Oye Shelly

To explore the ways in which migrants negotiated longing, gender, intimacy, courtship, marriage, and identity across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the 1960s and 1970s, chapter 1 opens by examining and analyzing the broader racial, labor, and environmental contexts shaping José Chávez’s—the author’s father—experience as a Mexican laborer in Imperial Valley in the 1950s and 1960s. Specifically, it pays attention to working and living conditions in el valle and how those contributed to his loneliness, isolation, and ambivalence as a border dweller, despite his status as a green card holder and his ability to engage in return migration. Next, it examines letter writing as a form of courtship as detailed in the love letters he crafted and the cultural tools—stylized letter writing, the English language, portraits, songs, movies, and the radio—he drew upon to convince Maria Concepción “Conchita” Alvarado—the author’s mother—to accept his marriage proposal. Finally, it shows that while Conchita never formally agreed to the nuptials, she walked down the aisle and married José, an act that set her life on a new course. Indeed, within a few days, she left her hometown and relocated with José to the Mexicali-Calexico border, where they set out to create a new future for themselves.

Contesta Pronto

Chapter 3 focuses on gender and family life in Mexico, centering on the shifting power relations in the patriarchal household. Using dozens of letters written by José Chávez Torres to his son Paco Chávez, the author’s grandfather and uncle, respectively, the latter of which was living and working in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the chapter examines the personal, emotional, and economic toll of migration on family members who stayed at home. It demonstrates the profound ways in which the migration of family members and loved ones affected their social roles and identities, that is, the real and perceived understanding of who they were in relation to their changing circumstances in their family and community in Mexico and the United States.

Introduction

The introduction outlines the significance of the 300 personal family letters at the heart of the study’s archive. It describes the process through which the correspondence was acquired, examined, and analyzed as well as the tools and techniques used to narrate a broader history of migration, gender, intimacy, identity, and race across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the twentieth century. As the letters demonstrate, rural Mexican migrants had the personal and emotional wherewithal—the audacity and agency as historical actors—to take charge of their future where little or no hope existed. By toggling between the micro and macro as they are read, the letters demonstrate how the individual stories embedded in the lines of the paper reflect and intersect with broader historical and, in this case, migratory, experiences.

Conclusion

The conclusion details how the creative art of letter writing and 300 plus letters written in the 1960s and 1970s at the heart of this study have proven an invaluable source of insight on the past and present world. Indeed, the intricate and detail-laden missives provide a window onto the ways in which immigration policies and practices impacted the every-day lives of migrants and those left behind. They demonstrate, too, how migrants and non-migrants alike built, nurtured, and sustained intimate, emotional, and social relationships across vast distances, including nation-state divides. Despite the ability of distance and time to weaken, at best, and destroy, at worst, personal, family, and community relations, the notes indicate that migrants pursued their hopes and dreams and sometimes nearly lost and shattered them altogether. Embedded in a richly textured social, political, economic, cultural, and historical context, the notes provide a unique lens onto the lives of ordinary people negotiating extraordinary circumstances in their attempts to establish transnational lives that could sustain them and the loved ones who stayed at home.

A Toda Madre (ATM)

Chapter five traces the experience of Paco Chavez’s friend Rogelio Martínez Serna— and that of his male peers—across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and attempts to achieve his hopes and dreams for an economically, physically, and emotionally stable family life. To do so, the chapter opens by examining Rogelio’s effort to migrate lawfully. It shows that his motivation for migration was stoked by Paco’s recent successful settlement in California. Like his peers, Rogelio imagined Paco earning pockets full of dollars, attracting women with his convertible car, and enjoying new adventures. Life was much more difficult for Rogelio, living in the Mexican border. Inspired by his friend Paco, and not easily defeated, Rogelio developed ingenious plans to achieve his purpose: migrating to California to save enough money for an economically secure life as a “man” who could support a household in Mexico. Despite his setbacks, he never lost sight of his aims, especially with peers providing support for how to lead the life of a successful male Mexican migrant with his masculinity and manhood intact. As Rogelio’s experiences show, migrants relied on social networks to achieve lawful migration, employment, housing, and companionship, facilitating their settlement in and transition to the new environment.

A Dios

Chapter 4 reveals that maintaining relationships between parents and children, though challenging, paled in comparison to the work needed to keep alive passionate romantic relationships between male migrants and the female partners they left behind. This chapter focuses on the on again, off again relationship between José’s younger brother, Paco, and Conchita’s older sister, Chifis or Chonita. It demonstrates that the rudimentary systems of communication, distance, rampant chisme, and shifting interests and personal goals proved too burdensome for them to maintain a long-term, long-distance courtship. Though the noviasgo (courtship) did not result in marriage, it allowed them to express their greatest hopes and dreams as well as their everyday social and cultural experiences across the vast divide. While letters often worked to maintain and build relations, this chapter shows how and why they worked to destroy them as well.

Tu Peor Es Nada

Chapter 2 situates the historical lens to south of the border—to Calvillo, Aguascalientes, specifically—to probe how and why María Concepción “Conchita” Alvarado, the author’s mother, a vibrant, free-spirited young woman, eventually went through with the wedding, even though she had little interest in settling down and forming a family and expressed few emotional and romantic feelings of love toward José. As a muchacha (young woman) in a relatively insular pueblo, Conchita lived a life that revolved around schooling and her friends, attending the local movie theater and participating in festivities, and spending time at her cousins’ rancho as well as supporting an increasingly impoverished and conflicted household. Yet, after only three face-to-face meetings and three years of an epistolary-based courtship across hundreds of miles, Conchita married José and migrated to the border region where he lived and worked. In the process, she left behind her youth, her family, her closest confidante, Asunción (Chifis), her older sister, and the only world she had known for eighteen years.