Raza Sí, Migra No: Chicano Movement Struggles for Immigrant Rights in San Diego

Justice, Power, and Politics

by Jimmy Patino

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 Patino 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, Patino fundamentally reorients the understanding of the Chicano movement. Ultimately, Patino 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.

346 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 18, 2017

Reviews

[Michael Calonne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent overview of parts of the Chicano Rights Movement, with a particular focus on immigration and San Diego.

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dense read but incredibly informative on the Chicano culture.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very detailed and well researched. However the topic was so broad that it became difficult to keep track of. It was a very dense reading.

[Mills College Library]

305.86807 P298 2017