police, and other state agents exerted increasing violence against ethnic Mexicans in San Diego's volatile border region. In response, many San Diego activists rallied around the leadership of the small-scale print shop owner Herman Baca in the Chicano movement to empower Mexican Americans through Chicano self-determination. The combination of increasing repression and Chicano activism gradually produced a new conception of ethnic and racial community that included both established Mexican Americans and new Mexican immigrants. Here, Jimmy Patiño narrates the rise of this Chicano/Mexicano consciousness and the dawning awareness that Mexican Americans and Mexicans would have to work together to fight border enforcement policies that subjected Latinos of all statuses to legal violence.

By placing the Chicano and Latino civil rights struggle on explicitly transnational terrain, Patiño fundamentally reorients the understanding of the Chicano movement. Ultimately, Patiño tells the story of how Chicano/Mexicano politics articulated an "abolitionist" position on immigration -- going beyond the agreed upon assumptions shared by liberals and conservatives alike that deportations are inherent to any solutions to the still burgeoning immigration debate.

Review Quotes

"A sharp, well-written history. In a single community study, Patií±o expertly shows the development of an important set of ideas that continues to impact both the field and its practitioners."--Pacific Historical Review

"Capably chronicles the conflicting and shifting attitudes toward immigrants among Chicano activists from the late 1960s through the 1980s . . . . An important examination of the role of place and of flexible notions of identity in shaping a social movement."--Journal of American History

"Patiño's powerful analysis will challenge and occupy scholars of immigration studies, community mobilization, and identity politics for generations to come."--American Historical Review

"The most valuable lesson learned from Patií±o's book is the author's uncompromising critical review of the Chicano military history and of activists' transition to more nuanced perspectives of La Raza."--Western Historical Quarterly

About the Author

Jimmy Patiño is assistant professor of Chicano and Latino studies at the University of Minnesota.