Aknauta
01-28-2003, 11:19 PM
indianaedu.com
Migration, Emergent Ethnicity,
and the "Third Space": The Shifting Politics of Nationalism in Greater Mexico
David G. Gutiérrerz
In October 1994, in an incident that is now widely considered to have marked a turning point in recent immigration history, an estimated seventy thousand people took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest the impending passage of California’s Proposition 187. The statewide initiative, much of which was subsequently invalidated in a federal district court, was a frankly punitive measure designed to discourage unauthorized migration to California by denying undocumented residents and their children access to virtually all public services, including tax-subsidized health care, welfare programs, and public education. The initiative generated fierce debate in the state in the months before the vote. Indeed, the controversy swirling around the initiative was such that the anti-187 march was among the largest organized political protests to occur in Los Angeles since the height of the Vietnam War.1
The march became a political flash point for many reasons, not least of which was a long-simmering resentment felt by many Californians based on their sense that "illegal aliens" were demanding rights in the United States to which they were not entitled. This impression undoubtedly was reinforced by the large numbers of Latinos who participated in the march. It is impossible to tell exactly who the protesters were, but photographs and news footage of the event indicate that most of the crowd appeared to be Latinos, and since the Mexican proportion of the Latino population of Los Angeles is conservatively estimated to be something between 70 and 80 percent, most of the marchers were probably either resident Mexican nationals or sympathetic Mexican Americans.2 What really seemed to raise the ire of observers most, however, was the political symbolism of the protest
This way for more of this study (http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/mexico/dgutierrez.html)
Migration, Emergent Ethnicity,
and the "Third Space": The Shifting Politics of Nationalism in Greater Mexico
David G. Gutiérrerz
In October 1994, in an incident that is now widely considered to have marked a turning point in recent immigration history, an estimated seventy thousand people took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest the impending passage of California’s Proposition 187. The statewide initiative, much of which was subsequently invalidated in a federal district court, was a frankly punitive measure designed to discourage unauthorized migration to California by denying undocumented residents and their children access to virtually all public services, including tax-subsidized health care, welfare programs, and public education. The initiative generated fierce debate in the state in the months before the vote. Indeed, the controversy swirling around the initiative was such that the anti-187 march was among the largest organized political protests to occur in Los Angeles since the height of the Vietnam War.1
The march became a political flash point for many reasons, not least of which was a long-simmering resentment felt by many Californians based on their sense that "illegal aliens" were demanding rights in the United States to which they were not entitled. This impression undoubtedly was reinforced by the large numbers of Latinos who participated in the march. It is impossible to tell exactly who the protesters were, but photographs and news footage of the event indicate that most of the crowd appeared to be Latinos, and since the Mexican proportion of the Latino population of Los Angeles is conservatively estimated to be something between 70 and 80 percent, most of the marchers were probably either resident Mexican nationals or sympathetic Mexican Americans.2 What really seemed to raise the ire of observers most, however, was the political symbolism of the protest
This way for more of this study (http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/mexico/dgutierrez.html)