Word: mexicans
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...Sept. 11, the INS has set about pulling back the welcome mat. But doing so requires an abrupt shift in the agency's mission, which for the past decade has been informed by conflicting mandates. On the one hand, the U.S. has made a show of plugging up the Mexican border to keep out migrant workers and drug smugglers. Yet it gives much less public scrutiny to the millions who enter the country by air. Once foreigners reach American soil unlawfully, the INS, under pressure from industries that depend on cheap labor, does next to nothing to throw them...
...latest book, Crossing Over, ends by finally stating what Martínez has been alluding to all along: “There is no border; the line is an idea.” Crossing Over chronicles the vitality, resilience and internal conflict of Cherán, a small Mexican pueblo, after the death of three of its community members. While attempting to cross the border in order to earn money to support their family, three Chávez brothers died in an automobile accident. Martínez’s non-fictional account traces the anguish of a family...
Martínez, a Mexican-American himself, visited the town of Cherán shortly after the death of the Chávez brothers. What he found was a community rich in tradition and receptive to change; the American dream had been shaping their cultural landscape for decades. The locals, many of whom proudly claim to be Purépecha Indians, have over time been forced, in one way or another, to integrate certain aspects of another culture into their own. Throughout the book, Martínez’s experiences in Cherán reinforce the idea that...
...Throughout Crossing Over he asserts that during certain months, the border patrol is lenient when farmers need cheap labor. However, during other times of the year, the border patrol’s tactics can be so vigilant and irresponsible as to cause the death of three Mexican migrants. Although it was not one of his original intentions, Martínez wants the book to allow Americans to see that, “even though [Mexican migrants] lack papers, they’ve suffered like other Americans.” Martínez, whom many of the Cherán residents...
...were spotted with spells at a finishing school in Montreal and the Julliard School in New York, and by age 21 she had endured a failed marriage, given up a child for adoption and worked at a string of odd jobs, some days making shrimp cocktails and others painting Mexican scenes on pottery...