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Impacting Arkansas: Vietnamese and Cuban refugees and Latina/o immigrants, 1975-2005

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Impacting Arkansas: Vietnamese and Cuban refugees and Latina/o immigrants, 1975-2005

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Content IMPACTING ARKANSAS: VIETNAMESE AND CUBAN REFUGEES AND LATINA/O IMMIGRANTS, 1975-2005 by Perla M. Guerrero A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY) December 2010 Copyright 2010 Perla M. Guerrero ii DEDICATION —Para mis papás por todos sus sacrificios y con mucho amor— iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could not have completed this project without the great community that I found in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California I benefited greatly from the knowledge and mentorship of all the members of my dissertation committee. George Sánchez, my advisor, believed in this project from the beginning and helped me think through its various permutations with questions, challenges and advice while also providing words of encouragement when needed. I learned a lot from Ruthie Gilmore’s keen grasp of geography and political economy; her classes changed the way I think about the world while her tireless work on social justice issues is humbling. Laura Pulido’s work in geography and Chicano studies enriched this project and my thinking in a multitude of ways while her commitment to fair labor and environmental practices provide an example I wish to follow. I thank her especially for giving me the opportunity to work with her on an article that gave me invaluable experience and immensely aided the path of this dissertation. Finally, Terry Seip readily agreed to join my committee without hesitation and the support and guidance he provided were indispensable. During my time in ASE other faculty members worked closely with me and my overall intellectual development is informed by each of them in ways they may not recognized but which I cherish greatly. I will never forget Dorinne Kondo’s introduction to American Studies, David Roman’s course on archives and subcultures, Teresa McKenna’s classes in Chicano studies and literature or the conversations with Macarena Gomez-Barris and Maria Helena Martinez who were challenging members of my qualifying exam committee. iv This project was also been influenced by my peers and professors in seminars, symposia, and conferences. The dissertation writing workshop that George helped to organized provided a great space to share my work and hear other people’s ideas and suggestions, I even gained a lot by listening to the comments the professors gave to other students. In particular I would like to thank Clyde Woods who gave me thoughtful and supportive feedback during that workshop and who never fails to engage with students’ work. Fred Moten is always a great inspiration with poetic and insightful comments. I would also like to thank the panelists and participants at the Crossing Borders Ethnic Studies Conference in 2004 and 2006, at the IV International Conference on Chicano Literature/ IV Congreso Internacional de Literatura Chicana in 2004, the Oral History Association in 2006, and the Race & Place in the American South in 2008 who listened to the various aspects of this project. In 2009 I co-organized “Illegality, Citizenship, and Critical Latin@/Latin American Studies Symposium,” with Araceli and Gretel and I am a better scholar for it. Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel and Cecilia Menjívar did not hesitate to participate in this endeavor and they along with the graduate students in attendance made it a great intellectual exchange. From the moment I was accepted to ASE the office staff were friendly and helpful as well as being part of an network of camaraderie and support. Sandra Hopwood not only took an interest in the students but was always a fierce advocate and a great ally. Kitty Lai, Sonia Rodriguez, and Jujuana Preston were ready to lend a hand in the various bureaucratic obstacles that occasionally took place and I thank each of them for their time. v Before I moved back to Los Angeles I was fortunate enough to have been at the University of Central Arkansas’ Honors College where I got to know and learn from their great faculty. Norbert Schedler’s commitment to provide a wonderful education without exorbitant prices made the Honors College a great place to be. I will never forget the first lecture I heard Norb give—in his suit, bowtie, and tennis shoes—about naming things into existence. Donna Bowman arrived my freshman year and I became a groupie early on. She is the reason I went to graduate school—I wanted to know as much as she did. And a long time ago, before arriving in college, elementary school teacher Lupe Perez took the time after school to tutor me in English-language acquisition although I was not even her student. Throughout my public school education I had some wonderful and dedicated teachers and I thank them for providing a strong foundation that allowed me to get to graduate school. However, I also recognize that I was tracked early as a “gifted” student and every child should feel the confidence and expectation that moniker provides. Among other things, I am indebted to George and other USC faculty who worked hard to obtain a major grant from the Irvine Foundation that helped fund the program in its initial years and which provided fellowships and stipends to students from underrepresented groups who were seeking a doctoral degree—without this financial support I could not have attended graduate school. I thank the James Irvine Foundation for years of funding while the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and USC’s Diversity Placement endeavor provided stipends that helped me research and write during several summers. During my last year I was also fortunate to receive USC’s Oakley Endowed Fellowship which allowed me to finish in a timely manner. vi I would also like to thank Linda R. Pine, Head of Archives & Special Collections, Ottenheimer Library, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Andrea Cantrell, Head of Research Services, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, and Frances Morgan, Manager, Bill Clinton State Government Project provided great guidance and support. In the final writing stages of the dissertation I finally took advantage of the great librarians at USC and wish I had done it sooner because Sue Tyson, American Studies and Ethnic Studies Librarian (to name only two areas of expertise), Sherry Mosley, Public Affairs Librarian, and Katharin Peter, Social Sciences & Data Librarian made it possible for me to finish in a timely manner. I would like to thank all the Arkansans who gave so much of their time and shared part of their histories with me. I regret that I was unable to incorporate more of their voices into this version of the project but I want to assure them that their insights are still with me and I already have some ideas about how to represent their perspectives in the book that will arise from this dissertation. I could not have done all the hard work that graduate school demands without so many great people that I am lucky to call friends. By the time I arrived Laura Barraclough, Hillary Jenks, Jenny Stoever, Nicole Hodges Persley, Ulli Ryder, and Reina Prado among others had established a nurturing and convivial community of support. They made sure we knew as first-year students that it was okay to ask questions, that we really were not expected to know everything, and—most importantly—they would always be there to help. For that and for many funny, witty, and warm conversations I thank them. I was fortunate to be part of the third cohort and I could not have wished for a better or more fun group of people to take this journey with than Araceli Esparza, Imani vii Johnson, Sionne Neely, Jesús Hernández, Nisha Kunte, Anton Smith, Micaela Smith, and Carolyn Dunn. They have made my graduate experience challenging and joyful, to say the least. There were analyses and critiques, rants and raves, and above all, always support. I also have awesome memories of conversations, dinners, parties, drinks, and dancing—I dare say we made grad school fun! During an emergency Thang Dao, Tasneem Siddiqui, and Anthony Bayani Rodriguez opened their home to me and I thank them for that and for being such great roommates and friends. Michelle Commander, Emily Hobson, Sharon Luk, Gretel H. Vera-Rosas, Wendy Cheng, Laura S. Fugikawa, Terrion Williams, Alvaro D. Marquez, and Orlando Serrano, among others who are too many to name, also made ASE a great place to be. I would especially like to thank the various members of my writing groups including Araceli, Gretel, Nisha, Mica, Fiorella Cotrina and Bert Emerson for their feedback. Laura F., Anton, Thang, and Orlando read all or various chapters of the dissertation and I thank them immensely for helping me out and giving of their time so freely. Long-time friends, particularly Diem Le, Hong Vong, and Kim Kwee, were more than understanding when research, writing, and teaching got in the way of talking on the phone and spending time together. I would also like to thank Brooke and Treavor Edwards for so readily opening their home to me as I looked for an apartment in Little Rock for a year of research. I could not have completed this project, however, without the special people that were in the trenches with me finishing their respective dissertations. I worked extensively and intensively with Michelle and Sionne and I would like to thank them for offering me the couch so I could sleep over and we could continue writing early in the morning, and for the dancing, coffee, and shopping breaks. Laura F. is the most nicest and most viii positive person that I know. I thank her for sharing that positivity with me even when I did not want to hear it, for the many, many hours we spent at coffee shops around L.A., and for all the work that she does to help other people including me. Toward the end of the writing process I was fortunate enough to meet Isabela Seong-Leong Quintana who also worked many hours with Laura and I, and I am grateful for this friendship. From the beginning my family was the greatest source of strength, support, nourishment, and love. Aunque nos fuimos de México cuando era muy niña, en los últimos diez años he tenido la oportunidad de reestablecer relaciones con toda mi familia. Mis viajes a México me han servido para darme ánimo cuando lo necesitaba y para llenarme de mucho amor —y de comida. Mi hermano Sandro siempre esta ahí cuando necesito desahogarme y distraerme y lo quiero mucho. Mis papás me han dado un gran sentido de seguridad y estabilidad, creando a la mujer que soy ahora: segura de sí misma y de mi valor como persona. Estas características han sido muy importantes en mi vida y fundamentals para terminar el doctorado. Ellos sacrificaron mucho—principalmente dejar a sus familias para inmigrar a Estados Unidos con la esperanza de darnos mejores oportunidades—motivo por el cual les doy las gracias. Pero más que nada, les doy las gracias por sus abrazos, besos y amor incondicional. Los quiero con todo mi corazón. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………...…ii Acknowledgements...………………………..………………………………………...…iii Table of Contents…..…………………………………………………………………......ix List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………...…x List of Figures...………………………………………………………………………..…xi Abstract…..…………………………………………………………………………..…..xii Introduction …...…………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Understanding Northwest Arkansas………...………………………………..32 Chapter 2: “We’re All Unhappy About This”: Vietnamese Refugees and “Yellow Peril”……………………………………………….73 Chapter 3: Arkansa(n)s Victimized by the Federal Government and Mariel Cubans: Legal, Political, and Military Actions ………………………………...134 Chapter 4: Latinas/os and Polleras: Social Networks, Multi-Site Migration, Raids, and Upward Mobility…………………199 Chapter 5: “Northwest Arkansas’ No. 1 Societal Concern”: “Illegal Aliens,” Acts of Spatial Illegality, and Political Mobilizations…………..……255 Conclusion: “Immigrants in Arkansas, Illegal but Useful”………………………….…303 Bibliography: …………………………………………………………………………..310 x LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Arkansas’ Population, 1980-2000…………………………………………….216 Table 2: Four Arkansas Cities, 1990……………………………………………………218 Table 3: Four Arkansas Cities, 2000……………………………………………………219 Table 4: FSPS Enrollment of Latina/o & White Students, 1990-2004…………………233 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Regional Map…………………………………………………………………...3 Figure 2: Arkansas' Congressional Districts, 2000………………………………………13 Figure 3: Northwest Arkansas…………………………………...………………………49 xii ABSTRACT “Impacting Arkansas: Vietnamese and Cuban Refugees and Latina/o Immigrants, 1975-2005,” considers the effects of the arrival of refugees from Vietnam and Cuba and Latina/o immigrants (mainly ethnic Mexicans) to the U.S. South. I use newspaper articles and state and federal archives to analyze how refugees and immigrants were racialized in the state. I examine each group’s racialization with attention to the historical moment in which they entered homogenously White, Protestant, and Republican northwest Arkansas and I find that contextual forces such as local history, U.S. foreign policy, national political context, social class status, and dominant racial discourses articulated in ways that drew on long-standing ideologies. The racialization of Vietnamese refugees in 1975 was affected by their placement in Arkansas at the end of the Vietnam War, in a moment when the nation was dealing with having lost an exceptionally contentious episode within the ongoing Cold War. Vietnamese were cautiously welcomed with a rhetoric of American values which opposed communism and had to make good on promises to help the United States’ former allies. Their reception was further shaped by their status as largely professionals, college-educated, and English-proficient, nonetheless, fear of “yellow peril” promulgated. In contrast to the Vietnamese, Cuban refugees arrived in 1980 amidst national and international accusations that Fidel Castro’s government had unleashed criminals, prostitutes, and the mentally ill. Given these circumstances, and that this cohort of Cuban refugees was largely working-class, gay, and of African descent, they were constructed as criminal and deviant and Arkansans and their politicians mobilized to xiii remove them from the state. Latinas/os (immigrants and U.S.-born), particularly ethnic Mexicans, began arriving in the early 1990s during a significant economic regional reorganization which provided many of them with low-wage work. They were all quickly constructed as “illegal aliens,” with their behaviors in public and private spaces severely condemned and policed. The history and relationship between the State of Arkansas and the federal government also shaped the reception of the groups in important ways as local (city and state) versus extra-local (federal agencies) control became central to the debates over the changes occurring in northwest Arkansas. Generally, there were hostile reactions toward Vietnamese, Cubans, and ethnic Mexicans because Arkansans deemed the new groups a threat to their community, their way of life, and their country. xiv INTRODUCTION One needs to know how different racial and ethnic groups were inserted historically, and the relations which have tended to erode and transform, or to preserve these distinctions through time—not simply as residues and traces of previous modes, but as active structuring principles of the present organization of society. —Stuart Hall 1 In 1985, my mother, brother, and I left Guanajuato, Mexico to join my father in Pico Rivera, California and we lived there until 1996 when we moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas. The first day at my new high school as I was standing in the lunch line a girl asked me, “What are you?” This was my first encounter with the question, although I heard it many times afterward. In an attempt to be playful I asked her to guess. She listed Vietnamese, Laotian, Hawaiian, “Indian from India,” Native American, “Eskimo,” and Filipina. At first I thought she was kidding, but I soon realized her query was an attempt to complete a puzzle she could not put together on her own. Throughout my time in Arkansas I got asked that question a lot by strangers and, except for this instance where it was an Asian girl—an immigrant, I would find out later—always by White folks and often in public spaces. I begin here because it points to the complexities of the processes of racialization of a new group in particular place and time. The Asian American girl tried to place me within the racial and ethnic fields she was familiar with and which at that time lacked Latinas/os. This changed over time as more Latinas/os settled in the area and as residents 1 Stuart Hall, “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance,” in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (UNESCO, 1980): 339. 2 became familiar with us. Three years later I went to college in Conway, two-and-a-half hours southeast and half an hour from Little Rock, a city that was very White where people turned and gave me quizzical looks. In and around Conway I either heard, “what are you” or people thought I was White. Again, this changed toward the end of my stay when Latinas/os began to live and work in the area. Once there were others to compare me to, both in Fort Smith and in Conway, I sometimes heard: “but you’re not a real Mexican like to other ones.” Usually the people who told me this—including friends— meant it as a complement; I did not take it as such but was intrigued as to what constituted “real Mexicans” to them. Arkansas changed my life because that is where I learned about racialization— that depending on a variety of variables such as dress, language spoken, and peer group, people would categorize me differently in terms of my race. In graduate school I realized that southern California also taught me about racialization; after all, I expected to be recognized as Mexican or Latina 1,500 miles east. But at sixteen all I knew was that I had always been (constructed as) Mexican and I could not comprehend how Arkansans could not make sense of me. I arrived in graduate school thinking that I was going to write about ethnic Mexican migrants in Arkansas but taking Stuart Hall’s assertion seriously I realized that I could not do so without addressing the groups that preceded them—Vietnamese and Cubans—and the manner in which they entered the state—as refugees from communist countries though their receptions and time in Arkansas were quite different. I became more intrigued about what took place in this former slave-holding state and one whose 3 social relations post-1865 largely took place within a Black/White paradigm. However, unlike the rest of the state, northwest Arkansas was overwhelmingly White, in some areas up to ninety-nine percent making it one of the nation’s most homogenous places at the end of the twentieth century. 2 How did this area react to refugees and immigrants, Asians and Latinas/os? This is a study about race in the South, about how the state and its people constructed groups differently. 3 Figure 1: Regional Map 2 Brooks Blevins, Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and their Image (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 212. 3 Generally the South refers to all of the former confederate states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Florida. In this project the discussion of the South excludes Texas due to its long history with Mexicans and Mexican Americans and Florida for clarity because it has had extensive experience with Cubans and other Latin Americans, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. 4 Arkansas is representative of the U.S. South as a region for several reasons. First, Arkansas was a slave-holding and Confederate state. Second, the southeastern area is part of the Delta which represents, according to most scholars, the epitome of Southern life in its culture, politics, economics, violence, oppression, and general exploitation of human lives. 4 Third, like other southern states, the civil rights struggle in Arkansas was long and arduous. Finally, Arkansas demographics and economic bases are—like the rest of the South—diversifying and becoming more like the rest of the country. Precisely because the South is becoming like the rest of the United States and vice versa it is an appropriate moment to explore the changing region. With this in mind, the questions guiding this dissertation are: How were Vietnamese, Cubans, and Mexicans racialized in Arkansas given the northwest area’s overwhelmingly White homogeneity and each group’s mode of entry into the city, state, and nation? How did space and place become central factors for the acceptance of rejection of each group? Finally, how did local, state, and federal government officials and agencies as well as people interact to shape each group’s reception in Arkansas? Impacting Arkansas explores these questions through camp, local, and state newspapers with an emphasis on the latter in order to untangle the various ways in which the groups were popularly understood and constructed. I also draw on federal and state papers that documented the groups’ arrival and time in Arkansas in order to see beyond public discourse and statements to determine what government officials thought was at stake in 4 Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (New York: Verso, 1998); Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 5 accepting or rejecting each of these groups. I focus on northwest Arkansas because that is where Fort Chaffee, the military installation twice used to process refugees, is located and the area where Latina/o immigrants in the 1990s tended to settle. Northwest Arkansas in the last quarter of the twentieth century was homogenous in three salient factors for regional identity—race, religion, and politics—where they were White, Protestant, and Republican. 5 These characteristics were factors in hostile reactions to toward Vietnamese and Cuban refugees and Latina/o immigrants and articulated differently for each group. In the case of Vietnamese in 1975, the area’s Christianity aided their resettlement but it worked against the sponsorship of Cubans in 1980 while the ascendancy and growing conservatism of the Republican Party provided forums for anti-immigrant and anti-Latina/o sentiments in the 1990s. At the forefront of the resistance to change were issues of race where northwest Arkansas’ whiteness was hardly invoked but constantly present and the groups’ racial and ethnic backgrounds were frequently referenced as primary reasons for rejecting them. The ways Vietnamese and Cuban refugees and Latina/o immigrants were understood in the state drew specifically on their racial and ethnic backgrounds though each group was deemed unassimilable to the nation. The Asian-specific “yellow peril” permeated discourse on Vietnamese, Cubans were deemed dangerous criminals, and Latina/o immigrants were “illegal aliens.” Generally, Vietnamese and Cuban refugees and Latina/o immigrants encountered 5 In this project the counties that include northwest Arkansas are: Benton, Washington, Crawford, Sebastian, Carroll, Madison, Franklin, Boone, Marion, Newton, Johnson, and Pope Counties. In 1990 and 2000, these counties also formed Arkansas’ Third Congressional District making it a coherent entity for political analysis. 6 xenophobic, nativist, and racist responses from Arkansans because they deemed the new groups a threat to their community, their way of life, and their country. The groups that are the subject of Impacting Arkansas entered the state in various ways and with different legal categories but in each instance there was tension over the federal government’s power and imposition on the state and Arkansan’s lives. The theme of “states’ rights” versus “federal mandate” in Arkansas history—indeed in southern history—extends to the antebellum era and has historically been a point of contention, especially in relationship to Black struggles for equality and justice. In the last quarter of the twentieth century this tension came to the fore again, except this time with refugees and immigrants, Asians and Latinas/os. In 1975 when Fort Chaffee was selected as a processing and relocation center for Vietnamese there was considerable resentment about the lack of agency the state had in deciding whether they wanted one of their federal bases to be used for such an endeavor and Arkansas government officials often asserted that it was a federal mandate that the state and Arkansans had to bear. Five years later when Fort Chaffee was once again chosen to process refugees, this time Cubans from Mariel, the state and its people resented the federal government more deeply than it had in the case of Vietnamese. However, those feelings had more to do with the Cubans themselves and what Arkansans and their government officials saw as a lack of responsibility on the part of the federal government to take care of people it admitted and the citizenry which it was accountable to. In response to Latina/o immigrants in the 1990s, Arkansans blamed the federal 7 government for ineffectively guarding the border while the state paid—and its people suffered—the consequences. Impacting Arkansas bridges Latina/o Studies, Asian American Studies, and Southern Studies in order to gain a better understanding of various peoples and a region and its increasing racial and ethnic diversification. This study challenges the focus of Chicano history and Chicano studies which has been on the Southwest. Mexicans and Mexican Americans are no longer solely located within the Southwest and it is important to understand the histories and trajectories of communities in other regions in order to have a better grasp of processes at a national level. In a similar way, Asian American history has focused significantly on the West Coast but the community is also moving beyond those borders. Latinas/os and Asians, both native- and foreign-born, are rapidly growing and settling in the South and that makes understanding their pasts there that much more important. This study also provides a link between refugee studies, immigration studies, and southern history as subjects of each area coalesced in late twentieth century Arkansas and shaped the context of reception for subsequent groups. That officials and average people deployed rhetoric of states’ rights when faced with refugees and immigrants shows how the region’s legacies remain unresolved. Although this feeling is not unique to the region itself it has deep historical meaning given the other times it has been deployed—mainly to fight against African Americans’ equality from emancipation to voting to desegregation. Tom W. Dillard of the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies wrote that “no state is as poorly studied as Arkansas,” and this dissertation documents state history that 8 is not centered on the antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, or Central High School periods. 6 Moreover, it also pushes Arkansas history beyond a Black and White paradigm to seriously consider how various racial and ethnic groups impacted the states’ economic and political arenas. Dillard’s assertion also holds true for the contemporary period— although Arkansas had the fastest Latina/o growth in all U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas and counties in the 1990s, it has hardly been studied within the growing literature on Latinas/os in the South. 7 To this scholarship this dissertation provides a longer lens about one of the places where they have settled and how the area’s religious, economic, political, and racial histories shaped the contours of reception to these newest southerners and the people that preceded them. Studies about Latina/os in the South have assessed the trend within a broader “geographic diversification of American immigration,” explored “the structure and 6 Tom W. Dillard, “Arkansas and the New South, 1874-1929,” The Journal of American History85, no. 4 (1999): 1601. 7 Three exceptions to the scholarship are: Debora O. Erwin, “An Ethnographic Description of Latino Immigration in Rural Arkansas: Intergroup Relations and Utilization of Healthcare Services,” Southern Rural Sociology 19(1): 2003, 46-72; Steve Striffler, “Neither Here Nor There: Mexican Immigrant Workers and the Search for Home,” American Ethnologist 34, no. 4 (2007): 674-688; and, idem, “We’re All Mexicans Here: Poultry Processing, Latino Migration, and the Transformation of a Class in the South,” in The American South in a Global World, eds. James L. Peacock, Harry L. Watson, and Carrie R. Matthews (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 9 dynamics of Mexican migration to new destinations in the United States,” and viewed the migration within the national trend of moving out of metropolitan areas. 8 Scholars have also studied the crucial role of social networks in the migration, the “pull” factors like the restructuring of poultry, beef, and construction, and the trend to deskill and decentralized production to areas with lower wage rates like the South. 9 There has also been much documentation on the responses of local school districts to the arrival of Latinas/os. Most of the time districts are unprepared, overwhelmed, and under-funded 8 Douglas S. Massey and Chiara Capoferro, “The Geographic Diversification of American Immigration,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. by Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 25-50; Mark A. Leach and Frank D. Bean, “The Structure and Dynamics of Mexican Migration to New Destinations in the United States,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. by Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 51-74; Katharine M. Donato, et al, “Changing Faces, Changing Places: The Emergence of New Nonmetropolitan Immigrant Gateways,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. by Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 75-98. 9 Charles Hirschman and Douglass S. Massey, “Places and Peoples: The New American Mosaic,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. by Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 4-10; William Kandel and Emilio A. Parrado, “Industrial Transformation and Hispanic Migration to the American South: The Case of the Poultry Industry,” in Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places: A Geography of Regional and Cultural Diversity, ed. Daniel D. Arreola (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 255-276; Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Michael J. Broadway, “From City to Countryside: Recent Changes in the Structure and Location of the Meat- and Fish-Processing Industries,” in Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small Town America, eds. Donald D. Stull, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); David Griffith, “Hay Trabajo: Poultry Processing, Rural Industrialization, and the Latinization of Low- Wage Labor,” in Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small Town America, eds. Donald D. Stull, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); Rebecca M. Torres, E. Jeffrey Popke, and Holly M. Hapke, “The South’s Silent Bargain: Rural Restructuring, Latino Labor and the Ambiguities of Migrant Experience,” in Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place, eds. Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 37-68; Leon Fink, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); James D. Engstrom, “Industry and Immigration in Dalton, Georgia,” in Latino Workers in the Contemporary South, eds. Arthur D. Murphy, Colleen Blanchard, and Jennifer A. Hill (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 44-56; Greig Guthey, “Mexican Places in Southern Spaces: Globalization, Work, and Daily Life in and Around the North Georgia Poultry Industry,” in Latino Workers in the Contemporary South, eds. Arthur D. Murphy, Colleen Blanchard, and Jennifer A. Hill (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 57-67; Emilio A. Parrado and William Kandel, “New Hispanic Migrant Destinations: A Tale of Two Industries,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008): 99-123. 10 to deal with the sheer growth of school-age children and to accommodate students who are often Spanish-speakers. 10 The research has thus far provided vital demographic information on Latina/os in some parts of the U.S. South, mainly in rural areas but has, until now, lacked a keen focus on issues of race. Jaime Winders points out that most studies note that one significant aspect of this migration is that Latinas/os are moving to an area that has historically been defined by its Black and White racial divisions. She argues that researchers have had an “overall failure to engage two topics: the geographic and place specificity of arguments about Latino migration to the South and the impacts of Latino migration on racial formations and politics in southern communities.” 11 Moreover, despite describing simultaneous economic integration and social isolation scholars have not “analyzed the practices that place Latinos outside the boundaries of community.” 12 Impacting Arkansas 10 Andrew Wainer, “The New Latino South and the Challenge to Public Education: Strategies for Educators and Policymakers in Emerging Immigrant Communities,” (University of Southern California: The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, 2004); William A. Kandel and Emilio A. Parrado, “Hispanic Population Growth and Public School Responses in Two New South Immigrant Destinations,” in Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place, eds. Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006): 111-134; David Griffith, “New Midwesterners, New Southerners: Immigration Experiences in Four Rural American Setting,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 179-210; Regina Cortina, “MexAmerica and the Global American South,” Paper presented at Navigating the Globalization of the American South, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2005. 11 Jaime Winders, “Changing Politics of Race and Region: Latino Migration to the US South,” Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 6 (2005): 683-699. For some exceptions see Barbara Ellen Smith, “Across Races and Nations: Social Justice Organizing in the Transnational South,” in Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place, eds. Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006): 235-256; Helen B. Marrow, “Hispanic Immigration, Black Population Size, and Intergroup Relations in the Rural and Small Town-South,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 211-248; and Paula D. McClain, et al, “Racial Distancing in a Southern City: Latino Immigrants' Views of Black Americans,” in The Journal of Politics 68, no. 3 (2006): 571-584. 12 Winders, “Changing Politics of Race and Region,” 689. 11 draws from literatures in geography, racialization, and ethnic studies to address these issues. Geography I draw from economic geographers who use frameworks and/or methodologies based on historical materialism which posits that the production and reproduction of life (forms of consciousness, relationships between people, ideologies, etcetera) are based on material conditions, i.e., on the mode of production. 13 Thus, space is a construction that is produced through an inherently political process because it is the outcome of social relations. Place is a particular form of space, and likewise, also the outcome of social relations. More precisely, economic geographers base their analyses of space and place on the ebbs and flows of capitalist development which forms part of the material and social conditions that articulate in a particular way to create categories of difference. Capitalism is a process of circulation that creates, and functions through uneven development which is the geographical expression at several spatial scales of the contradictions inherent in capital. “What it [capitalism] achieves in fact is the production of space in its own image….For not only does capital produce space in general, it produces the real spatial scales that give uneven development its coherence.” 14 Moreover, a region is site of economic production informed by national and global economic structures but regions are articulated differently to such structures so 13 Start Hall, "Re-Thinking the 'Base-and-Superstructre' Metaphor," in Class, Hegemony ed. Jon Bloomfield (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977), 44-48. 14 Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space (New York: Blackwell, 1984): xiii. 12 that each is shaped differently. 15 The particular articulation with national and global forces in part explains economic differentiation. Economic differentiation is the development of different modes of production in regions and the separation between products/producers and distributors within the nation-state. 16 The construction of space and the importance of economic production to a region or sub-region came into sharp focus because there are stark differences between areas of Arkansas. 15 Neil Smith, "Contours of Spatialized Politics: Homeless Vehicles and the Production of Geographical Scale" Social Text 33 (1992): 73; Ann Markusen, Regions: The Economics and Politics of Territory (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987), 13. 16 Markusen, 13, 4 13 Figure 2: Arkansas' Congressional Districts, 2000 Historically the Delta which currently forms part of the First and Fourth Congressional Districts grew cotton with African American laborers and was highly segregated; the prairie became a rice growing area with mostly White workers; and the hills in the northwest became overwhelmingly White and the central area of poultry production. The contrast between the northwest and the southeast are particularly strong. Arkansas four-hundred thousand African Americans are spread throughout the state but largely absent from the northwest corner which forms the state’s Third Congressional District. In the meantime, the Arkansas Delta in the south and east remains heavily 14 agricultural and one of the United States’ most disenfranchised areas with Black lives exponentially in danger, at great risk for premature death. 17 According to Neil Smith, scale is a primary way for spatial differentiation which defines identities and represents differences. Identity and difference are central to the definition of scale but they are most important at the low scale of the body because it provides access to other scales—home, community, urban, region, and nation—since it is the receptacle for race, class, gender, sexuality and other social constructs used to oppress people. Scales are “nested” or articulated which means that the scale of the body cannot be separated from other scales, more importantly, what happens to bodies is determined by scales at a higher level. 18 The regional scale is shaped by both lower and higher scales. Smith does not spend much time exploring or defining differentiation but discussing scale as an entity necessitates unity, especially in the ideological realm. Stuart Hall argues that ideology, which is a concrete discursive formation, first functions through interpellation. Relative unified ideological discourse occurs when, for example, the familial interpellation evokes a political interpellation with each symbolically representing the other and when a specific interpellation forms the axis and organizing principle of society. 19 Ann Markusen and Smith argue that regions are also made up of identities and cultures that are related to the type of work performed. 20 According to 17 Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (New York: Verso, 1998). 18 Smith, "Contours of Spatialized Politics.” 19 Stuart Hall, "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance," in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (UNESCO, 1980): 16-60. 20 Markusen; Smith, Uneven Development, 73-74. 15 Markusen the culture of a region influences its political controversies and strategies; the more homogenous the culture is the more unity around a regional disruption. Moreover, the Southern region has been the most distinctive one in the United States. 21 Drawing on this scholarship, I understand the region as a unit of analysis where the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres at the global, national, and local levels intersect to form “different kinds of places.” I build on these works to explore how ideologies about Vietnamese, Cubans, and Mexicans, communism and refugees, immigrants and immigration law, and race and culture were articulated in order to make sense of each group. In other words, I explore how knowledge circulated about the groups at the global and national scales—U.S. allies, deviants, criminals—largely determined their reception in Arkansas and to consider how the northwest’s homogeneity and concomitant insular culture leery of outsiders shaped those meanings. One of the questions explored by studying the regional scale is how spaces become different kinds of places. It might be tempting to argue that the enslavement of Africans necessarily produces the same outcome, especially in terms of racism, power relations, and domination. However, as Hall argues, racism is not inevitable or a priori. Racism cannot be explained in abstraction from other social relations, at the same time, it cannot be explained by reducing it to those relations. Thus, to argue that racism in the U.S. South was the result of slavery is a fallacy. Instead, scholars need to explore how racism is (re)organized and (re)articulated in different kinds of places because it does not take the same form or degree in all capitalist formations nor is it necessary for the 21 Markusen, 57. 16 functioning of all capitalisms. 22 Peter Jackson argues that the “political, cultural, and ideological dimensions of racism can[not] simply be read off from the economic….while racism may be determined economically, it is contested politically and experienced culturally.” 23 Similarly, Smith argues that “it is at the scale of the community that racism and indeed every form of localism is most firmly rooted” and Ruth Gilmore posits that racism has “place-based particularities.” 24 Historical anti-Black racism created northwest Arkansas as a particular kind of place and thus shaped the reception of Vietnamese, Cubans, and Mexicans. The way these groups were understood also drew on national ideas of race but articulated with local histories with African Americans and which eventually included Asians and Latinas/os. Jackson argues that racism needs to be understood historically but this does not mean that racist attitudes were passively inherited from slavery and empire, instead, racism is an active creation that attempts to make sense of everyday reality and is defined in relation to specific economic circumstances. 25 During slavery White people, especially poor White folks, defined themselves as free in opposition to slaves. Bobby Wilson elucidates the formation of whiteness through slavery and wage work in Birmingham, Alabama. He argues that wage work appeared before Emancipation, that White workers did not like wage work, and that they began to compare it to slavery but in a strategic 22 Hall, "Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance." 23 Peter Jackson, "Geography, Race, and Racism," in New Models in Geography, Volume 2: The Poltical- Economic Perspective, Ed. Richard Peet and Nigel Thrift (New York: Routledge 1989), 190. 24 Smith, "Contours of Spatialized Politics, 71; Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography,” Professional Geographer 54 (2002): 16. 25 Jackson, 179. 17 move the Republic Party connected freedom with wage work. Black slavery made it impossible for White workers to see themselves as a class. Ultimately, by distinguishing themselves from Black slavery the White working class contributed to and strengthened their exploitation as well as that of Black labor. Only the abolition of slavery could allow a more straight forward critique of wage work but by that time whiteness was long established politically and culturally as well as being too important to White workers. 26 Wilson further argues that race is central to U.S. capitalist development and that race and class are relational because class formation and patterns of racial domination define each other. After Emancipation when freedom no longer separated groups, phenotype still remained and White people defined themselves in opposition to blackness. Everyone was free but not everyone could be White. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, most of northwest Arkansas was White and historically its residents were working class people but this began to change as area businesses boomed and created a very wealthy class of folks. At the same time the area was becoming more ethnically and racially diverse so that the type of work performed became more associated with certain kinds of people. Poultry work which in that area had been done by White folks began to be associated with Latinas/os and to a lesser degree with Asians. Racialization In order to use race as a category of analysis, I draw from work on racialization. Generally this literature posits that race-making is complex, multifaceted, and about creating categories for groups of people (races) that are often central to the organization 26 Bobby Wilson, America’s Johannesburg: Industrialization and Racial Transformation in Birmingham (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 24-25. 18 of society. The process involves defining people through legal and economic means as well as social and cultural ways that are hard to legislate but carried out by society at large. Michael Omi and Howard Winant argue that racial formation (a sociohistorical process) and racial projects (the attempt to organize and distribute resources in particular ways) organize and structure U.S. society. They also argue that everyday activities contribute to racial projects because state policies alone cannot guarantee the particular treatment or racialization people. 27 Central to discussions of racialization are vertical hierarchies that position one group above another or several other groups. Tomas Almaguer and Neil Foley, for example, each describe such a schema. 28 Almaguer argues that in the California racial hierarchy of the mid-nineteenth century White people were at the top followed by Mexicans, African Americans, Asians, with Native Americans at the bottom. Furthermore, groups did not share a common structural position since each was racialized in particular ways—Mexicans were deemed White and half-civilized, African Americans and Asians were seen as between savages and half civilized with the latter as aliens ineligible for citizenship, and Indians as non-White also ineligible for citizenship. He concludes that the process of racial formation was defined by political struggles at the state level. 27 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994). 28 Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 19 Neil Foley argues that in central Texas where White, Black, and Mexican people lived and worked from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, Mexicans were between whiteness and blackness where whiteness was not solely an ethnoracial status but a social and economic matrix that provided power and privilege. In Foley’s schema Mexicans are in the middle of the hierarchy between White and Black people due to their investment in whiteness and denial of blackness which meant that they were able to access some power and privilege denied to African Americans. In contrast to Almaguer’s focus on the state, Foley argues that labor, more specifically the land tenure system, was the key to the racialization of those groups. In northwest Arkansas, the poultry industry became central to the way Latinas/os were racialized and contributed to the idea that they were only working-class. Moreover, political struggles began to take place with a focus on protecting northwest Arkansas communities and by extension identity. Claire Jean Kim attempts to avoid the vertical hierarchy, which she argues is too rigid, in her discussion of Asian Americans and instead argues for a field of racial positions that allows for more mobility and nuances. She uses the concept of “racial triangulation” that is formed through the axes of relative valorization and civic ostracism. This field accentuates that ethnic groups are racialized in comparison to one another and that they are therefore racialized differently. 29 Evelyn Nakano Glenn demonstrates how every day activities contribute to racial projects with her work citizenship and labor—two major structures that have shaped race 29 Claire Jean Kim, "The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans," Politics and Society 27, no. 1 (1999): 105-138. 20 and gender since the founding of the United States. She argues that citizenship determines who members of the community are and thus who is entitled to rights and protection while labor places people in an economic order that ultimately affects their quality of life. “Both have been constituted in ways that privilege white men and give them power over racialized minorities and women,” however, such boundaries are interpreted and enforced (or not) by people at the local level and it is these practices that “determine whether people have or do not have substantive as opposed to purely formal rights of citizens.” 30 She demonstrates that formal law and policy alone could not racialize and gender citizenship without localized practices and people in their everyday lives enforcing or challenging such ideas. In Arkansas, this process is best exemplified by the occasions when local folks called the Immigration and Naturalization Service to report Latinas/os they suspected of being undocumented immigrants in an attempt to police their community and the nation from those they suspected of breaking the law. Arkansans denied Latina/os substantive rights as the former continually policed the latter’s use of public space. While Glenn’s work considers African Americans and Mexican Americans she does not address how immigrant groups interacted with the structures of citizenship and labor. Mae Ngai’s research demonstrates that immigration law racialized Mexicans, Filipinos, and Chinese in particular ways. In the case of Mexicans, increased border restriction produced the illegal alien—a “new legal and political subject, whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and a legal impossibility—a subject 30 Glenn, 1-2. 21 barred from citizenship and without rights.” 31 Eventually Mexicans emerged as the “iconic illegal aliens” as opposed to Europeans and Canadians who tended to be disassociated from the category and thus able to assimilate as White American citizens. More significantly, however, “illegal status became constitutive of a racialized Mexican identity and of Mexicans’ exclusion from the national community and polity.” 32 The “legal racialization of these ethnic groups’ [Asians and Mexicans] national origin cast them as permanently foreign and unassimilable to the nation.” 33 Moreover, alien citizens are “persons who are American citizens by virtue of their birth in the United States but who are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state.” 34 With the above discussion in mind, I understand racialization as the process by which institutions and individuals form, establish, invoke, adapt, reformulate, and strengthen racial meanings. This happens at different and interconnecting spheres which include juridical, legislative, economic, political, cultural, and social. Some of these are formally part of the state, others are not; at different points in time individuals either corroborate with the state’s efforts and or do not. Following David Theo Goldberg and Omi and Winant, I believe that the U.S. is a racial state; the state itself is racially structured on white supremacy where its institutions and policies in various ways uphold 31 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 4 (italics in original). 32 Ibid., 58. 33 Ibid., 7-8. 34 Ibid., 2. 22 and organize social relations. 35 Moreover, the United States functions via a racial hierarchy that subordinates all people of color. Such a hierarchy should not be understood as rigid, linear, or unilateral but instead as articulated with other cultural, social, economic, and political formations which provides the “changing same” necessary to adapt to new circumstances but still maintain the material force that is detrimental to people’s lives. Ethnic Studies Ethnic studies scholars have been foundational to studies of difference and race. This dissertation draws especially from Chicano and Asian American studies. David Montejano argues that in the central Texas border region in the mid-nineteenth century the racial order roughly corresponded to the type of class societies that came into being, similarly to Neil Foley’s argument. 36 However, he also argues that attitudes about Indians and Black people as well as ideas about land and labor were translated into the sphere of public policy; in this regard, his work links with Almaguer’s who argues that the process of racial formation was defined by political struggles at the state level. Key to Montejano’s argument about Texas is that the local setting—the demographics and type of economic structure—determined whether or not Mexicans were treated as white or whether, “Mexicans were more of a race in one place and less of a race in another.” Montejano’s claim that the type of place—in his study a rural versus urban area— 35 David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002); Omi and Winant, 1994. 36 David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of South Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 7. 23 determined whether Mexicans were “more of a race” or “less of a race” along with the public policy that goes with it, parallels arguments made by scholars of African Americans who note that segregation, even once it was institutionalized throughout the South, differed from one place to another even within the same county. Montejano, Almaguer, and Foley all address issues about labor and its power to structure society. Montejano argues that there was a succession of class societies and each had its particularities with regard to race, i.e., economic development shaped ethnic relations. He, similar to Almaguer, argues that notions about race are not solely about ideas and sentiments but are more significant when they are institutionalized via public policy. Almaguer uses a Marxist approach and argues wage labor defined and racialized ethnic groups in California in particular ways especially with increased institutionalization and repercussions about access to resources. Foley also argues that labor issues were key to the racialization of the groups in central Texas. One key issue about the Mexican community—and as David Gutierrez demonstrates the Mexican American community as well—in the United States is immigration. 37 Gutierrez argues that since 1848 Mexican Americans have often been forced to forge an ethnic identity in opposition to White people but this became more complicated after 1910 when Mexican immigrants increasingly arrived in the country. The presence of Mexican immigrants who were “unacculturated” negatively impacted the 37 David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and “Sin Fronteras? Chicanos, Mexican Americans, and the Emergence of the Contemporary Mexican Immigration Debate, 1968-1978,” in Between Two World: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, ed. by David G. Gutiérrez (Wilmington, DL: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1996), 175-209. 24 Mexican American community that had fought for decades to be seen as Americans. At first, Mexican Americans attempted to differentiate themselves from immigrants but eventually realized that the larger public made no such distinction and that their fight for civil rights was connected to the rights of Mexican immigrants. Nicolas De Genova pushes Gutierrez’s position by arguing that it is not immigration alone that affects Mexican (Americans) but the discursive and legal power of illegality. 38 De Genova, similarly to Ngai, argues that the category of ‘illegal alien” has served as a means to racialize all Mexicans in particular ways. He argues that illegality is primarily a political identity because it is a juridical status that necessitates a social relation to the state. Furthermore, illegality is similar to citizenship because both are political identities formed through juridical status but whereas the latter defines inclusion, the former defines exclusion and the erasure of legal personhood. Illegality is the result of selective border enforcement the law itself produces the sociopolitical category “illegal alien” which is a central element of the racialization of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the United States. Even further, however, categories have been collapsed so that illegality is equated with “Mexican” as opposed to being only one element of racialization. Impacting Arkansas supports these arguments because ethnic Mexicans were initially understood within this paradigm and almost exclusively as “illegal aliens.” More specifically, the project traces the process by which ethnic Mexicans came to be constructed in Arkansas as “illegal aliens.” 38 Nicholas De Genova, "Migrant "Illegality" and Deportability in Everyday Life," Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002): 419-47. 25 If ethnic Mexicans are “illegal aliens,” scholars of Asian Americans have demonstrated that Asians have been constructed through the concept of “yellow peril.” Colleen Lye and Lisa Lowe argue that fear of Asian people within economic and cultural spheres has a history in the United States that dates back to the late nineteenth century while the racialization of Asians as physically and intellectually different from White people or the intersection of anti-Asian fears and nativism predominate during economic downturns. 39 In particular, Asian immigrants have served as “screens” “on which the nation projects a series of condensed, complicated anxieties regarding external and internal threats to the mutable coherence of the national body: the invading multitude,” and the treacherous domestic among other tropes, i.e., “yellow peril.” 40 These anxieties loomed particularly large during periods of U.S. wars in Asia where fears of defeat abroad are projected onto Asian workers in the nation. 41 As Lye points out these anxieties are based on a foundational belief: if “American universality depends upon the possibility of assimilation, there is always also the danger of discovering aliens in our midst, or the wholesale possibility of American takeover by aliens.” 42 So how do the American people and the government fight against this? According to Lowe, on one hand cultural producers contribute to and create stereotypes to discursively “fix” Asian people within certain parameters; on the other, the state 39 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996). 40 Lowe, 18, 4. 41 Ibid., 5. 42 Lye, 8. 26 racializes Asian identities through legal classifications which exclude and include— “citizen” and “noncitizen” or “U.S.-born” and “permanent resident.” 43 Lowe argues that “the American citizen has been defined over against the Asian immigrant, legally, economically, and culturally. These definitions have cast Asian immigrants both as persons and populations to be integrated into the national political sphere and as the contradictory, confusing, unintelligeible elements to be marginalized and returned to their alien origins.” 44 Moreover, as Lye argues, “yellow peril” is the manifestation of a “long- running racial form, a form whose most salient feature, whether it has been made the basis for exclusion or assimilation, is the trope of economic efficiency.” 45 This trope works in such a way as to make Asian economic advancement or success the danger that threatens White, native workers while race, cultures and languages make Asians as “‘foreign’ and ‘outside’ the national polity.” 46 Even though many Arkansans thought they had a responsibility to Vietnamese in 1975 because they had been U.S. allies, there was nevertheless a permeating fear that they were unassimilable. Over time, as they lived and worked in Arkansas and as Cubans and Mexicans arrived in the state, their position as unassimilable began to change. As an interdisciplinary investigation this dissertation uses various methodologies. I relied primarily on archival research in newspapers and primary documents collections, which are valuable resources for capturing the discourse used in particular times to make 43 Lowe, 19. 44 Ibid., 4. 45 Lye, 5. 46 Lowe, 8. 27 sense of Vietnamese, Cubans, and Mexicans. Newspapers also provide an arc as to whom and what was important at any given time and in terms of politics, business, and community. Other primary documents include gubernatorial papers, senator’s papers, and personal papers. 47 I was able to obtain most, if not all, of the issues of the Fort Chaffee paper La Vida Nueva published during the time Cubans were in Arkansas. The paper was published in Spanish and as a fluent speaker, reader, and writer, I translated the news stories quoted in this study. 48 I use discourse analysis in order analyze these sources. Discourse analysis posits that people use language to make things significant, to give them meaning or value since the meaning of a word is not inherent. It argues that language is used to make certain things significant or not in particular ways. Furthermore, it asks what “social goods” the language is communicating, i.e., word choice indicates what the speaker takes to be normal, good, right, valuable, the way things are, or the way things ought to be. Discourse analysis is about making sense of what is written or said and draws on intertextuality which is alluding in some way to other “texts” such as themes, debates, or motifs whether written, spoken, or cultural. Arkansans in the northwest hardly, if at all, had any experiences with Asian and Latina/o groups prior to their interactions in the period of this study, but they were very much aware of and informed by national debates about Vietnamese, Cubans, and Mexicans. 47 The papers of Arkansas politicians who held their positions during the time of this investigation are limited because several have not been inventoried or processed. 48 A similar newspaper exists for the Vietnamese tenure but because I am not fluent in the language and due to limited funding I did not collect their issues. 28 Chapter Breakdown The first chapter, “Understanding Northwest Arkansas,” explores state and regional history with a focus on the northwest area in order to provide place specificity for the subsequent chapters. Arkansas’ present is informed by its past where issues of race with roots in the antebellum and post-bellum periods have made this part of the state overwhelmingly White, Protestant, and Republican. This homogeneity has also created a strong and insular culture that is leery of “outsiders” where they have usually been the federal government and/or northerners. These groups have forced change on the sub- region that is resented and which contributes to “states’ rights” sentiments in the area. This sentiment has historically been deployed in order to fight against Black people’s equality. Nevertheless, not everything connected to the federal state is rejected as politicians have more than willingly accepted federal largess though agricultural subsidies, road and highway construction and military defense spending while often successfully freeing itself of federal oversight with regard to use and area businessmen have had the acumen to take advantage of such benefits while cherishing non-union labor. “‘We’re All Unhappy About This’: Vietnamese Refugees in Arkansas,” the second chapter, is an in-depth examination of how Vietnamese in 1975 were understood as people and as refugees. However, these were not the first Asians to be held inside an Arkansas federal military installation—Japanese and Japanese Americans had been interned in Jerome and Rohwer in southeast Arkansas during World War II. During the war, Fort Chaffee was used to hold German prisoners of war (POWs) while three other 29 camps throughout the state also held Germans and Italians. The anti-Asian sentiment coupled with the near embrace of European (and thus White) POWs of the war period hints at the attitudes Arkansans would have toward Vietnamese. The federal decision to use Fort Chaffee created a lot of resentment about Arkansas’ lack of agency in deciding whether they wanted it used for such an endeavor. Despite this and the United States’ loss in Vietnam, Arkansans religious beliefs came into play as some mobilized around rhetoric of Christian brotherhood and morality and served as sponsors. Nevertheless, reactions toward Vietnamese folks were based on “yellow peril” where the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the Southeast Asians aided nativist, xenophobic, and racist responses. But there were contradictions because at the same time that state officials worked to close Fort Chaffee they also attempted to get as many eligible medical personnel as they could to serve rural parts of the state. At first glance it seems that Arkansans’ reactions to Cubans in 1980 should have mirrored those they had to Vietnamese if for no other reason than because both were fleeing communist countries while anti-communist feelings were still prevalent in the United States, yet negative reactions to the re-activation of the camp and to Cubans themselves was swift. Chapter Three, “The Federal Government and Mariel Cubans Victimize Arkansa(n)s: Legal, Political, and Military Actions” describes the resentment Arkansans had but, in contrast to the Vietnamese case, their bitterness was aimed at the federal government for putting them in danger by placing Cubans in Fort Chaffee. The national media coverage about this wave of Cubans as criminals and homosexuals greatly influenced their reception in the state where their sexual orientation was objectionable to 30 the growing Religious Right. The case was also markedly different from that of Vietnamese due to questions about their categorization in the U.S. legal landscape and concomitant questions about who had authority to detain them if they left the base. After an uprising where Cubans broke the camp perimeter and headed to a nearby town, panic ensued and the governor seriously considered using the judicial system to determine whether federal legislation created “objectionable burdens” to the state. In some ways, the urgency and reactions to Cubans from Mariel foreshadowed what occurred with Latina/o immigrants. The fourth chapter, “Latinas/os and Polleras: Social Networks, Multi-Site Migration, Raids, and Upward Mobility,” focuses on the movement of Latinas/os, mainly ethnic Mexicans, to Arkansas in the 1990s. For some Latina/o migrants, Arkansas was a second or third site of settlement. They were drawn by the poultry industry who was searching for more low-wage workers and workers they could exploit more, offered year- round employment, and lax enforcement of immigration documents while the state’s low cost of living provided Latinas/os with opportunities of upward mobility and homeownership unavailable in traditional states of immigrant reception and settlement. In contrast to Vietnamese and Cubans, Latinas/os had the ability to decide when and where they moved to and they chose to concentrate in a few cities and counties and worked in the industry that had been central to Arkansas economy for decades. The poultry industry did more to racially and ethnically diversify northwest Arkansas in one decade than the activation of Fort Chaffee in 1975 and 1980. 31 Finally, “‘Northwest Arkansas’ No. 1 Societal Concern’: ‘Illegal Aliens,’ Acts of Spatial Illegality, and Political Mobilizations,” analyzes the responses to and racialization of Latinas/os during these years of change where some of the areas whitest towns and cities ceased to be so. The racialization of Latinas/os as “illegal aliens” and as both Mexicans and criminals occurred rapidly and with increasing force where White Arkansans policed their community borders based on who belonged (White folks) and who did not (Latinas/os); consequently, nearly all of Latinas/os’ behaviors were understood as “acts of spatial illegality.” In other words, because Latinas/os were racialized as “illegal aliens” their use of spaces did not depend on the law or social norms in order to be deemed a violation. The result is that Latinas/os themselves become illicit within those spaces. Latinas/os’ presence also mobilized grassroots responses from the Arkansas electorate, especially in the Third Congressional District with anti-Latina/o, anti-(Third World) immigrant sentiments though there were also some accepting and positive responses to Latinas/os from politicians and from White and Black Arkansans. 32 CHAPTER 1 Understanding Northwest Arkansas We all know that immigration is transforming the region, that newcomers- new southerners, to be sure, but also new kinds of southerners-are introducing novel ways of speaking, of eating, of worshiping. These cultural innovations bring new diversity to a place long noted for its starkly black and white biracialism, its ethnically homogenous Anglo- Celtic whites, and its Christ-haunted Protestantism. —Larry J. Griffin and Katherine McFarland 1 Whenever the South has experienced rapid social change, it has invariably been imposed from outside. —Jack Bass and Walter DeVries 2 Introduction As Larry J. Griffin and Katherine McFarland observed, southern white people have had a common ethnic ancestry and religious background for more than a century but “new kinds of southerners” are bringing cultural innovations to the area. However, regions are built to last, they are resistant to change, and the more homogenous a place is the harder it is to transform because its folks are invested in the past and have particular visions for its future. 3 Northwest Arkansans’ homogeneity in the last quarter of the twentieth century in race, religion, and politics—three salient factors for regional identity—led to hostile reactions toward Vietnamese, Cubans, and ethnic Mexicans 1 Larry J Griffin and Katherine McFarland, “‘In My Heart, I'm an American’: Regional Attitudes and American Identity,” Southern Cultures, 13, no. 4 (2007), 119. 2 Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequences Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1976), 7. 3 Ann Markusen, Regions: The Economics and Politics of Territory (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987). 33 because they deemed the new groups a threat to their community, their way of life, and their country. The Arkansas Ozarks have been homogenous since British and Scotch-Irish peoples settled the area. Even in the 1850s, the overwhelming majority of residents were U.S.-born, a rarity west of the Mississippi. A majority of these folks were also Protestant; a belief system which endured for more than a century and was augmented in the postwar period by a nationwide evangelical movement. At the end of the twentieth century, the area was a Republican stronghold with roots extending to the Civil War. As Jack Bass and Walter DeVries note, change in the South usually comes from outside forces. To the insular region, “outsiders” has often meant northerners or the federal government. The South has had a tenuous relationship with both since it seceded from the Union while Reconstruction, Civil Rights, and desegregation brought underlying tensions to the surface. The core of their resentments has to do with “states’ rights:” the belief that each state has a right to decide what is lawful within its borders and that the federal government should not or does not have the right to dictate or impose its laws. The states’ rights argument was used to secede from the Union, to fight against Republican rule during Reconstruction, to struggle against civil rights, equal rights, and desegregation. And as we shall see in the subsequent chapters, it has also been deployed to complain about refugees and immigrants. At the same time, the region has not fought against every aspect of the federal state. The South has been more than willing to accept its share of federal monies for agricultural subsidies, road and highway construction, and military defense spending while often successfully freeing itself of federal oversight with 34 regard to use. These triumphs have been important for regional businesses and its people though groups experienced different consequences. The aim of this chapter is to provide context and specificity for the area under study. To this end, I provide and analyze relevant Arkansas history with a focus on the northwest to have an understanding of this region and its people. I begin by addressing the economic and development efforts undertaken by the federal state as well as southern businessmen and legislators during the twentieth century, their attempts to diversify its economic base, and their attempts to integrate the region into the national and global marketplaces. New companies to the South have been recruited with a non-unionized labor force and tax breaks since the turn of the twentieth century while social programs to create more equitable living conditions were often marginalized and/or hindered. I then move to state history to situate northwest Arkansas as a particular kind of place— homogenous in terms of race, religion, and politics or one that is white, Protestant, and Republican—while exploring how some of the state’s most successful companies greatly benefited from federal expenditures. I conclude with a discussion of the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock and the 30 year-plus process to integrate public schools throughout the city and its county to elucidate the tense relationship between Black and white Arkansans, as well as the state’s hostility toward the federal government. The New South, the Sunbelt, and the Twentieth Century Northwest Arkansas’ immigrant, demographic, and class issues at the turn of the twenty-first century reflect ongoing changes in the South’s economic, political, and racial landscapes that extend back into the nineteenth century. The South has been reinventing 35 itself since the end of Reconstruction with the aid of the North, the federal government, and business leaders and entrepreneurs from both regions. Post-Reconstruction advocates argued that the Old South was gone, as exemplified by the elimination of racial slavery, and in its place was a region and people ready to embrace industrialization. Since then, the push to modernize the region has led to a multitude of efforts to “develop” its cities, counties, and states with capital and labor. The federal government has been an extensive investor through social and work programs—many born during the New Deal—and the rise of the military industrial complex that began during World War II. Bruce Schulman argues with perspicacity that “from the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency of Bill Clinton, federal intervention channeled the South’s transformation, catalyzing growth and reform and defining the limits of Sunbelt prosperity.” 52 The antebellum South was based on two central organizing principles—the plantation system and racial slavery—that mutually reinforced each other and shaped the region from its inception to the present. Indeed, Robin D.G. Kelley argues that the way we understand race—white, black, Other—in the United States is based upon ideas that are intimately articulated with racial slavery. 53 When slavery was legal, unpaid labor was associated with Black folks and paid labor with free but poor white people. After abolition the two were competitors in the same labor market. As David Roediger argues, it was this competition in the marketplace that created a sense of whiteness for working- 52 Bruce Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 53 Robin D.G. Kelley, “Foreword,” Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation, eds., Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller (New York: The New Press, 2007), vii. 36 class people. Whiteness provided a status, privilege, or “wage” for workers being exploited in the labor market and they defined themselves as “‘not slaves’ and as ‘not Blacks.’” 54 The plantation system also meant that men who got rich through slave labor translated their wealth into power, mainly through the political system. According to Clyde Woods the plantation bloc has been in power since the Trail of Tears and constantly adjusts by building new alliances that work to keep Black folks and poor white people at the bottom of economic development. Since “the ideological and territorial consolidation of the Deep South plantation regime” they have mobilized “Mississippi Delta Plans” to restructure the region’s political economy. The causes for these mobilizations have been economic and social crises that resulted in a “shift in the form of social explanation; [and] the establishment of a new stable regime of accumulation.” 55 Kelley argues, “slavery provided one of the essential legs upon which modern capitalism was built.” Woods similarly asserts, “slavery and the plantation are not an anathema to capitalism but are pillars of it.” 56 As foundational institutions to capitalism they pervade every aspect of the nation-state. Some of these mobilizations have been the relationships between the federal government and northern businessmen with southern politicians and industrialists who helped create the “New South.” In his ground-breaking work, Origins of the New South, 54 David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Rev. ed. (New York: Verso (1991) 1999), 13. 55 Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (New York: Verso, 1998), 45, 40, 2. 56 Kelley, vii; Woods, 6. 37 C. Van Woodward demonstrated that after the fall of Radical Republicans and the end of Reconstruction, Southern Democrats allied with Northern Republicans with the goal of industrialization and consequently established foundations in politics, economics, law, and race for a modern South. 57 Woodward argued that though Democrats were associated with the planter class, they were in actuality middle-class capitalist and merchants with little interest in poor white people. Woods makes a similar point and argues that the latter groups allied with the former as opposed to overthrowing them. 58 The changes that occurred after Reconstruction formed the groundwork for a systemic exploitation of the labor power of poor workers, both Black and white. The planter bloc mobilized, shifted “the form of social exploitation,” and launched “a new stable regime of accumulation” mainly through southern congressmen and businessmen. The former secured federal monies from the New Deal through World War II with limited or non-existent oversight so expenditures on infrastructures such as schools or social services were largely absent while a repressive system of agricultural labor continued. Administrators of New Deal programs often compromised with southern congressmen. For example, the agricultural program was dominated by southern business leaders who facilitated the matters of implementation. The economic policies enacted rarely helped poor areas or poor people, even the minimum wage caused hardships for Black workers who were replaced by white folks or machinery. Efforts aimed at creating economic gains for the region hardly addressed ongoing poverty, racism, and poorly funded education. On the contrary, they 57 C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, 2nd ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971). 58 Woods, Development Arrested. 38 often contributed to disparities between urban and rural places, white and Black folks, and middle-class and poor people. 59 As James Cobb argues, the South has been sold to a variety of business interests since the mid-1930s while its industrial development reflects local, state, national, and global forces that exacerbated the region’s problems. The selling point to prospective investors was that the South was business-friendly, i.e., it offered low wages, low taxes, and an anti-union climate. However, this led to slow growth and labor-intensive companies that hardly boosted the region’s economy. Consequently many local and state developers aligned and allied with lawmakers, public officials, and private citizens to maintain stable labor conditions; as long as there was the promise of growth, government officials and community members maintained a close relationship to industry. 60 Like Schulman, Cobb argues that investments in infrastructure like schools and roads were limited despite the increasing role of the federal government in shaping the region through economic enterprises. John Egerton avers that southern Democrats prevented the New Deal from taking shape the way it was intended because it was slightly sympathetic toward African Americans and supported labor unions. 61 Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White is a piercing analysis of the influence and power of 59 Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt; Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolution in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Numan V. Bartley, The New South, 1945-1980 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 1995); George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, 1913-1945 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967); James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1990, 2 nd ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993). 60 Cobb, The Selling of the South. 61 John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (New York: Knopf, 1994). 39 southern representatives who pushed for the marginalization or exclusion of African Americans from work, war, and welfare policy decisions in the 1930s and 1940s. While white war veterans used the G.I. Bill to increase their education, buy farms, or start businesses African Americans and other men of color were barred from taking advantage of the various facets. Consequently, inequalities between white and Black folks increased as the white U.S. middle-class emerged. 62 By the mid-1950s, industrial recruiters became reluctant advocates of integration as reports suggested that businesses would not go South due to the racial turmoil. 63 Nevertheless, their advocacy was superficial, aimed at improving the region’s appalling image as opposed to an investment in the area’s poor Black and white folks. The continued exploitation of people and resources created a vicious cycle as “proponents justified the use of subsidies to attract new industries by arguing that areas that lacked investment capital, consumer demand, or skilled workers needed some special feature to make them more alluring to potential investors.” 64 The enticements certainly contributed to the region’s industrial growth but they came at the cost of reinforcing exploitative conditions and led to an increase in low-wage manufacturers who need that kind of economic environment. “Shackled with poorly paying, slowly growing industries, the region had little opportunity to experience the rapid, self-sustaining expansion that might 62 Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: The Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005). 63 Bartley, The New South; Wright, Old South, New South. 64 Cobb, The Selling of the South, 63. 40 have generated the capital and demand needed to attract more desirable firms.” 65 Simultaneously, though liberals and some moderates hoped that a modernized economy would be incompatible with racial discrimination they ignored the similarities to the late 1800s when “New South” leaders promoted industrial growth without disrupting socioeconomic and political landscapes. 66 By the 1970s, with the North’s economy in decline, local boosters pushed the South’s virtues—cheap, non-union labor, low taxes, low cost of living, and a relaxed lifestyle—and the Sunbelt South was built. 67 Cobb argues that the boom was the result of seemingly contradictory influences: an influx of relatively affluent consumers, high birth rates, increased federal spending, and traditional development policies (cost advantages and tax-breaks). However, Cobb concludes that, “Reduced to its essentials, the so-called good business climate of which southern politicians remained so protective in the 1990s still bore a striking resemblance to the planter-industrial policy rapprochement of the 1880s.” 68 David Goldfield astutely notes, “the South has absorbed black political power, the growth of a two-party system of government, and a civil rights movement yet policy priorities, tax structure, attitudes toward organized labor, and racial and geographic disparities persist.” 69 The plantation bloc was alive and well at the end of the twentieth 65 Ibid. 66 Cobb, The Selling of the South,, 2. 67 Cobb, “The Emergence of the Sunbelt South,” The Selling of the South, ch. 7. 68 Cobb, The Selling of the South, 280. 69 David Goldfield, “The Changing Continuity of the South,” Reviews in American History 20, no. 2 (1992): 233. 41 century, pushing for the exploitation of the South and its people for the benefit of a few at the cost of many. Globalization at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with a racially diversifying workforce made of white and Black folks, migrants and transplants of color, as well as refugees and immigrants from outside of the United States the discussion has become about a globalizing U.S. South. The endeavors undertaken in the name of globalization and its benefits are the newest configuration of the plantation bloc, of the ongoing arguments about the progress the region has made in economic and political terms, and how racism, especially its institutionalized form, have all but disappeared. Globalization for the U.S. South has meant that now its low-taxes and exploitable workforces have drawn companies and industries from the Global North instead of solely from the U.S. North. James C. Cobb and William Stueck write that “the essence of globalization is the transnational flow of people, capital, technology, and expertise that is initiated and sustained by the desire to capitalize on natural or human resources or attractive investment opportunities available somewhere else.” 70 But Cobb and Stueck do not believe that globalization in the U.S. South is “the hydra-headed monster its critics seem to describe. For all the talk about globalization exacerbating inequalities of wealth, the extent of a nation’s global economic involvement correlates positively with a rise from day-to-day subsistence to a more stable and secure existence for many of its people.” 71 I 70 James C. Cobb and William Stueck, “Introduction,” Globalization and the American South, eds., James C. Cobb and William Stueck (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005): xii. 71 Ibid., xv. 42 would argue that Cobb and Stueck should consider more closely who obtains a “stable and secure existence” within this framework—is it poor Black folks, Latina/o immigrants, Asian professionals, or the white middle-class? Does capitalism actually improve the “lot of those whom it exploits” especially given the dangerous working conditions of many blue-collar workers in the region’s manufacturing and meat- processing plants? Furthermore, how has the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) improved the lives of the Mexicans that now work at poultry plants or serve as gardeners to the expanding Southern suburbs? The editors and contributors of Global Connections and Local Receptions have a different interpretation than Cobb and Stueck. 72 Jon Shefner and Katie Kirkpatrick argue that the jobs created in immigrant-sending nations through foreign direct investments are insufficient to address poverty; consequently, emigration becomes a “safety valve for nations and households.” 73 Despite aggregate economic growth in some Latin American countries, inequality is increasing, for all the talk about the benefits of globalization, people from the Global South have not benefited nor have many U.S. workers whose salaries have stagnated or whose jobs have been replaced by lower paying ones. 74 Globalization’s effects are also clearly felt in the U.S. South where manufacturing has increased in contrast to its nation-wide decline. Shefner and Kirkpatrick note that what 72 Fran Ansely and Jon Shefner, Global Connections and Local Receptions: New Latino Immigration to the Southeastern United States, eds. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2009). 73 Jon Shefner and Katie Kirkpatrick, “Introduction: Globalization and the New Destination Immigrant,” in Global Connections and Local Receptions: New Latino Immigration to the Southeastern United States, eds. Fran Ansely and Jon Shefner (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2009), xxii. 74 Ibid. 43 attracted U.S. businesses to the Global South—low-cost labor, and limited unionization, work-place, and environmental regulations—also led them to the U.S. South. 75 They concluded that “politicians facilitated the increase in inequality” through trade policies that impoverished other countries while facilitating “‘free trade friendly’ policies like an anti-union climate and the destruction of the relief system.” 76 NAFTA contributed to increasing migration flows across the U.S.-Mexico border while ongoing economic struggles throughout Latin America continued to make the United States a favorable choice for immigrants able to obtain the money necessary to enter the country with or without permission. 77 These folks increasingly bypass traditional receiving states such as California or Texas and head further east to the Carolinas, Georgia and Arkansas. According to several scholars, a variety of factors beyond NAFTA-related consequences are driving these moves. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) allowed more than 3 million undocumented immigrants, many of them Latinas/os, to legalize their status. As a result of IRCA, local labor markets in California were inundated with newly legalized, often low-wage workers. In addition, in the late 1980s and into the 1990s a severe economic recession engrossed California 75 Ibid., xxv-xxvii. 76 Ibid., xxvii. 77 Douglas S. Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002); Rebecca Morales, “Dependence or Interdependence: Issues and Policy Choices Facing Latin Americans and Latinos,” in Borderless Borders: US Latinos, Latin Americans, and the Paradox of Interdependence, eds. Frank Bonilla et al. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998): 1-13; Manuel Pastor Jr., “Interdependence, Inequality, and Identity: Linking Latinos and Latin Americans,” in Borderless Borders: US Latinos, Latin Americans, and the Paradox of Interdependence, eds. Frank Bonilla et al. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998): 17-33. 44 which in turn exacerbated anti-immigrant sentiments led by Governor Pete Wilson who blamed immigrants, particularly Latinas/os and Mexicans, for the financial woes. Californians passed Proposition 187 which sought to prevent undocumented immigrants from using publicly provided social services. Although most of its provisions were ultimately declared unconstitutional by courts, the anti-immigrant and anti-Latina/o sentiment was clear and likely encouraged some newly legalized immigrants to look elsewhere for a place to call home. 78 The concomitant restructuring of U.S. industries such as poultry, beef and construction as well as the trend to deskill and decentralize production to areas with lower wage rates, like the South, provided job prospects, albeit with low wages. 79 78 Douglas S. Massey and Chiara Capoferro, “The Geographic Diversification of American Immigration,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. by Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 25-50; Massey, Durand, and Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors. 79 Charles Hirschman and Douglass S. Massey, “Places and Peoples: The New American Mosaic,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. by Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 4-10; William Kandel and Emilio A. Parrado, “Industrial Transformation and Hispanic Migration to the American South: The Case of the Poultry Industry,” in Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places: A Geography of Regional and Cultural Diversity, ed. Daniel D. Arreola (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 255-276; Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Michael J. Broadway, “From City to Countryside: Recent Changes in the Structure and Location of the Meat- and Fish-Processing Industries,” in Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small Town America, eds. Donald D. Stull, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 17-40; David Griffith, “Hay Trabajo: Poultry Processing, Rural Industrialization, and the Latinization of Low-Wage Labor,” in Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small Town America, eds. Donald D. Stull, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 129-152. 45 The U.S. South offered a lower cost of living, the possibility of homeownership with low-income employment, and a desirable place to live and raise children in part because of the lack of anti-immigrant hysterics. 80 Similarly to other southern states, Mexicans and Mexican Americans had been passing through Arkansas as migrant workers since the beginning of the twentieth century. Several thousands worked in the Delta region picking cotton and mining aluminum in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1950s, the area’s farmers became “completely dependent on Mexican braceros.” In the 1960s, they were displaced by mechanical cotton pickers and moved to work in agriculture in the Atlantic Coast. 81 More recently, ethnic Mexicans harvested tomatoes in the Arkansas Delta such as Bradley County but they did so as migrant workers who remained only as long as the season allowed them to make temporary homes. 82 Thus far I have traced ethnic Mexican or Latina/o migrants to the northwest area beginning in the late 1980s and greatly increasingly in the 1990s. In 1980, Arkansas Latina/o population was 17,904 and ten years later it grew by less than 2,000. 83 However, in the 1990s the population more than quadrupled to nearly 90,000. There were 80 Mark A. Leach and Frank D. Bean, “The Structure and Dynamics of Mexican Migration to New Destinations in the United States,” in New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, ed. Douglas S. Massey (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 56; Rebecca M. Torres, E. Jeffrey Popke, and Holly M. Hapke, “The South’s Silent Bargain: Rural Restructuring, Latino Labor and the Ambiguities of Migrant Experience,” in Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place, eds. Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 51-54; Shefner and Kirkpatrick, “Introduction,” xxx. 81 Julie M. Weise, “Mexican and Mexican-Americans in the Mississippi Delta, 1908-1939,” Unpublished paper, 2006, 23-24. 82 Joe Stumpe, “’93 Tomato Fields Draw Illegal Aliens, But None Caught,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 15, 1993, sec. B. 83 Jeralynn S. Cossman and Edward L. Powers, “Dynamics of Hispanic Population Growth in Arkansas,” Arkansas Business and Economic Review 33, no. 4 (2000): 2-9. 46 positive Latina/o growth rates in every county including those with net population losses. 84 Although by 2000 Latinas/os were only 3.2 percent of Arkansans, their presence in certain counties, cities, and towns were much higher. Their tendency to settle in the northwest meant there were several towns, cities, and counties with Latina/o populations approaching and even surpassing 20 percent. According to the 2000 Census, 44,000 Latinas/os lived in northwest Arkansas meaning that half of the entire Latina/o population of the state resided in these counties. Only Benton, Washington, and Sebastian counties had a population of over 5,000 Latinas/os. Many settled in the location defined by the Census Bureau as the Fayetteville- Springdale-Rogers Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in Benton and Washington counties. In 2000 the MSA had the fastest growing Latina/o population in the United States with a growth of 1,630 percent. Benton also led all U.S. counties in Latina/o population growth with 891 percent, from 1,359 to 13,489. 85 When Latina/o immigrants, mainly ethnic Mexicans, arrived in northwest Arkansas, the area was undergoing and economic boom with roots in the mid-century. But to understand what Brookes Blevins calls Arkansas’ “corridor of prosperity” we must learn about the changes that have occurred in the state since the displacement and dispossession of the Natives. 84 Cossman and Powers; Gazi Shbikat and Steve Striffler, “Arkansas Migration and Population,” Arkansas Business and Economic Review 33, no. 3 (2000): 1-5. 85 Andrew Wainer, “The New Latino South and the Challenge to Public Education: Strategies for Educators and Policymakers in Emerging Immigrant Communities,” (Los Angeles: Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, 2004): 8. 47 Northwest Arkansas: “Homogeneity…West of the Mississippi” In 1686, on Quapaw lands 20 miles west of the Mississippi River, French Canadians established a post on the Arkansas River. More than a century later, in 1804, the United States acquired the land through the Louisiana Purchase. In what would become the state of Arkansas, there were three to five indigenous tribes. However, as early as 1808 the U.S. government displaced other tribes to the newly acquired lands. In 1819, Arkansas became a territory and a year later much of it was either settled by displaced Indians such as the Cherokees and Choctaws or promised to them. Nevertheless, the Natives were once again displaced as the designated Indian Territory was created further west. Indian removal in Arkansas began with the Caddo in 1824, the federal Indian Removal Act of 1830 continued the work, and the last Natives were removed in 1834. Only two years later, Arkansas became a state and today it has no federally recognized Indian tribes. 86 During the 1820s and 1830s the slave and plantation systems grew, especially in the southeastern area and former Quapaw lands. Many of the slaveholders in southeast Arkansas were sons and nephews of planters in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia and led the westward expansion of slavery and the plantation system. One of their effects was the creation and maintenance of the one-party political system which allowed the plantation bloc to dictate social and economic policies to suit their needs and desires. 87 86 Jeannie M. Whayne, et al. Arkansas: A Narrative History (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002); S. Charles Bolton, “Jeffersonian Indian Removal and the Emergence of Arkansas Territory,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 62, no. 3 (2003): 253-271. 87 Woods, Development Arrested; Cobb, The Selling of the South; Wright, Old South, New South; V. O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York City: Knopf, 1949); Woodward, Origins of the New South. 48 This was especially true in the profitable Black Belt counties—rich agricultural lands at the center of plantation production where Black folks outnumbered white people—where African Americans’ movements were limited with social, legal, and extralegal controls. 88 Through the one-party system Democratic senators and representatives from Black Belt counties were continually reelected thereby ensuring their seniority in Congress and ability to block integration and voting rights efforts for African Americans. 89 The Arkansas Delta stands in contrast to the “corridor of prosperity” in the northwest in a variety of ways. 90 88 Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation. 89 V.O. Key, Southern Politics in State and Nation; Woodward, Origins of the New South, chs. 3 and 12; Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt. . 90 Brooks Blevins, Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 199. 49 Figure 3: Northwest Arkansas The demographics of Arkansas’ southeast and northwest regions, for example, differentiate the two. As a plantation region, there are still many African Americans in the Delta where they commonly form some counties’ majorities. In contrast, the northwest is overwhelmingly white. White folks from Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and even New York moved into the Arkansas Ozarks shortly after the War of 1812 and found a diversity of topographic conditions ranging from fertile plains to rocky hillsides and rugged mountains, the latter making subsistence particularly difficult. Much of the land in northwest Arkansas was in the possession of Cherokees until 1828 when the U.S. government once again displaced them westward. 50 With the Native Americans out of the way white folks flooded the area. By 1840, eight counties in the northwest had more than 20,000 people. Washington County was the most populous with 6,000 while its 1,515 slaves made up more than half of the total slave population in the area. 91 The heterogeneity of early Ozarkers, however, was limited because by 1850 almost half came from Tennessee and another 20 percent from Missouri and many of them came from professional or planter families. This meant that many of “the region’s pioneer settlers possessed a homogeneity rarely witnessed west of the Mississippi” with most of British or Scotch-Irish origin. 92 By the mid-nineteenth century, less than 20 years after statehood, there were 40,000 white folks and 90 percent of them were U.S.-born. From 1850 to 1860 a “massive wave of yeoman immigrants” joined their more affluent predecessors from the east, but they had to settle in less fertile hillsides and rocky uplands that provided few opportunities for cultivation. This led most of them to live off of subsistence farming. 93 By the 1890s, 56 percent of the Ozarks’ 200,000 people were in the western counties and Washington alone had more than 32,000. 94 Most of the yeomen were Baptists, Methodists, Cumberland Presbyterians, or Disciples of Christ. 95 These religions thrived in an area whose people were suspicious of the urban and educated ministers and eventually formed part of what became known as 91 Ibid., 5, 14-18. 92 Blevins, 19; Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 10-11. 93 Blevins, 29. 94 Ibid., 39. 95 Ibid., 39, 52. 51 the Bible Belt—an area with “individualist, provincial, conversion-oriented, and pietistic” attitudes. 96 Of the two largest denominations, Baptists were more successful than Methodists because the nonhierarchical system of associations and the ordaining of uneducated preachers appealed to Ozarkers’ frontier egalitarianism. 97 The Cumberland Presbyterians were prominent in certain areas and reflected the Scotch-Irish heritage of many Ozarkers. 98 Evangelical Protestantism provided a religious homogeneity that extended to the end of the twentieth century. In 1936, there were only 723 Roman Catholics, by 1971 the denomination’s numbers increased to only 3,000. 99 According to Brooks Blevins, the Ozarks’ African American community “was never more than miniscule.” 100 That is not quite accurate, since slaves constituted 25 percent of Washington County in 1840. By the early 1900s, however, there were few Black folks. Given the limited sources, I have been unable to determine if they were worked to death, sold, or migrated out of the area after emancipation. Jacqueline Froelich and David Zimmermann argue that the color line was less rigidly drawn in this part of Arkansas than in the Black Belt. They cite white folks’ attendance at African American fundraisers as evidence of a more malleable color line in Harrison, Arkansas. Black folks there were first counted in the 1870 Census and thirty years later they constituted eight 96 John B. Boles, The Great Revival: the Beginnings of the Bible Belt, [1972] (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 44. 97 Blevins, 53. 98 Blevins, 56; Moreton, 10-11. 99 Blevins, 204. 100 Ibid., 211. 52 percent of the town with 115 people. 101 In 1905, everything changed as white folks exploded in mass violence toward their Black neighbors. In September of that year, a Black man from outside of the community sought shelter from the cold and entered a white man’s house; he was arrested and two days later an angry mob pulled him from jail and terrorized the Black neighborhood by tying men and women to trees and whipping them, drowning them, and burning several of their houses with the demand that they needed to leave town. 102 Some Black families returned to Harrison after a prudent period but in 1909, after a local young Black man was accused of rape and rumors spread that the alleged victim was near death, the white townspeople once again erupted in mob violence with all but one of the Black Harrisonians leaving for good (Alecta Caledonia Melvina Smith remained with the family she worked for and lived with). 103 According to Froelich and Zimmerman, several factors led to this episode of anti- Black racist terror. The arrival of unemployed, single Black men from outside of the community at the end of their work on a railroad project raised white people’s fears because they were strangers to Harrisonians and had nobody in either the African American or white community to vouch for them. At that time, there was also an escalation of racial radicalism facilitated by the tenure of rabid racist Governor Jeff Davis which added to a long tradition of “public displays of punitive aggression” even within 101 Jacqueline Froelich and David Zimmermann, “Total Eclipse: The Destruction of the African American Community of Harrison, Arkansas in 1905 and 1909,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 58, no. 2 (1999): 131. 102 Ibid., 141-145. 103 Ibid., 148-156. 53 the white community. 104 The impact of these events spread beyond the town as the African American populations of two adjoining counties dropped dramatically between 1900 and 1910. 105 By 1930, there were less than 1,000 Black folks in the Ozarks, only 91 families worked the land, 80 percent lived in Izard, Van Buren, or Washington, and seven counties had no Black farm families. By 1969, there were only three Black farm families in a fifteen-county region. 106 In short, this section of Arkansas had a history of racial terror directed at African Americans that would be critical in the future with regard to dealing with racial difference. Ozarkers survived largely by trapping and hunting animals, subsistence farming, and raising some livestock but early settlers claimed the best lands. Many of Washington County’s settlers were slave-holding farmers who inhabited fertile bottomlands along the area’s rivers. However, there were only three white men who owned more than 20 slaves making planters, per se, largely absent. Cotton culture did not saturate northwest Arkansas like it did the Delta due in great part to the difficulty of transporting the product to major markets. By 1859, Ozarkers grew the crop represented less than one percent of their yields. 107 Tobacco, however, was important for the region and by 1859 ten Ozark counties produced more than 450,000 pounds. 108 104 Ibid., 139. 105 Gordon Morgan, Black Hillbillies of the Arkansas Ozark (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 1973). 106 Blevins, 212. 107 Ibid., 23-25. 108 Ibid., 26. 54 The product that would eventually rule Northwest Arkansas, however, would be poultry. The growth of the industry was largely facilitated by federal monies for infrastructure such as roads and rails used to connect this remote area to surrounding cities. Another vital development for the are and industry that occurred alongside the infrastructure expansion was the establishment of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1871 and the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station in 1887. 109 The station was established through the federal funds provided by the Hatch Act, aimed at creating such centers at state universities. The remote location of the station made this federally subsidized venture a regional and not state institution because the farmers in the area were the primary beneficiaries of its research. Likewise, scientists were influenced by local farmers’ and agriculturalists’ concerns. 110 Raising chickens in northwest Arkansas grew as an industry when a representative from a Kansas company opened a small processing and shipping plant in the area in 1914. That year the Experiment Station established a poultry division. 111 In 1931, Missourian John Tyson arrived in Springdale and worked hauling chickens to Kansas City and St. Louis. In 1936, after reading that broilers were selling for better prices in Chicago, he made the 700 mile trek. That successful trip led him to invest in various aspects of production from feed to incubators. World War II proved to be a turning point for entrepreneurs such as Tyson because the U.S. Army contracted 109 Ibid., 61. 110 Ibid., 42, 96. 111 Ibid., 105. 55 Delmarva’s entire production (the leading production area located in the northeast) and thus allowed small businesses to compete for domestic consumers. At the same time, the rationing of red meat helped increase chicken consumption. During the war, Tyson expanded his business by building his own mill and establishing company-owned broiler houses on his Springdale farm. In 1957, Tyson Foods became the “first fully integrated broiler” in the area and in 1986 became the nation’s top poultry processing company after it acquired Lane Processing, Inc. The growth of the poultry industry in northwest Arkansas was swift. By the end of WWII, the region accounted for 90 percent of the poultry produced in the state with sales in Benton and Washington Counties more than doubling to over $7 million. In 1954 it generated more than $11 million in Benton and Washington Counties alone. By 1974 the region’s sales were $250 million with $100 million emanating from the latter county. 112 The federal state’s farm subsidies and rail, road, and highway construction were especially significant to the rise of the area’s most successful companies—Tyson Foods (the world’s largest meat producer), Walmart (the world’s largest retailer), and J.B Hunt (the nation’s largest trucking company). John Tyson began selling broilers in the early 1930s and benefited from a 1925 law that provided tax exemption to poultry producers, a benefit Tyson Foods had until 1988 when it earned close to $1 billion and when it was anticipating a tax deferment of over $135 million for 1987 alone. 113 Tyson Foods— formerly Tyson’s Foods—quickly spawned a growth of farms and farmers to meet its 112 Ibid., 163-166. 113 Brent E. Riffel, “The Feathered Kingdom: Tyson Foods and the Transformation of American Land, Labor, and Law, 1930-2005,” (PhD diss., University of Arkansas, 2008), 205. 56 increasing demands. The influx in cash flow throughout the area contributed to Sam Walton’s successes with discount chains in small towns. Walton, like Tyson, depended on improved roads to move his merchandise and to facilitate rural Arkansan’s trips to his stores. But perhaps the entrepreneur most dependent on improved roads was Johnnie Bryan Hunt whose rise to the top of the U.S. trucking industry was intimately connected to the poultry industry. After ten years as a truck driver, he invented a machine for using rice hulls as chicken litter or to cover the floors of chicken houses and began selling his product throughout the state, most of it going to the Arkansas Ozarks. After the Federal Motor Carrier Act deregulated the trucking industry in 1980 the company quickly expanded. 114 Arkansas’ “Corridor of Prosperity” In the last quarter of the twentieth century northwest Arkansans were white, Republican and Protestant like their ancestors. This, however, did not mean that the area remained unchanged; there were several national trends that shaped the region including the evangelical movement and the rise of conservative politics. For example, northwest Arkansas Protestantism was augmented by the mid-century’s Christian movement that provided a counter culture to the liberal secularism of the postwar period. The evangelical movement made several substantial strides in Arkansas. In the 1970s Springdale’s First Baptist Church launched a ‘lifestyle evangelism’ program that tripled its membership. [Add a couple of paragraphs that discuss the major growth of evangelical Protestantism and their role in politics]. By 2004, its pastor urged his congregation to “vote God” and 114 Blevins, 166-168. 57 elect George W. Bush. By the end of the twentieth century they formed a conservative Christian voting bloc that was largely female, southern and who “staunchly opposed abortion and gay marriage.” 115 [Why female? Why is it important? Say more] To paraphrase Bethany Moreton, these folks were devoted to God and to Wal-Mart. Historically, Christianity deemed consumption a vice, but Sam Walton convinced evangelicals that in fact it could be a Christian virtue, as long as it meant “procuring humble products ‘for the family.’” 116 Moreover, Wal-Mart’s early employees—white, southern and midwestern women—taught the future international conglomerate that they were very proud of providing “humble service work” because their “professional goal was not their own self-realization through consumption but that of their customers and clients….Consumption for oneself fell outside Protestantism’s sacred circle. But helping others consume—especially helping them consume necessities ‘for their families’—that could be a sacred calling.” 117 [Add a paragraph or two about evangelical missionaries abroad, especially in Southeast Asia] The area’s conservatism is also connected to its Republican roots which go back to the Civil War when independent yeoman farmers opposed secession and fought for the Union. 118 After the fall of Republicans in the 1870s the South’s businessmen and 115 Moreton, 1. 116 Ibid., 89. 117 Moreton, 106-107, italics in original 118 Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequences Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1976), 25, 96, 104. Also see, Alexander P. Lanis, The Two Party South (Expanded Edition) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), ch. 9; Blevins, 205- 206. 58 politicians strengthened the Democratic Party as oppositional to the “Party of Lincoln” and stood for segregation. The alliance of Southern states created “the Solid South,” a bloc that always voted Democratic and segregationist. For decades after the end of the Civil War, Republicans struggled to be the Democrats’ competitors, often to no avail. In his influential work, V.O. Key identified Arkansas as a state with “pure one-party politics,” its people always voted for a Democratic president. In spite of this, Key found that some Republicans controlled local governments and occasionally elected congressmen as in the Ozarks. 119 Those traditional Republicans laid the foundations for the development of the GOP in Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina and had strong showings in northwest Arkansas. 120 In the late nineteenth century, Arkansans were in fervor over Populism and the party represented poor folks regardless of race. 121 The People’s Party fought against corporations for their infringement on their independence and the party’s Jeff Davis was elected in 1900 and served three terms. Davis, however, did not subscribe to the Arkansas Populist Party’s stance about race. Instead, as Froelich and Zimmerman observe, “Davis freely spewed racist epithets during election campaigns and stump speeches and justified the lynching of blacks as a southern tradition.” 122 This was a populism firmly rooted in racist beliefs and actions, and its legacy would remain strong long after the demise of the 119 V.O. Key, “Arkansas: Pure One-Party Politics,” Southern Politics in State and Nation, ch. 9. 120 Bass and DeVries, 25. 121 Ibid., 87-88. 122 Froelich and Zimmermann, 138. 59 Populist Party. By the early 1900s the Republican Party mobilized an effective campaign and ended the Populist Party’s run in Arkansas. 123 The South was a stronghold for the segregationist Democratic Party until the mid- twentieth century. In preparing for the 1948 election President Harry Truman perceived that Black voters could be the swing votes in some states with numerous electoral votes so he created the President’s Commission on Civil Rights and pushed a moderate plank but the Democratic National Convention voted for a stronger civil rights proposal. The Mississippi delegation and half of Alabama’s walked out in protest. [Why didn’t Arkansas walk out? What was their position?] Later many southern legislators reconvened and formed the Dixiecrat or States’ Rights Party. 124 With the expanding Civil Rights Movement, the South’s revolt continued. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won in 1952 but failed to get states in the Deep South though he made inroads in the 1956 election with mountain Republicans. However, these moderates lost control in the South and after Barry Goldwater voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act he became the first Republican to sweep the Deep South. 125 More recently the Republican base in northwest Arkansas has been strengthened by thousands of retirees from the Midwest. 126 After the Second World War white midwesterners began moving to the Ozarks as businessmen mined the scenic landscape 123 Moreton, 14-15. 124 Bass and DeVries, 5. 125 Ibid., 28. 126 Jeannie M. Whayne, “Dramatic Departures: Political, Demographic, and Economic Realignment,” in Arkansas: A Narrative History, eds. Jeannie M. Whayne et al. (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2002), 375; Blevins, 205-206. 60 for its beauty and built retirement communities. 127 In 1967 John Paul Hammerschmidt was the first post-Reconstruction Republican sent to Congress from the northwest area’s 3 rd District. It quickly became common for Republicans to garner more than 40 percent of the vote. In 1996 they sent Tim Hutchinson as the first post-Reconstruction Republican Senator. Blevins notes that “by the turn of the twenty-first century, the combination of northern Republican immigrants, traditional Ozark Republicans, and middle-class Christian conservatives made northwest Arkansas a stronghold of Republicanism.” 128 The anti-Black racist terror that transpired in the 1900s in the Arkansas Ozarks left a legacy that extends into the twenty-first century as evidenced by the dearth of Black folks in that part of the state. In 1990, the Arkansas Ozarks had 2,000 people of color, but 80 percent lived in the city of Fayetteville or Washington County, home to the University of Arkansas’ flagship campus. 129 In 2005, Shannon Ammons, a Black middle-class professional woman who lived in Rogers said: “The reputation within the state is that the [northwest] area is racist….We [she and her husband] knew Harrison was the headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan. No one wanted to come here for college, because this area of the state always had bad connotations.” 130 She moved from Atlanta with her 127 Blevins, 198-199. 128 Ibid., 206. 129 Ibid., 212. 130 Warwick Sabin, “The White Place: A Good Home and Little Isolation in Northwest Arkansas,” Arkansas Times, February 3, 2005, sec. A. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Harrison is home to an active chapter of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK); the state as a whole has 23 active hate groups based on white supremacist ideals ranging from the KKK to neo-Confederates to neo-Nazis to those with a Christian identity. Harrison and its surrounding towns are home to six such organizations, see “Active KKK Groups,” Southern Poverty Law Center, <http://www.splcenter.org/get- informed/intelligence-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan/active_hate_groups> Accessed March 27, 2010 and 61 husband, Dana, when she became a sales manager at Colgate-Palmolive’s northwest Arkansas office which deals primarily with Walmart (formerly Wal-Mart). According to the 2000 Census, Benton County’s Black population was 639 or 0.4 percent of 153,406 (Latinas/os made up 8.8 percent with 13,469). 131 The Ammons observed that the few Black folks who live in the area usually move for their careers and only stay for two to three years and that they are mostly college educated and middle-class professionals. 132 The area shows no signs that its growth will slow down but it remains to be seen whether Black folks from Arkansas will move to the area nor how many. It is uncertain whether transplants from other parts of the nation will contribute to the northwest’s racial diversification. As of now, Arkansas’ international corporations seem to be the main entities driving demographic growth. For example, as the Ammons’ move demonstrates, many Walmart vendors have established offices near the conglomerate’s Benton County headquarters drawing thousands of professionals. Marjorie Rosen argues that white, Christian Arkansans are adjusting well to the educated, professional people of color of varying non-Christian religious backgrounds including African Americans, Jewish, Hindus, and Muslims but that there is a lot of tension with the working-class, low-skilled Latina/o community. 133 “Arkansas Hate Map,” Southern Poverty Law Center, < http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate- map#s=AR> Accessed March 27, 2010. 131 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Profiles of General Demographic Characteristics, Arkansas, Prepared by U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (Washington, D.C. 2000). 132 Sabin, “The White Place.” 133 Marjorie Rosen, Boom Town: How Wal-Mart Transformed an All-American Town into an International Community (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009). 62 The professionals of color and of various faiths differ in two important ways from many Latina/o newcomers—they are middle or upper-class and are demographically a small percentage of the area’s population. As we shall see in the following chapters, the outcries from the community members against Vietnamese, Cubans, and ethnic Mexicans are about an invasion and a destruction of the “American way of life.” Professionals of color are holding up that lifestyle while their relatively low numbers allow Arkansans to maintain their sense of ownership within their communities. They are contributing to a construction boom in the area consisting of both middle and upper class housing developments while Latinas/os spur the development of working-class apartments and houses. Yet working-class Latinas/os and young professionals have a similar trajectory in that they tend to be from outside of the state as well as being drawn to the area by international conglomerates. Although their participation in the companies greatly differ as Latinas/os tend to work as laborers, mainly in the poultry industry while professionals work for the corporate offices of Walmart, Tyson, J.B. Hunt, or other businesses such as Walmart vendors. By the late twentieth century, northwest Arkansas’ economy was booming but in contrast to much of the rest of the state, the area was overwhelmingly white and Republican, and like the rest of the state it was also evangelical. This homogeneity in terms of race, politics and religion created a conservative and insular culture that looked wearily upon “foreigners” whether from the U.S. North or abroad. The work to keep an area close to 100 percent white throughout a century cannot be undervalued and dismissed as accidental but must be seen as the maintenance of a regional culture 63 developed over decades. Ann Markusen argues that regions are highly resistant “units of societal structure” built upon economic foundations, political systems and cultural practices. 134 Some factors that contribute to “internal unity around a regional disruption” are economic, ethnic, religious conditions “and other cultural traits fashioned over the generations.” 135 Northwest Arkansans fashioned an identity for themselves based on a common past, a history they shared because folks from outside of the area rarely moved there between the 1850s and early 1990s. Its inhabitants at the end of the twentieth century were descendents of British and Scotch-Irish, they were white folks who still practiced their ancestors’ Protestant faith though they adapted the evangelical stance that was increasingly influential since the mid century. The economic and infrastructural changes that occurred throughout the century were often directly or indirectly subsidized by the federal government through rail roads, roads, highway construction, state universities, agricultural subsidies, or tax breaks. Businessmen like Sam Walton, John Tyson, and Johnnie Hunt had the acumen to draw on such benefits in order to build remarkably successful companies. But the federal state played a more direct role in racially diversifying northwest Arkansas when it established Fort Chaffee close to Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was built in September 1941 at the beginning of the rise of the military industrial complex and during the war years was used as a prisoner of war camp for Germans. However, it was only in 1975 when it was used as a detention and processing center for Southeast Asian refugees that the area had “new 134 Markusen, Regions, xi. 135 Ibid., 6. 64 southerners,” mainly Vietnamese refugees who were sponsored out of the camp and into communities in the northwest, mainly Fort Smith. The process, however, would be difficult and the area’s homogeneity in terms of race, religion, and politics would play a central role in how the region responded to the group. States’ Rights, the Federal State, and Desegregation of Public Schools Federal intervention had been a longstanding feature of the southern economy and thus of the local one, but southerners always wanted to control its impact and were largely successful. Their efforts were not limited to the economic and labor sphere, but extended to the social realm as they sought to maintain a particular kind of society—one premised on the subjugation of African Americans. This is clear because Jim Crow laws in the South arose slowly in the post-Civil War period after Black and white folks intermingled. 136 When it became evident that people interacted with each other, segregation was increasingly institutionalized as state governments sought to keep members of society in their respective places and public schools were a primary site for the endeavor. When the Supreme Court announced the Brown decision in 1954 and the second Brown decision in 1955 state governments could no longer continue to legally have segregated education facilities. Nevertheless, several states including Arkansas attempted to halt impending integration through various means. What occurred in Arkansas around the desegregation of its public schools elucidates social relations between Black and white Arkansans as well as the state’s hostility toward the federal government. 136 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 3 rd Rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, [1974] 2002). 65 Arkansas gained international attention on September 2, 1957 when Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the integration of Central High School in Little Rock. In doing so, Kirk notes that “Faubus directly challenged the authority of the federal government as no other elected southern official had since the Civil War.” 137 After weeks of negotiations with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Faubus removed the National Guard but on September 23 when the nine Black students attempted to enter the high school, an unruly white mob created an environment that led school officials to remove the students for their own safety. This finally led Eisenhower to send federal troops from the 101 st Airborne to secure a safe passage for the students. But this was not the end of the fight over desegregation in Little Rock. In February 1958 the school board requested a two-and-a-half-year delay which eventually reached the Supreme Court who ordered integration to continue. On September 12, the same day of the court decision, Faubus closed all of the city’s schools. He had recently convened a special session of the Arkansas General Assembly and pushed through six new laws that gave him “sweeping powers to uphold segregation.” 138 One law gave him the authority to close any school integrated by federal order and then voters in the school district could decide if they wanted it to be reopened on an integrated basis. In a referendum held on September 27, 72 percent of 27,031 voters decided to keep the schools closed. 139 The schools reopened the following fall, only after it was evident that it 137 John A. Kirk, “The 1957 Little Rock Crisis: A Fiftieth Anniversary Retrospective,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2007): 91. 138 Ibid., 92. 139 Ibid., 92. 66 was impossible to perpetually fund private high schools. The reopening of the schools was the beginning of a decades-long battle to maintain segregated facilities. The school board proposed a series of initiatives whose implicit aim was minimum compliance with the two Brown decisions by offering plans from pupil assignment to “freedom-of- choice.” 140 The measures often ended back in the courts as African American leaders continued to fight for equality. In July 1971 a federal court largely overturned the Little Rock School District’s latest plan and instead ordered the busing of high school students for the 1971-72 school year in order to achieve integration. 141 In response, William F. Rector, a suburban real estate developer, “revealed to a meeting of 600 cheering whites he was building a private school [Pulaski Academy] near the golf course in his western subdivision development.” 142 By 2003, only half of white students were in public schools and Pulaski Academy’s graduating class of 102 had only one Black student. 143 The Little Rock School District was finally released from court oversight in February 2007 but by then most of its schools had a “substantial” Black student body. 144 The continuous court battles and oversight over the Little Rock School District demonstrates that local officials and residents were willing to “risk that [local] authority 140 Ben F. Johnson III, “After 1957: Resisting Integration in Little Rock,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2007): 284. 141 Ibid., 280. 142 Ibid., 281. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid., 283 and 282 f36, Grif Stockley, Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 296-297. 67 over their schools rather than support the efforts” to end segregated facilities. 145 This went against a long-standing tradition of fierce state independence. Indeed, leading up to the crisis at Central High School, the state’s eligible voters (mainly White folks) in 1956 passed Amendment 44 which sought to nullify the Brown decision by using a logic of states’ rights: “The General Assembly of the state of Arkansas shall take appropriate action and pass laws opposing in every constitutional manner the unconstitutional desegregation actions of the United States Supreme Court, including interposing the sovereignty of the state of Arkansas.” 146 The idea was that a state would prevent the enforcement of Brown until “the states passed an amendment to the United States Constitution giving Congress the power to implement or to deny implementation of integration. The idea of interposition had had no legal credence in American constitutional jurisprudence since at least the time of the Civil War.” 147 The law remained on the books until 1990 when state representatives sought to have it removed in response to a $130 million settlement in a desegregation lawsuit involving the Pulaski County schools (the county is home to Little Rock). The federal court ruled that the government of Arkansas shared responsibility for the desegregation of that county’s schools because Amendment 44 defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions on school integration. 148 Amendment 3, which repealed Amendment 44, passed with a 145 Ibid., 283. 146 Amendment 44 qtd. in John Brummet, “Rid State of Bogus Amendment,” Arkansas Gazette, October 5, 1990, sec. B. 147 Tony A. Freyer, “Politics and Law in the Little Rock Crisis, 1954-1957,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2007): 154. 148 Mark Oswald, “Segregation Act Resurfaces,” Arkansas Gazette, September 23, 1990, sec. A. 68 narrow difference of 11,000 votes or 272,198 versus 261,463; 57 out of 75 counties voted against it, including 16 of 17 counties with the state’s highest percentage of Black voters. 149 Many political commentators quickly explained Amendment 3’s near defeat as voter confusion or ignorance about the issue, but editorial writer Max Brantley argued that while this theory had some support, especially when the amendment failed to pass some heavily African American counties, there was another more nefarious side since the media did a good job explaining what voting “yes” meant. Brantley posits that the other explanation for the vote was most evident in Pulaski County where white working-class neighborhoods strongly opposed Amendment 3. 150 In other words, its near defeat was a backlash by folks who had been at the center of battles over integration. In Little Rock the desegregation of public schools broke along class lines since the 1950s. John Kirk argues that in Arkansas, as opposed to many other southern states, the most active segregationists were not respected people but marginalized white folks whether socially, economically, or politically. 151 Their mobilizations were responses to local forces greater than themselves. Working-class white folks had been pushed to the front of the line in the name of racial progress while the wealthy white elites, often the civic leaders doing the pushing, remained at the back of the line and continued to send their children to all-white schools. This is conspicuous when we consider that Little 149 Jerry Dean, “Arkansas Segregation Vote Close,” Arkansas Gazette, November 8, 1990, sec. B. 150 Max Brantley, “Darker Side to Close Vote on Racist Law,” Arkansas Gazette, November 11, 1990, sec. B. 151 Kirk, “The 1957 Little Rock Crisis,” 100. For a detailed discussion of the members of the Capital Citizens’ Council in Little Rock, see Graeme Cope, “‘Honest White People of the Middle and Lower Classes’”? A Profile of Capital Citizens’ Council during the Little Rock Crisis of 1957,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 61, no. 1 (2002): 37-58. 69 Rock’s first desegregation plan as laid out by Superintendent Virgil T. Blossom was premised on the opening of the new Hall High School in the western part of the city, home to Pulaski Heights where many of the city’s most influential people lived. Central would be desegregated and the working and middle classes would send their children to the integrated high school. 152 Affluent homeowners, by virtue of their addresses, could postpone integration until a later date, and if they desired they could simply move away from the core of the city, bask in their personal choices, and refuse to acknowledge how they benefited from residential segregation. In fact, many of the mid-1950s integrationists became “Education First” partisans in the late-1950s and 1960s and argued for neighborhood unity and individual freedom as they moved into expanding white subdivisions in the suburbs. 153 In northwest Arkansas, the desegregation of public schools took a slightly different path because school boards acted in a different manner than the one in Little Rock. Charleston in Franklin County kept its plans quiet and desegregation occurred peacefully when 11 Black high school students attended classes with their white peers. In contrast to Charleston’s secrecy, Fayetteville in Washington County publicly prepared for desegregation and announced its aim on May 22, five days after the Brown decision. That fall, five African American sophomores and two juniors attended the integrated high 152 Numan V. Bartley, “Looking Back at Little Rock,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 66, no. 2 ([1966] 2007), 114. 153 Johnson III, 277, 281. 70 school. 154 Andrew Brill argues that “Fayetteville was no racial utopia” but that it possessed “important ingredients of successful school integration—namely a lack of excessive preexisting racial tension coupled with firm local leadership.” 155 According to him, Fayetteville’s location, racial history, and culture of education were helpful and contributing factors for the smooth processes of initial desegregation. Brill posits that Fayetteville’s closeness to Missouri and Oklahoma makes its racial history more like theirs than that of the “volatile Deep South” and that “when the time came to desegregate its schools, Fayetteville was free of much of the weighty racial baggage many other southern communities labored with.” 156 That the town was the home for the University of Arkansas influenced the community’s culture since many faculty members were local leaders who came from outside of the South and thus brought “less rigid attitudes about race.” 157 The institution also led by example—it integrated its law school in 1948. 158 However, it should be noted that it chose to do so in order to avert a lawsuit and that in practice Black students that enrolled were taught in separate classrooms, thus, “as much as possible the rituals of segregation would apply.” 159 In a similar vein, its elementary 154 Andrew Brill, “Brown in Fayetteville: Peaceful Southern School Desegregation in 1954,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 65, no. 4 (2006): 339. 155 Ibid., 338. 156 Ibid., 340, 342. 157 Ibid., 342. 158 Ibid. 159 Judith Kilpatrick, “Desegregating the University of Arkansas School of Law: L. Clifford Davis and the Six Pioneers,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2009): 124. 71 schools were desegregated over ten years after the high school which gestures toward the resistance of integration. The desegregation of Little Rock public schools demonstrates how far the state of Arkansas was willing to go to resist the federal government’s power to effect social change. The battles over integrated educational facilities were conflicts over identity and culture and ultimately about community. Faubus knew how potent these issues were and he often “painted the federal government in the same color as blacks—that is as a contaminating and intrusive force that threatened the political, economic, social, and sexual privileges of southern white males.” 160 The outsiders threatened the very identity of the South as conceptualized by white people and as Phoebe Godfrey succinctly argues, “like the one-drop rule that defined social status, even one or two or nine black students could, through ‘penetrating’ a school of over 2,000 whites, transform its color, its identity, and more importantly, its value.” 161 But Faubus, the state legislature, and many white Arkansas voters could not allow such an attack on their community and way of life. Instead, they invested time and effort in attempts to regain control by implementing plans that in effect maintained segregation. Ironically, in Little Rock this meant that they eventually gave up that which was so dear to them—local authority—as the school district ended up under court supervision for thirty years after 1957. At the same time, their efforts to maintain majority white schools succeeded as many white Little Rock 160 Phoebe Godfrey, “Bayonets, Brainwashing, and Bathrooms: The Discourse of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 62, no. 1 (2003), 55. 161 Ibid., 45. 72 residents moved away from the urban center into the suburbs. Once there, they continued to fight desegregation at the county level until the 1990s. Among other issues, the Central High School desegregation crisis left many white Arkansans with bitter and oppositional feelings toward the federal government. In northwest Arkansas desegregation occurred in what was arguably a smother process but we have to keep in mind that many communities did not actually have to integrate their schools because the student body was entirely white. For many, integrating public schools would come much later as would anxiety over their changing communities and local and regional identities. Their brush with a more direct intrusion of the federal state and its consequences would involve the U.S. military and the use of Fort Chaffee as a refugee and processing center as well as the consequences of sponsoring refugees into the overwhelmingly white community. 73 CHAPTER 2 “We’re All Unhappy About This”: Vietnamese Refugees and “Yellow Peril” Arriving on the shores of the United States in 1975, the first wave of Vietnamese people were not welcomed with open arms. For some Americans, the refugees represented the remnants of a bitterly debated unpopular war which the United States had lost….To other Americans, the refugees posed a threat of economic competition during a time of high unemployment and high inflation. To still other Americans, the refugee’s race was the most salient factor, as anti-Asian racism reared its head. —Alden E. Roberts 1 Dr. Lam Van Thatch, the informal leader of the group, wore a brown tailored suit as he led seventy exhausted people from the airplane into the chilly Friday afternoon on May 2, 1975. 2 About four hundred people from surrounding communities including church leaders and members, Girl Scouts and, arguably, one White supremacist welcomed them to northwest Arkansas. The Vietnamese arrivals stood in the rain and fifty-five degree weather—some without coats—at the municipal airport as Mayor Jack Freeze and Governor David Pryor welcomed them to Fort Smith, to Arkansas, and to the United States. 3 There were welcome signs in English and Vietnamese; unfriendly signs were largely absent except for one that read, “RESCUE USA FROM REDS FIRST!!! WHiTE MAN UNiTE!!! AND FigHT!!” with a Star of David and a swastika in the background. 4 As the governor gave his speech the man with the racist sign constantly 1 Alden E. Roberts, “Racism Sent and Received: Americans and Vietnamese View One Another,” Research in Race and Ethnic Relations, v. 5, 1988: 75-97. 2 Mike Trimble, “Last, Sad Effort Gets Underway In First Welcome,” Arkansas Gazette, May 3, 1975, sec. A. 3 Peggy Robertson, “Governor Greets First 71 Refugees,” Arkansas Gazette, May 3, 1975, sec. A. 4 “Arkansas: A Temporary Home,” Arkansas Gazette, May 3, 1975, sec. A.; capitalization in poster. 74 yelled that the refugee presence was a Zionist conspiracy. In turn, others in attendance tried to drown him out by shouting, “Welcome, Welcome!” At one point a woman tried to tear down the Nazi sign but a minister stopped her and a scuffle ensued as members of the welcoming group asked and tried to prevent national news photographers from taking the man’s picture and capturing his response to the Vietnamese. 5 It was among this chaos that forty-one year-old Governor Pryor, a Democrat just past his third month in office, explained to the refugees through an interpreter that the people of the United States, and particularly Arkansans, understood their experience: “We hope that you realize that we share the agony, pain and sorrow you have experienced.” 6 He cited the benevolent nature of Americans across the country as they gathered much needed provisions such as clothing and toys and emphasized Arkansans’ Christian rectitude when he said: “[L]et me assure you, if I may, that the people of Arkansas are an open and friendly people. We have a long history and tradition of sharing what we have with others and using our best attempts to subscribe to the Biblical admonition, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’…This is the spirit and the nature of our people.” 7 For at least for half of the group, this Christian rectitude did not fall on unfamiliar ears because they were Catholic. For the Buddhists that constituted the other half, it might have been a different experience. 8 Three weeks later when the camp population was about 26,500 their religious affiliations broke down as 5 Trimble, “Last, Sad Effort Gets Underway.” 6 Editorial, “A Welcome to the Refugees,” Arkansas Gazette, May 3, 1975, sec. A. 7 Robertson, “Governor Greets First 71 Refugees.” 8 Trimble, “Last, Sad Effort Gets Underway.” 75 follows: “12,464 are Buddhists, 10,143 Catholic, 1,567 Protestant, 1,270 Confucian or Cao-Dai, 959 expressed no religious preference, 23 are Jewish and three Brahman.” 9 The reporter pointed out that those backgrounds did not accurately reflect Vietnam where 80 percent were Buddhist and 10 percent Catholic. The majority of the refugees spoke English—30 percent and 40 percent had, respectively, “excellent” and “fairly well” abilities so they understood the general thrust of Pryor’s message. 10 The refugees arrived from Guam where 28 percent already had U.S. sponsors and another 34 percent had relatives in the states; only 10 percent had not ties to the country. The over representation of Catholics, their English-language abilities, and their connections to the Unites States through sponsors and family members already in the country strongly indicate that these Vietnamese refugees in Fort Chaffee belonged to the middle- and upper-class in their native country. Despite attempting to put the situation in a good light, Pryor could not ignore those voices of dissent which objected—sometimes quite strongly—to the arrival of Vietnamese refugees to U.S. shores and particularly to their placement in Arkansas. The ceremony itself was marred by the constant yelling of the “professional protester from Hot Springs” but there were also incidents prior to the refugees arriving that demonstrated how unhappy some people were about Fort Chaffee being used as a refugee 9 Unknown, “Procedures Set Up For Relief Agencies To Route Refugees,” Arkansas Gazette, May 28, 1975, sec. A. 10 “Procedures Set Up For Relief Agencies To Route Refugees.” 76 processing center and camp. 11 For example, a group of five young people held signs on Highway 59, a road that leads to Fort Chaffee and one which refugees traveled, that said, “Go Back to Vietnam,” and “Would They Do The Same For Us?” 12 A homeowner who lived close to Chaffee made a sign that read, “Gooksville, three miles.” 13 But dissent did not stop at making signs. On April 30 th , residents of Barling and Greenwood, two towns close to Fort Chaffee, were organizing a protest so that, according to Johnnie Calhoun, “those slant-eyes can see they’re not wanted.” She was so incensed about Vietnamese refugees in Fort Chaffee that she told a reporter: “They say it’s a lot colder here than it is in Vietnam. With a little luck, maybe they’ll all take pneumonia and die.” 14 Calhoun was not alone in her general outrage. The mayor of one of the towns assured a local reporter that “the people here are 100 percent against it. They don’t want them moving into this community.” 15 Governor Pryor gestured toward these reactions when he told the refugees at the welcome ceremony: “All of us share your apprehension at the prospect of being thrown suddenly into new circumstances. It is the nature of man to view with fear the unknown….If for some reason you encounter some who are less than friendly, I hope you will understand that like yourselves they are people who have also met unknown 11 The Fort Smith Police Department identified the man as a “professional protester from Hot Springs” from a city two-hours southeast of Fort Smith; Robertson, “Governor Greets First 71 Refugees.” 12 Trimble, “Last, Sad Effort Gets Underway.” 13 Gazette State News Service, “Residents Near Chaffee Divided in Reaction to Influx of Vietnamese,” Arkansas Gazette, May 1, 1975, sec. A. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid; the article does not cite which town’s mayor made the statement. 77 circumstances and are uncertain how to deal with them.” 16 The “new circumstances” he referenced were, for Arkansans, the arrival of Vietnamese refugees to a military camp in their state. Pryor placed both Vietnamese and Arkansans in the same category as people who “met unknown circumstances and are uncertain how to deal with them.” In doing so, he erased the travails of the Vietnamese who escaped premature death, a war-torn country, and risked their lives and equated them with Arkansans who had to accept a processing center in the state. But the situation was more complicated due to the state’s and region’s histories. There were at least four factors at play: 1) the relationship between the federal government and the state; 2) the legacies of the Vietnam War; 3) Christian beliefs; 4) the racial and ethnic background of refugees and Arkansans. The use of Fort Chaffee as a processing and relocation center brought up one of the South’s recurring themes and substantial issues—states’ rights. Southern states since the antebellum era mobilize around it during times of crises to defend “their way of life” from change imposed by outsiders whom they often define as “foreigners” even when they were White folks from the North. Many southern representatives, businessmen, and denizens attempted to maintain racial slavery by seceding from the Union, and when they lost the war they fought against Reconstruction policies. Threatened by the intermingling of Black and White folks in the post-bellum period, they implemented de jure segregation. By the mid- 1950s they fought against integrated public schools with Arkansas at center stage. In 1975 when Fort Chaffee was selected as a processing and relocation center for 16 Robertson, “Governor Greets First 71 Refugees.” 78 Vietnamese there was a lot of resentment about the lack of agency the state had in deciding whether they wanted one of their federal bases to be used for such an endeavor. Since the announcement was made there were at least two Arkansas officials—a state senator and a representative—who were publicly unhappy with the situation. Although initially begrudgingly acquiescent, they eventually strongly opposed it. Likewise, in spite of Governor Pryor’s seeming acceptance to the federal mandate, he quickly became anxious about the length of time the center would be open. In 1966 Pryor was elected to Congress at the young age of thirty-one. The story has it that early during this tenure he worked anonymously in a nursing home for weeks because he was disturbed by the treatment of the patients. He attempted to create a subcommittee to investigate the institutions; when it was denied he rented three trailers and set up volunteer staff to conduct research. 17 He had a progressive voting record in Congress and as a member of the Credentials Committee at the 1968 Democratic National Convention voted against seating the all-White delegation from Mississippi. Elected as governor in 1974, he was a fitting successor to Dale Bumpers as both Democrats embraced a “politics of progressive moderation.” 18 Pryor served two terms in office, established the Department of Local Services, the Department of Natural and Cultural Heritage, and a statewide energy conservation plan. During his first term he pushed through his “Arkansas Plan” “designed to shift taxing powers and responsibilities 17 Jack Bass and Walter DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics: Social Change and Political Consequences Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 97. 18 Bass and DeVries, 89. 79 from the state to the local level” but it was never enacted. He also made “breakthrough” appointments of African Americans and women. 19 The responses from Arkansas officials mirrored the stances by state residents. Some accepted the Southeast Asian refugees because they believed the United States owed them a chance at a new life after meddling so much in Vietnam’s affairs, but the war had various legacies. Alden Roberts holds that the first wave of Vietnamese people was not readily welcomed to the United States and Americans’ rejections broke down along three issues—war, labor market, and race. For some, refugees were reminders of the bitterly contested war and to others they were future competitors in the labor market. But for some Americans “the refugee’s race was the most salient factor.” 20 These reactions were also prevalent among Arkansans, and for those that sought to forget the war the task was difficult because more than sixty thousand served in the armed forces with more than six hundred of them killed and twenty-two missing in action. 21 But the area was also quite Christian and their religious beliefs came into play in terms of understanding their responsibilities to other people; they often cited humanitarianism and moral obligations as two potent reasons to support the use of Fort Chaffee as a processing center and relocation site as well as a motivating factor for sponsoring families into their communities. Nevertheless, northwest Arkansas was overwhelming White with an insular 19 Diane D. Blair, “The Big Three of Late Twentieth-Century Arkansas Politics: Dale Bumpers, Bill Clinton, and David Pryor,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 54, no. 1 (Spring 1995), 57. 20 Roberts, 75. 21 State of Arkansas, “Vietnam Veterans Memorial Details,” http://www.sosweb.state.ar.us/virtual_tour_02/popups/grounds/vietnam/vietnam_details.html (accessed May 7, 2010). 80 culture, a product of homogeneity based on their limited experience with people from outside of the area. This facilitated xenophobic and nativist reactions toward Vietnamese folks based on “yellow peril”—fears of diseases, economic competition, abuse of social services, the formation of an ethnic enclave, and extensive biological reproduction. This situation was tense since the beginning because of the federal government’s dictum that Fort Chaffee would be used while the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the Southeast Asians aided nativist, xenophobic, and racist responses. I begin by briefly discussing the establishment and use of various federal military camps in Arkansas during World War II to show how Arkansans reacted to interned Japanese Americans and German and Italian prisoners of war (POWs) as well as provide a context for the use of Fort Chaffee during 1975. I then move on to discuss the historical factors that led Vietnamese to Arkansas and lay out scholarly arguments about “yellow peril” in order to provide the necessary framework to analyze the fears exteriorized by Arkansans about Vietnamese in their communities while keeping in mind the other ways in which they were constructed, namely as victims in need of humanitarian aid. From there I explore the tension around the federal decision to use Fort Chaffee including elected-officials responses to the site. I close this discussion with an analysis of the sponsorship of Vietnamese doctors to practice medicine in Arkansas in order to demonstrate some contradictions; specifically that state officials were simultaneously anxiously awaiting Fort Chaffee’s closure and working toward keeping these educated professionals in order to serve the state’s rural inhabitants. 81 Arkansas Camps and World War II: Japanese American Internees and European POWs Camp Chaffee was established at the beginning of the rise of the military- industrial complex, as part of the United States’ effort to increase its military capacity given the looming Second World War. The federal government paid $1.35 million to acquire 15,163 acres from 712 Arkansan property owners from schools, churches, to families, businesses, and other government agencies. 22 The base was built in only sixteen months and was finally activated in March 1942 and from then until 1946, the Sixth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth Armored Divisions trained there. 23 As a camp it was supposed to be a temporary facility and the “frame barracks” reflect that temporary nature. They were two-story, approximately 30 by 90 feet with a normal capacity for 63 people; however, if steel cots are stacked then the maximum occupancy increases to 90. 24 Though its main purpose during this time was to train soldiers for combat and prepare units for deployment, it was also used as a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp for four-thousand Germans. 25 22 Maranda Radcliff, “Fort Chaffee,” Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, July 2008, http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2263 (accessed May 27, 2010). 23 W. J. Bennett Jr., et al. Center Valley, Archeological Assessment Report No. 217 / Fort Chaffee Cultural Resource Report No. 17. (US Army Corps of Engineers, Little Rock District), July 24, 1995, 5. 24 U.S. Congress, Eleventh Report of the Preparedness Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, Investigation of the Preparedness Program, 82 nd Cong., 1 st sess.,1951, Committee on Armed Services, 6. 25 Merrill R. Pritchett and William L. Shea. “The Afrika Korps in Arkansas, 1943–1946.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 37 (Spring 1978): 3–22. 82 In the 1940s, the federal government chose to place two groups of people— Japanese American internees and European prisoners of war—in Arkansas. About seventeen thousand Japanese Americans were relocated to Arkansas where they lived from September 1942 through June 1944. The camps in Arkansas—Rohwer and Jerome—were the eastern-most U.S. locations and the only ones in the South. Land for both camps, each slightly bigger than ten thousand acres, was purchased by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) from the Farm Security Administration who bought it in the 1930s to resettle and rehabilitate poor farm families; however, the land was never used for this purpose. Governor Homer Martin Adkins, a rabid racist and former Ku Klux Klan member who began his political careers as a KKK candidate in 1924, did not want internment camps in his state. Writing to J.H. Tolan, chairman of the House Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, he said: “the only way I can visualize where we can use them at all would be to fence them in concentration camps under wire fence and the guard of white soldiers.” When it was clear to Adkins that despite his disapproval, the federal government was going to place two internment camps in the Arkansas Delta he requested guard towers, barbed wire, search lights, and armed guards. When Japanese Americans arrived at the camps there were many structures unfinished and unfurnished which they were forced to complete. They also had to clear the land and finish other work such as wells, laying water and sewage pipes, and building roads. Finding enough wood during winter to stave off the cold was a monumental task as was finding enough materials to build furniture or partitions since the barracks only had 83 old cots for sleeping. Life in the camps was hard and made harder by the local landscape and environment. There were water moccasins, copperheads, rattlesnakes, and mosquitoes. One internee remembers, “When the rains came…we could not leave our quarters. The water stagnated at the front steps….The mosquitoes that festered there were horrible, and the authorities never had enough quinine for sickness….Rohwer was a living nightmare.” 26 Most Arkansans were unhappy with ethnic Japanese in their midst but they understood it as a war necessity. They were also very concerned with what was happening inside the camps—they wanted to make sure that internees were not being coddled by camp staff or over fed. Before Japanese Americans had even arrived rumors flew that that there was not going to be any food rationing which created a great frenzy and finally the War Relocation Authority assured residents that food at the camps was going to be equivalent to Army “B” rations. The Arkansas legislature introduced several anti-Japanese bills and passed some during this time period. One banned Japanese and Japanese Americans from owning land in the state in order to make sure that “no Japs can stay in the state” because according to Senator Frank Williams who spearheaded the legislation, it is common knowledge that “a white person cannot profitably compete with the Japanese.” They also passed legislation prohibiting Japanese and Japanese American children from attending White schools. Japanese American internees in Arkansas who sought to continue higher education had to take courses via mail from schools outside of the state. During the internment period 26 Quoted in Russell Bearden “Life Inside Arkansas’s Japanese-American Relocation Centers,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 48, no. 2 (Summer, 1989): 169-196. 84 there were some instances of shootings—a guard shot at three boys and injured one or the case of a farmer who shot at a guard and three boys who were returning from a deer hunt because he thought the former was helping them escape. No deaths due to shootings are recorded. Unfortunately, Senator C. B. Ragsdale who introduced legislature similar to the ban on Japanese and Japanese Americans owning land might have been speaking for a large number of Arkansans when he said, “I don’t believe anybody wants a Japanese person in Arkansas. If I had my way, we’d put them all on a ship and have the ship torpedoed.” 27 During the same time period, there were also German and Italian prisoners of war in the United States. More than four-hundred thousand POWs were held in the country between 1942 and 1945. About twenty-three thousand of them were placed in Arkansas during these years. Fort Chaffee was the first POW camp in the state and held about four thousand Germans. Camp Robinson, near Little Rock, was the second site and held about ten thousand Germans and eventually played a key role as supply and administrative center for other smaller camps throughout the state. In 1944, Camp Dermott, whose name had been changed from Jerome after the last of the Japanese American internees were transferred to Rohwer, held about seven thousand German POWs and was used for fanatically pro-Nazi soldiers. Monticello, also in southeast Arkansas, was the fourth camp and used for two thousand Italian POWs. Contrary to the squalor, disrepair, and disarray that Japanese Americans found in their internment camps, German and Italian prisoners of war were pleasantly surprised by 27 Quoted in William G. Anderson, “Early Reaction in Arkansas to the Relocation of Japanese in the State.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 23 (Autumn 1964): 196–211. 85 the conditions of the camps. Camp Robinson, for example, was singled out by Swiss representatives as “one of the best” prison camps ever seen and they were “particularly impressed with the excellent physical appearance of the camp.” 28 Such descriptions contrast greatly with those of the Japanese American internee that described life in Rohwer as a living nightmare. Contrary to the great upheaval about rationing food for Japanese Americans, Arkansans did not notice that POWs were well fed to the point of gaining an average of fifteen pounds over a thirty-day period. Moreover, while all Japanese Americans were expected to work inside the camp ground, German and Italian officers received monetary payments even if they chose not to work. They were also able to enroll in correspondence courses as well as establish college courses inside the camps. Contrary to Japanese Americans, Arkansans were not outraged at these education programs. They were, however, finally outraged at camp conditions when news started arriving as to the conditions of US prisoners of war in Europe. 29 In 1943, the War Department announced that POWs could work outside of military installations, something which thrilled most Arkansas businessmen, especially planters. Despite petitions from planters to use Japanese Americans for labor, Adkins denied such requests as well as most work outside of the camps. 30 Contrary to his attitude with Japanese Americans, Adkins petitioned to put European POWs to work on plantations or in any other jobs necessary throughout the state. Twenty six of the branch 28 Quoted in Pritchett and Shea, “The Afrika Korps in Arkansas,” 8. 29 C. Calvin Smith, “The Response of Arkansas to Prisoners of War and Japanese Americans in Arkansas, 1942–1945,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 53 (Autumn 1994): 340–364. 30 Smith, “The Response of Arkansas to Prisoners of War.” 86 camps were in the Delta reflecting the agricultural dependence of the state and the determination of its planters. More than thirty smaller work camps were established throughout the state with the overwhelming majority of them in the Delta. 31 Racism won out over any inclination to aid planters in their economic endeavors as long as they wanted to use Asian laborers. Planters sought to use Japanese and Japanese American internees, a more vulnerable group than the area’s Black or White people who were leaving the area in search of better opportunities, but Adkins’ beliefs did not allow him to acquiesce to their petitions. However, he held a different perspective in the case of European POWs. In general, German and Italian POWs were praised by Arkansans for their excellent work, for saving crops, and getting much needed work done. There was no outcry about having enemies in Arkansas and instead it appears such negative feelings were reserved for Americans of Japanese ancestry. Neither Atkins nor other Arkansans saw a contradiction between allowing Italian and German men—some of them fanatical Nazis—who were enemies of the United States in an ongoing war to labor outside of their camps and go to worksites throughout the state while denying Japanese Americans the same kind of mobility. By World War II, Italians and Germans were considered White within the United State’s racial landscape and these events indicate that this was the most important factor in accepting, or even embracing, POWs in contrast to Asian internees. This was not the last time race was the most important indicator of how Arkansans reacted to varying groups who were placed in or moved to the state. 31 Pritchett and Shea, “The Afrika Korps in Arkansas,” 3-22. 87 The last POWs left Arkansas in 1946, the same year Fort Chaffee was deactivated only to be opened in 1948 and become the home of the Fifth Army Division until 1957, with the exception of February to August 1950 when Chaffee was deactivated. 32 From 1942 to 1994, except for brief periods at the end of WWII and from 1959 to 1961, Chaffee has been “used continuously for ordnance training that ranged from small arms to Honest John rockets.” 33 It was finally designated a base in March 1956 which reflected its more permanent status as a military installation. 34 Fort Chaffee did not become central to the economic well-being of neighboring communities such as Barling, Greenwood, or Fort Smith likely due to the U.S. armed forces oscillation between activating and deactivating it. For example, in early 1957 it became the “United States Army Training Center, Field Artillery” and tasked instructing Reserve Force personnel prior to entry into the National Guard or Army reserve units, but only two years later it was place in “caretaker” status. Then in 1961 during the Berlin Crisis, Chaffee was reopened as a training center but this time to train Infantrymen in Basic and Advanced Infantry tactics; the U.S. Army Garrison Reserve Unit from Oklahoma and the 100 th Infantry Division, a Kentucky Reserve Unite, trained there. Only a year later, the 100 th Division was deactivated and Fort Chaffee’s new mission was to help the 3 rd Corps Artillery and the XIX Corps. However, it was again deactivated in 32 Bennett Jr., 5. 33 US Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis District, “Supplement to the 1994 Archives Search Report for Camp Chaffee,” Defense Environment Restoration Program fro Formerly Used Defense Sites, September 2002, 2-1. 34 Bennett Jr., 5. 88 1965 though many National Guard and Reserve Units use it for summer training. 35 In November 1974, it was redesignated as the U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Chaffee which made it “semi-active” and in early 1975 it served as a “Refugee Processing Center for Indochina Refugees” but was again closed in December 1975 after all the Southeast Asian folks left the camp. In the interim period between Vietnamese and Cuban refugees, the post was used as training grounds for the National Guard and Army Reserve Units with more than fifty thousand military personnel passing through the grounds. The Mariel Boatlift served as a catalyst for the federal government to once again activate Fort Chaffee, this time to process Southeast Asians but once they left, it was once again deactivated. 36 Fort Chaffee was built at the beginning of the military-industrial complex but unlike Fort Bragg which essentially dictated the economic environment of Fayetteville, North Carolina it largely lacked that level of connection with surrounding communities. 37 That is not to say that during the times that it operated, especially when it was used as a refugee and processing center, it did not boost the local economy. In the 1980s, when the federal government studied the possibility of designating Chaffee as a facility to hold and process refugees whenever necessary, the Fort Smith City Council and Governor Frank White vehemently opposed the idea because it was unfair to expect Arkansas to carry what should have been a national burden. An official of the refugee program said, “I’m 35 Bennett Jr., 5. 36 Ibid. 37 Catherine A. Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). 89 not sure what Arkansas’s burden has been other than bearing an infusion of about $150 million into the economy of this area.” In effect, they turned down an estimated $50 million per year. 38 Arkansas’ Context of Reception: The Cold War, the Vietnam War, “Yellow Peril,” and Christianity In order to understand the context for a Vietnamese refugee processing center to be located in Arkansas let me first discuss the historical moment articulated by the Cold War, the Vietnam War’s impacts on the nation, and “yellow peril.” The Cold War—a political, economic, and military conflict between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the western nations, primarily the United States—began at the end of World War II. The Cold War resulted in a constant state of fear from both an outside threat and subversion from within which ultimately created a “national security mentality.” This way of thinking allowed presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower to dramatically increase presidential powers that restricted and classified information from both Congress and the public. 39 The political, economic, and military conflict often coalesced and turned different geographic locations into battle sites; Vietnam was one such place. Truman put the United States on a road that would last nearly twenty-five years when the government began intervening in Vietnam in the name of containing communism. According to 38 “Politics Key to the Fate of Camp’s Last Cubans.,” New York Times, January 4, 1982, sec. A. 39 Clarence R. Wyatt, “The Media and the Vietnam War,” in The War That Never Ends: New Perspectives on the Vietnam War, eds. David L. Anderson and John Ernst (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 266-69. 90 Franklin H. Bruce, Truman’s decision fell in line with U.S. policy that “committed the nation to buttressing, maintaining, and becoming the dominant power within the ‘Free World,’ that is, a global Anglo-European-American imperial system that had controlled the planet’s economy for about a century.” 40 Unbeknownst to Truman and his successors, these aspirations and actions eventually lead to the Vietnam War—an endeavor so divisive that its impact in the domestic sphere continued long after troops were removed. In fact, Edwin Martini argues that “Vietnam” ceased to be a war or a country and instead became an “‘experience,’ something that happened to America and Americans.” 41 The United States war in and against Vietnam caused the emergence of seemingly intractable political and cultural divisions, the fraying of bonds that made up national identity in the postwar period, and transformed culture and life. 42 More specifically, according to Marita Sturken, it disrupted “definitions of family, gender, morality, and the nation” ultimately becoming a national trauma. 43 The war was so contentious that debates ensued over what kind of endeavor it was—a “noble cause,” a “quagmire,” or “imperialism.” 44 For Americans who opposed the war the press were good guys who dispelled government lies and allowed the U.S. 40 Franklin H. Bruce, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000), 42. 41 Edwin Martini, Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975-2000 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 76, italics in original. 42 Brian Balogh, “From Metaphor to Quagmire: The Domestic Legacy of the Vietnam War,” in After Vietnam: Legacies of a Lost War, ed. Charles E. Neu (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 24-55; Bruce; Martini. 43 Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 2. 44 Bruce, 41-42. 91 public to bring an “ill-advised, unjust war to an end.” 45 Those who saw the war as a noble fight blamed news media, politicians, and the antiwar movement for successfully restricting military actions which eventually led to the shameful withdrawal of the United States. This abject departure then dishonored American soldiers’ sacrifices, abandoned Vietnamese to communism, and ultimately emasculated the nation. 46 Nearly immediately and certainly before the end of the decade, efforts were made in film and literature to change the narrative of the war through “historical inversion” where the United States was the victim of the Vietnamese. 47 According to Susan Jeffords, male Vietnam veterans, especially White men, were constructed as “an emblem for a fallen and emasculated American male, one who had been falsely scorned by society and unjustly victimized by his own government.” 48 This “national trauma” had special significance in the South because it was the second time that the region experienced loss in a military endeavor. Indeed, to some southerners, mainly White folks, their defeat in the Civil War became a central aspect of southern identity. For example in 2003, at the opening of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Shelby Foote said: “All Southerners who try to express themselves in art…are very much aware that they are party to a defeat, which is something most 45 Wyatt, 266. 46 Bruce, 28; Wyatt 266; Gil Loescher and John A. Scanlan, Calculated Kindness: Refugees and America’s Half-Open Door, 1945 to the Present (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 120; Susan Jeffords, The Remasculization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 47 Sturken; Martini, 7. 48 Jeffords, 169. 92 other Americans didn't feel until Vietnam." 49 Foote makes it clear that Southerners were uniquely poised to understand their fellow Americans’ sentiments at the end of the Vietnam War because of their own experience with the Civil War. Additionally, despite some resentment over the Civil War, the South has been very patriotic, and the Vietnam era was no exception. As we shall see, the framing Americans as victims of Vietnamese people was a common theme in Arkansans letters to government officials. But the effects of the war on the nation only partially explain the reactions of Arkansans to Vietnamese, these southerners were also reacting negatively toward the Southeast Asians’ racial and ethnic origins. Ethnic Studies scholars argue that Asian immigrants are supposed to be integrated into the nation but simultaneously rejected due to their “alien origins.” 50 For Vietnamese refugees the two main tropes were those of “good workers” who would be competitors in the labor sphere and that of “victims” who needed to be rescued from communism. 51 As Colleen Lye and Lisa Lowe have demonstrated, fear of Asian people within economic and cultural spheres has a history in the United States that dates back to the late nineteenth century while the racialization of Asians as physically and intellectually different from White people or the intersection of anti-Asian fears and nativism 49 Stephen Kinzer, “Embracing Southern Art: Old Times There Are Not Forgotten,” The New York Times, November 12, 2003, sec. E. 50 Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 4. 51 These processes are versions that are in many ways similar to the racial formations of other people of color in the United States. 93 predominate during economic downturns. 52 In particular, Asian immigrants have served as “screens” “on which the nation projects a series of condensed, complicated anxieties regarding external and internal threats to the mutable coherence of the national body: the invading multitude,” and the treacherous domestic among other tropes, i.e., “yellow peril.” 53 These anxieties loomed particularly large during periods of U.S. wars in Asia where fears of defeat abroad are projected onto Asian workers in the nation. 54 As Lye points out these anxieties are based on a foundational belief: if “American universality depends upon the possibility of assimilation, there is always also the danger of discovering aliens in our midst, or the wholesale possibility of American takeover by aliens.” 55 So how do the American people and the government fight against this? According to Lowe, on one hand cultural producers contribute to and create stereotypes to discursively “fix” Asian people within certain parameters; on the other, the state racializes Asian identities through legal classifications which exclude and include— “citizen” and “noncitizen” or “U.S.-born” and “permanent resident.” 56 Lowe argues that “the American citizen has been defined over against the Asian immigrant, legally, economically, and culturally. These definitions have cast Asian immigrants both as persons and populations to be integrated into the national political sphere and as the 52 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Lowe, Immigrant Acts. 53 Lowe, 18, 4. 54 Ibid., 5. 55 Lye, 8. 56 Lowe, 19. 94 contradictory, confusing, unintelligeible elements to be marginalized and returned to their alien origins.” 57 Moreover, as Lye argues, “yellow peril” is the manifestation of a “long- running racial form, a form whose most salient feature, whether it has been made the basis for exclusion or assimilation, is the trope of economic efficiency.” 58 This trope works in such a way as to make Asian economic advancement or success the danger that threatens White, native workers while race, cultures and languages make Asians as “‘foreign’ and ‘outside’ the national polity.” 59 While racialization is most powerful where Americans have had some contact with Asians, such as the East and West Coasts, the Vietnam War had been well-covered by the media, brought into Americans’ living rooms initially through the television and, when veterans arrived, through the stories they told and perspectives they held. So while Northwest Arkansans had a limited history with people from other places and none with Asian people (Japanese American internment camps were in the state’s southeast), they were privy to, and participated in, the racialization of Vietnamese at the national scale. “Yellow peril” is evident in the contradictory narratives about the war and its repercussions and reactions of Arkansans to Vietnamese. On the one hand, many were in favor of saving Vietnamese allies from the persecution that awaited them if they remained in communist Vietnam. On the other hand, once Vietnamese were in Arkansas they were rejected because they were either culturally alien to U.S. norms in their 57 Ibid., 4. 58 Lye, 5. 59 Lowe, 8. 95 language, dress, and hygiene or because they were competitors in the labor sphere. To Arkansans, change in racial makeup and culture were detrimental to the nation and more immediately to their community, while competition for jobs and benefits was unfair and should have been reserved solely for native-born workers, Black and White. 60 Often Vietnamese were constructed as an invading horde that would be unable to assimilate to U.S. and Arkansan culture. These divisions were also class-based; Vietnamese professional and military personnel had the English-language proficiency and grooming habits desired by Arkansans but their rural and poor compatriots supposedly did not. Yet both groups would enter the labor force and compete with Arkansans. 60 I did not find that white Arkansans thought it was unfair for African Americans to receive unemployment, food stamps, or other benefits. However, several brought up other people of color, perceived as foreigners to the nation without regard to citizenship status, such as ethnic Puerto Ricans, Cubans, or Mexicans. As we shall see, there were great similarities with Vietnamese in the way these groups were constructed, usually as dangerous and detrimental to the nation whether due to language, ethnic communities, or biological reproduction. For example, Mr. and Mrs. E.C. Watson of Pine Bluff in southeast Arkansas wrote: This is a terrible thing that we have done bringing these people into our country. The Vietnamese people are not used to our way of life and besides we cannot play God to some foreigners who do not even want to be here. WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES HAVE EARNED OUR VETERANS BENEFITS AND SOCIAL SECURITY, and these people from other lands should not have the right to these privileges unless they earn them. This is nothing but stealing from the people of the U.S. This decision for foreigners should be reversed…. P.S. Speaking of LAWS and CRIMINAL ACTS, someone in Washington should check out the immigration law. E.C. Watson & Mrs. E.C. Watson to Pryor, May 21, 1975, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 33 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Assistance Offered (3 of 3),” capitals and underlines in original. 96 In April 1975 the unemployment rate in Arkansas was 9.6 percent, above the national average. 61 Nevertheless, business-owners from throughout the state quickly asked for Vietnamese laborers. For example, a manufacturer from the northeast town of Jonesboro asked for fifty workers to begin immediately; two car dealers needed mechanics; others asked for shoe makers and tailors. 62 Some city officials requested doctors and dentists; Winslow, Arkansas asked for a doctor and his wife as well as for a nurse and her husband and Phil Matthews of the Arkansas Hospital Association sought to find those with medical training or who were in health-related fields. 63 The Jonesboro company Frolic Footwear quickly increased their request to a total of two hundred workers because they had not been able to recruit Arkansans to the plant. Leland Harland, the director of personnel, said: “We feel the main reason is that people are making more on unemployment compensation than they would if they were working.” 64 According to Harland, many unemployed workers received $84 per week tax free, plus $150 per month in food stamps and “there’s no way to get people off unemployment with that kind of money,” he said. Their salaries ranged from the federal minimum wage to $6 with an average of $2.75 per hour. 65 A forty-hour work week would yield $110 minus taxes. 61 Ernest Dumas, “Chaffee to Provide Transitory Housing, Bumpers, Pryor Say” Arkansas Gazette, April 30, 1975, sec. A. 62 Carol Griffee, “Aid for Refugees: Good Intentions Outshine Spite,” Arkansas Gazette, May 16, 1975, sec. A 63 Notes RE: Phil Matthews from DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 7 “Vietnamese Refugee Program— Sponsorship M-R,” and Folder 8 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Sponsorship S-Z. 64 Gazette State News Service, “Shoe Firm Wants to Hire 150 Refugees,” Arkansas Gazette, May 17, 1975, sec. A. 65 “Shoe Firm Wants to Hire 150 Refugees.” 97 But all the offers for work were not benevolent. For example, a man with a 164- acre farm wanted a boy or girl, or possibly a woman and child to help him full-time with a “salary to be paid at some future date if arrangement is working out.” He was also okay with splitting up a family because a farm 10 miles away also needed help. 66 He was not alone in implying that pay was out of the question or a luxury that went beyond a standard agreement. This suggests that Arkansans saw Vietnamese people as labor power that did not merit monetary compensation. 67 Arkansans also had particular requests and caveats about who they would like to have. Some were based on age (e.g., kids no younger than X, no kids at all; others were based on gender (e.g., only women) or gender and age (e.g., only young women). Requests and caveats were also based on serviced rendered (e.g. only a maid), lodging, language (Spoke English) and length of stay (from three months to two years). Most of the requests were for farming and outdoor work. Arkansans and their churches did not request that refugees they sponsor have a specific religious belief but one man was direct when he wrote that Vietnamese “must be agile and willing to please.” 68 When the U.S. government decided to expand its refugee policy and allow tens of thousands of Vietnamese who managed to escape, old anti-Asian fears and nativist 66 Griffee, “Good Intentions Outshine Spite.” 67 Cubans faced a similar construction as a sergeant in Fort Chaffee told a reporter that they were willing to work for gum, coffee, cigarettes or anything (cualquier cosa). Luisa Velladares, a professional singer and a disc jockey at the Cuban-initiated radio station KNBJ 92.7, responded: “I’m not here for something to do, nor for cigarettes, nor for coffee. I’m here, helping my Cuban brothers and because of my Cuban brothers. And I would really like that man to retract that very demeaning statement he made to the press”; from “Contact” a radio show that aired Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to noon, Alina Fernandez Papers, Summer 1980 (exact date unknown), MC 870, Cassette 3. 68 May 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folders 1 – 8. 98 sentiments of “yellow peril” emerged nationwide despite the ongoing rhetoric of humanitarianism. At the end of the war, with short notice and nearly zero preparation, the federal government decided to aid their former allies and couched the efforts within a humanitarian paradigm. Gill Loescher and John Scanlan put it as follows: “Regarding the crisis primarily in humanitarian and political terms …the White House, the military, and the State Department all committed themselves to a program of limited scope and duration dedicated to rescuing America’s Vietnamese allies.” 69 The Ford administration emphasized “the traditional image of America as the nation of immigrants and attempted to mobilize the humanitarian impulse of American society.” 70 The national press followed suit and printed editorial support for the refugees citing their allegiance, flight from communism, U.S. humanitarian tradition, and previous refugee legislations. At that time, however, the country was in the middle of an economic recession with high unemployment which resulted in some resentment toward the refugees as competitors for social services and jobs. 71 Arkansas was no exception. In 1975, twenty-six thousand non-White people in northwest Arkansas was a huge demographic shift, even if most would only be there temporarily. Anti-Black racism existed but African Americans were conspicuously absent from the area making Southeast Asian refugees that much more important, even for Fort Smith which had the area’s largest African American population at less than seven thousand. In short, 69 Loescher and Scanlan, 102. 70 Ibid., 113. 71 Ibid., 112, 114. 99 Arkansans and those in the northwest in particular, saw Vietnamese as a real threat to their communities because they were in the backyard, metaphorically speaking. Complicating the issue further was Arkansans’ religious beliefs; some drew on these to commend Pryor for his actions. For example, Caroline L. Brendel’s letter is representative of many the governor received. She wrote: “Please permit me to express my commendation of your Christian charity and kindness in personally welcoming refugees. God will richly bless you and your family for what you have done for ‘the least of these etc.’ [sic].” 72 To the letter writers that supported his actions Pryor often replied with a form letter that in part read: “It pleases me to learn of your support of federal and state efforts to assist in providing humanitarian aid to Vietnamese evacuees. Arkansas is a community of people whose spirit and heart offer friendship and aid to all persons who seek our help.” 73 Since Arkansas is part of the Bible Belt it is hardly surprising that many people turned to their Christian beliefs in commending the governor’s favorable actions toward Vietnamese refugees. Nevertheless, Arkansans had an insular culture based on their homogeneity and their Christian charity only went so far. At the end of the year Arkansans sponsored a total of 2,061 Vietnamese into various communities with 1,840 of them coming from Fort Chaffee. 74 The 1980 Census shows that between 1975 and 1980 1,577 Vietnamese arrived in the state with “other Asia[ns]” constituting 863. The latter 72 Caroline L. Brendel to Pryor, May 3, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box, 67, Folder 29 “Vietnamese Refugee Program--Favorable.” For letters that expressed similar sentiments please see this folder. 73 David Pryor to constituents supportive of Vietnamese refugees in Arkansas, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box, 67, Folder 29 “Vietnamese Refugee Program--Favorable.” 74 “Exhibit A: Refugees Resettled Into Society as of December 20, 1975,”in a proposal from Reverend Tom Adkinson, Associate Minister in Lakeside United Methodist Church, Pine Bluff, February 26, 1976, DHPP, MC 336, Box 92, Folder 19 “Vietnamese/English Education Proposal, 1976.” 100 likely represent other Southeast Asians that arrived during the refugee resettlement, for example, Laotians. 75 When Fort Chaffee opened as a refugee processing center, the resentment was not only aimed at Southeast Asians but also at the federal government for imposing themselves on the state and people of Arkansas. The underlying tension was centered on questions of autonomy and states’ rights. The last time the question had come up statewide was during the integration of Central High School in 1957, as the world watched Governor Faubus deny entry to nine Black students. The circumstances in 1975 differed in many ways, but both situations were centered on non-White people and on local versus extra-local control. Cooperating with Unfortunate Circumstances: The Federal Decision to Use Fort Chaffee On April 25, 1975 the Arkansas Gazette reported Fort Chaffee was going to be used as a refugee center yet the news was treated as a preposterous rumor. The story was not given much weight for three likely reasons: the news came through “unnamed” sources; state officials and congressmen contacted did not know of any such move; and army officers at the fort had heard nothing. That day Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan, a Democrat, said Chaffee was not being immediately considered because he was “assured by the State Department that no such decision has been made concerning Fort Chaffee 75 U.S. Census Bureau, “Table 195. Citizenship and Year of Immigration for Foreign-born Persons by Country of Birth 1980,” 1980 Census of Population, Chapter D, Detailed Population Characteristics, Part 5, Arkansas (November 1983), 8. These numbers do not include foreign-born persons from China, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Philippines, Thailand, and Turkey. 101 and that it will not be made without further consultation” with him. 76 The next day Pentagon officials declared Fort Chaffee was being considered as a site; state officials were not cited on matter. 77 On April 28 the Pentagon announced that it had chosen Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Eaglin Air Force Base, Florida, and Camp Pendleton, California as processing centers. The centers were chosen in order to disperse the refugee population, an attempt to preemptively halt the formation of ethnic enclaves. L. Dean Brown, director of the Interagency Task Force for Indochinese Refugees (ITFIR) established by President Gerald Ford, announced that the camps would house up to twenty thousand refugees for up to ninety days or more with hopes of relocating them within two weeks. 78 When the Arkansas Gazette printed the story the next day there was also another noteworthy headline—“State Lawmakers Accept Proposal With Qualms.” Senator McClellan and Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt, a Republican who represented Arkansas 3 rd Congressional District, were uneasy with the federal decision. The newspaper did not quote Hammerschmidt directly but reported the representative’s questions “reflected concern for the economic and social ramifications of placing a refugee center in the Fort Smith area.” 79 Fort Smith administrator Ray Riley also voiced his concern when he told a reporter that “at this point they (federal officials) are not even worried about the city of Fort Smith, but just about finding a facility large enough to 76 Gazette Press Services, “Plan Reported to Use Chaffee,” Arkansas Gazette, April 25, 1975, sec. A. 77 Gazette Washington Bureau, “Fort Chaffee Just One Possibility As Refugee Camp, Pentagon Says,” Arkansas Gazette, April 26, 1975, sec. A. 78 Roy Bode, “Use of Fort Chaffee Confirmed,” Arkansas Gazette, April 29, 1975, sec. A. 79 Gazette Washington Bureau, “State Lawmakers Accept Proposal With Qualms,” Arkansas Gazette, April 29, 1975, sec. A. 102 handle 20,000 Vietnamese.” 80 Riley implied that the city, and by extension its inhabitants, was going to be put in danger by both the federal government and outsiders or that the former solely focused their attention on Vietnamese refugees without consideration to the well-being of the city. McClellan and Hammerschmidt quickly made it clear that they were upset about the choice of Arkansas as site for the refugees. McClellan was direct when he said, “We’re all unhappy about this situation developing,” and Hammerschmidt mirrored that sentiment when he said, “I wish the situation didn’t exist and wish it was not in Arkansas…but it is and we have to face it.” 81 Both were so displeased that McClellan thought about trying to reduce the$327 million appropriation the Ford administration sought for humanitarian aid to South Vietnam while Hammerschmidt voted against it “out of protest of where the refugee centers were located.” 82 Neither was convinced by administration officials or meetings with President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who said the refugee center would not cause regional economic and social damage to the area. 83 Governor Pryor reacted publicly on April 30, after he and Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers, a Democrat, returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. where they were briefed 80 UPI, “Town Divided on Chaffee’s Use For Vietnamese,” Arkansas Gazette, April 28, 1975, sec. A; parentheses in original. 81 Gazette Washington Bureau, “Lawmakers Told Refugees’ Impact Will Be Minimal,” Arkansas Gazette, April 30, 1975, sec. A. 82 Gazette Washington Bureau, “State Lawmakers Accept Proposal With Qualms”; Gazette Washington Bureau, “Lawmakers Told Refugees’ Impact Will Be Minimal”; Gazette Press Services, “Opponents Cite Clause on Troop Use,” Arkansas Gazette, May 2, 1975, sec. A. 83 Gazette Washington Bureau, “Lawmakers Told Refugees’ Impact Will Be Minimal.” 103 about the operation by its administrators. They told their constituents that Fort Chaffee would only provide transitory housing of up to two weeks for a period of six months and that the undertaking should not cause much burden to local governments. They admitted however that they were still unclear about many details. Bumpers emphasized that Vietnamese refugees’ arrival as well as their processing, and placement were a “national problem, and it will be borne out on a national scale,” thereby allaying those fears that Arkansas was going to unfairly carry the burden. 84 Reactions nationally mirrored those in Arkansas. Niceville, Florida residents immediately organized and circulated a petition requesting that Vietnamese folks be sent somewhere else besides Eglin Air Force base which is their neighbor. Officials also reacted negatively toward the group. California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. protested that he did not want them there, taking jobs because there were more than one million unemployed Americans in the state. His administration even proposed that the refugee aid bill under consideration be changed in order to provide “jobs for Americans first.” 85 Although Pryor made supportive statements in public he made it clear in correspondence to constituents that he opposed this federal decision. For example, when Larry J. Cornish wrote a letter to Pryor voicing his concerns the governor replied: Arkansas has a role to play in the evacuation of Vietnamese refugees. You must accept the inevitable responsibilities which result from the Federal Government deciding to utilize the facilities at Fort Chaffee. I believe that we must do all we can 84 Dumas, “Chaffee to Provide Transitory Housing.” 85 Douglass E. Kneeland, “Wide Hostility Found as First Exiles Arrive,” The New York Times, May 2, 1975, 73. 104 to cooperate with both the federal officials and the voluntary agencies to see that the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the presence of the Vietnamese are quickly relieved. 86 Pryor told Cornish that he, like the state of Arkansas, had to accept the federal government’s decision. The “unfortunate circumstances surrounding the presence of the Vietnamese” could be the federal jurisdiction that beat the state’s power to decide whether they wanted to have a processing center. Or, it could have been the presence of Vietnamese refugees themselves. As time passed, it became clear that despite initial positive public statements, Pryor did not want to encourage Vietnamese to settle in the state. By May 11 there was talk about raising the limit at Fort Chaffee by four thousand and Pryor said, “if we can accommodate them without running into health problems, if the water supply is adequate, if we have some hope that it will be only a very temporary situation, I have enough faith in the people running this program to back it up.” 87 On May 12 the Defense Department announced it was indeed raising Fort Chaffee’s capacity to twenty-four thousand. 88 Hammerschmidt “strong[ly] protest[ed]” the increase and “emphatically urged” government officials to open another facility instead of “cramming 86 David Pryor to Larry J. Cornish, May 13, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 30 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Unfavorable”; capitalization in original. 87 Peggy Robertson, “Officials Uncertain About Raising Limits at Fort Chaffee,” Arkansas Gazette, May 12, 1975, sec. A. 88 Gazette State News Services, “Refugee Number at Fort Chaffee Raised by 4,000,” Arkansas Gazette, May 13, 1975, sec. A. 105 Fort Chaffee full—above the permanent barrack capacity.” 89 He also said he was worried about deteriorating health maintenance due to temporary sanitary arrangements required. “I will flatly oppose any refugee population increase over the announced twenty-four thousand capacity” because the fardel “must be shared nationwide. I will continue to oppose efforts to impose a disproportionate share on Arkansas.” 90 In mid-June the Army once again increased the limit by one thousand to a total of twenty-five thousand. Although there was not much protest to this last increase, there was another issue which caused clamor and trepidation. 91 When Julia Taft, who succeeded Brown as the director of ITFIR, announced on July 7 that Fort Chafee would be the only camp open through winter Pryor told the Associated Press that he was unhappy with the decision to keep the center open beyond the scheduled closing date of October 1 which would have fulfilled the federal government’s promise to use it for only six months. Pryor had not been consulted by federal authorities over the extension and feared that the longer Chaffee stayed open the more problems the state would face. Moreover, he said that Arkansas had demonstrated a benevolent spirit toward the refugee program and that the government might be taking advantage by keeping Chaffee open. 92 Pryor’s comments parallel Bumpers’ statement that Vietnamese refugees and their housing and relocation were a “national problem” that needed to be 89 Gazette Washington Bureau, “Opposition to Increase is Voiced,” Arkansas Gazette, May 13, 1975, sec. A. 90 Ibid. 91 “Population at Chaffee to Increase,” Arkansas Gazette, June 19, 1975, sec. A. 92 Associated Press, “Decision to Keep Fort Chaffee Open Upsets Governor,” Arkansas Gazette, July 15, 1975, sec. A. 106 “borne out on a national scale.” Both Pryor and Bumpers suggested that Arkansas and Arkansans were paying or carrying the fardel too much and that the rest of the country was taking advantage. Moreover, Pryor made it clear that once again it was a federal decision where the state, and he as its representative, had no vote. The feelings of resentment expressed by Arkansas government officials about the federal decision to use Chaffee as a processing center impacted the people living there in at least one way. A month earlier a team from the Arkansas Education Department visited Fort Chaffee in June and concluded that the state should not contract to provide education for refugee children. At that point in time language classes were taught by volunteer agencies or groups from the Fort Smith area. The education team suggested that the federal government should supplement the existing efforts but should do so through a private group because it would not be feasible to contract with Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Earl Willis, associate director of the Arkansas Department for Finance, led the group and said: “The refugees at Fort Chaffee are not yet legally in the country. From the legal standpoint, they are still offshore; therefore, immediate responsibility for them cannot in any manner be shifted to the state at this point.” 93 Willis’ main point, then, was to make it clear that the state had no legal obligation to provide a service because the subjects in question did not reside in Arkansas. The issue was couched within a federal versus state perspective where the state was not going to be taken advantage of by the federal government or be made responsible for federal responsibilities. 93 “Don’t Contract for Education of Refugees, State Team Says,” Arkansas Gazette, June 7, 1975, sec. A. 107 Despite this dispute and Pryor’s lack of enthusiasm for the extended deadline, President Ford decided to visit Fort Smith for the opening of a local hospital and made a quick visit to Fort Chaffee on August 11 because he was “very gratified” with the acceptance local residents had given refugees especially in comparison to the adverse reactions they received in other parts of the country. 94 A few days before Ford’s arrival, Senator McClellan spoke to a TV station and said he was unhappy when the program started and had not changed his mind in the months since. Moreover, he was dissatisfied with the progress in resettling the refugees. He never believed that Chaffee would close in sixty days and that Arkansans, and especially those around the Fort Smith area, should be praised for their benevolent attitude toward the refugees. His most striking comment, however, was that it was possible that Chaffee might end up with a permanent refugee population. 95 McClellan picked up on a controversy that erupted in late May when Donald MacDonald, the civilian coordinator for Fort Chaffee, said the federal government was engaging in a program that would lead to “Indian reservations” for lower income, unskilled Vietnamese. “We think this is risky – a path possibly to an Indian reservation of indefinite term. We haven’t done well with real or simulated Indian reservations in the past,” he wrote in a memorandum circulated among officials at Fort Chaffee and Washington. 96 Indians were removed from the state by 1830 with no land used for a 94 Roy Bode, “Ford Sets Visit to Fort Smith, Refugee Center,” Arkansas Gazette, July 26, 1975, sec. B. 95 AP, “McClellan Declares Pace of Relocating Refugees Too Slow,” Arkansas Gazette, August 11, 1975, sec. A. 96 UPI, “Official Fears ‘Reservations” For Refugees,” Arkansas Gazette, May 26, 1975, sec. A. 108 reservation. However, Fort Smith borders Oklahoma so the comment was particularly regionally significant. Eleanor Green, public affairs officer for the State Department Refugee Task Force, said the “report is totally incorrect” and denied the allegation. MacDonald said that decisions needed to be made on whether or not to handle lower- income, non-English speaking refugees that were beginning to arrive at the camp in the same manner as the English-speaking, middle-income and upper-income refugees which formed the first arrivals. The State Department’s denial of any possibility that Fort Chaffee would be used as a permanent camp settled the matter for a few months until McClellan brought up the issue followed by Pryor. President Ford met with the governor during his visit to Arkansas and Pryor “told him that if there was a problem or apprehension, it was a growing feeling – I don’t want to say fear – that the Vietnamese encampment might be more permanent than anyone had been led to believe.” 97 The president “assured me this is not the case” and that every effort would be made to complete the relocation of Vietnamese refugees as quickly as possible though Pryor noted that “nobody seems to know when that will be.” He was particularly concerned because many refugees at Fort Chaffee consisted of larger families and a number of older people which might make it difficult for them to find sponsors. In reference to these groups Pryor rhetorically asked: “What are they going to do with the people? No one knows the answer…Do they stay permanently in the state of Arkansas if sponsors do not volunteer? The president didn’t think so but didn’t know for sure what would be done.” Playing out a worst case scenario in which Vietnamese 97 AP, “Ford Promises Total Effort For Relocation, Pryor Says,” Arkansas Gazette, August 12, 1975, sec. A. The quotes for the rest of the paragraph come from this source. 109 refugees remained at Fort Chaffee for many months Pryor speculated that they might begin to feel anxious and seek repatriation but did not like that idea either. When asked whether he preferred repatriation or an encampment he chose the latter. The fear of an “Indian reservation” for lower income, unskilled Vietnamese demonstrates the class issues that arose with the refugee population because such apprehensions were absent when those being processed were military and professionals. That MacDonald and McClellan thought a reservation was a possibility also demonstrates race-based anxieties since historically the U.S. nation-state has interned racial and ethnic groups it has deemed uncivilized, threatening, and subversive such as Native Americans and Japanese Americans. The fears of a permanent reservation were unfounded as processing and sponsorship were more or less steady throughout the year. The process of sponsoring Vietnamese from Fort Chaffee was an exercise in coordination and interagency cooperation because the President’s Indochina Inter-agency Task Force, the State Indochinese Refugee Coordinator for the Governor’s Office, and the U.S. Catholic Conference were all involved. The volunteer agency at Fort Chaffee responsible for locating sponsors for more than half of the Vietnamese was the Little Rock Catholic Diocese with Father Joseph Blitz serving as Resettlement Director. 98 Initially, Southeast Asians in Fort Chaffee that were processed most rapidly were those who had specific sponsors, people they knew from their lives in Vietnam. 99 But the 98 Information from DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 31 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Assistance Offered (1 of 3).” 99 Gazette State News Service, “Sponsors for Refugees Deterred by Red Tape, Lack of Qualifications,” Arkansas Gazette, May 11, 1975, sec. A. 110 process was not without its difficulties. In California, refugees were released “without proper sponsorship” after people told Camp Pendleton officials they could sponsor twelve Vietnamese, only to find out later it was untrue. The Roman Catholic Conference supported a course where Americans interested in sponsoring Vietnamese families went through their local diocese in order to make sure their documentation could be adequately checked. In other words, that they were members in good standing in their communities who could help the refugees settle into the United States, help them find jobs, and provide food and lodging in the meantime. David Herman of the Roman Catholic Conference said volunteer agency “want[s] to make sure we release them into the right hands and make sure we’re not releasing them into white slavery or any other situation.” 100 According to MacDonald, “the entire policy of having volunteer agencies place refugee families with sponsors is aimed at keeping them from becoming public wards.” 101 The Catholic Diocese was one of seven religious or private volunteer agencies operating in Fort Chaffee (another was the YMCA) and they were responsible for finding adequate sponsors, not the federal government nor the state of Arkansas. 102 Churches were encouraged to sponsor families which were too large for one U.S. family to sponsor. At the end of the year more than two thousand Vietnamese lived in Arkansas and they were sponsored throughout the state. The largest concentrations were in Fort Smith with 416, Little Rock with 200, and Grannis with 221. In addition to Fort Smith’s 100 “Sponsors for Refugees Deterred by Red Tape,” and “Procedures Set Up For Relief Agencies.” 101 Peggy Robertson, “Pryor Visits Chaffee, Cites Concern Over Food Stamps,” Arkansas Gazette, May 17, 1975, sec. A. 102 “Procedures Set Up For Relief Agencies” and Tish Talbot, “Public Misunderstands Sponsorship of Refugees, YMCA Official Says,” Arkansas Gazette, May 30, 1975, sec. A. 111 population, there were 25 in Fayetteville, 19 in Bentonville, 19 in Rogers, and 1 in Springdale. 103 In the meantime, however, many Arkansans were panicking over how Fort Chaffee’s use a refugee and processing center would hurt them and how Vietnamese in their midst would damage their lives. More specifically, “yellow peril” engulfed Arkansas because of the sponsorship of Vietnamese into its communities since they were seen as threatening outsiders that would, at best, change the culture and, at worst, corrupt it. “Yellow Peril” and Poverty Threaten Arkansas Governor Pryor’s inquietude in mid-August about Fort Chaffee was in sharp contrast to his initial warm welcome to the refugees and did not go unnoticed by some of his constituents. In response to Pryor’s changing tone W. Trueman Moore, Pastor of the East Side Baptist Church of Fort Smith and Coordinator for the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote to the governor asking him “to refrain from making any further statements which would encourage our citizens to agree with you in objecting to the presence of the Vietnamese in the state.” 104 Although Moore feared that the governor’s tone would open the floodgates for reactionary responses, Pryor had received anti-refugee letters since April. 105 The reasons they gave for objecting to Vietnamese in the state were couched in a variety of terms including Arkansans paying (through taxes) for the “benefits” extended 103 “Exhibit B / Printout dated 31 Dec, 1975 and released through Governor’s Office [at the bottom of the page ],” in a proposal from Reverend Tom Adkinson, Associate Minister in Lakeside United Methodist Church, Pine Bluff, February 26, 1976, DHPP, MC 336, Box 92, Folder 19 “Vietnamese/English Education Proposal, 1976.” 104 W. Trueman Moore to Pryor, August 4, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 10 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Suggestions and Ideas.” 105 The letters form part of the DHPP. 112 to refugees or the state serving them at the expense of its citizens. Other Arkansans had xenophobic fears of Vietnamese ruining the state and national culture, in other words, “yellow peril.” For example, Charles and Martha Hankins told Pryor they raised a family of four on less than $5,000 per year but made it clear they did not receive any welfare benefits. They were particularly upset that their son, one of two children, was supposed to attend the University of Arkansas in the fall but was unsure of how to cover the expenses despite an academic scholarship. He also applied for a state grant for low-income students that would only cover $300 per year but had yet to hear whether he was selected. They then asked Pryor, “how about sparing some of that generosity for Arkansas citizens who furnish that money in the first place?” 106 The Hankins’ focused on the prospects and aid for young people in the state and suggested the governor talk to folks outside of Little Rock as well as consider how many voters were alienated by his favorable stance toward refugees. They closed by writing, “We have always prided ourselves on our lack of prejudice against people of other races or nationalities but we find ourselves becoming very prejudiced against a people who are being so greatly favored above our own.” 107 It is highly likely that the Hankins’ wrote the letter in response to news that the state of Arkansas was going to provide funding for a year to twenty Vietnamese doctors and senior medical students to help them pass an exam to enable them to practice medicine in 106 Charles and Martha Hankins to Pryor, August 19, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 30 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Unfavorable.” 107 Ibid. 113 Arkansas. 108 For them the issue was not aid, per se, but that refugees obtained “benefits” paid for by Arkansas taxpayers while state aid programs for students were low. Their most pointed questions was, “Don’t you think Arkansas people are capable of producing young people worthy of help education-wise too?” 109 Similar to the Hankins’, Louise Owens Finney of Fort Smith was driven to action by her preoccupations over the kind of life that awaited her unborn child. She told Pryor that she persevered through college “to be sure [she] could work and support” herself and used contraceptives to plan for four years for the birth of her first child; thus, she “cannot rationally accept our leaders’ assurance that these added thousands will not affect the American community or economy—or the child I have waited for and tried to prepare for.” 110 Because she had empathy for the refugees’ situation she could not ask the governor or the United States to “send the people back” but could ask her elected government officials to realistically analyze the situation while keeping in mind they were supposed to represent her best interests. She suggested the United States ask other countries to take in some of the refugees as well as “insist that these people exercise reliable birth control measures. (Most of the refugee families I read of in my local paper speak of having eight or nine children.)” and that they “become self-supporting as soon as possible in order to ease the burden of the hard-working, middle-class American, 108 The case is discussed in more detail in the section that follows. 109 Charles and Martha Hankins to Pryor. 110 Louise Owens Finney to Pryor, May 5, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 29 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Favorable”; underline in original. 114 whose task, supporting not only himself but also thousands of non-working adults, looms overpoweringly.” 111 Finney centered her argument on the well-being of her unborn child whose future was at risk due to poor judgment on the part of her elected officials and on the need for refugees to become “self-supporting” and “hard-working” like their “middle-class American” counterparts. Yet, not all dissidents were as diffident about their suggestions. Gim Shek, NASA Engineer, made the following assessment: Our [the United States’] involvement and loss in Vietnam to shame us; the influx of thousands of foreigners to smother our economic growth; is making a sucker out of us. Those foreigners coming here are not bringing their hearts. They will eventually bring over more of their kind, and won’t be satisfied until they have brought over part of the ‘Country’.…We [Little Rock peers] think poor management there [in Washington] is going to put us out of business as a nation of might. 112 Shek’s concern was that Vietnamese refugees would eventually take over the country by bringing more relatives. His xenophobic fears were such that these refugees would be responsible for bringing down the “mighty” United States. Shek saw Vietnamese as interested parties that sought to transfer part of Vietnam to the United States as opposed to refugees that fled a country wrecked by war and all its concomitant terrors such as hunger, displacement, homelessness, and death. Similarly to Shek, Larry J. Cornish feared the country would start on a downward spiral. He asserted that “this act of human kindness will only weaken the United States” and that “at the rate the United States is going, this country won’t be fit to live in, when 111 Ibid. 112 Gim Shek to Pryor, May 5, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 30 “Vietnamese Refugee Program— Unfavorable.” 115 they [his two children] get grown.” 113 Ruth Patterson of Oklahoma was near panic as she compared Vietnamese refugees to the emblematic horse responsible for the fall of Troy. In her metaphor the otherwise secure United States, a bastion for millions of (White) people, were tricked into allowing in their enemy who would then make sure to open the gates to their peers and in this way cause the downfall of the country after breaking the spirits of its noble citizens. Not satisfied enough with that imagery she brought up the Civil War and implied that the situation was bad enough to divide the country. She wrote that “since this Gerald Ford action to flood America with the oriental from Asia I’ve been panic stricken for our country….The Trojan Horse from Vietnam came in by air and just could be what really breaks the hearts and backs of all us Americans. It’s as bad as the Civil War and the most unfair thing to the Americans I’ve ever witnessed.” 114 While Patterson relied on metaphor to make her point John M. Shutak, an unemployed Maryland veteran that had just returned from ten years in South Vietnam, sought to provide concrete information. 115 He made it clear he was not protesting the refugee program, but trying to provide constructive counsel such as the need for Vietnamese to be quarantined and required to pass a rigid physical examination….[because] The consensus of venereal disease in Vietnam is estimated to be the highest in the world – 100%. It is understood that numerous prostitutes 113 Cornish to Pryor, May 13, 1975. 114 Ruth Patterson to Pryor, May 1, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 30 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Unfavorable.” 115 John M. Shutak to President Jimmy Carter, May 8, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 10 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Suggestions and Ideas.” 116 and bar girls are endeavoring to enter…who are infected with gonorrhea and syphilis. 116 Shutak also warned that the number of tuberculosis patients would increase as working- class refugees arrived at U.S. shores, as would the cases of “one of the dreadest [sic] diseases in the world…..[in original] leprosy.” He argued that at that point—May 8, 1975—the Vietnamese that arrived in the country were “worthy of being considered refugees” but ones that arrived later would “mar the image” because of their illiteracy and lack of use of shoes, shirts, and “toilet or toilet paper. These are the refugees who have no qualms about defecating or urinating openly in public.” He suggested they be “indoctrinated” in order for them to be accepted eventually into U.S. society. Ultimately, however, Shutak was concerned that one state would be “burdened with the refugees.” He was particularly worried about what would happen when federal aid for refugees was exhausted and foretold that there would be “a repeat of the Cuban refugee program whereas the State of Florida got stuck with the refugee problem.” 117 Shutak brought up issues of class and in so doing passed judgment on who was “worthy of being considered” a refugee and who was not. For him, Vietnamese refugees that escaped early on were acceptable because they had at least some behaviors similar to their host country but lower-class refugees that escaped later would be unworthy and threatening due to lack of those customs. However, all of the Vietnamese “worthy of being considered refugees” and their lesser brethren after “indoctrination” would prove to 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 117 be a huge burden on Arkansas, California, and Pennsylvania like their Latino counterparts—the Cubans. Shutak’s argument about Cubans was a theme that several people affirmed. For example, Cecil Allen of Van Buren, Arkansas did not think Vietnamese should have been brought to the U.S. because “we’ll end up supporting them like we’re having to support the Cubans, Puerto Ricans and others right now.” 118 Tom Alverson, an unemployed Vietnam veteran, agreed when he said the government “is telling us a bunch of lies. They say they’re (the refugees) going to be here temporarily. They’re going to be here for good. It’s going to be just like the Cubans in Florida.” 119 A. DeGroff of Fort Smith objected to aid given to Vietnamese because there was no way for the state to “absorb” them without problems or at the cost of Arkansas families. Moreover, he suggested that just like Puerto Ricans caused New York City to go bankrupt, Vietnamese might have the same effect in Arkansas. 120 Allen, Alverson and DeGroff, like many of their fellow Arkansans, feared being financially responsible for the refugees and that the United States would not be able to “absorb” them. The arguments these and other Arkansans presented can be divided into two areas. On the one hand, their concerns were for their and their children’s economic and educational well-being and they saw the government’s investment in refugees as unfair given the harsh circumstances they lived with. On the other hand, they were concerned about 118 UPI, “Town Divided on Chaffee’s Use For Vietnamese.” 119 Gazette State News Service, “Resident Near Chaffee Divided.” 120 A. DeGroff to the Southwest Times Record and carbon copied to Governor David Pryor and John Eisenhower, August 23, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 33 “Vietnamese Refugee Program— Assistance Offered (3 of 3).” 118 nation and culture and saw refugees as a horde that would most certainly destroy everything they loved about their towns and country. In 1979, 19 percent or 423,552 of all Arkansans lived below the poverty level then defined as $7,412 for a family of four; 14 percent of White folks and 42.7 percent of African Americans. Poverty was racialized as Black folks were nearly three times more likely to be poor than their White Arkansas peers. 121 The Hankins’ made it a point to mention they did not receive welfare benefits which suggests they refused to partake of this kind of aid and, arguably, represent a “frontier” attitude based on fierce independence or one where outside entities such as the federal government are shunned even if they could improve their economic situation. The cultural arguments against the Vietnamese refugees were premised on the group being a blight on society through high biological reproduction, a take-over through sheer numbers, diseases, and the formation of ethnic enclaves. All of these tropes have a long history in the United States where they have been strategically deployed against people of color—Black, Brow, Yellow, and Red—whether native-born or immigrants or refugees. The federal government has made efforts to control the “over reproduction” of various racial and ethnic communities at different historical times during moments of crises. The primary aim of prohibiting the entrance of Asians to the United States, whether through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, or the Immigration Act of 1924, was to curtail or halt altogether the growth of the of those communities. Americans have historically advocated for those kinds of restrictions as 121 U.S. Census Bureau, “Table 245. Persons Below Specified Poverty Level in 1979 by Relationship, Age, Sex, Race, and Spanish Origin: 1980,” 1980 Census of Population, Chapter D, Detailed Population Characteristics, Part 5, Arkansas (November 1983), 536-540. 119 nativist sentiments flare. Those attitudes loom particularly large during economic downturns and during the United States’ wars with Asia and during the Vietnam era these two strong forces coalesced as the nation was in the midst of a severe recession. Americans wanted to have jobs and saw Vietnamese people as competitors which arguably they might be. But overall the fear of competition was not the main thrust of objections; instead they were cultural and racial arguments. Vietnamese were racialized through fears of disease, prostitution, and ethnic community formation which would all lead to the wholesale destruction of the United States and is identity. Shutak mentioned syphilis, tuberculosis, and leprosy, a line-up that is based on sexual activity, a high mortality rate if left untreated, and a large social stigma most famously represented in the Bible. He then argued that most Vietnamese would be unable to assimilate, their foreignness too large, too much. The connections he and other Arkansans made to Cubans and Puerto Ricans demonstrates how aware they were to issues of race and ethnicity and how the United States was changing and being destroyed with Miami and New York as the best examples. Northwest Arkansans might have been overwhelmingly White in 1975 but that was only the case because they had lynched and massacred African Americans until most of the rest of them left the area. Arkansans were well aware of the diversification of the nation, but they would resist it as best they could. “A Profound Misadventure in American Life”: Humanitarianism, Morality, and the War Negative and xenophobic reactions were not the only feelings that Arkansans had toward Vietnamese refugees; some accepted the placement of Vietnamese in the state. 120 These feelings can be most clearly seen in statewide editorials that ran the week after the arrival of the refugees. Writers gave a variety of reasons which included humanitarianism, payment for intervening in Vietnam’s affairs, following forbearers who welcomed those less fortunate, and to demonstrate how much Arkansas had changed from its racist past. Those more welcoming sentiments were tied to feelings of failure or frustration born out of the United States’ failed intervention in Vietnam. For example, The Eagle Democrat from Warren argued that Arkansans “should not be unkind to them [Vietnamese refugees] simply because they remind us of a rather profound misadventure in American life.” Similarly, the Baxter Bulletin from Mountain Home argued that people who had “tried to shut the war out of their lives” would no longer be able to do so because of refugees’ arrival to U.S. shores. According to the Dumas Clarion from Dumas, “the United States ought to find room for the new refugees, to whom this nation owes an obligation” because many of them were relatives of U.S. citizens or worked for the U.S. government marking them as enemies to the communist regime. 122 The Yell County Record from Danville put it to their readers in the following manner: “What it really gets down to is strictly humane—is it morally right or not for America to bring back the Vietnamese who helped us during the past 10 years?...Maybe it’s not the right time to bring a 100,000 refugees and over, to America because of our unemployment and our slow economy, but it’s hard to say that it is not our ‘moral’ obligation.” The editors of Yell County Record believed, much like those of the Dumas 122 “Those Vietnamese Refugees at Fort Chaffee,” Arkansas Gazette, May 11, 1975, sec. A Ibid. 121 Clarion, that leaving the Vietnamese in their country would have likely resulted in a massacre and ultimately argued that the United States and its people had a “moral obligation” to offer shelter and relief. The Yell County Record editors invoked the United States’ “moral obligation” despite a slow economy and financially difficult times because this quality is emblematic of the country: “Hopefully, we as Americans can retain this value as a people and nation.” 123 This approach to the situation was premised on the area’s Christian values, even if religion was not explicitly mentioned. The Moral Majority was on the upswing and on its way to becoming the Christian Right with a focus on “traditional values” and fighting against the “moral breakdown of America.” Additionally, they fought against moral relativism, antifamily values, and federal bureaucracy. 124 Because the decision to use the camp was made without any input from local and state officials, Arkansans saw it an infringement of their rights and as an imposition on the state. But the decision was made and the people were there and the situation put many of their beliefs to the test. The “moral obligation,” the Christian course of action was to sponsor a refugee or family because it was the right thing to do. The Northwest Arkansas Times from Fayetteville took it one step further and argued that skirting the moral issue by turning refugees away would eradicate the core of United States and its people. But their logic was not solely based on a moral argument; they also relied on logic of quid pro quo where both parties must pay each other in terms of suffering. They endorsed 123 Ibid. 124 Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). 122 the acceptance of Vietnamese refugees because the United States “owe[s] them something”; “they suffered dearly, so we should return the favor.” 125 The Vietnamese had to deal with U.S. intervention and now people in the United States would have to deal with Southeast Asian refugees in their back yards. This obfuscated the situation because Arkansans would deal with a certain number of people who would sooner or later care for themselves as opposed to living in the United States while the Vietnam interfered, leading to a war that would displace Americans around the world. The editors moreover argued that there was no reason to “assume automatically that they will be a plague on our society” and pointed out that many refugees were college-educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers. Pointing out the good qualifications of these new arrivals served to alleviate anxieties that the refugees were going to be a “plague” that was to consume the United States. Notably this argument was not one based on humanitarianism or a moral obligation but a much more pragmatic approach that recognized there was a price to pay for the United States’ (failed) intervention in Vietnam. The editors, however, could not resist invoking Liberty Enlightening the World (more commonly known as the Statue of Liberty) and, by extension, its meaning for so many: freedom and liberty. They rhetorically asked, “Or would the opponents, in the final analysis, have us dismantle the statue and send it back to France with a brief note of thanks…?” The question was meant to disquiet readers or force them take note of their actions and the ramifications—that if the U.S. populace and Arkansans in particular 125 Ibid. 123 turned their back on Vietnamese refugees they might as well put a tombstone on everything the United States purportedly represented. 126 A newspaper out of Little Rock decided to take a more local approach by addressing the issue in terms of the image of the state in the mind’s eye of the rest of the world: Once again, America is a refuge for a frightened and homeless people, and we are proud that Arkansas has been chosen to give them temporary refuge. Though the image doesn’t fit any more, countless non-white people throughout the world still associate Arkansas with racism because of the 1957 school desegregation crisis at Little Rock. With the arrival of the South Vietnamese refugees, the state now has an opportunity to show the world what it is really like – a state of open and friendly people, a state that knows what it is like to be down and out and poor, a state that describes itself as a Land of Opportunity and invites outsiders to make a go of it. 127 These editors drew on the idea of the United States as a haven for the world’s downtrodden and were proud that Arkansas was going to be a temporary home for Vietnamese refugees. They were, however, particularly concerned with the image of the state among “non-white” people of the world, arguing that many of them still erroneously believed Arkansas and Arkansans were racist based on the events that surrounded the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. Thus, the task handed to Arkansans was to present an accurate portrait of the state and its citizens as welcoming people, who invited “outsiders” to try their luck in the “Land of Opportunity,” which in this case 126 A close look at U.S. history demonstrates that freedom and liberty have been the rights of only a small percentage the nation’s population. For two excellent analyses see Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 127 “Those Vietnamese Refugees at Fort Chaffee.” 124 refers to both Arkansas and the United States. 128 The editors were happy with the overall response of Arkansans to Vietnamese refugees. They were quite certain that despite language and cultural differences, assimilation and the integration into the fabric of American life could be accomplished “if the rest of the country respond[s] like most Arkansans have it is a problem the nation can lick.” 129 In this scenario, Arkansans served as the example to follow—a leader to the rest of the country. State newspaper editorial writers, however, were not the only people to speak up and support the arrival of Vietnamese refugees in one way or another. Other Arkansans voiced their opinions as well, often paralleling the logic and arguments used in the op-ed pieces. For example, Steve Smith of Huntsville wrote to Governor Pryor and commended him on his “humanitarian wisdom and public courage” and was particularly glad that “the reaction to [his] actions had been widely favorable and had helped lift the people of our state out of the narrow ways and distorted views of the past.” 130 Smith does not mention racism explicitly but refers to it implicitly and thus saw the events of 1975 as an opportunity to finally overcome the past. Indeed, it had been less than two decades since the world watched as Faubus turned away the nine African American students. Generally, Arkansans resented the use of Fort Chaffee but some of them were anxious to get Vietnamese into their communities—as long as they were doctors. 128 “Land of Opportunity” was Arkansas official state nickname from 1947 to 1995. 129 “Those Vietnamese Refugees at Fort Chaffee.” 130 Steve Smith to Pryor, May 31, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 29 “Vietnamese Refugee Program--Favorable.” 125 “Critical Need for Trained Medical Personnel”: Vietnamese Doctors for Arkansans’ Health Shortly after the fort opened it came to Pryor’s attention that amongst the thousands of refugees were hundreds of professionals including doctors. He subsequently appointed a special committee to determine the possibility of licensing them and advanced medical students to become certified physicians under Arkansas law due to a “critical need for trained medical personnel in many of Arkansas’ rural counties.” By early August the governor’s office estimated that there remained one-hundred and thirty doctors at the camp; however, they were being sponsored at a rate of four per day making it “imperative that [a] training program should be initiated as soon as practicable.” 131 The special committee determined that at that time there were approximately five senior medical students and fifteen physicians interested in becoming certified to practice medicine in Arkansas. In order to be licensed, however, the individuals had to pass the Educational Council for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) exam and serve a one-year internship in an approved medical facility. The University of Arkansas Medical Center (UAMS) would prepare the candidates for the exam scheduled for July 1976 at a cost of approximately $10,000 per person. The committee felt that the costs of the program should be borne by local communities through loans to the individuals “who, by contractual obligation, agreed to practice in that community for a specified period of time after completion of his internship. The loan would be repaid through actual service in the 131 David Pryor to John Miller, August 7, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 4 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Special Assistance.” 126 community by the physician.” 132 The Legislative Council voted to support the program at their August 8 meeting. 133 By August 15 Pryor released a statement authorizing the expenditure of $165,000 from the Emergency Fund--$100,000 for stipends and direct expenses, $42,000 for housing and maintenance, and $23,000 for education expenses incurred by UAMS. 134 The program went forward and “twenty refugee physicians were selected for training. It provided intensive language instruction, cultural orientation, medical didactic and tutorial instruction and instruction relative to the practice of medicine in this country.” 135 The program also provided “dependency and education allowances” for the forty-eight family members of the physicians. 136 To further fund the program they obtained nearly $60,000 from the Bureau of Health Manpower, HEW and federal assistance “limited to basic and clinical sciences instruction costs together with stipend allowance for 4 months not to exceed $250.00 per month” for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1976. According to Thomas A. Bruce, Dean of the College of Medicine at UAMS, the program went as planned and was “identified as a model program by federal education authorities.” Whereas other efforts to train Vietnamese refugees to pass the ECFMG were as low as 30 132 Ibid. 133 Marcus Halbrook to the David Pryor, August 12, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 4 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Special Assistance.” 134 Statement by David Pryor, August 15, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 4 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Special Assistance.” 135 Thomas A. Bruce to David Pryor, July 21, 1976, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 4 “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Special Assistance.” 136 Ibid.; the quotes from this paragraph are taken from this letter. 127 percent likely due to poor language comprehension and difficulty with cultural transition, he was confident that 50 percent of Arkansas’ cohort would pass the medical portion. He was also attempting to secure funds to extend the ECFMG training program for those physicians who nearly passed the exam or who passed the medical portion but failed the language section. 137 I was unable to find documents that conclude the story of the Vietnamese health professionals that participated in the program. However, that was not the only way that Southeast Asian doctors could end up sponsored into rural Arkansas communities. William L. Johnson, a store owner, learned early on there were Vietnamese doctors in Fort Chaffee and he was committed to securing one for his town so that its residents would no longer have to travel thirty miles to the nearest clinic for any kind of medical necessity. He made six trips and encountered fierce competition from other small communities which had the same needs and eventually sponsored Drs. Thieu Bui and Thoa That De to the Delta town of Wilmot. 138 By March 1976, forty men, women, and children had arrived though many of them worked picking cotton. However, some had left after work slowed down. Bui had been chief surgeon of the First Corps area in Saigon after serving seventeen years in the army, nine of them as a paratroop battalion surgeon. He had been a medical exchange student in Morgantown, West Virginia which made him highly sought 137 I could not find the results of the 1976 ECFMG exam or how many Vietnamese refugee doctors and medical students completed an internship year and practiced medicine in rural Arkansas. 138 Janice Clark, “Vietnamese Doctors Bring Health Care to Arkansas Community,” Arkansas Gazette, March 7, 1976, sec. E. 128 after once he was in Chaffee due to his experience with U.S. hospitals and because he had passed the required license exam. Bui agreed to return with Johnson as long as he could also take De, an old college classmate he ran into while at Fort Chaffee and an obstetrician-gynecologist. Johnson along with his uncle, William de Yampert, agreed to sponsor both families and the fifteen people made the trip to their new home. Bui’s wife, Simone, was a Paris-educated lawyer who spoke fluent English and French and was dedicating herself to teaching English to children and adults in the Wilmot schools. De’s wife, Dr. Phung Mai, was a pediatrician. The doctors alternated working at a small clinic and their salaries were paid by the Civil Service under the auspices of the National Health Service. 139 While Pryor attempted to secure a much needed resource for many rural Arkansans, many people still objected to the program. Noticeably their objections were not based on arguments that such efforts were unnecessary but instead on a belief that Arkansans were victims of their government and Vietnamese refugees. For example, L.W. Setz of Ozark argued: We [Americans] might insist on closing the golden door on most of the free gift medical education for refugee doctors and give most of the free education money to some worthy native Arkansan who have worked to make Vietnam safe for the Vietnamese refugees. If the U.S. people don’t speak out to stop begin victimized by refugees we might have the country flooded with millions of South Koreans one of these days, to pay our phony obligation to them. 140 139 Clark, “Vietnamese Doctors Bring Health Care.” 140 “That Golden Door,” Southwest Times Record, article attached to letter from A. DeGroff to the Editor of the Southwest Times Record and carbon copied to Gov. David Pryor and John Eisenshower, August 23, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 33, “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Assistance Offered (3 of 3).” 129 Setz focused particularly on an Asian invasion, or “yellow peril,” that would invade the national body and drastically affect the lives of worthy and hard-working Americans. He couched his objection on the depletion of valuable resources that were owed to “worthy native Arkansans” as opposed to outsiders who deserved nothing from the United States. DeGroff concurred that Arkansas tax payers were being burdened with Vietnamese refugees. Moreover, like other Arkansans, he feared that it would be impossible to incorporate them, especially as they procreated: “Thousands of children, with a new crop in the offing every nine months. HOW CAN we absorb them?...Where are they coming from? All of North Vietnam must be enroute, which means Communists by the thousands.” 141 For DeGroff the first step of the invasion of Vietnamese would take place by half a country moving to the United States and bringing with them their communist ideas that would eradicate everything the United States stood for, despite the fact that they fled communist persecution. The second step would take place by biological reproduction, something with no foreseeable end, as subsequent generations would follow in the footsteps of their ancestors and have too many children that would consume the nation’s resources and radically alter the national (racial) makeup. According to Setz and DeGroff Vietnamese refugees were not entitled to valuable resources offered by the state and federal governments, instead, “native Arkansans” were the people worthy of such resources. The Governor and his office agreed. On July 30, 1975 Rick Osborne reported that Colonel Morris, director of both the Arkansas Student Loan Program and the Guaranteed Student Loan Foundation, called to 141 A. DeGroff to the Editor of the Southwest Times Record; capitals in original. 130 inquire whether any Vietnamese would be interested in a loan. Osborne told Morris “to discreetly check and not alert them of existence of the funds more than necessary in keeping with the Governor’s policy of not encouraging the refugees to stay any longer than necessary. State loans—federal funds, but Arkansans need the money too.” 142 Thus, the governor and his office agreed with the logic and goals of many Arkansas residents in wishing that Vietnamese refugees’ stay in Arkansas be as short as possible. Noticeably, Pryor’s efforts to facilitate the stay of twenty doctors and advanced medical students were in sharp contrast to his policy. That program, however, seemed to provide benefits to both Arkansas and Vietnamese. It was in the state’s best interest to provide qualified medical personnel for rural areas while participating in the program provided the sponsorship refugees needed to leave the camp. This situation, however, was an exception because neither Arkansans nor the state government wanted Vietnamese refugees to say in the state. These sentiments fall in line with researchers, which demonstrated that although many Americans said they did not object to Vietnamese refugees in the United States, they greatly disapproved of the marriage of one of them into their family or would refuse to have them as guests in their home. In short, most Americans did not want to have them too close. 143 The contours of “yellow peril” can be seen in the contrasting approach to supporting and securing funds for the training of Vietnamese doctors for the ECFMG— despite constituents’ objections—and to making sure that Vietnamese students seeking 142 A note from Rick Osborne, Office of the Governor, July 30, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 68, Folder 9, “Vietnamese Refugee Program—Suggestions and Ideas”; underline in original. 143 Roberts, 81. 131 higher education were not alerted to state monies for loans. Arguably both groups of students would contribute to the state, though advanced medical students and doctors would presumably do so more quickly. But the note from the Governor’s office made it clear that the objection was not solely to the use of state or federal funds but because he did not want to encourage Vietnamese refugees to stay in the state, not even if they were pursing higher education. This situation demonstrates how tenuous Arkansas’ welcome was for Vietnamese. Conclusion The use of Fort Chaffee as a refugee and processing center for Southeast Asians occurred during a moment of great change for the United States. The rise of the conservative right, based at least in part on resentment and backlash from the Civil Rights Movement and its concomitant issues—desegregation of public schools, busing of students, and voting rights for African Americans, White resentment against strides for racial equality, ongoing fears of a Communist invasion, the Vietnam War whose trauma caused a national identity crisis, fear of big government, Black folks unhappy with the slow progress who sometimes expressed themselves on the street, White folks quietly seething with anger at the changes in their lifetime. Perhaps no one person better understood all those tensions than George Wallace. He tapped into the rage that many White people held underneath the surface and ranted against African Americans and connected the Civil Rights Movement to a communist conspiracy. He recognized the alienation that America’s working and lower-middle classes had in the North and 132 South. 144 They felt “powerless” given the federal government’s intervention in local and state matters and its acquiesce to people of color power movements, the anti-war movement, the feminist movement. 145 They felt “betrayed” by the abandonment of “God, Flag, and Country.” 146 White folks across the South established suburban communities, away from urban areas and Black people that lived there. They continued to segregate themselves and those in the middle and upper classes were successful. Many Arkansans in the northwest did not need to move out of their neighborhoods, since the area was so White. Five hundred Southeast Asians in the area would not change that though people were definitely happy when Fort Chaffee shut down on December 21, 1975 after processing 50,809 people. It seemed like the best Christmas present its neighbors could ask for. 147 Arkansans were resistant to the use of Fort Chaffee to process Vietnamese because it was federally imposed while many of them were panicked about the demise of the United States due to the unassimilable Asians. Some of the worries that Arkansans expressed about Vietnamese such as biological over-reproduction have a long history in racializing African Americans and anti-Black racism but the outspoken letter-writers did not explicitly connect Vietnamese to African Americans. Instead, some of them saw them 144 Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995). 145 Carter, The Politics of Rage, 15-17. 146 Dan T. Carter, “Legacy of Rage: George Wallace and the Transformation of American Politics,” The Journal of Southern History 62, no. 1 (February 1996): 3-26. 147 Peggy Watson, “Last Refugees Depart Amid Cheering Crowd,” Arkansas Gazette, December 21, 1975, sec. A. 133 closer to other “foreigners”—Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Mexicans who blighted and continued to threaten New York, Miami, or the Southwest. Vietnamese’s race was the most important factor at play when Arkansans reacted to the refugees. Although some class issue also arose it was race, and by extension cultural issues, that were the hallmark of Arkansans’ concerns. In this case, the Asian-specific “yellow peril” permeated the discourse on Vietnamese. The Vietnamese community had been in Arkansas for only five years when Chaffee was once again used a refugee processing center for Cubans, but the latter group would have a very different experience with Arkansans and state officials. 134 CHAPTER 3 Arkansa(n)s Victimized by the Federal Government and Mariel Cubans: Legal, Political, and Military Actions 1 On Sunday, June 1, 1980 at mid-morning about 100 Cubans began to gather on Fourth Avenue inside of Fort Chaffee and approached one of the gates. A Cuban refugee talked to the group and they dispersed. At noon they “returned with rocks and empty bottles” which they threw at Military Police and state troopers stationed at the gate— three were injured. 2 At 1:30 p.m. about 200 Cubans broke through the entrance on Highway 22. “They encountered no resistance, other than verbal commands from Army guards to retreat. Upon reaching the highway, the refugees appeared puzzled and confused until one, shouting ‘Libertad!’ struck out toward Barling.” The crowd followed him toward a bridge a few hundred yards west of the gate while continuing the recitation of “liberty!” Two State Police cars stopped in front of them then “two troopers, wielding nightsticks, attempted to confront Cubans until an unidentified Army major, jumping between the troopers and refugees, shouted, ‘Don’t hit them!’” More State Police vehicles blocked the road but Cubans ran around the barricade then state troopers and local policemen formed a “human barricade and managed to turn back about half of the crowd. Officers chased retreating refugees to the front gates, kicking and clubbing the 1 Throughout the chapter I refer to Cubans from Mariel, Mariel Cubans, and Cubans from the boatlift and only use Marielitos when quoting sources. I have chosen to do so because the term Marielito has derogatory connotations borne out of the negative media reports about the group. Also, in Spanish the diminutive can be used to dismiss and belittle people and I believe this was one of the aims of using the moniker given the group’s stigmatization at the time, and some would argue until today. Consequently, I have chosen not to use the term. 2 Bob Plunkett, “What Went Wrong at Fort Chaffee: Behind the Cuban Refugee Crisis,” Arkansas Times (September 1980): 42-43; the subsequent quotes are from the same source. 135 Cubans on the heads, backs and arms. The 75 or more refugees who slipped through this barricade were finally halted about 50 yards from the Barling city limit by a line of local police and deputies….” 3 By the following week, Fort Chaffee was fortified with “barbed concertina wire and guarded by more than 2,000 federal troops.” 4 From April to October about 125,000 Cubans left the island after Fidel Castro initiated his “Back Door Policy” which allowed many people wishing to leave the island to do so. The majority arrived in the United States where they were temporarily detained in Florida but the numbers left the government unprepared to deal with people reaching the shores. Thus, they were sent to processing centers throughout the country. Fort McCoy, Wisconsin as well as two of the three military camps used in the 1970s to process and hold Vietnamese refugees—Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas—were once again utilized for this task in party because of their prior experience. 5 Arkansans resented Cubans and the federal government more deeply than they had in the case of Vietnamese. At first glance it seems that the reactions to both groups should have mirrored each other if for no other reason than because both were fleeing communist countries while anti-communist feelings were still prevalent in the United States, yet negative reactions to the re-activation of the camp and to Cubans themselves was swift. 3 Plunkett, 43. 4 Ibid., 34. 5 B.E. Aguirre, “Cuban Mass Migration and the Social Construction of Deviants,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 13, no. 2 (1994): 172. 136 To Arkansas and Arkansans the use of Fort Chaffee as a refugee holding and processing center for the second time in a five-year period was an “objectionable burden” and one which added to the existing acrimonious relationship the state had with the federal government for imposing change on the region. The matter was complicated further by negative media coverage of the Cubans that constructed them as murderers, prostitutes, and homosexuals, i.e., as criminals and deviants, as well as by protests at each of the camps. Arkansans resentment toward Cubans was also influenced by two national trends—economic anxiety and evangelical fundamentalism. The 1970s had been rocked by high unemployment rates and inflation and the latter peaked in 1980. At such a time aid to foreigners, even those fleeing a communist country, stirred bitterness based on feelings of victimization where outsiders were “taken care of” while Americans struggled to survive. Some Americans, white people and white men in particular, increasingly understood themselves as victimized by compatriots seeking “special” treatment. For them the end of de jure segregation and disenfranchisement at the ballot box provided equality. They objected to women, people of color, and gays who sought “special” treatment because it resulted in an encroachment of their rights. At the same time, evangelicals sought to impede what they saw as the slackening of morality, the deterioration of (heteronormative) gender and sexual roles was threatening the familial structure and the nation which was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Their solution was to go back to fundamentalist doctrines, fight against secular culture, and do so through the political arena where they could influence policies to secure their vision. 137 The processing of the Mariel Cubans in Arkansas was a fractious issue due to the protests staged by Cubans as well as questions about their legal status with concomitant concerns about which authorities could detain them and how much force they could use to prevent them from leaving Fort Chaffee. As the opening description demonstrates, it was a multi-department effort that involved the U.S. military, the Military Police (MP), Arkansas State Police (ASP), the Arkansas National Guard, county police departments, and local police departments. While local and state law enforcement officers were more than willing to use extreme force to prevent Cubans from reaching Barling, military officials used only verbal commands to attempt to prevent them from leaving the base. The ensuing dispute encompassed more than simply the orders the U.S. military at Chaffee had or had not received and ventured into the legal categories used to define this wave of Cubans—detainee, entrant, refugee, Cuban/Haitian entrant (status pending)— and into how the designation affected their rights in the country and the State of Arkansas’ responsibility for them. Whereas Christian virtues and morality were often used by Arkansans to support the resettlement effort and sponsor Vietnamese into communities across the state, this was largely absent with Mariel Cubans. Arkansans had reached their limits of their Christian brotherhood. Again, media representation of the cohort as criminals and homosexuals colored their reception. Arkansas evangelicals, especial Southern Baptists, would have greatly objected to their sexual orientation and that they were basking in it as opposed to attempting to curtail it. The Moral Majority had been founded just a year prior and the Religious Right was on the rise, pushing their goals of traditional values. These 138 fundamentalists also objected to the expanding role of the federal government and its placement of what they thought were gay men, communists, and criminals into their communities would have demonstrated the low kinds of values the Democratic Party-led federal state embraced and that it was willing to place its native, white folks in danger. Their Christian rectitude would not have allowed them to aid Arkansas latest refugees. I begin the chapter by analyzing the national mood in more detail and move on to discuss a letter written by the National Governors’ Association to President Jimmy Carter reminding him of the responsibilities of the federal government once it accepted Cubans (and Haitians) in to the United States. I then address media representations of the cohort and their importance to how Cubans were perceived by the public. From there I focus on the events that led to the June 1 uprising. I close with Governor Clinton’s apprehension over whether “federal legislation impose[d] objectionable burdens” on Arkansas and subsequent concerns, mainly, the Arkansas Attorney General’s opinions about the U.S. legal status of Cubans and its implications for state and local law enforcement officers. The New Right, Fundamentalistic Evangelicals, and Ongoing Recession The so-called “Second Reconstruction,” a period in the mid-twentieth century during the long civil rights era, denotes the federal government’s intervention in U.S. southern society as it attempted to get the region to accept national changes around issues of equality for African Americans. 6 Many of the transformations were the result of legal challenges taken to courts or mandated through federal legislation including the Brown 6 Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion : The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006, 3 rd ed. (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007); Clive Webb, ed., Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 139 decisions, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Despite violent and brutal episodes and massive resistance, change once again came to the region. 7 Many of the white folks who could afford it moved away from the urban centers to the suburbs in order to maintain their way of life, their segregated lifestyle. 8 To white folks, especially the working-class, the change came at the cost of their standing because during slavery and segregation whiteness was a kind of “wage,” a benefit that provided a certain kinds of privileges and entitlements. 9 In the ensuing decades various politicians tapped into white rage and resentment. Dan Carter points to George Wallace as the first politician to exploit “white backlash” as a means to further his political career. 10 In doing so, Wallace set the precedent for a “politics of rage” that has been central to the rise of the Republican Party. He posits that by 1972 the GOP was solidly identified with conservative American values. Subsequent politicians like Nixon and Reagan used such a values system to mobilize a base of supporters against the liberal 7 Numan V. Bartley, The Rise of Massive Resistance: Race and Politics in the South During the 1950s (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999 [1969]); George Lewis, Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006); Francis M. Wilhoit, The Politics of Massive Resistance (New York: George Braziller, 1973). 8 Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 9 David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of American Working-Class. Rev. ed. (New York: Verso, [1991] 1999). 10 Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). 140 Democratic Party who was out of touch with traditional values as it supported African Americans, gay people, and (lazy) welfare recipients. 11 Much of the conservative push, the rise of the New Right, arose from the suburbs though they mobilized their peers at city, state, regional, and national levels. 12 According to Clive Webb modern conservatism “utilizes racially encoded concepts to legitimize attacks on minorities. There is a distinct echo of segregationist rhetoric in the New Right defense of states’ rights from the tyranny of centralized government.” 13 However, the rise of conservative politics was not in response solely to the civil rights movement but also to other struggles for equality such as the gay rights movement and the feminist movements. Many Americans thought that these and other groups were asking for “special” rights, resented them for the illegitimate claims, and saw themselves as “defenders of the core American values and ideals.” 14 According to Jeffrey Dudas, “scholars agree that the resentment that accompanied the rights revolutions of the twentieth century was motivated by self-interested concerns that egalitarian social change threatened existing patterns of privilege” though the arguments were couched within 11 Dan T. Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gringrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1964-1994 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University press, 1996). 12 Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); and Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 13 Clive Webb, “A Continuity of Conservatism: The Limitations of Brown v. Board of Education,” The Journal of Southern History 70, no. 2 (2004): 335. 14 Jeffrey R. Dudas, “In the Name of Equal Rights: ‘Special’ Rights and the Politics of Resentment in Post- Civil Rights America,” Law & Society Review 39, no. 4 (2005): 723. 141 discussions about a “way of life.” 15 “[R]esentful Americans have made sense of, and condemned, redistributive social change by appealing to such ingrained values as states’ rights, anti-communism, color blindness, traditional racial and gender stereotypes, evangelical Christianity, free market ideology, and nostalgia for allegedly harmonious communities.” 16 The rancor is based on a sense of victimization where groups claiming “special” rights violate the legitimate rights of the rest of society. In Arkansas, as in the region, issues of states’ rights were particularly salient given their histories while the expanding evangelical movement also had a strong base given the area’s overwhelmingly Protestant communities. 17 By the 1970s fundamentalism was growing, especially in the South, and expounding “its core concerns for proclaiming the Gospel, its fundamentalist doctrines, its concern for personal piety, and its militant opposition to liberal theology and to secularizing culture” and becoming “deeply” involved in national politics. 18 Some of the early leadership of the Religious Right was drawn from separatist fundamentalists. According to George Marsden it was only after white southerners were no longer solidly voting Democratic that “the Religious Right emerged as a national movement with conspicuous southern leadership, best exemplified by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Robinson.” He also argues that “fundamentalist militancy typically arises when proponents of a once-dominant religious 15 Ibid., 726. 16 Ibid., 732. 17 Brian Stanford Miller, “Car Tags and Cubans: Bill Clinton, Frank White and Arkansas’ Return to Conservatism,” (PhD diss., University of Mississippi, 2006), 49. 18 George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2 nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 231-232. 142 culture feel threatened by trend in the larger surrounding culture.” Thus, it is unsurprising that the early Moral Majority emerged from the upper South and took over the Southern Baptist Convention, the United States’ largest Protestant denomination. 19 Marsden also posits that the countercultural revolution of the 1960s was motivated by patriotism and the Vietnam War but the transformation in family and sexuality had a greater impact in shaping 1970s fundamentalism. “Dramatic changes in standards of public decency, aggressive second-wave feminism, gay activism, and challenges to conventional family structures all generated alarm….This revolution in standards for sexuality and gender coincided with aggressive efforts to secularize public culture” with the 1963 Supreme Court ruling against reading the Bible in public schools as a primary symbol. 20 Fundamentalism was more influenced by “opposition to the expansion of the powers of civil government” and “its intrusion on people’s lives” than with doctrinal erosion; the only exception being Southern Baptists. There was strong opposition to affirmative action, school busing, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the ban on prayer in schools which all fueled anti-government resentment because it altered their way of life. He concludes that “the Christian School movement had gained immensely in popularity as a practical sort of cultural separatism and as an alternative to government controlled secular education. Especially in the South, one motive was to avoid racial integration but resistance to other cultural trends soon became more basic to 19 Ibid., 234-239, quote 237. 20 Ibid., 239-243, quote from 240. 143 the national movement.” 21 In Arkansas, Family, Life, America, and God (FLAG) represented the resurgence of an ultra-conservatism which decried the Equal Rights Amendment and supported prayer in school. 22 Along with these issues, the U.S. economy suffered in the 1970s. At that time, James T. Patterson argues that Americans were “conditioned to expect progress, they were impatient, and they resisted leaders who asked them to sacrifice. Suspicious of authority figures, they were quick to direct their wrath at Ford, congressional leaders, big businessmen, lawyers—anyone in position of power.” 23 When President Jimmy Carter took office in 1977 the per capita income improved on average of 1.8 percent a year while overall per capita income in the South rose from 60 percent of the national average in 1960 to 80 percent in 1980. 24 Amidst these positive inroads, inflation soared and the index of consumer prices rose from 4.9 percent in 1976 to 12.5 percent in 1980; that year the economy went into another recession. Anthony Campagna summed up the nation’s ailments in the following way: “the economy was floundering, and the political atmosphere was contentious. The nation was in the grip of stagflation, and the mood of the public was gloomy. Having just emerged from a sharp recession, the economy did not appear to be growing strongly enough, and unemployment was still hovering around 21 Marsden, 244-246, quote from 246. 22 Miller, 88. 23 James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 10. 24 Anthony Campagna, Economic Policy in the Carter Administration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995); Patterson, 59. 144 7.5%.” 25 In response, Carter supported fiscal responsibility which often meant cutting expansive spending programs and attempted to persuade unions to restrain their demands for raises. 26 Although the South objected vocally to federal oversight, they were more than willing recipients of federal largess. In 1979, for example, it received more in federal aid than it contributed to tax revenues ($1.24 received per every $1 sent). 27 Arkansas, however, remained one of the poorest states and many people depended on federally subsidized programs for subsistence. Communists, Criminals, and Homosexuals: Mariel Cubans as a Dangerous Triumvirate It was during this period of economic instability and cultural upheaval that Castro announced he would allow an unrestricted number of Cubans to leave the island. On April 24 when he made the announcement, the U.S. press reacted positively to the news because they saw these Cubans as only the latest cohort fleeing the communist regime and anti-communism was still a potent point of mobilization. 28 These Cubans were raised under Castro’s leadership, they were “children of the revolution” and yet they wanted to leave the island; to the United States this was perhaps the best example against communism as people voted with their feet. 25 Campagna, xi. 26 W. Carl Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy: Policy in an Age of Limits (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2002), 130-144 27 Diane K. Blair and Joan Roberts, “Acquiescent Arkansas: the 1981 Response to Reaganomics and the New Federalism,” Publius 12 (1983): 163. 28 Brian Hufker and Gray Cavender, “From Freedom Floatilla to America’s Burden: The Social Construction of the Mariel Immigrants,” The Sociological Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1992): 321. 145 The two prior “waves” of exiles from Cuba consisted of upper-class and middle- class people, they were professionals, business owners, managers, skilled workers, and overwhelmingly white. The first to leave the island did as soon as Castro was victorious or immediately after he nationalized industry (1960-1964) and many were able to transfer their savings to the United States while others were re-hired by the U.S. companies that had employed them in Cuba. When the second cohort (1965-1974) arrived made up of small merchants, skilled, and semi-skilled workers, there were Cuban-owned businesses that often hired them. However, social class distinctions from the island were transferred to the United States; for example, those who had belonged to the five most exclusive yacht and country clubs in Havana founded one in Miami and nicknamed it “The Big Five.” 29 Cuban exiles in the United States initially enthusiastically embraced those leaving from Mariel but when the press began reporting that they were social deviants, many Cuban Americans distanced themselves fearing the new cohort would tarnish their reputation in the United States as “golden exiles.” Unlike their predecessors, this group was working-class with close to 71 percent blue-collar workers and with more people of color since Blacks or Mulattos made up more than 20 percent of the arrivals. 30 29 For a more about the waves of Cuban exiles see, Pedraza, “Cuba’s Refugees”; Maria de los Angeles Torres, In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999); and Felix Roberto Masud-Piloto, From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants: Cuban Migration to the U.S., 1959-1995 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). 30 Gastón A. Fernández, “Race, Gender, and Class in the Persistence of the Mariel Stigma Twenty Years after the Exodus from Cuba,” IMR 41, no. 3 (2007): 612; Pedraza, “Cuba’s Refugees,” 317-318; idem, “Los Marielitos of 1980: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality,” Cuba in Transition (ASCE), 14 (2004): 91. 146 The media coverage changed quickly as Castro cast them as criminals, delinquents, and parasites in an effort to discredit the group. 31 Brian Hufker and Gray Cavender argue that the April news stories were positive but by May negative ones began to constitute the majority with the press focused on criminality, mental illness, and homosexuality as the three primary deviant themes. 32 Consequently, Susana Peña concluded that “racialization, class stigma, and sexual deviance were thus embedded in coverage of the Mariel migration, reinforcing the notion that these migrants were no loss to Cuba and posed a potential problem for the United States.” 33 In the end, less than two percent of the Cubans from Mariel were considered serious criminals and denied asylum. 34 John Borneman argues that “what is most perverse about the classification of the Marielitos is that we have an odd actual convergence ‘in practice’ of three major American demons—‘communists,’ ‘criminals,’ and ‘homosexuals’—which usually converge only in the mind.” 35 He further argues: “a seemingly political threat is actually perceived as if it were a sexual one, where political boundaries are perceived as if—i.e., felt like—they are boundaries of the body.” 36 This is more so the case in a country such as the United States where immigration laws are structured in terms of kinship—where 31 Hufker and Cavender, 327; John Borneman, “Emigres as Bullets/Immigration as Penetration Perceptions of the Marielitos,” Journal of Popular Culture 20, no. 3 (1986): 73; Susana Peña, “‘Obvious Gays’ and the State Gaze: Cuban Gay Visibility and U.S. Immigration Policy during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 16, no. 3 (2007): 485. 32 Huker and Cavendar, 328. 33 Peña, 485. 34 Silvia Pedraza, “Cuba’s Refugees: Manifold Migrations,” Cuba in Transition (ASCE), 5 (1995): 319. 35 Borneman, 83. 36 Ibid., 84. 147 family reunification is generally of the utmost importance and where the law is aimed at facilitating the replication of heteronormative families which are based on sexual reproduction. Communities are often conceived as a body that needs to be taken care of and protected, especially from certain outsiders. Protection of “a way of life” often takes on these tones, as was the case during the integration of Central High School when the community was in danger of being contaminated by the federal government and African Americans. In 1980 the threat came from gay communist criminals, many of whom were also Black or mixed race. The United States has used sexual, gender, and moral norms to exclude certain groups of people from entering the country including prostitutes and homosexuals. 37 However, the authorities never invoked the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act) with Cubans which excluded homosexuals based on a framework of “psychopathic personality or a mental defect.” 38 According to Lourdes Arguelles and Rudy Rich, “the Cuban gay immigration posed a difficult contradiction for the U.S. government, pitting its strong desire for a real advantage in the Cold War against its equally strong homophobia. Then, as now, anticommunism won out. Those fleeing the socialist revolution were welcomed despite their frequently open homosexuality.” 39 Less than a year prior to the Mariel boatlift, the Public Health Service had ceased to use 37 Eithne Luibhéid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 38 Lourdes Arguelles and B. Rudy Rich, “Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Revolution: Notes Toward an Understanding of the Cuban Lesbian and Gay Male Experience, Part I,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 9, no. 4 (1984): 689; Luibhéid, 78. 39 Arguelles and Rich, 689. 148 homosexuality as a “Class A medical exclusion” and in September 1980, acting Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner David Crosland sent a memorandum that “the Department of Justice [DOJ] and INS were to exclude homosexuals entering the United States, but ‘solely upon the voluntary admission by the alien that he or she is homosexual.’ Aliens making an ‘unsolicited, unambiguous admission of homosexuality’ and those so identified by a third party or parties would undergo secondary inspection.” 40 At the secondary screening they were only to be asked if they were gay, if they answered in the negative they were released, if they answered in the positive they were to sign an admission and exclusion procedures initiated. 41 It is unclear how closely these rules were followed during the processing of Mariel Cubans. One man, for example, could not recall if federal officials asked him about his sexual orientation but Peña posits that local state and federal officials “demonstrated a strong yet inconsistently focused interest in the sexuality of Mariel immigrants. 42 Obtaining an accurate number about how many gay men and women left Cuba during the Mariel boatlift is difficult to determine. At that time Judy Weiss, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spokesperson said, “I don’t think there are any accurate statistics at all on this issue. A refugee’s sexual preference is not one of those questions that is part of our system of interrogation here.” Dorothy Riccio, a police officer from Albuquerque who volunteered 30 days at Fort Chaffee, estimated that only 40 “Problem Population – Gays,” Chaffee – Resettlement, Consolidation, December 3, 1980, AFP, MC 870, Box 2, Folder 7 “C/HTF: Office Papers, Nov. 25, 1980 – July 29, 1981,” 58. 41 Peña, 493. 42 Ibid., 483. 149 400 refugees were gay but that is on the lower end of estimates. A military corporal on guard duty at Chaffee said the government did not try to sort people but as everyone rearranged themselves, some barracks ended up with more gay men. 43 The Chaffee – Resettlement, Consolidation report notes that many gay men self-segregated, which gave them a high level of visibility which in turn fueled media estimates that up to 20,000 of the refugees were gay. For example, a Washington Post article in July claimed U.S. and private agency sources declared that up to 50 percent of the 40,000 Cubans in the centers were gay. 44 The report notes that the Cuban-Haitian Task Force (CHTF) estimated 1,000 self-identified and takes care to state that it is “a figure will within the expected distribution of homosexuals in any large population.” 45 A later report from the CHTF stated that 2,500 gay men arrived. 46 Bill Traugh, director of FEMA at Chaffee said: “All we know is that we have a lot of gay people here among our 10,179 remaining refugees.” 47 In the same article, however, he is also quoted as saying that those that are openly gay self-segregated into two barracks, each holding up to 125 people. If that was the case, then Fort Chaffee’s gay population was 250 making them about 2.5 percent of the camp’s population. The caveat was that those were the folks who “acknowledged” 43 Plunkett, 39; including Weiss quote. 44 Warren Brown, “Cuban Boatlift Drew Thousands of Homosexuals,” Washington Post, July 7, 1980, sec. A. 45 “Problem Population – Gays,” p. 58. 46 Wilford J. Forbush, Director, Cuban/Haitian Task Force, “Fort Chaffee Resettlement Plan” Memorandum to Jack Svahn, March 10, 1981, AFP, MC 870, Box 1, Folder 5 “C/HTF: March 3, 1981 - March 31, 1981,” 4. 47 Brown, “Cuban Boatlift Drew Thousands of Homosexuals.” 150 their homosexuality and the suggestion was that many disavowed it. 48 Cubans might also have been confused as to whether they needed to avow or disavow their sexual orientation because many used their homosexuality to get out of the island and because they perceived the United States to be more liberal, they were unaware that it could be used to deny their entry. 49 Cubans hoping to pick up their relatives also had other theories as to why there were so many gay men in this cohort of refugees. Francisco Vasquez Ruiz explained: “In Cuba, a homosexual is classified as ‘peligrosidad.’ When Castro began to let peligrosidad prisoners leave for America, I knew heterosexual men who went so far as to shave their eyebrows and put on dresses, pretending to be homosexuals in their attempt to be declared peligrosidad.” 50 Even “obviously” gay men in Cuba played up their homosexuality in order to be granted an exit permit by the government. For example, one man who had been told he was too “obviously” gay to be a teacher made sure to wear “the gayest outfit he could find” which included a flowery shirt and a snugly fitting chain for his interview with the Cuban police. 51 Attempting to figure out accurate numbers for queer migrants is a formidable task because as Eithne Luibhéib argues “in many ways comprise ‘impossible subjects’ with unrepresentable histories that exceed existing 48 Ibid. 49 Peña, 497. 50 Plunkett, 39. 51 Peña, 482. 151 categories.” 52 Because sexual orientation or non-normative gender identity is used to exclude immigrants from entering the United States it’s a category that cannot be accurately represented. It is an impossible task to determine the numbers of gay men and lesbians who lived in Chaffee, though as noted above there were at least two barracks with people that were gay. Mariel Cubans arrived in Fort Chaffee on May 9: “The oblong white exteriors were barely visible in the dusk, giving these first 128 refugees a glimpse of what would become their first home in the United States. The men, mostly ranging from 20 to 40 years of age, would be joined in coming days by more than 19,000 of their countrymen, including several thousand women and 220 minors, temporarily forming the 11 th largest city in Arkansas.” 53 This reflected the trend in May where 74 percent of arrivals were men, 26 percent women, and 18 percent children (less than 18 years old). 54 These demographics would come to play a central role in the difficulty of finding sponsors for them as Americans were more likely to sponsor family units than single men. 55 For Arkansans, Mariel men constituted a threatening triumvirate—criminal-homosexual- communist—like they did for many other Americans across the nation. Race also played a significant role in terms of how Arkansas constructed and received them because 52 Eithne Luibhéib, “Queer/Migration: An Unruly Body of Scholarship,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 14, no. 2-3 (2008): 171. 53 Plunkett, 34. 54 Frederick M. Bohen, Director of the Cuban-Haitian Task Force, “Monthly Entrant Report for November,” Memorandum to Eugene Eidenberg, December 11, 1980, AFP, MC 870, Box 1, Folder 2 “C/HTF, Nov 6, 1980-Dec 17, 1980,” 13. 55 Plunkett, 34. 152 Gastón Fernandez estimated that Fort Chaffee’s non-white population was nearly double the cohort average at nearly 40 percent with almost 30 percent Black and 7 percent mulatto. 56 This meant that “Arkansas 11 th largest city” was also almost half non-white, a significant demographic change in northwest Arkansas’s overwhelmingly white landscape while the possibility that so many gay men were in their community also alarmed area residents. 57 Before Arkansans had a chance to panic about the backgrounds of the group, the primary concern was the federal government’s responsibility to the state. Arkansas’ Assistance to the Federal Government Federal authorities informed Governor Clinton about the selection of Fort Chaffee as a refugee processing center on May 7, 1980—only two days before Cubans arrived in the state and just a few days past the five year anniversary of the arrival-date of Vietnamese. 58 Upon receipt of the news he released a statement to the press asserting that he knew that all Arkansans understood the Cubans’ desire for freedom, especially as they fled from a communist dictatorship. In many ways this statement was similar to the one Governor David Pryor made when Vietnamese refugees arrived; he said that Arkansans understood their experience and that there was a long tradition of sharing with others. 59 56 Gastón Fernández, “The Freedom Flotilla: A Legitimate Crisis of Cuban Socialism?” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 24, no. 2 (1982): 189. He interviewed 225 Cubans or 1.5 percent of Fort Chaffee’s population with even distribution across 150 barracks. 57 Plunkett, 34-39. 58 Memo from Bob Lyford and Freddie Nixon to Rob Wiley, October 14, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 2 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – Memos & Notes.” 59 Editorial, “A Welcome to the Refugees,” Arkansas Gazette, May 3, 1975, sec. A. 153 Yet, the messages were different in tone. Most notably, Pryor’s address was infused with Christian feeling through his reference that Arkansans tried to live by the Biblical admonition to treat others the way they want to be treated. 60 Unlike Pryor who focused greatly on the refugees and their transition, Clinton centered the role of the federal government by talking about how it “imposed” the burden and “responsibilities” on Arkansas, its officials, and its people: The Cuban refugees who are now temporarily housed in Florida came to this country in flight from a Communist dictatorship. I know that everyone in this state sympathizes and identifies with them in their desire for freedom. I will do all I can to fulfill whatever responsibilities the President imposes upon Arkansas to facilitate the refugees’ resettlement in this country. I have ordered all appropriate state agencies to co-operate with Federal officials in working out details of the resettlement at Fort Chaffee… 61 The authority the federal government exercised in accepting Cubans and placing them at their discretion in various states of the Union is a role that Clinton and other governors did not forget. By the end of the month John P. Lagomarcino, General Counsel and Legislative Director of the National Governors’ Association, wrote a letter to Gene Eidenberg, Deputy Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs, reminding the federal government about their responsibilities in providing funds for all the expenses associated with Cubans and Haitians. During this time hundreds of Haitians were arriving on U.S. shores, detained, and sent back to their country despite a repressive dictatorship while 60 Peggy Robertson, “Governor Greets First 71 Refugees,” Arkansas Gazette, May 3, 1975, sec. A. 61 Clinton’s statement to the press, May 7, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 15 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – File 12.” 154 Cubans were automatically allowed to stay. The immigration policy toward Haitians had been unfair since the Lyndon Johnson’s administration and by 1980 Haitians had “acquired the dubious distinction of having the highest rejection rate of political asylum applicants” because INS constructed them as economic migrants and deported them despite testimony of political persecution. 62 The Haitian Refugee Center worked tirelessly to attempt to get them equal treatment and federal courts often ordered INS to respect Haitians’ rights and give them a fair hearing. Despite ongoing legal challenges, the INS kept their track record of denying Haitians applications for asylum. In 1980 Jesse Jackson, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Senator Edward Kennedy among others fought to ensure that Haitians received the same treatment as Cubans. 63 A recent U.S. District Court decision validated their struggles; Judge James King found that the INS continually committed “a wholesale violation of due process” in their concerted efforts to deny entrance to Haitians and ordered that the facts be considered in each application. 64 Finally, President Carter formed the CHTF that “promised equal treatment” for both groups. However, the victory was short-lived with the election of Ronald Reagan who quickly implemented an effort to keep Haitians out by interdicting boats. 65 It is within the ongoing arrival of Cubans and Haitians that the National Governors’ Association wrote to the Carter administration. The letter opens in a tone 62 Alex Stepick, Pride Against Prejudice: Haitians in the United States (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1998), 102. 63 Ibid., 101-103. 64 Carl J. Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate: the United States and Refugees During the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 182. 65 Stepick, 103. 155 redolent of a parental admonition to a child about taking responsibility their actions: “The decision to admit Cubans and Haitians to the United States – when, where, and how many, under what conditions, and with what status – or a decision to allow them to remain once they have arrived, are unquestionably federal decisions. But decisions made fully by the federal government carry with them responsibilities which must be borne by the federal government.” 66 Lagomarcino further noted that the National Governors’ Association “recognize[d] that the federal government is determining the formal status of the newly arrived Cubans and Haitians. Regardless of the decision made in this matter, the obligation of the federal government to fully cover the costs of services and assistance to the Cubans and Haitians during their first years in the United States remains unchanged.” 67 Lagomarcino’s reference to “the formal status” of Cubans and Haitians gestured to the ongoing processes of defining the legal status these national groups would hold within the U.S. legal landscape. Whatever the designation it would be important because each allowed certain federal benefits and limitations and told state governments what programs and funds the groups were eligible for. Lagomarcino listed five areas in which “virtually all Cubans and Haitians will need some services or assistance from government”—“income security,” “health,” “social services,” “employment and training,” and “education.” 68 Under “income security” the association noted that many 66 John P. Lagomarcino to Gene Eidenberg, May 30, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 15 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – File 12,” 1. 67 Ibid., 1. 68 Ibid., 1-3. 156 Cubans and Haitians were going to be eligible for “federal, state-federal, and state assistance programs” but that nearly 40 percent were young, single males who would be ineligible under federal guidelines. They proposed that “categorical limitations” should be waived for “Cubans and Haitians so that assistance costs for these persons are fully federally covered.” In other words, they advocated for granting these arrivals permission to obtain services from assistance programs but as a means of insuring that the federal government paid for such expenses. For “social services” they would be eligible for Title XX but most states had already exhausted their funds; “consequently, there is not room whatsoever in most states for purchasing or providing additional services under Title XX unless desperately needed services now being provided to other vulnerable populations are halted or severely cut.” 69 A similar scenario awaited “employment and training” since Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) Titles II-D and VI had few vacant slots with severe cuts proposed for the following year. Finally, children and many adults would also enroll in local public schools and they estimated that on average they would require an additional $1,000 more than other students. The purpose of the letter was at least two-fold: 1) to remind the federal government of their decisions and responsibilities; 2) to remind them that state budgets were already strained. Lagomarcino affirmed: State governments recognize that, in the long run, there will be increased costs to state and local governments attributable to the Cubans and Haitians approximately equivalent to the costs of services to similar numbers of their general population. We accept this responsibility and are fully prepared to do our part to assist these Cubans and Haitians in becoming productive citizens. But the acute and disproportionate needs of 69 Ibid., 2. 157 the vast majority of these people for intensive assistance in the areas noted above is something which state governments should not be asked to finance and which they cannot finance now when, simultaneously we are experiencing severe cutbacks in federal aid for many of the programs which would provide assistance. Additionally, the recession is reducing state revenues and increasing the need for services among current residents. 70 Lagomarcino alluded to Carter’s fiscal restraint approach to inflation when he referenced the cutbacks to Social Security’s Title XX and job training and explicitly contrasted Cubans’ and Haitians’ well-being with average and needy Americans that use or will need to use the same services as these entrants. Both programs would likely be essential in Arkansas as it remained at the bottom of national personal income and comparative rates of poverty through the 1990s. 71 The governors’ fears, however, were anticipatory since they did not know how many Cubans and Haitians would end up in each of their states. Arkansans had also feared Vietnamese refugees on economic grounds arguing that they would either take much needed jobs or live off of the welfare rolls; however, it appears that by 1980 their latter apprehension proved unfounded. 72 The accusation that foreign-born workers are the root cause for the denial and elimination of services to U.S. native-born folks is frequently employed. 73 This fits 70 Ibid., 3. 71 Ben F. Johnson III, Arkansas in Modern America, 1930-1999 (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2000), 188. 72 In subsequent years statewide newspapers reported on how Vietnamese adjusted to life in Arkansas but none mentioned welfare assistance. This is not to say that no Vietnamese family used welfare or food stamps but if there was widespread use newspapers would have reported it. 73 George J. Borjas, “Immigration and Welfare: A Review of the Evidence,” in The Debate in the United States over Immigration, Peter Duignan and L.H. Gann, eds. (Palo Alto: Hoover Institute Press, 1998); George J. Borjas and Lynette Hilton, “Immigration and the Welfare State: Immigrant Participation in Meant-Tested Entitlement Programs,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, no. 2 (1996): 575-604. 158 within the framework of victimization because the implication or assumption is that if there were not so many immigrants using the services, the system would not be overburdened and on the brink of collapse. In this way, foreigners deprive natives of their birthright. Frank White, a former Democrat who filed as a Republican in order to challenge Clinton for the governor’s office said as much in an interview: “The people in Arkansas question severely the wisdom of spending $385 million to have an unlimited refugee program from Cuba and Haiti at a time when we have unemployment. These people have a language barrier and they’re going to be on welfare and food stamps and require support of the federal and state government.” 74 The issue, however, is also racialized as African Americans are frequently accused of partaking too much from the system, especially welfare. 75 The “welfare queen” is frequently used as “the public identity of all welfare recipients” according to Ange-Maria Hancock but is shorthand for biologically over productive Black women who then expect the federal government to pay to maintain their children. The letter is also a subtler version of accusations state governors would make in the 1990s about the failure of the federal government to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and how that breakdown impacted their states and the well-being of their constituents in detrimental ways. Perhaps the best example of this is California Governor Pete Wilson who sued the federal government to pay for expenses his state 74 White quoted in Miller, 84. 75 Ange-Maria Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (New York: New York University Press, 2004) and Carly Hayden Foster, “The Welfare Queen: Race, Gender, and Public Opinion,” Race, Gender, & Class 15, no. 3-4 (2008): 162-180. 159 incurred due to failed federal law enforcement. 76 Chapter 4 addresses these issues more fully as Arkansas elected officials, political organizations, and nativist grassroots organizations accused the federal government of failing to protect the nation from massive immigration of people from the Third World. While Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin governors anticipated their financial concerns, none foresaw the high- levels of anxiety that would encompass their states, their constituents, and the refugees. Mounting Anxieties, Tensions, and Frustrations: “Castro Agents,” Protests, and “Libertad!” On May 19, only ten days after the first refugees arrived, Clinton released a press statement publicizing his distress over the security at Fort Chaffee. That same day Bill Tidball, Coordinator for FEMA, reported that the MP were on stations, that there were foot patrols along the perimeter, and that Cubans went off base for cigarettes. 77 In order keep Cubans in, more cigarettes were to be provided and announcements made through a loudspeaker that if they went off base their processing would be delayed. Governor Clinton used state and local law enforcement to secure the perimeter around the camp but according to the Fort Chaffee Task Force Situation Reports (SITREP) from the days leading up to May 19 there were only a few “notable incidents” none of which included refugees leaving the base or having serious altercations with military personnel. 78 76 Chapter 4 addresses these issues more fully as Arkansas elected officials, political organizations, and nativist grassroots organizations accused the federal government of failing to protect America from massive immigration of people from the Third World. 77 “Tidball” note, May 19, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 12 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – File 15.” 78 “Ft. Chaffee Task Force, Public Affairs SITREP” No. 6-9, 11, May 13-17, 19, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 17 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – File 10.” These included three Cubans identified as communists 160 Nevertheless, Clinton talked with local officials regarding “the concern of citizens in the area about problems which could be caused by some of the refugee population at Fort Chaffee.” 79 The governor further stated that “this is a Federal problem and the Federal Government must take responsibility for providing more adequate security. Until it does, we will provide whatever assistance is necessary from the state to enable the local officials to do the job.” 80 He spoke with Sebastian County Sheriff Bill Cauthron, ASP Director Colonel Doug Harp, and other local law enforcement officials to “maintain adequate 24-hour-a-day security.” Major General Jimmie “Red” Jones, the Adjutant General of Arkansas, recommended two courses of action. First, reinforce the ASP with noncommissioned officers of the Arkansas National Guard in order to allow the former to reassign personnel to the Troop H area near Fort Chaffee. The state military could also provide sedans to patrol the roads and highways surrounding the base. Second, Jones’ office had been in contact with Lieutenant Colonel Moye of the ASP who assigned one additional sergeant and four men to Troop H to aid in patrolling duties. 81 However, the federal government only agreed to provide more security personnel after the June 1 uprising. 82 causing a crowd to gather on May 13 and MPs dispersing the crowd. Rocks were thrown at Cubans but hit one MP. An incident involving a soldier and a female prostitute, and one domestic disturbance. 79 Press Release from the Office of the Governor, May 19, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 12 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – File 15.” 80 Ibid. 81 “Assistance to Law Enforcement, Sebastian County,” memo from Jimmie “Red” Jones to Governor, May 19, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 12 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – File 15.” 82 “Chaffee” Timeline memorandum from Bob Lyford and Freddie Nixon to Rob Wiley, October 14, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 2 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – Memos & Notes.” 161 By the end of May there were already concerns about the kind of force the military could use to impede Cubans from leaving the base. For example, a notation from the “military” section of a May 27 meeting about security at Fort Chaffee stated that the military had not received orders from the Pentagon giving them additional security. However, the U.S. Attorney told Clinton’s staff that the DOJ gave the military the order to maintain security. 83 At that point, the city, state, and county law enforcement officials were still patrolling the area. Lieutenant Colonel A.T. Brainerd, a spokesman at Fort Chaffee said that security was adequate and added that “Cubans are not actually incarcerated here. After all, we’re not running a concentration camp.” 84 But area residents were afraid because “for a while a year ago the average Arkansan envisioned the Cubans in Arkansas as nothing more than a pack of criminals.” 85 Jack Moseley, editor of a Fort Smith newspaper said: “No one was very high on the Cubans. It was a totally different reaction than to the Vietnamese who were out there in the 1970s.” 86 Local nerves were set on edge based in part on the negative media reports. Bill McAda, spokesman for FEMA, attempted to address these when he told reporters that thieves, murderers, and psychopaths did not form the majority of these Cubans. It was true, however, that many had been to jail in Cuba but only because they had been deemed 83 “Security” notes from meeting at Fort Chaffee, May 27, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 6 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – Memos and Notes.” 84 Lt. Col. A.T. Brainerd quoted in Plunkett, 39. 85 Bob Plunkett, “The New Arkansans: The Cuban Refugees, Revisited,” Arkansas Times 8, no. 1 (1981): 22. 86 Associated Press, “Two Decades Later, Mariel Boat Lift Refugees Still Feel Effects of Riot,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2001, sec. A. 162 a threat to the Cuban government. 87 Arkansans were unaware that in order to leave the island Cubans had to apply for an exit permit and obtain a carta de escoria (“dreg” letter) where they publicly confessed their crimes. 88 Among the so-called criminals were former political prisoners or other Cubans that had been sent to jail for participating in the black market or running illegal business or other offenses which were misdemeanors within the United States. 89 McAda implied that if they were a threat to the Cuban government then they were anti-communist and thus held a political perspective most Americans supported. He also noted that he and other officials had not found drugs in Fort Chaffee or had any knowledge about drugs being present in the camp despite media reports. 90 On the night of Monday, May 26 about 350 Cubans that had been protesting their detention broke through the southwest gate and into the neighboring community of Jenny Lind after somebody yelled “liberty!” According to one report, the military and park police did not attempt to stop them because of “questions about the military police’s authority over civilians.” 91 This community is a subsection of the Barling area whose population in 1980 was 3,761 (unfortunately, the 1980 Census did not list the racial breakdown of the town). In 1990, the population grew to 4,078 with white folks constituting 90 percent of the population and African Americans 1.2 percent with 48 87 Plunkett, 39. 88 Aguirre, 168. 89 Fernández, 189; Pedraza, “Cubas’s Refugees,” 319. 90 Plunkett, 39. 91 Unknown, “Better Security for Camp Asked as Refugees Flee,” The New York Times, May 28, 1980, pg. 14. 163 people. 92 Barling and its Jenny Lind area were overwhelmingly white like the majority of northwest Arkansas and Cubans in Fort Chaffee quintupled the town’s population while its nearly 7,600 Black and mulatto people were double the size of the town. To Arkansans, Cubans were dangerous criminals and their blackness only added to residents’ fears. The racial and ethnic backgrounds of Mariel Cubans were rarely discussed; however, that did not mean they did not play a role in how the group was racialized nationally and locally. For example, although only about 20 percent of the cohort was Black or mulatto, 75 percent of 6,547 left at Fort Chaffee at the end of 1980 fit the category and 93 percent of them were single men demonstrating the reluctance Americans had to sponsor single black men. By March 1981, only 402 Cubans had found sponsors in the state as opposed to the 500 or so Vietnamese sponsored into northwest Arkansas area alone. 93 In contrast to the Southeast Asian community which grew post- sponsorship, Cubans largely left the area. By 2001 only about 15 refugees from Mariel lived in the area. Billye Carter and Don Carter, a Black couple who sponsored several Cubans said people were fearful but racism also played a part. Billey Carter said people reacted differently to the Black Cubans than to the white ones while Don Carter stated that “after the darker-skinned Cubans came, people started getting leery and the sponsorships stopped. 94 92 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population, Detailed Characteristics of the Population, Arkansas, Prepared by the U.S. Department of Commerce (Washington, D.C. Bureau of the Census, 1980); idem, General Population Characteristics, Arkansas, Prepared by U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of the Census, 1990). 93 Chaffee – Resettlement, Consolidation, December 3, 1980, AFP, MC 870, Box 2, Folder 7 “C/HTF: Office Papers, Nov. 25, 1980 – July 29, 1981,” 51. 94 Quoted in “Two Decades Later.” 164 A local historian recalled that people were “scared to death” and “carrying guns” but McAda compared the Cubans’ energy to a college “panty raid” though Arkansans claimed that they ran through the streets shouting threatening slogans such as “Come on Castro, lets kill some Americans.” Locals fired shots into the air as the refugees approached the houses even though Cauthron said “there seemingly were no overt acts on the part of the refugees to damage any property.” 95 McAda reminded Arkansans that Cubans came to the United States for freedom and that “no citizen has been threatened or harmed in any way.” 96 However, Jenny Lind and other Arkansans were outraged at his response. The situation was fanned by the press on the day of the Arkansas Democratic Primary and Governor Clinton immediately labeled the security at Fort Chaffee “totally inadequate.” 97 He pleaded with the federal government to handle the situation by sending more personnel: “They’re going to have to send those soldiers in there, and they’re going to have to establish a perimeter of mobility more narrowly restricted than the 72,000 acres of Fort Chaffee.” 98 He ordered 64 Army National Guards from the Second Battalion 142 nd Artillery Brigade and later another 140 guards to assist local and county law enforcement officials. For the rest of the week life on Fort Chaffee proceeded without major incidents. On the afternoon of Friday, May 30 about 30 Cubans assembled on Fourth Avenue roughly 1,000 yards from the gates. They were threatening a hunger strike to protest their slow processing; however, camp officials were able to calm them down. 95 “Better Security for Camp Asked as Refugees Flee.” 96 Plunkett, 39, 41. 97 Ibid. 98 “Better Security for Camp Asked as Refugees Flee.” 165 Their confinement did not make sense to them because they knew their predecessors did not have such an experience. 99 The rate of processing was one of the key and volatile issues at Fort Chaffee during the summer of 1980. All the parties involved—Cubans from the Mariel boatlift and volunteer agencies inside and Cuban Americans and Arkansans outside of the camp—were getting anxious about the slow processing rate but none more so than the refugees themselves. McAda said that when FEMA was given the task of finding sponsors for Cubans the agency expected them to be cleared by the INS and health officials like the Vietnamese had been as opposed to arriving unprocessed. Moreover, FEMA had also expected 80 percent of the refugees sent to Fort Chaffee to be family units with the other 20 percent made up of single-males, but the opposite occurred which made finding sponsors more difficult since Americans were far more likely to help families as opposed to single men. Dave Lewis, head of the United States Catholic Conference (USCC), one of the largest volunteer agencies responsible for finding sponsors said that delays were due to INS processing. By early June, the USCC had registered about 9,500 and found sponsors for 4,500 but they had yet to get clearance from immigration officials. Federal officials countered that it was not due to their screening procedures but because of lack of sponsors. 100 After the Carter administration formed the CHTF, twelve federal agencies were involved and worked with seven volunteer agencies, most of which had experience with 99 Masud-Piloto, From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants. 100 Jo Thomas, “Troops Ordered to Arkansas Camp After Refugee Riot,” The New York Times, June 3, 1980, A1. 166 Southeast Asian resettlement efforts in 1975. 101 A Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) report, the federal agency in charge at the end of 1980 and who served as the umbrella for the CHTF, stated that nine agencies were involved in resettling Cubans “without direct family ties in the United States, and all those processed through the resettlement camps.” 102 In addition to the USCC, the Church World Service, the International Rescue Committee, the World Relief Rescue Service, the Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, the American Council for Nationalities Service, and the Tolstoy Foundation helped to process and resettle 116,349 Cubans. Part of the reason that paperwork took such a long time was that each agency had unique forms a refugee needed to fill out (some were even supposed to be updated daily), plus, some of the volunteers had limited Spanish ability and information was often lost or rearranged in translation. 103 Joe Daly, assistant operations officer at Fort Chaffee, outlined the procedure as it took place in mid- May: first, a medical screening with hospitalization if required; an “alien number” assignment; initial personal questionnaire and screening; placement in barracks; a more detailed screening by INS with information checked in Washington; a more thorough medical screening conducted by federal officials; finally, possibly a screening by the FBI or the CIA. 104 At the end of May, more than 19,000 Cubans had been at Fort Chaffee 101 Paul Heath Hoeffel, “Fort Chaffee’s Unwanted Cubans,” The New York Times, December 21, 1980, SM 8. 102 Bohen, “Monthly Entrant Report for November,” 10. 103 Aguirre, 171. 104 John Workman, “Churches, Other Organizations All Hard At Work,” Arkansas Gazette, May 18, 1980, sec. F. 167 since mid-May but only 767 had actually left the base to join their sponsors. What Cubans did not know was that 15,913 of them had been cleared by the DHHS, INS had interviewed nearly 8,400, and about 2,500 had been cleared for relocation. 105 To Cubans it looked as if nearly nothing was being done to process their departure. One Cuban refugee expressed his frustration with the process as follows: They [federal officials] tell me to get on this plane [in Florida] and we will go to Arkansas for one week only. But it took ten days to fill out all government papers, to get myself clear with Immigration, with Health Services. Then they say, ‘Wait some more time,’ so I wait. Now, I am here three weeks and the government tells me I must continue to wait. I have family I want tot see here in America. I have a job waiting for me in New Jersey. I have a sister at Eglin Air Force Base camp. Why should I wait any longer? 106 Cuban American relatives waiting outside of the camp were also getting anxious about the how long it was taking government officials to process the cohort. At various points throughout May they would gather outside of Fort Chaffee and call in to their relatives, “You’ve got to get out of there. They can’t keep you!” The process that those from the boatlift were submitted to was in sharp contrast to the treatment previous Cuban exiles received during the height of the United States’ “open door” policy and because of the history, their detention seemed arbitrary. 107 The process reflected the changing United States immigration policies as well as the White House’s poor control over the administration of the program. In fact, the administration was cautious about how to 105 Plunkett, 35, 38. 106 Ibid., 38. 107 Masud-Piloto, From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants; Aguirre, 170. 168 classify Cubans and Haitians because they did not want to encourage Mexicans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, other people from Latin Americans and the Caribbean to seek shelter in the United States. 108 Part of the reason they were apprehensive was due to rumors that drugs, gambling, and homosexuality were rampant in the camp. Moraisa Martinez declared: “We want our decent people out of there. Did you know there are many, many decent people forced to live in that camp?” 109 With her declaration Martinez implicitly acknowledged that there were also bad people in Chaffee but was concerned about her relatives, good people forced to live in the camp. The rhetoric that Cuban Americans and Cubans from Mariel used to discuss the cohort drew from and was a response to the negative media coverage that portrayed them as criminals and deviants. While initially the Cuban American community went as far as renting boats and going to Cuba to pick up family members, they began to distance themselves from most of the Mariel Cubans after media coverage became negative. 110 Within Fort Chaffee, Cubans published a newspaper, La Vida Nueva, from May 10 through November 1980 with the help of the Department of the Army and had more than 15 reporters that discussed events at the camp and around the world. The issues from May 27 through June 10 had front-page articles and editorials chastising “impatient” Cubans for the various protests and the demonstrations that escalated to breaking the camp perimeter and for forgetting what life was like in Cuba. They reminded readers that 108 Engstrom, 147. 109 Plunkett, 39. 110 Masud-Pilot, , From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants. 169 such actions serve only to mar the group’s image nationally and internationally. “It appears you have forgotten what we went through in Cuba. Many of us were prisoners and it does not need to be said that we all know the repressive tools used in those ‘prisons’….” Ruben Tormo Bravo goes on, “we were never treated in such a respectful way, so kindly….They are treating us like human beings, without distinctions to race or class….” “Nevertheless, a bitty group of ‘strongmen,’ politicos without a cause, troublemakers and who knows, invisible agents of Castro, have planted that classification within the Cuban Colony that’s sheltered in the Fort.” 111 Bravo wrote at length about the great organization of the United States, that Cubans were “immigrants who entered the country illegally,” (“nosotros somos Inmigrantes que hemos entrado al Pais de forma illegal,”) and that they had to remember the Cold War that mandated that the “great powers” be careful about whom they let in. A theme throughout much of the newspaper’s run was that of “Castro agents” as the instigators of chaos and destruction on the base where they occasionally persuaded naïve or stupid people to participate. An article published on May 28 acknowledges that there were many impatient people but that engaging in “truly embarrassing attitudes” (“actitudes realmente vergonzosas”) only damaged their cause. Moreover, the “United States has the right to protect its people against the irreparable damages that uncontrolled immigration always brings about.” The author says that Castro let them go in order to be 111 “Por lo visto Uds. se han olvidado por lo que estuvimos pasando en Cuba. Muchos de nosotros fuimos presos y demas está decir que todos conocimos los medios de represión en esas ‘Prisiones’….” / “[J]amás fuimos tratdos en forma tan respetuosa, tan amable….Nos están trantando como seres humanos, sin distinción de raza ni de clases.” / Sin embargo, un grupito de “Caudillos,’ politicos sin causa, enredatores y quien sabe, agents invisibles de Castro, han planteado lad clasificación dentro de la Colonia Cubana que se refugia en el Fuerte.” All quotes translated by author and taken from: R.T.B., “La Noche del 26 en el Fuerte Café,” La Vida Nueva, May 27, 1980. 170 a burden to the Untied States and by acting in ways that violate the simplest standards of civility they are doing his job for him. Moreover, there are “Castro agents” at Fort Chaffee but they are in insignificant numbers. He concludes the article by writing: “only a perfect imbecile or Castro agent could be impatient” given all the accommodations provided for them at the base. 112 After the June 1 break, the newspaper reported proudly on the Cuban “vigilantes” that helped to reestablish order and prevent more property damage; they wore a white armband in order to be easily identified by federal, state, and local officials on the scene. The local and state press also reported on the group. 113 Overall, La Vida Nueva encouraged Cubans to demonstrate how “grateful” and “educated” they were at all times and provided civic lessons in order to teach them how to be good and valuable citizens. The overwhelming majority of people interviewed supported all the raids, inspections, and curfews implemented by the military and law enforcement officers in the months after June 1. La Vida Nueva’s tone provides insight into camp life. Cubans were suspicious of each other, they accepted there were “criminal elements” and policed each others behaviors as best they could. There were some folks who assaulted men, women, and children so Cubans also had to protect themselves to the best of their ability. The situation was a result of a lack of centrally organized processing and clearly defined law enforcement order. When Cubans broke camp laws or built some weapons, it served as a 112 “Es una forma que tienen los Estados de proteger a sus pueblos contra los daños irreprables que siempre ocasionaria una inmigración incontrolada”; C.L.S., “Los Impacientes,” La Vida Nueva, May 28, 1980. 113 L.G.T., “Cubanos Vigilan y Mantienen Control y Orden,” La Vida Nueva, June 4, 1980 and Ray Robinson, “67 Injured in Fort Chaffee Riot,” Southwest Times Record, June 4, 1980, sec. A; Plunkett, 44. 171 confirmation that they were indeed criminals. There was little to no understanding of how those problems were a reflection of the larger institutions not doing their jobs. Bureaucratic infighting often led to neither state governments nor federal offices to take responsibility for the Cubans’ welfare while law enforcement officials continued to be confused about their jurisdiction or refused to get involved at length like some departments in Pennsylvania. 114 The events that occurred El Domingo as the uprising came to be called by Cubans, had built up for weeks. The governor and state and local officials were upset about the lack of security, Cubans were suspicious of each other as “Castro agents,” and Cuban Americans were becoming exasperated with the wait. On Saturday, May 31 Cubans staged another protest. After the Cubans stood their ground, FEMA authorities asked Victor Valdez, a refugee at Fort Chaffee, to calm the dissenters; he had done so on two previous occasions. He spoke with the crowd for 15 minutes and got them back inside their designated area. He told his peers that they needed to try to understand the U.S. government who was attempting to process them quickly but that it was a chaotic task. Valdez asked one of the men in the crowd how long he waited to have the opportunity to move to the United States. The man replied, “For 21 years—ever since Fidel,” and Valdez asked: “So you waited 21 years to come here. Surely you can wait 21 more days or so to enter a country that offers you a new life.” Valdez diffused the 114 Aguirre, 169-174. 172 situation but the next day he told camp authorities he would no longer be a peacemaker; he also urged INS to speed up processing before Cubans took action “in a few days.” 115 The clash occurred on a Sunday and became a serious point of contention between the State of Arkansas and the federal government as each understood the event, its causes, and solutions in different ways. A picture shows the Cubans leaving Fort Chaffee; it appears that it was all men who were unarmed. It is of poor quality so smaller weapons such as rocks are harder to spot, but they look as if they are speed walking, perhaps jogging toward a destination that makes them happy. The crowd does not look enraged. Nevertheless, they did break through the boundaries established by the military and headed into Barling until they were stopped by the officers. After the afternoon skirmish another group, “bolstered by the military’s ineffective response to gate- crashers,” started throwing rocks at MPs across the highway who shielded themselves with their cars. The situation continued to escalate until 6:20 p.m. “when the troopers, in defense, finally opened fire with pistols and shotguns, wounding three Cubans and clubbing another. In ten minutes, federal authorities and soldiers, armed with tear gas and clubs, finally forced the hostile refugees back inside Chaffee’s gates.…” 116 At 8 p.m. about 1,000 Cubans were heading toward the front gate but the MPs responded by forming a line five deep; the refugees upon seeing their numbers dispersed into the compound. 115 Quoted in Plunkett, 42. 116 Ibid., 44. 173 At 8:30 p.m. Major Brian McWilliams, Fort Chaffee’s information officer, reported that everything was calm as Cubans started fires to make their coffee. Apparently, the refugees insisted on cooking inside the wooden barracks despite being told it was dangerous. 117 Nine MPs sent to put out the unauthorized fires had to take cover and called for reinforcements as Cubans assaulted them with bricks and stones. In minutes, the assault grew out of control as more than a thousand frustrated Cubans went on a rampage through the compound overturning guard stations and setting fire to four buildings, including three mess halls. As MPs roamed through the area attempting to corral rioters they were joined by large numbers of refugees, each wearing a white arm band for identity as a non-combatant vowing to hunt down ‘those Communists agitators.’ 118 The outbreak subsided by 10:30 p.m. Later that night McAda said he did not know of any law enforcement officials who had been injured (Plunkett notes that more than 50 were hurt) and could not explain why four Cubans were sent to a hospital in Fort Smith with gunshots and other wounds. The events at Fort Chaffee greatly outraged the surrounding community who “all agreed their town would have been overrun with refugees had it not been for the last-ditch stand made by local police and sheriff’s deputies.” 119 After the uprising, the military put up concertina wire and more than 2,000 federal troops were stationed at Fort Chaffee to watch over the camp population. 120 A map provides a layout and shows some of the ways in which the camp was divided with family, youth, protective custody, and the stockade. Unfortunately, it does not list were 117 “Cuidado Con El Fuego!” La Vida Nueva, May 26, 1980. 118 Plunkett, 44. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 35. 174 the gay barracks were located nor the position of Fourth Avenue which would provide an understanding of how Cubans organized themselves since they often altered the arrangements they were provided. The reasons given for the June 1 uprising or riot, depends on who answers the question. Many Cubans in Fort Chaffee attributed it to “Castro agents” and to some naïve compatriots who were persuaded by demagogues; local residents were certain all the Cubans were criminals that threatened their communities and their lives and immediately needed to be removed from the state; local, state, and federal officials interpreted the events within those extremes which caused even more tension between the State of Arkansas and the federal government. It had been offensive that Arkansas was chosen without a consultation with Governor Clinton, Senators Pryor and Bumpers, and Representative Hammerschmidt but the events of El Domingo had endangered Arkansans lives. To them it proved how little the federal state cared about Arkansas and its people because Clinton had petitioned that security be increased two weeks prior to no avail, it demonstrated that Washington in general and the Carter White House in particular were willing to risk American lives for people that were dangerous. Cubans in Fort Chaffee became a trauma to Arkansans; they were the victims of the federal government and a “mob of maniacs” out to kill Americans and the only reason they survived is because of the valiant efforts of the local and state officers. Does “Federal Legislation Impose Objectionable Burdens on Our State”? Clinton arrived at Fort Chaffee in the early hours of June 2 and said he “was furious” over the “long disputed” question of whether the military could use force to 175 control the refugees. 121 The next day, at a meeting with outraged Barling residents he defended himself by placing the failure squarely on the shoulders of President Carter and by extension the federal government: “In spite of what I was told on election day by the highest authority at the White House, there was still no security on that Fort, and the only thing between you and it were the State Police, who risked themselves to protect you.” 122 Clinton’s finger pointing, however, fell short of the accusations Senator David Pryor, former governor of Arkansas (a post he held in 1975 when Fort Chaffee was used to process Vietnamese), made when he said that the White House’s attitude to Arkansans problems in dealing with Cuban refugees was “almost contemptuous” and that President Carter seemed “totally indifferent” to them. 123 Senator Dale Bumpers added that his warnings of the dire situation went unheeded: “I sent a telegram to the president Thursday and I told them [the Carter administration] it was a powderkeg, but no one at the White House paid much attention.” 124 Eidenberg, who went to Fort Chaffee at Clinton’s insistence, told reporters that he was “appalled” that the order for tougher security measures had not been carried out. 125 During that visit he and Clinton implemented a policy of “reasonable but not lethal force” to control the refugees; plus, “hard-core agitators” were to be removed to federal detention. Clinton eventually understood the situation as a miscommunication, that 121 Ibid., 44. 122 Clinton quoted in Ibid., 44-45. 123 Ibid., 45. 124 “‘Powderkeg’ Ignored,” Southwest Times Record, June 2, 1980, sec. A. 125 Plunkett, 45. 176 “somehow in the chain of command of the military the message didn’t get down” because the White House and the DOJ told him the order to use “necessary force” had been given. 126 The army, however, maintained that it could not use force unless it received the specific orders from a superior military command. 127 Moreover, Brigadier General James Drummond, task force commander at Fort Chaffee, asserted that “there was no breakdown in communications.” 128 He affirmed that they had been authorized to use “reasonable force” but that such an order did not include physical restraint and that he had no control over Governor Clinton’s interpretation of the term. Drummond added that he received an order Monday afternoon that provided for an “amplification of powers” which meant the military could physically restrain refugees. 129 When a reporter asked Drummond if the base “was out of control” he said, “No. I wouldn’t say that. I’d say the state police of Arkansas is kind of bad, though.” (Reporter Ray Robinson suggested that Drummond was likely referencing the use of clubs to get the refugees back on camp grounds.) 130 Ten days later, however, the general called the governor’s office and told them that he had made an incorrect statement about the actions of the ASP; he reviewed the tape and now asserted that the officers acted correctly as they were under attack and in danger. 131 McAda and Causey supported the State Police’s 126 Clinton quoted in Plunkett, 45. 127 Jack Mosely, “Why Did It Happen?” Southwest Times Record, June 2, 1980, sec. A. 128 Kevin Laval, “Breakdown in Communication Denied,” Southwest Times Record, June 4, 1980, sec. A. 129 Ibid. 130 Robinson, “67 Injured in Fort Chaffee Riot.” 131 “Chaffee” Note, June 14, 1980, BCSGP, Box 1, “Fort Chaffee–Misc.– Freddie 2 of 2.” 177 actions from the beginning. The former said that the officers had used necessary force while the latter held that they acted in that manner because “the military has not done a damn thing.” 132 Drummond’s lack of response to the events in Fort Chaffee upset many people throughout the state and lawyer Fines F. Batchelor, Jr. offered to help Arkansas Attorney General Clark in any possible litigation against Drummond for “his feeble attempt to excuse his inaction.” 133 For General Drummond to expect anyone familiar with federal military law to believe that 18 U.S.C. 1385, the “Posse Commitatus” statute, to have prevented him from taking any action to prevent the wholesale destruction of military property under his command, or to reasonably exclude from, or retain on the military installation under his command, persons there to be either excluded or retained upon the military facility is complete farce. 134 Batchelor further argued that Drummond’s justification for inaction was committing “a very serious injustice and damage” to “our beloved United States of America,” to the majority of Cubans who did not participate in the disturbance and to the state and local law officials who did his “job for him.” 135 After the incident there were some debates over whether state law officials were authorized to detain Cubans heading to town and push them back into camp grounds. 136 To this Batchelor claimed that state and local 132 Robinson, “67 Injured in Fort Chaffee Riot.” 133 Letter from Fines F. Batchelor, Jr. to Clinton, June 16, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 14, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–File 13.” 134 Ibid., 1-2. 135 Ibid., 2. 136 This question is addressed fully in the next section. 178 officers were not enforcing federal law but state law. Clinton accepted the lawyer’s offer and told Clark to seek Batchelor’s assistance. 137 Jesse L. Long, a real estate broker who lived in the Jenny Lind community that neighbors Fort Chaffee, was also outraged at Drummond’s actions on the night of May 26 when 350 Cubans broke through the southwest gate and went into that community. Long indicted the General’s actions and argued that the Cubans’ penetration of the camp’s perimeter was “a breach of law. This is a usurpation of the legal constitutional and civil right each of us has to ‘domestic tranquility.’” He condemned Drummond for letting “raving, hostile, belligerent, rioting mob of maniacs armed with knives, clubs and rocks, weapons with which they did [sic] menace our lives here, run screaming and yelling through our community….we were subjected to the horror and terror of them rampaging by and around our homes and community.” 138 The federal government’s failure to maintain law and order subjected the community of Jenny Lind to a dangerous throng who violated their rights and that the U.S. government needed to make amends: Let legal and lawful charges in his control and legal command deliberately trample our lawful and legal rights – just as though our rights didn’t exist….Governor, atone and redress this gross wrong we’ve had to undergo because of Drummond’s inaction and because of the Federal Government’s failure to take steps to insure that our constitutional and civil rights were not violated by these Cubans, lawful and legal charges of the Federal Government, we must have redress from the Federal Government. 139 137 Letter from Clinton to Attorney General Steve Clark, June 18, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 14, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–File 13.” 138 Letter from Jesse L. Long to Clinton, June 14, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 3, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–Misc. Correspondence,” 1, quotes in original. 139 Ibid.,1-2. 179 He demanded “redress for the pain, suffering, humiliation, degradation and contempt wrecked upon us by the Cubans in Drummond’s lawful charge.” 140 Long’s elaborate complaint accurately captures the mood as Arkansans felt threatened and neglected by their government because it decided to protect and take care of outsiders. Long aimed his panic, fear, indignation, and resentment at the federal government and Cubans, the former for abandoning him, his local community, and his state and to the latter whose criminal and violent behaviors threatened Arkansans lives. The rage and indignation that Long showcased in his letter fell in line with the white feelings of victimization that so many people expressed post-civil rights, -gay rights, and -feminist movements though in the South they had special resonance since the federal government had been deemed a meddling outsider since the Civil War. The demographics of the area were also significant because whiteness had been protected in the 1900s with anti-Black terror campaigns that kept the area overwhelmingly white yet the federal government kept imposing non-white foreigners on the area. The resettlement of Vietnamese had been a success though only about 500 were sponsored into northwest Arkansas communities. Southeast Asians, however, largely arrived in family units and were college educated folks who spoke English while the media coverage was supportive to the U.S. refugee endeavor and of the people in need of resettlement. In contrast, Cubans were single men of color and media reports pathologized them as criminals and deviants and the uprising at Fort Chaffee served only to cement such an understanding in Arkansans minds. To Arkansans, Cubans were a 140 Ibid., 2. 180 dangerous triumvirate—communists, criminals, and homosexuals—and having them walk down the street was cause for panic, more so if they were armed with rocks. According to Long, Cubans violated his rights and the federal government allowed them to do so. That Long framed the discussion in term of civil rights is telling because he tapped into the simmering resentment to the ongoing “rights revolution.” He made himself and other Arkansans the victims of a Cuban horde of criminals that rampaged through the community though by all accounts they did little else besides walk down a road after they broke through Fort Chaffee’s perimeter. Long spoke of civil rights but ignored those guaranteed to Cubans despite their special “Cuban/Haitian entrant (status pending)” designation; the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) did not. It conducted a “limited inquiry” into the actions of the ASP during the events that took place in and around Fort Chaffee on June 1 at the request of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ. Clinton soon thereafter sent a letter to William E. Kell, Special Agent-In-Charge of the investigation stating his support of the police officers as well as requesting to include his actions “within the scope of your inquiry.” He informed Kell that the ASP acted under his “direct orders…to contain disturbances and rioting that were taking place on the perimeter of the base. I bear full responsibility for their efforts to quell this disturbance.” He also informed the FBI that the State of Arkansas also conducted its own investigation and believed the ASP acted within the orders Clinton gave and that “their actions were both reasonable and necessary under the circumstances.” Moreover, their actions prevented “tragic violence” to Arkansans and refugees “due to the inability of Federal security personnel to contain the disturbance.” 181 Finally, he argued the state police deserved commendation. 141 The DOJ concluded, based on the FBI’s investigation that the ASP did not deprive Cubans of their civil rights through excessive use of force and that, in fact, there was no evidence for those actions. 142 On October 31 Clinton sent a memorandum to “All State Police Personnel Involved in the Fort Chaffee Incident” informing them that the DOJ investigation was closed, that no offenses had been committed, and that their actions were in “keeping with the highest traditions of law enforcement and pubic service” which won them “renewed respect” from him and every Arkansas citizen. 143 Ironically, Long suggested that Clinton sue Drummond, FEMA, and other entities through the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ for the incident on May 26 and did not wait for Clinton to heed his words; he filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Division as well as a Citizen Complaint with the Inspector General of the U.S. Army. 144 Clinton responded that he preferred to wait for Clark’s “inquiry into the failure by the Federal Military Officials to maintain law and order” before considering a lawsuit. 145 141 Clinton letter to William E. Kell, Special Agent-in-Charge, FBI, June 13, 1980, BCSGP, Box 1, “Fort Chaffee Misc.—Freddie 1 of 2.” 142 Letter from Drew S. Days III, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice to Clinton, September 29, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 8, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—File 19.” 143 Memo from Clinton to “All State Police Personnel Involved in the Fort Chaffee Incident,” October 31, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 8, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—File 19.” 144 Note from Jesse L. Long to Clinton, June 14, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 3, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–Misc. Correspondence” and Copy of Citizen Complaint to Inspector General, U.S. Army, June, 6, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 3, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–Misc. Correspondence.” 145 Letter from Clinton to Jesse L. Long, June18, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 3, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–Misc. Correspondence.” 182 Governor Clinton and Arkansas Attorney General Steve Clark spoke on June 17 about pursuing an inquiry into the possibility that federal action or inaction at Fort Chaffee “resulted in objectionable or harmful encroachments upon the normal field of state functions and powers.” 146 The governor opined that the legal position taken by the military prevented them from providing adequate security at Fort Chaffee and “therefore, imposed upon our State the burden of doing so.” The military argued that 18 U.S.C. §1385, also known as the Posse Commitatus Act, “prohibited military personnel from using force to keep refugees on the fort grounds and to maintain law and order within the fort.” 147 The act prohibits the “social control of civilians.” 148 Clinton also argued that he was given an “interpretation” of the law and was led to believe the military received the same explanation by the White House or DOJ; he only found out later about their differing understandings. Clark investigated the military’s inaction based upon Ark. Stat. Ann. § 5-401 which allowed the Attorney General to “determine whether federal legislation imposes objectionable burdens on our State.” 149 Part of the urgency in answering the question was because Fort Chaffee had already been used as a relocation center in 1975 for Vietnamese and it was likely that it would serve this purpose again in the future. 150 Clark argued that 146 Clinton letter to Steve Clark, June 17, 1980, BCSGP, Box 1, “Fort Chaffee Misc.–Freddie 1 of 2.” 147 Ibid. 148 Aguirre, 172. 149 “Summary of Inquiry of Attorney General Steve Clark,” August 27, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 8, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–File 19,” 1, August 27, 1980. 150 Ibid., 7. 183 the federal statute in question was 18. U.S.C. § 1385 because federal military authorities cited it as the reason for their inaction to control the situation and by extension provide “security to the civilian population residing near the main gates to Fort Chaffee.” 151 In the context of the 1980 summer, “the burden ultimately imposed in this instance was the cost associated with the use of State and local personnel, officials and equipment used to control the June 1 riot. The cost would also include the risk of loss of life and risk of injury to which the State and local officials were subjected. The cost would also include the civilian unrest and insecurity that resulted from the federal inaction.” Clark concluded that the military position that 18. U.S.C. § 1385 prohibited them from controlling Fort Chaffee was erroneous. 152 He noted that federal military authorities were under orders to “exercise the minimum amount of restraint, or physical force necessary” in order to provide safety to persons and property inside the compound and in cases such as May 26 and June 1, outside the compound as well; “to take a contrary view is to ignore the fact that the federal authorities created the general situation (i.e. the use of Fort Chaffee as a relocation center), and in so doing accepted the simultaneous commensurate responsibility and obligation to confine the refugees to the military installation.” 153 He also argued that it was “an inescapable conclusion that federal authorities did not provide for proper security planning and implementation” because procedures were not laid out 151 Ibid., 1-2. 152 Ibid., 2. 153 Ibid., 3, underline and parentheses in original. 184 nor did military officials have the power to act according to what the situation demanded. 154 One of Clark’s arguments mirrored that made by the National Governors’ Association about the federal government’s need to take responsibility for its actions; like the association, he also rebuked that branch of government for shirking its responsibilities. There was a three month difference, however, between the letters so that Clark had more support for his stance than Governors’ Association. By August, Carter had proposed rather insistently that states and local government share the financial cost of resettlement, a position that was in contrast to how other administrations handled refugee processing. The proposal reflected Carter’s fiscal conservatism and was politically naïve since he had just cut some federally funded programs due to the country’s poor economic situation yet he thought breaking with precedent and asking local and state governments to share the cost would not be a problem. Arkansas was not alone in rejecting such a proposal; local and state governments affected by Cubans and Haitians fought against such legislation. For a time, they were reimbursed for 75 percent of the cost for a period of year while Cubans and Haitians were eligible for SSI, Medicaid, and AFDC according to the rules of their state which created severe discrepancies between for states and people. Florida government officials were especially incensed because that was the first stop, and often last one, for both Cubans and Haitians. In response they put forth the Refugee Education Assistance Act (REAA) as a means of covering their costs and 154 Ibid., 4. 185 forcing the federal government to pay for resettlement. They also managed to authorize the use of FEMA monies to pay for the resettlement program. 155 In terms of the confusion over Posse Commitatus, Arkansas was not alone; other camps also had “jurisdictional conflicts” between the Army and civil agencies centered on the act, as well as questions about authority, the use of force, and coordination conflicts with local authorities that were “never satisfactorily resolved.” 156 The military invoked Posse Commitatus because the camps populations were civilians, not soldiers, but state and local law enforcement agents did not understand them solely as that, certainly not as United States civilians with freedom of movement. In the meantime, Clinton admonished the federal government for the confusion about the orders and made certain that Fort Chaffee’s military received clear orders. United States military installations “designated to receive ‘Cuban aliens’” were sent an order on June 2 telling them what to do if detainees attempted to breach their housing area or the camp perimeter. 157 First, they had to establish a clearly marked perimeter with signs in English and Spanish that notified them that unauthorized exists were unacceptable. 158 Military at that perimeter were to take “reasonable measures” such as: Oral warnings and, if those fail, reasonable, but whole non-lethal, measures…only the minimum measures required to deter detainees is authorized: such measures should not impose a threat of death or serious bodily harm. Military personnel may be authorized to use nightsticks and 155 Engstrom, 162-169. 156 Aguirre. 173. 157 “CDR FORSCOM FT MCPHERSON GA//AFOP-COF//,” June 2, 1980, BCSGP, Box 1 “Chaffee – Bob 1 of 2.” 158 Ibid., 1. 186 riot control equipment. Use of the nightstick or baton as a barrier may be sufficient to deter individuals from leaving the enclave; however, individuals should not be struck in the head or otherwise subjected to excessive measures. Firearms without ammunition may be used. 159 They were to use the same measures to keep them from leaving the camp but “military personnel shall not leave the installation to pursue and apprehend detainees.” 160 Clinton probably did not read the order because the limits imposed were not what he would have approved; after all, he supported the actions of the ASP which included the use of batons to hit Cubans on the head as well as the use of loaded firearms. Moreover, he had been incensed the military had not physically tried to stop refugees from leaving or pursued them after they broke through the gates, yet this order prevented the military from chasing Cubans who left the camp. This meant that state officials would be the ones responsible for detaining Cubans meandering through Jenny Lind and Barling. The order, however, raised an important concomitant question: did local law enforcement officers in fact have the legal authority to detain Cubans found outside of Fort Chaffee? Looming Questions about Cubans’ Status and the Authority to Detain Them When Cubans arrived on U.S. shores the Refugee Act of 1980 established an annual quota of 50,000 refugees from any part of the world and the scale of Cubans from the Mariel boatlift would quickly exhaust the quota. Only the first 4,000 Mariel Cubans entered as refugees. Moreover, the act adopted the United Nation’s definition of refugees as anyone who fled their country due to persecution and made people fleeing communism more likely to receive asylum. For a while, Cubans were considered applicants for 159 Ibid., 2. 160 Ibid., 3. 187 asylum; however, the process and paper work was long and cumbersome with review procedures too time-consuming and this classification was also discarded. In an effort to streamline procedures, the U.S. Attorney General created the parolee “Cuban/Haitian entrant (status pending)” category on June 20. 161 Benigno Aguirre argues that “this was a new, anomalous migratory category. There was no provision in the law for ‘entrant’ aliens.” 162 There was political fallout over the Administration’s actions and in October the Carter White House supported the Fascell-Stone Amendment pushed by Florida legislators to the Refugee Act of 1980 which gave Cubans and Haitians “official recognition and levels of social assistance similar to those granted to refugee populations.” 163 However, David Engstrom argues that the administration failed to secure the necessary legislation to legally fix their category so that President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General had to keep extending their parole. Reagan did not treat Cubans and Haitians as equals and quickly implemented a harsh policy toward the latter group. He also carried Cuban Americans in the presidential election making them a valuable constituency while his own anti-communist stance about the “‘pariah’ of the Western Hemisphere” (Cuba) led him to allow the Attorney General to adjust Cubans’ status to permanent residents by using provisions in the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. 164 In Arkansas the question about Cubans’ legal status came to the fore after the White House announced that Fort Chaffee would be used as a consolidation center with 161 Aguirre, 165-166 and Engstrom, 139. 162 Aguirre, 166. 163 Ibid. 164 Engstrom, 186-187. 188 refugees from Fort McCoy, Wisconsin and Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania transferred to Arkansas. 165 Carter’s administration had previously promised Clinton that it would not send any more refugees; however, by August 2 they announced that Chaffee would be the only camp to remain open through the winter. Eidenberg told Senator Bumpers that the camp was the only place in the United States they could put refugees. In a fair response Bumpers said: “It may be the easiest place to put them, it may be the most convenient place to put them, it may even be the most economical place to put them, but this is not the only place they could put the refugees.” 166 One theory that explained the decision was that with the upcoming presidential election, the state was chosen over Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida because it had the least number of electoral votes with six but also historically voted Democratic in presidential elections. 167 Unhappy but acquiescent, Clinton made sure that security would not be an issue again. He negotiated a deal where he had to concur with the Joint Security Plan outlined by the federal operatives running the camp. 168 The governor and his staff also sought to make sure that “certain categories of Cubans” such as mental and medical problems, minors, and “hardcore troublemakers” were not taken to Fort Chaffee but sent to 165 “Chaffee” Timeline memorandum, October 14, 1980. 166 Peggy Watson, “Remaining Refugees Will Be Assigned to Fort Chaffee,” Arkansas Gazette, August 2, 1980, sec. A. 167 Bill Terry, “Cubans and Politics,” Arkansas Times, October 1980, 25; Blair and Roberts, 164. 168 Letter from Clinton to President Carter, September 12, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 2, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—Memos & Notes.” 189 appropriate facilities. 169 Robert Lyford, an aide to the governor, told Clinton he needed to ask Carter for a document that defined the Cubans’ status because the governor’s staff had been previously told that “they were applicants for asylum, not detainees refugees [sic], or aliens. Whatever their status it needs to be committed to writing. Also the authority or lack thereof for a local law enforcement officer to return a Cuban to the base needs to be clarified.” 170 The attempt to obtain a clear legal definition about Cubans’ status was not an exercise in legal doctrine but instead had important consequences for local and state police officers assigned to duties in and around Fort Chaffee. 171 As Clinton spoke with local and state authorities about the Joint Security Plan they wanted to know what authority they had to arrest or detain Cubans when they left Fort Chaffee without permission. Clinton asked Christian R. Holmes, Director of the CHTF, who responded that “the authority of local and state authorities with regard to the arrest or detaining of aliens, which, essentially, is that state and local authorities may arrest and/or detain only for violation of the laws of the State of Arkansas. In the final analysis, however, the actions of State and local enforcement officers would of course be governed by legal guidance provided by the State of Arkansas.” 172 In other words, local authorities could not arrest or detain Cubans walking down the road from Fort Chaffee or 169 “Security at Fort Chaffee for Consolidation,” Memorandum from Robert Lyford to Clinton, August 8, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 1, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—Memos and Notes.” 170 “Chaffee” Timeline memorandum, October 14, 1980 and “Security at Fort Chaffee for Consolidation,” August 8, 1980. 171 “Security at Fort Chaffee for Consolidation,” August 8, 1980. 172 Christian R. Holmes quoted in Clinton’s letter to Clark, September 19, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 9, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—File 18,” 1. 190 in Barling because strolling down the street was a not a crime according to Arkansas ordinances. A few days later Attorney General Clark made the point explicit when he said: “six thousand Cubans walking on Highway 22 adjacent to Fort Chaffee aren’t guilty of anything.” 173 At the same time, however, the June 2 order prevented military personnel from leaving federal facilities to pursue Cubans thus creating a loophole where if refugees could penetrate the camp perimeter they were technically allowed to roam and do as they pleased as long as they did not commit crimes. As a lawyer and former attorney general for Arkansas, Clinton understood the ramifications of Holmes’ reply but sought Clark’s opinion nonetheless; the governor asked him: “What authority, if any, do State and local law enforcement officials have to arrest or detain Cuban entrants who leave Fort Chaffee without permission?” 174 Clark responded with two letters; the first addressed Cubans’ legal status while the second answered the governor’s question. The first had three components. He pointed out that “entrants” was not a recognized category in federal immigration law like “immigrants,” “refugees,” “illegal” immigrants, and parolees for which there existed steps to process them. 175 Because no regulations were written that defined the status “it appears to me that the Cuban ‘entrants’ are being confined in detention or ‘relocation’ centers pursuant to insufficiently defined authority.” For that reason the “authority of federal officials to take into custody Cuban ‘entrants’ who have left Fort Chaffee 173 Clark quoted in the Lonoke Democrat reprinted in “Steve Clark’s Opinion on Security at Fort Chaffee,” Arkansas Gazette, October 20, 1980, sec. B. 174 Clinton’s letter to Clark, September 19, 1980, 2. 175 “Your letter makes reference to Cuban ‘entrants’…”, letter from Clark to Clinton, September 25, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 9, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–File 18,” 1-2. 191 ‘without permission’ is suspect and certainly open to question.” 176 It appears that Clark’s conclusion actually supported the argument the military made about Posse Commitatus because to them “entrants” were civilians and fell under the jurisdiction of the act. Clark even remarked that there was no authority which permitted the President of the United States to allow the admission of thousands of people into the country whether as detainees, parolees, refugees, or entrants. 177 Second, he advised Clinton to attempt to secure a definition of the Cubans’ status in the Joint Security Plan and if he could not achieve that then he should ask the United States Attorney General to declare a legal status as well as a designation and character for the Fort Chaffee “military reservation.” 178 Third, if the federal government failed to act then it was time for state action based on the U.S. Constitution’s Tenth Amendment “which provides that states have the authority to exercise police power except in those areas specifically pre-empted by the federal government.” 179 Clark proposed that Clinton might need to file a suit in U.S. District Court, Western District “seeking declaratory judgment as to the construction of federal immigration laws and actions arising thereunder. This suit should address the issue of legal authority of the federal government to act in the area of law enforcement in contrast to the authority of state and local officials.” 180 The Cubans in Fort Chaffee 176 Ibid., 2. 177 Ibid. 178 Ibid., 3. 179 Ibid. 180 Ibid., 4. 192 presented a new situation for the state because of their ambiguous categorization; Vietnamese had been refugees since their arrival and there was never a question of that status. Clark also put forth that Clinton might consider seeking “injunctive relief” to prevent the transfer of more Cubans to Chaffee until the questions were resolved. This last point was timely since that day marked the beginning of the camps’ consolidation and more Cubans were already on their way to Arkansas. Clark reached the conclusion that “the authority of State and local law enforcement is severely circumscribed. Further, the position of the federal military authorities is that their enforcement capabilities are limited to events occurring within the federal facility. Thus, there still remains confusion over who has the responsibility to act.” 181 The orders the military received on June 2 stating that they were not to leave the base in pursuit of Cubans made the question Clinton asked Clark urgent as more Cubans were transferred to Chaffee. The second letter explicitly answered Clinton’s question regarding the authority state and local officials had to detain Cubans. 182 Clark told the governor that that any person not a citizen or national of the United States was an “alien” with INS determining whether they could stay while enforcement of the Immigration and Nationality Act was at the hands of the U.S. Attorney General. 183 Arkansas and county police, sheriff, and deputies were responsible for enforcement of the criminal, highway, and traffic laws of 181 “Your letter makes reference to Cuban ‘entrants’…”, September 25, 1980, 4. 182 “The office of the Attorney General…”, letter from Clark to Clinton, September 25, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 9, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–File 18,” 1. 183 “The office of the Attorney General…”, September 25, 1980, 1. 193 the State thus if Cubans violated any of those Arkansas regulations they could be arrested by state and local officials. But as to whether they could detain and arrest Cubans who left Fort Chaffee without permission, law enforcement personnel could stop and hold a person if the officer suspected they committed or were about to commit a felony or misdemeanor but the officer had a maximum of 15 minutes to charge them with crimes or had to let them go. 184 Clark concluded the letter by saying that he was “unaware of any law of this State which prohibits or makes it a crime for an alien person to leave a federal compound or institution without permission. It is my opinion, then, that State and local authorities would have no authority to arrest or detain Cuban entrants for this reason alone.” 185 As the consolidation plan was put into action, Clark still sought a written document from United States Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti in order not to file a suit in U.S. District Court. 186 The stipulations Clark demanded were: 1) that “Cubans are detainees under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Feds and that, as detainees, the local and state law enforcement people can provide assistance under color of law for any escapees or people who walk off,” and 2) that Cubans sponsored by Arkansans or living in the state be ineligible for federal or state benefits. While it is understandable that Clark wanted a legal designation for the Cubans so that the state could understand its legal basis for action, the second stipulation had no precedent in the ongoing discussion with Clinton 184 Ibid., 2. 185 Ibid., 3. 186 “Steve Clark and Status of Cubans,” Memorandum from Rudy to Bob Lyford, October 16, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 9, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–File 18.” 194 and ran contrary to what state governments fought the Carter administration for—that Cubans be eligible for federal aid in particular so that they would not be a burden on the state. Civiletti responded to Clinton and said that Cubans at Fort Chaffee were “detainees who are in the exclusive custody of the U.S. Government pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act, specifically Sections 233(b) and 235(b). Accordingly, these aliens, who have not been admitted to the United States, are not free to depart Fort Chaffee, and may be restrained and be kept on the military installation by Federal Government personnel.” 187 Civiletti added that: Any Cuban entrant, except one who has been placed with a sponsor, paroled by my authority, and released by INS into the community, who departs from Fort Chaffee is in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act and INS rules and regulations. A contingent of Border Patrol officers is responsible for finding any such “escapees” and returning them to INS custody at Fort Chaffee. I hearby request that, whenever needed, law enforcement officials of the state of Arkansas and local communities there in render assistance to the Border Patrol or other federal personnel regarding the detection, temporary custody, and return to INS detention, of any such Cuban entrants. 188 The issue was resolved when the Joint Security Plan called for extra Border Patrol agents and deputized U.S. Park Police who would have the capacity to detain Cubans. 189 Appendix O of the Joint Security Plan, “Guidance for State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies,” stipulated that camp authorities would notify state officers if they learned that 187 Letter from Benjamin R. Civiletti, United States Attorney General, to Clinton, October 22, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 8, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—File 19,” 1. 188 Ibid., 1. 189 Letter from Clinton to Paul Michel, Associate Deputy Attorney General, United States Department of Justice, September 26, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 2, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—Memos & Notes.” 195 any Cubans escaped but the latter could only pick them up if they violated local or state laws. Otherwise the local and state officials had to notify Border Patrol agents because it was “the only agency authorized by law to arrest illegal aliens.” 190 Conclusion The consolidation occurred smoothly and no other major incidents occurred. Fort Chaffee finally closed as a refugee and processing center for Cubans in February 1982 at which point 395 folks were sent to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta and a much smaller group to federal psychiatric facilities. 191 For Clinton it was a political catastrophe during an election year; White won the governor’s office with strong support from staunch conservatives and the Arkansas Christian Right. 192 The episode was so negative to Arkansans that they turned down a $50 million per year proposal to use Fort Chaffee as permanent place to process refugees. Fort Smith Mayor Jack Freeze denied city officials turned down the proposal due to xenophobia and instead said: “Our people are unique in that they don’t want to get involved in anything but being happy. Quality of life is more important to our people than making a dollar.” 193 However, these words were a variation of coded language, instead of saying “way of life” Freeze and other Arkansans talked about their “quality of life” which fits within the framework that conservatives use to 190 “Appendix O: Guidance for State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies,” Joint Security Plan for the Cuban Entrants Processing Center Resettlement Operation, September 5, 1980 (continually updated) by the Department of Justice and Department of Defense, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 12, “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee–File 15.” 191 Aguirre, 159. 192 Miller, 96. 193 Gregory Jaynes, “Fort Smith Has Bad Morning After,” The New York Times, February 12, 1982, sec. A. 196 defend “core American values” and attempt to maintain the white privilege which is based on the oppression of people of color. The experiences most northwest Arkansans had with foreign-born people before Cubans were limited to Vietnamese five years prior. There were differences between Cubans and Vietnamese that would be of great importance for their reception in Arkansas. First, families constituted the majority of Vietnamese as opposed to the large numbers of single Cuban men from the boatlift, many of whom were suspected of being gay. Second, Vietnamese in one way or another were constructed as victims whether of war or communism, they needed to be helped and the impetus to do so was often attached to the United States involvement in their country. In contrast, Cubans from Mariel were quickly depicted as criminals and deviants and made more threatening and fearful than anything that was said about Vietnamese. Arkansans might have feared the Vietnamese were backward and non-westernized, lazy people that would live off the government but they did not fear them as murderers or criminals, as mentally ill, or as homosexuals. Arkansans might have feared Vietnamese for being unassimilable Asians but they also had support based on Christian rectitude. By contrast, Cubans did not. In my research I did not find evidence to indicate that Christian churches sponsored Cubans like they had Vietnamese nor did I encounter letters that advocated for them based on a Christian sense of morality. The rise of fundamentalistic evangelicalism would have worked against Cubans as homosexuality was strongly condemned within the Christian Right. There was never a question that Vietnamese were refugees, that they fled a communist country and that Americans needed to do their part to aid them by sponsoring 197 them. There was a kind of benevolent acceptance, not always, but often. Cubans, however, arrived weeks after the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980 and most were denied the categorization “refugee” and instead were eventually made “Cuban/Haitian entrant (status pending).” For Arkansas this designation was particularly important given the ongoing debate about local and state authority to detain them. Additionally, despite the ongoing battles to define them within immigration law, they were constructed discursively as “economic migrants” by the Carter Administration as opposed to people fleeing a communist government. 194 The convoluted process to find an appropriate category for Cubans reflected the growing apprehension the United States government about Latin American and Caribbean people arriving in the nation despite valid claims of persecution and terror. Haitians, Salvadorans, and Nicaraguans, to name a few, never received the kind of “open door” policy Cubans did even though the former fled a violent dictatorship and civil wars. In the end the legal title assigned to Cubans in Arkansas mirrored that of undocumented immigrants as they were “aliens” that had not been admitted to the country. This was made even clearer when the Border Patrol was the only federal agency authorized to detain Cubans found off Fort Chaffee. The agency had exclusive jurisdiction to arrest them and local law enforcement had to call them in. It might be telling that Cubans—a Latina/o group—preceded Mexican immigrants as “illegal aliens” in Arkansas. The rhetoric about criminality is also something the two groups shared. Mexican immigrants are presided to be undocumented, and as law breakers they are 194 Aguirre, 166. 198 criminals that threaten communities in Arkansas. In contrast to Cubans and Vietnamese who were contained within a military installation and were eventually dispersed throughout the country, ethnic Mexicans arrived in Arkansas at their will and lived where they chose. Arkansans could not control how many settled where while they were also the largest group of new southerners and quickly surpassed the Asian American and African American communities in historically white northwest Arkansas. The reactionary responses to Latina/o migrants and immigrants were also centered on the protection of Arkansas communities and their way of life where Latina/os violated both even when they acted within the norms of society. 199 CHAPTER 4 Latinas/os and Polleras: Social Networks, Multi-Site Migration, Raids, and Upward Mobility In Rogers, they [Latinas/os] took jobs in chicken plants at a time when other workers, sick of the low wages, were leaving an industry that was desperate to grow. They have saved chicken-packing from collapse and even helped its expansion, creating an economic boom in Arkansas. —The Economist 1 And little by little everyone bought their house. I know how much the men struggled in California. Here [in Arkansas] we struggle as well. But we also advance. That’s the difference. —Lucia, Mexican immigrant 2 Polleras, as Latinas/os call poultry processing plants, are central to Arkansas and have been for decades. As home to the headquarters of Tyson Foods, the world’s largest meat producer, northwest Arkansas is part of what one scholar called the “Feathered Kingdom,” an area where the industry is king. 3 For decades John Tyson and Sam Walton were local heroes as they expanded and pushed their companies into the upper echelons to become multi-billion dollar and international corporations. Most Arkansans were proud of what these Ozarkers accomplished despite, in the case of Tyson, an increasing stench that emanated from the farms it contracted with, the feathers and dead birds that littered the area’s highways, and the illegal disposal of poultry waste into the area’s 1 Anonymous, The Economist, 348, no. 8086 (1998): 39. 2 Quoted in Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 105. 3 Brent E. Riffel, “The Feathered Kingdom: Tyson Foods and the Transformation of American Land, Labor, and Law, 1930-2005,” (PhD diss., University of Arkansas, 2008). 200 waterways. When Arkansans realized that Latinas/os were drawn to the area by the poultry industry in general and by Tyson’s northwest kingdom in particular, they started objecting, sometimes vehemently, to its role in the racial and ethnic diversification of the area. 4 In this way, capital in the form of poultry has been a powerful agent of change and one which drew tens of thousands of migrants and immigrants from the Americas, especially ethnic Mexicans. This industry did more to diversity northwest Arkansas in one decade than the activation of Fort Chaffee in 1975 and 1980 to process Vietnamese and Cuban refugees. For some Latina/o migrants, Arkansas was a second or third site of settlement; they moved after years even decades of living in more traditional states of immigrant settlement such as California and Texas. They were working-class people who thought they had found their U.S. homes only to realize that their livelihoods were threatened or eliminated in the recession of the 1990s. 5 Other factors facilitated the migration and settlement of these new southerners, but as Steve Striffler argues, “the role of chicken cannot be underestimated.” 6 This industry was searching for more low-wage workers and workers they could exploit more, offered year-round employment, and lax enforcement of immigration documents while the state’s low cost of living served to provide Latinas/os with opportunities of upward mobility and homeownership unavailable in traditional states of immigrant reception and settlement. 4 Class issues were a lesser part of the equation because the Ozarks has historically been a poor area and in the 1990s there were still many working-class White folks. 5 Anecdotal evidence suggest the migration also included some working-class, native-born Chicanas/os but more thorough research needs to be conducted to determine accurate numbers. 6 Striffler, Chicken, 95. 201 Mexicans who had engaged in circular migration for years also discovered these opportunities. Lucia said she stayed behind each time her husband left for the United States because of the living conditions at the migrant camps in California not because she was unable to do the work. After her husband’s first trip to Arkansas, he rented a trailer and asked Lucia to join him. Lucia was quick to note that her family struggled in both California and Arkansas, but the difference was that they “advanced” in the latter. What her husband had been unable to do in years of working in California’s agricultural fields, they did in a few years in Arkansas—they bought a house. And so did “everyone” else, her children and the rest of her family members. This upward mobility, however, often had a tremendous cost as work in polleras is arduous and too often permanently damages their health. 7 Moreover, the rejection many working-class Latinas/os, especially darker- skinned, monolingual Spanish speakers experience from white folks of varying class backgrounds is another price they paid. 8 The demographic shifts that changed Arkansas and the South and the industry’s eventual reliance on an immigrant, mainly Latina/o workforce, were facilitated by globalization and its effects with roots in the 1940s. The industry began in the U.S. Northeast but was effectively moved to the South during World War II when the federal government contracted all the production from the Delmarva Peninsula, then the national center for poultry production, and entrepreneurs like John Tyson took the opportunity to expand their businesses. There was also a push facilitated by the federal government to 7 Striffler, Chicken, 97-107. 8 The rejection and reaction to Latinas/os will be explored fully in the following chapter. 202 allow red meat to be consumed by soldiers and for households to be patriotic and each chicken. This dramatically changed domestic consumption patterns of poultry and laid the groundwork for it to become the nation’s number one source of meat. But raising and producing young chickens, also known as broilers, was not a lucrative endeavor and companies and farmers struggled to increase their profits. The industry responded by vertically integrating as well as developing “further-processed” or “value-added” poultry products. Vertical integration resulted in a further concentration in the South where they located processing plants close to other sources like feed mills and chicken farms and a historically low-wage and anti-labor union region. The industry also changed their relationship to farmers as they began to make more demands on the size and shape of the birds they accepted and hired farmers on a contract basis so that the latter were always on the losing end as they worked without an economic safety net, always in danger of receiving a cancellation of services that would leave them with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Among other products, with Tyson often leading the way, the industry began selling parts of the bird as opposed to the whole, created boneless breast, and tenders which led to a deskilling of labor but an increase in line speeds and repetitive motions and that made working conditions even more heinous. 9 9 David Griffith, Jones’s Minimal: Low-Wage Labor in the United States (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 83- 114; Donald D. Stull and Michael J. Broadway. Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2004), 1-21, 36-51; David Griffith, Michael J. Broadway, Donald D. Stull, “Introduction: Making Meat,” Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small-Town America, eds. Donald D. Stull, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 1-16; and, David Griffith, “Hay Trabajo: Poultry Processing, Rural Industrialization, and the Latinization of Low-Wage Labor,” in Any Way You Cut It: Meat Processing and Small-Town America, eds. Donald D. Stull, Michael J. Broadway, and David Griffith (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 129-151. 203 The increased demand for chicken coincided with the regional boom in the South and growth of what is often called the Sunbelt based on industrial growth in a variety of sectors from the military industrial complex to aeronautics to technology and jobs in the service sector, construction, and manufacturing. These endeavors created employment opportunities for some southerners, mainly White men, who often relocated to urban areas from their rural homes and created a need for laborers willing to do the strenuous jobs at poultry plants. From 1980 to 2000, the White workforce has dropped from under seventy percent to just over thirty percent, Black workers increased from thirty to fifty percent, and Latina/o laborers from one to seventeen percent. During the same period, the number of workers in the industry nationwide more than doubled. 10 There were also a small percentage of other workers such as Southeast Asians depending on where a plant was located. Migrant Latinas/os sometimes worked in poultry plants but through the late 1980s they were not a significant percentage of the workforce, instead they used the industry when agricultural work slowed down or when there was a poor harvest. 11 By the 1990s, Latinas/os migrated in significant numbers to the South to work in poultry plants and the industry saw a variety of benefits when they hired Latinas/os, especially undocumented people—they were eager to work, did not complain about working conditions, and rarely filed worker’s compensation claims. In 1995, John Caplinger, 10 William Kandel and Emilio Parrado, “Hispanics in the American South and the Transformation of the Poultry Industry,” in Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places: Community and Cultural Diversity in Contemporary America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 265. 11 Griffith, Jones’s Minimal,(1993), 100. More research needs to be conducted on why these early poultry workers did not spawn a large scale migration of their peers like the one in the 1990s. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the legalization of millions of Latinas/os provides only a partial answer. 204 district director of INS in New Orleans and referring specifically to Arkansas said, “Obviously, illegal aliens working in the poultry industry is not new, but (in the past) you had a rush before Christmas, a rush before summer, but not this long term employment.” 12 By 2005, Latinas/os constituted a major percentage of the industry’s work force and in some plants in northwest Arkansas their numbers reached into the seventieth percentile. 13 I begin by addressing social relations between Black and White folks because the legacies of slavery and segregation continued to deny African Americans fair treatment and representation even though they constituted sixteen percent of Arkansans. I then present the demographic changes in the last two decades of the twentieth century through a focus on Latina/o growth in general and northwest Arkansas in particular. From there I use the life of a Mexican immigrant couple to briefly trace the factors for Latinas/os who engaged in multi-site migration from their home states to California to Arkansas. The last section addresses the difficulties and opportunities they found in their new locations. On the one hand, grueling work in polleras and work place raids and on the other, lax enforcement of immigration documents, tranquilidad, and a reasonable possibility of homeownership with working-class earnings. 14 12 Quoted in D.R. Stewart, “‘Southpaw’ Pinches Illegals—613 in Week,” Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Sept. 14, 1995, sec. A. 13 Riffel, 259. In 2003 a Tyson manager said one-third of their line force was Latina/o but Human Rights Watch investigators who interviewed Tyson workers in northwest Arkansas suggested a majority of their coworkers immigrants and in that are the majority of immigrants would be Latina/o, see Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants, Human Rights Watch (2004), 110. 14 Tranquilidad literally means tranquility but for many immigrants it encompassed peace of mind in terms of employment and child rearing and referred to an overall wholesome environment. I will discuss the term and its meanings in more detail in a section below. 205 African American Struggles for Equality in the Late Twentieth Century Indicative of ongoing efforts, 1988 and 1990 marked the first time since Reconstruction that the First District (made up of six counties with a large African American populations), respectively, sent a Black Representative and Senator to the state legislature. 15 White Arkansans in the 1990s were still having difficulties addressing issues of representation, structural racism, and integration both in communities at large and in the schools. In this section I use a variety of issues from White flight, to redrawing congressional districts, defeating a segregationist law from the era of “massive resistance,” and attempting to pass the state’s first civil rights law in order to provide some context for ongoing social justice issues. In the 1980s Pulaski County, home to Little Rock, grew thirteen percent in terms of its Black population with its White population decreasing slightly yet all the counties surrounding it grew steadily, except for one, especially in terms of White folks suggesting these areas were becoming bedroom communities, in other words, people commuted to the Little Rock for work but lived and sent their kids to schools in these smaller areas. 16 According to journalist Karen Rafinski, the growth of bedroom communities reflected desires of “advantages of the big city without the drawbacks….lower housing costs, lower crime rates and—in their own eyes, at least— better schools. They also typically find a less diverse ethnic population.” 17 A few miles 15 Joe Crommett, “Voter Strength Stressed,” Arkansas Gazette, March 23, 1990, sec. B; George Wells, “Redistricting Give Blacks Bigger Say,” Arkansas Gazette, October 7, 1990, sec. A. 16 Karen Rafinski, “Racial Mix in Delta is Shifting,” Arkansas Gazette, January 27, 1991, sec. B. 17 Karen Rafinski, “Arkansas Population: Gainers and Losers,” Arkansas Gazette, February 3, 1991, sec. A. 206 west in Garland County, Hot Springs’ population decreased more than ten percent despite its county growing more than nineteen percent. According to Mayor Melinda Baran, the city “is a victim of its school district lines’’ as White folks left the city for more rural areas in order to send their kids to the county’s predominantly White school districts. 18 She even made it clear that several industrial plant closings were not the cause for people’s moves. Two weeks later Baran added that it was “wealth flight” and said that both Black and White folks left the city in search of “good schools” or were “fleeing from what is perceived to be the bad schools.” 19 Though reporters did not use the term “white flight” this is the process they described as White Arkansans moved out of the cities and into more rural areas. This pattern was repeated across the nation as White folks who had the financial resources to leave increasingly integrated communities and schools searched for neighborhoods and areas that were predominantly White. In Little Rock, the middle- and upper-class White folks that pushed to integrate Central High School and its working-class people increasingly moved west and facilitated the growth of Pulaski Heights, which would become one of the city’s wealthier (and White) neighborhoods. However, White flight was only a segment of larger concerns about equality. In December 1989, a three-judge federal panel found that the 1981 districts designed by state officials diluted the voting power of African Americans and ordered the 18 Ibid. 19 Elizabeth Lowry, “Hot Springs Mayor Calls Changes ‘Wealth Flight,’” Arkansas Gazette, February 15, 1991, sec. A. 207 state to create majority Black legislative districts in east and south Arkansas. 20 The decision was part of a series of lawsuits filed by Black lawyers aimed at gaining representation on councils at a variety of levels from school districts to city councils to quorum courts. Often the result was changing from at-large to single-member elections. 21 According to Viney Johnson of the Hope School Board and Mable Mitchell of the North Little Rock School Board, “it’s the only way for blacks to get elected.” John W. Walker, a Little Rock civil rights lawyer who brought several of the lawsuits, believed that improvements depended on increasing Black representation but that it might require “disproportional representation” in order to “be able to make the necessary deals to make this state a decent place.” 22 Walker sought to make Arkansas a respectable place to live, where people could make their voices heard by participating in governing bodies at a variety of scales but many White Arkansans, including government officials, did not share his view. The Board of Apportionment consisting of Governor Bill Clinton (who had been reelected in 1982), State Attorney General Steve Clark, and Secretary of State Bill McCuen unanimously appealed the court-ordered decision for two interrelated reasons. 23 First, the board objected to the creation of three “supermajority” districts where African Americans made up 60 percent or more. 24 They failed to see the long-time existence of White “supermajority” districts throughout the state, even in the Delta with 20 Mark Oswald, “Supreme Court Affirms Redistricting,” Arkansas Gazette, January 8, 1991, sec. A. 21 Wells, “Redistricting Give Blacks Bigger Say.” 22 Ibid. 23 Phoebe Wall Howard, “Clinton Called ‘Arrogant,’” Arkansas Gazette, July 31, 1990, sec. B. 24 Mark Oswald, “Supreme Court Affirms Redistricting,” Arkansas Gazette, January 8, 1991, sec. A. 208 historically large numbers of African American constituents. Second, they sought guidance in terms of reapportionment because the court-ordered redistricting had Black- majorities of varying sizes. Other government officials also objected to the ruling. Representative Doug Wood of Sherwood believed race relations would deteriorate in the legislature due to redistricting. According to Wood, whose district was not affected, “a lot of bitter, bitter feelings” were created when African Americans resorted to the federal courts. 25 “Anytime you use the court or judicial system, it really causes inflamed emotions….It’s going to take a lot of bridge-building and fence- mending.” 26 The ruling can be understood as one that fit into the trajectory of federal mandates that changed the way society was organized in Arkansas where many White folks did not see anything wrong with the legal and political structures in place. Wood and others who objected to the decision failed to understand why the African American community would resort to the courts despite the appalling lack of Black representatives even in counties where they were the majority. They also failed to acknowledge that Black Arkansans might have been left with no option but to resort to federal courts after decades of discrimination and opposition to change. Senator Paul Benham, Jr. from Marianna in Lee County had harsh sentiments toward redistricting. In fact, he rejected a need for such a move and argued: “my blacks” 25 Carla Johnson Kimbrough, “Attempts to Ease Racial Heat Cooling,” Arkansas Gazette, June 25, 1990, sec. A. 26 Ibid. 209 are satisfied with the status quo. 27 He had been a state senator since 1973 and was secure in his position, or so he thought. After the court-mandated changes which affected his district he lost to an African American opponent and angrily told the press that Governor Clinton “took my damn district from me and gave it to the niggers.” 28 His paternalism came through in the remark where he claimed ownership over the Black folks in his district, but his racism was clear when he used that racial slur to refer to some of his constituents. The following day Clinton stated: “I think what Benham said was wrong….Those were the comments of a mindset that dominated the Delta for too long” but then justified their utterance when he said they were made by a man who was in “great personal pain” because he “lost something he cared a great deal about—his seat in the state senate – because the rules were changed.” 29 Clinton attempted to make Benham anachronistic for his time by speaking about the mentality that dominated the Delta as if it was in the past but the power of that mindset was evident in the lack of African American representatives from counties where they were between thirty and sixty percent of Arkansans. Clinton also said he “repudiate[d]” Benham’s statement but “did not personally feel any pain or anger” because Benham was simply lashing out. The governor’s attitude justified Benham and White men in government who blatantly disenfranchised African Americans. Clinton’s attitude also obfuscated other instances where Benham used racial slurs, for example, when he referred to then presidential 27 Deborah Mathis, “Benham Loses His Power, Not His Bigotry,” Arkansas Gazette, November 2, 1990, sec. B. 28 Michael Arbanas, “Senator Accused of Racial Slur,” Arkansas Gazette, November 1, 1990, sec. B. 29 Mark Oswald, “Clinton Explains Benham,” Arkansas Gazette, November 3, 1990, sec. B. 210 candidate Jesse Jackson as “da coon” and said it was an example of his kind of humor. 30 Moreover, Clinton might not have been as racist as Benham but he exemplified some of the Delta thinking when he opposed the legislative redistricting. However, limiting such a mindset to the Delta region was inaccurate because an effort to overturn a segregationist law from the age of “massive resistance” and to implement the state’s first civil rights law nearly failed. As discussed with more detail in the Introduction, in the late 1980s the Pulaski County schools faced a desegregation lawsuit where the federal judge ruled the state bore some responsibility for the county’s school problems due to the 1956 law (Amendment 44) passed by Arkansans which dictated the state interpose it sovereignty and prevent school integration. State officials put Amendment 3 on the ballot in order to overturn Amendment 44 to avoid other lawsuits that would hold the state responsible for segregation. Amendment 3 passed by a narrow margin. After the result of the vote, Religious Leaders for Racial Justice—an inter-denominational, inter-racial group—said the vote revealed residual and entrenched racism. They released a statement which said in part: “The Amendment 3 vote count is clear and present proof that racism is alive and well in the hearts, minds, and ballots of too many Arkansans.” 31 Reverend Wendell Griffen, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church of Little Rock and member of the organization, put it in the following manner: “Much of the post-vote analysis can be summarized by a collective sigh of relief….That’s a terrible, terrible fallacy. That’s the same kind of attitude there was in Louisiana when David Duke 30 Arbanas, “Senator Accused of Racial Slur.” 31 James Scudder, “Racism Clear in Vote Count, Group Says,” Arkansas Gazette, November 14, 1990, sec. B. 211 didn’t get elected. Forty-percent voted for a Klansman.” 32 What Griffen and the organization understood was the significance of more than 260,000 people voting for maintaining an amendment that opposed integration throughout Arkansas. Editorial pieces sometimes argued that the state had to overturn the amendment because otherwise it would look bad on the national stage. Partially responding to this thrust, Religious Leaders for Racial Justice argued that “to speak of changing the image of Arkansas without changing the character of Arkansans is hypocrisy.” 33 Griffen closed by saying the vote fell in line with a pattern established in the country in the past decade as exemplified by President George Bush’s veto of a civil rights legislation earlier in the year. The topic was close to home as well because the Arkansas legislature attempted to implement the state’s first civil rights law in 1991. At that point, the only other states without any such statutes were Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 34 A group of legislators, including Senator John Pagan and Representative Roy C. “Bill” Lewellen, hoped to emulate legislation from Reconstruction which gave people the right to sue public officials if they violated people’s rights in the name of state business. 35 By March of that year the House Judiciary Committee unanimously recommended a proposal for a state civil rights act, despite opposition from the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce, but 32 Ibid. In fact, Arkansans nearly elected Ralph Forbes, a white supremacist and former Nazi, to the office of Lieutenant Governor in 1990; he was defeated in a run-off election. See Brummett, “Rid State of Bogus Amendment.” 33 Scudder, “Racism Clear in Vote Count.” 34 Michael Arbanas, “Arkansas Lacks Civil Rights Statutes,” Arkansas Gazette, January 20, 1991, sec. A. 35 Michael Arbanas, “Legislators to Propose Package of Civil Rights Laws,” Arkansas Gazette, January 18, 1991, sec. B. 212 added four amendments; one exempted from punitive damages employers found liable “for intimidation, harassment, violence or vandalism against an employee or that employee’s property.” 36 Pagan said it was “a stupid exemption” but that the issues were covered under another section. Although this legislation was based on a far reaching law, many legislators and special interests such as the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce, the Arkansas Poultry Federation, Union National Bank, and the International Paper Company objected to various versions of it. 37 Ron Russell, the executive director of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce said they opposed provisions which guaranteed jury trials, provided a three-year statute of limitations, and punitive damages. Moreover, according to Russell, the Chamber felt the bill “would hamper the growth and development of business and industry in the state” and that large punitive damage awards would be a “deterrent against business.” 38 The Chamber, the Arkansas Poultry Federation, the Arkansas Human Resources Association and other business interests drafted another version with a three to six month statute of limitations. According to the backers of this bill, it was fair to employers and employees but removed the “harsh provisions that 36 Max Parker, “House Committee Unanimously Recommends Civil Rights Proposal,” Arkansas Gazette, March 6, 1991, sec. B. 37 Caroline Decker, “Civil Rights Proposal Being Negotiated at Clinton’s Bidding,” Arkansas Gazette, March 8, 1991, sec. A. 38 Ibid. 213 would severely impact small business and make Arkansas less attractive to industry moving here.” 39 Senator Pagan said, “It’s a fraud, a trick, a sham,” and “It’s not a civil rights bill. It is a bill written by and for the Chamber of Commerce in order to give its allies in the legislature a political excuse to vote for a bill with civil rights on it when in fact it does not deal with discrimination.” 40 The Arkansas Gazette concurred and wrote an editorial which criticized the Chamber’s bill because it was “so restrictive that it would have almost no effect on employment discrimination.” 41 The debates continued until the Senate Judiciary Committee was ready to block a version of the bill backed by the Chamber of Commerce because they felt that legislation did not adequately address civil rights concerns. At the end of the legislative session the committee requested a blue ribbon commission to conduct a study and propose a state civil rights law. 42 The stalemate lasted until 1993 when legislation modeled on Pagan and Lewellen’s bill was signed into law. The end product included a comprehensive hate crimes section as well as compensatory and punitive damages and attorney fees and litigation costs. 43 Despite supporting the bill, Lewellen called it “weak” but thought it provided a beginning which could be productive. 39 Caroline Decker, “Chamber Ends Negotiations on Civil Rights Act,” Arkansas Gazette, March 9, 1991, sec. A. 40 Decker, “Chamber Ends Negotiations.” 41 “A Civil Rights Fig Leaf,” Arkansas Gazette, March 11, 1991, sec. B. 42 Caroline Decker, “Rights Study, Not Bill, Backed,” Arkansas Gazette, March 22, 1991, sec. I. 43 Noel Oman, “Signing of Bill Ends State’s Long Holdout on Civil Rights Front,” Arkansas Democrat Gazette, April 9, 1993, sec. A. 214 The focus on maintaining Arkansas friendly to business interests mirrors similar rhetoric which circulated in the 1950s when businessmen feared the South was losing out on business endeavors from northerners who found segregation unappetizing. In that instance, business interests helped to end de jure segregation and increase more equitable conditions but in this case supporting a more just civil rights bill served business no purpose. The focus on business-friendly or anti-worker policies were aimed at maintaining the region’s long-standing and accurate reputation for a labor force that was more easily exploited than their northern brethren. The “selling of the South” to the U.S. north and increasingly to the Global North has been based on favorable conditions for companies from tax breaks to lower wages to non-union labor. 44 The active role of the Arkansas Poultry Federation within the formulation of the bill was important because the industry is a big employer in the state and one with many labor violations and accidents. The 1990s would be a decade of consistency and transition. The poultry industry would continue its reign as a top employer, serve to draw Latinas/os to Arkansas, and eventually rely on documented and undocumented workers. Arkansas’ Demographics: 1980-2000 Latinas/os were not entirely new to Arkansas. In the twentieth century Arkansans had some experience with Mexican origin people mainly through migrant workers and braceros. The majority of these workers were concentrated in the southeast area where they picked cotton or tomatoes, some settled in the state and fought to be recognized as 44 James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1990, 2 nd ed. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993). 215 White as they sought to limit the effects of Jim Crow on their families and well being. 45 But their growth was small and Arkansas did not become a place of settlement for large numbers of migrant workers like Texas or California. 46 Nevertheless, in 1980 there were nearly 17,000 “Spanish origin” people, 91 percent of whom were native-born, 615 were foreign-born Mexicans only 290 of which immigrated to the United States between 1970 and 1980. 47 By 1990, the group now defined as “Hispanic origin (of any race)” grew by less than three thousand and still constituted less than one percent of Arkansans. Within the group Mexican origin people made up sixty-three percent (12,496), “other Hispanic” twenty-nine percent (5,710), Puerto Ricans nearly six percent (1,176), and Cubans two- and-a-half percent (494) though using the census there is no way to determine how many of the latter were sponsored from the Mariel boatlift. 48 Meanwhile, the Asian/Pacific Islander population had tripled from 1980 to 2000. Eighty-six percent of Asians in 1980 were foreign born and of those Vietnamese accounted for nearly twenty-six percent (1,623). By 1990, Vietnamese were still the largest group with twenty percent (2,348) followed closely by Laotians with sixteen percent (1,982). Between 1990 and 2000 the group with the most dynamic growth was Latinas/os whose population quadrupled to 45 Julie Weise, “Mexican Nationalisms, Southern Racisms: Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. South, 1908-1939,” American Quarterly 60 (2008): 749-778. 46 More research needs to be done, however, to uncover their histories in order to come up with an accurate demographic profile 47 There is no way to determine what percentage of the 1980 “Spanish origin” population was ethnic Mexicans. 48 The Census Bureau also changed the questions they asked, making it difficult to determine how many of these Latinas/os were foreign-born. 216 more than 86,000 though some local agencies and community organizations noted that the numbers were low. Table 1: Arkansas’ Population, 1980-2000 49 0 20 40 60 80 100 1980 1990 2000 White Black Native American/Alaskan Native Asian/Pacific Islander Hispanic In the 1990s there were positive Latina/o growth rates in every county including those with net population losses. 50 More than half of the Latina/o population (44,290) moved into the Third Congressional District in the state’s northwest corner with nearly eighty percent of them into Benton, Washington, and Sebastian Counties. They were even concentrated 49 From the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Census. 1980 % 1990 % 2000 % Total Population 2,286,435 100 2,350,725 100 2,673,400 100 White 1,889,935 82.7 1,944,744 82.7 2,138,598 80 Black 373,025 16.3 373,912 15.9 418,950 15.7 Asian/Pacific Islander 7,232 0.3 12,530 0.5 21,888 0.8 Native American/Aleut N/A --- 12,773 0.5 17,808 0.6 Hispanic 16,976 0.7 19,876 0.8 86,866 3.2 50 Cossman and Powers; Gazi Shbikat and Steve Striffler, “Arkansas Migration and Population,” Arkansas Business and Economic Review 33, no. 3 (2000): 1-5. 217 within those counties. The Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in Benton and Washington counties had the fastest growing Latina/o population in the United States with a growth of 1,630 percent and a population of 26,401. Benton also led all U.S. counties in Latina/o population growth with 891 percent, from 1,359 to 13,489. 51 In the northwest, Springdale, Fayetteville, Rogers, and Fort Smith (Sebastian County) were the primary towns and cities of settlement. Springdale and Rogers were the towns with an overwhelmingly White community and only a few African Americans so that even in 1990 with less than five-hundred people, Latinas/os were already the largest group of people of color, native or foreign born. Fayetteville and Fort Smith had larger Black populations with the latter’s 5,600 leading the way. By 2000, Latinas/os constituted nearly twenty percent of Springdale and Rogers, greatly surpassing any other population except for White folks. In Fayetteville and Fort Smith Latinas/os and African Americans were within once percentage points of each other. 51 Wainer, “The New Latino South and the Challenge to Public Education,” 8. 218 Table 2: Four Arkansas Cities, 1990 52 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Springdale R ogers Fayettev ille Fort Smith Black American Inidan/Alaskan N ativ e Asian/Pacific Islander Latino 52 1990 Census: City White % Black % American Indian/ Alaskan Native % Asian/ Pacific Islander % Latina/o % Total Springdale 29,095 97.2 33 0.11 338 1.1 292 1.0 446 1.5 29,941 Rogers 24,128 97.7 16 0.06 224 0.9 191 0.8 460 1.9 24,692 Fayetteville 39,206 93.1 1,580 3.8 481 1.1 657 1.6 603 1.4 42,099 Fort Smith 62,790 86.3 5,590 7.7 1,001 1.4 2,981 4.1 1,032 1.4 72,798 219 Table 3: Four Arkansas Cities, 2000 53 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Springdale R ogers Fayettev ille Fort Smith Black American Inidan/Alaskan Nativ e Asian/Pacific Islander Latino Northwest Arkansas’ Third Congressional District in 2000 also adequately represented the area’s whiteness. African Americans constituted less than two percent of the population with 14,015 people in contrast to the three remaining districts where they made up between eighteen to twenty-seven percent of the population (and had between 112,000 and 163,000 people). Even within District 3, fifty percent of African Americans were in Fort Smith and another twenty percent in Fayetteville. In contrast to the rest of the state, Latinas/os in northwest were the largest group of people of color whether native 53 2000 Census: City White % Black % American Indian/ Alaskan Native Asian/ Pacific Islander Latina/o % Total Springdale 37,380 81.6 377 0.8 431 0.9 1,484 3.2 9,005 19.7 45,798 Rogers 33,296 85.8 184 0.5 407 1 585 1.5 7,490 19.3 38.892 Fayetteville 50,212 86.5 2,969 5.1 730 1.3 1,574 2.7 2,821 4.8 58,047 Fort Smith 61,798 77 6,943 8.6 1,358 1.7 3,725 4.6 7,048 8.8 80,268 220 or foreign born. In order to understand the multifaceted reasons that led many Latin American immigrants and their U.S.-born children to migrate to Arkansas in the 1990s, I use Javier and Andrea’s life as way to delineate some of the contours of the movement. Social Networks and Multi-Site Migration: Zacatecas, California, and Arkansas Javier was born in the small community of La Blanca, Zacatecas and as a teenager he decided to follow in the footsteps of those men that traveled to the United States in search of better employment opportunities. Migrating to the United States also meant periodically returning home for special events such as weddings, birthdays, and the town’s annual fiesta commemorating its founding. It was at one such event that Javier became reacquainted with Andrea—they had gone to elementary school together—and they courted while he was in town; before leaving he asked for Andrea’s hand in marriage and promised to return the following year so they could marry. He did and they left to Pico Rivera, California in 1985. La Blanca: A Mythical Place La Blanca, in the state of Zacatecas, forms part of western Mexico which has a long tradition of migration to the U.S. 54 This community is 50 kilometers from the capital and located on hilly, arid land which makes agricultural cultivation difficult though not impossible. 55 La Blanca is located in the municipio (roughly equivalent to a U.S. county) of General Pánfilo Natera and is the county seat. In the past the area had a reputation for 54 Massey et al, 22. 55 The description of the town is taken from interviews with Andrea and Rodolfo who are both natives of La Blanca. Andrea, phone interview, 7 November 2004; Rodolfo, personal interview, 13 August 2004; “Gral. Pánfilo Natera,” Turismo Zacatecas. < http://www.turismozacatecas.gob.mx/Fiestas.htm> (9 November2004). 221 tunas blancas (white cactus fruit) and people said “vamos a la blanca” when picking the fruit. The saying evolved to officially become the name of the area but La Blanca officially no longer exists; in 1964 the government changed the name to General Pánfilo Natera in honor of a revolutionary general. Nevertheless, residents still almost exclusively refer to La Blanca and only use the official name when it is demanded, e.g., in the case of airmail yet even then they write La Blanca in parenthesis. 56 According to Andrea, La Blanca’s tradition of emigrating to the U.S. was established during the Bracero Program where men either returned each time they could to the federal initiative or ventured outside of it in order to get better paying jobs. 57 This began a migrant social network as men returned and told their friends and family about opportunities and enticed some to join them on the next trip. Little by little, more men made the trip north and returned with savings to live off of for a few months or to slowly build and add to their houses. Eventually the trip north stopped being one possibility for economic advancement and became the possibility to such an extent that those that did not participate in such a move were seen as unenterprising. According to Andrea, “The people that do not go to the United States live in poverty, they are conformists and do not move from there.” 58 This perception is facilitated because everyone in town has at least one relative, often more, living in the United States and could subsequently tap into knowledge and financial resource in order to make their maiden voyage al norte. These 56 Gobierno de Estado—Zacatecas. “Gral. Pánfilo Natera,” http://www.zacatecas.gob.mx/Municipios/GpanfilonateraHist.htm, Sept. 9, 2009; Andrea, phone interview. 57 Andrea, phone interview. 58 Ibid; “La gente que no va a Estados Unidos viven en la pobreza, son conformistas y no se mueven de ahí,” translation by author. 222 ties often meant that a new migrant might have a place to stay, connections to employment opportunities, or even people to lend him or her money to make the trip. Today, La Blanca is not much different than when Javier and Andrea immigrated to Pico Rivera. According to descriptions from its natives, it is a small town with narrow, mostly dirt and some cobblestone and paved roads where sheep and donkeys from the ranchos still wander into town. It has a presidencia (literally presidency, but it refers to the city government offices), a jardin (literally garden, however it is the town square) and little commerce. There are three elementary schools and one junior high and high school each. Traditionally, homes in La Blanca are made from adobe; about 70 percent of all the houses in the municipality are made from this, with the rest consisting of a variety of stones. 59 Notably, houses financed with U.S. dollars are built with more expensive materials as well as containing newer appliances. In 2000, 21,689 people lived in the municipality with 10,424 men and 11,265 women. A 1990 estimate placed La Blanca’s population at about 3,500. 60 In contrast, residents estimated the population to be between 8,000 and 10,000 year round with the population ballooning up to nearly 20,000 when a lot of people return for the Christmas season and the celebration of its patron saint, Santa Ana, on July 26. 61 Thus, residents believe that at any given point at least half of the townspeople reside on the northern side 59 Gobierno de Estado—Zacatecas, “Gral. Panfirlo Natera--Infraestructura Social Y De Comunicaciones,” http://www.zacatecas.gob.mx/Municipios/GpanfilonateraInfra.htm. 60 I have been unable to find more recent information for the La Blanca specifically. “Perfil Sociodemogáfico,” http://www.zacatecas.gob.mx/Municipios/GpanfilonateraSoc.htm; The Columbia Gazetteer of North America, 2000, “General Pánfilo Natera,” http://www.bartleby.com/69/14/G01414.html. 61 Andrea, phone interview; Rodolfo, personal interview; these names are pseudonyms for the protection of their privacy. 223 of the U.S.-Mexico border and that the town’s population year round appears to be over represented by youth under sixteen and the elderly. 62 Their observations are backed up by the 2000 numbers for the municipality which only had 3,370 people working, 11,345 inactive, and almost seven thousand people unaccounted for. Furthermore, between 1985 and 2005 there were only 648 births in the municipality. 63 Five years later, the municipality’s population had decreased to 21,398 with 10,246 men and 11,152 women. 64 Overall, La Blanca’s population’s decline fits in with statewide patterns. In 2000, Zacatecas lead Mexican states in the numbers of immigrants that left for the United States, forty-eight out of every one-thousand in contrast to the national average of sixteen. 65 More municipalities in Zacatecas increasingly have a negative population growth. In the 1980s it was twenty-four; by 1999 it was thirty-four out of its fifty seven. 66 Andrea immigrated to the United States after she married Javier. They went to Pico Rivera because several members of his family lived there, mainly at the Samoa 62 Andrea, phone interview; Rodolfo, personal interview. 63 “Información estadistica disponible,” INEGI, http://galileo.inegi.gob.mx/CubexConnector/validaDatos.do?geograficaE=32016; “Marco geoestadisco municipal,” http://galileo.inegi.org.mx/website/mexico/viewer.htm?bsqTable=77&bsqField=CVEMUN&bsqStr=32016 &TName=MGM&seccionB=mdm. 64 “Poblacion Total, Edad Mediana y Relación Hombres-Mujeres Por Municipio Según Sexo,” INEGI Conteo de Población y Vivienda 2005. 65 “Movimientors Migratorios,” Zacatecas. INEGI. http://cuentame.inegi.org.mx/monografias/informacion/zac/poblacion/m_migratorios.aspx?tema=me&e=32 66 Miguel Moctezuma Longoria, “La experiencia de las remesas comunitarias del club de migrantes El Remolino, Zacatecas,” in Integración Económica y Resistencia popular en México (Ciudad de México, 2003), 227. 224 Apartments or los Samoas. It made sense for her to go to the United States since they were newlyweds and so she could take care of household duties like cleaning and cooking. For her part, Andrea was familiar with the expectations that came in marrying a young migrant man in the 1980s. It was no longer the case that men would marry but leave their wives in town, instead they were joining their husbands in the United States. She looked forward to spending time with her husband but did not know they would share a two-bedroom apartment with two other men, sometimes four others, in order to save money on rent. She also did not expect to cook and clean for all of them or to not feel completely comfortable in her new home. This situation was not ideal for either Javier or Andrea. He wanted to provide an apartment for the two of them, but that was nearly impossible given his low wage. There they made a life for themselves, eventually having two boys. In los Samoas they found a community of immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, and Nicaragua. Pico Rivera: Suburban, Working-Class Apartments Pico Rivera is approximately eleven miles southeast of Los Angeles on the southern edge of the San Gabriel Valley and was an overwhelmingly majority Latina/o suburb with a population in 1990 of 59,177. 67 In the late 1980s several families from La Blanca lived in Pico Rivera, more specifically, in the Samoa Apartments. The apartment complex in the mid-1980s and 1990s consisted of working-class families, mostly immigrants from Mexico with a handful of other Latin Americans, and only a few U.S.- 67 Eighty-three percent of the population was Latina/o according to the1990 Census; U.S. Bureau of the Census, General Population Characteristics, California, Prepared by U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, (Washington, D.C: Bureau of the Census, 1990). 225 born Latina/o and White people. There were varying configurations to the living arrangements of tenants. Javier and Andrea, for example, rented a two-bedroom apartment but only used one room in order to rent out the other bedroom and sometimes the living room and save on the cost of rent. Other apartments were occupied solely by single and married immigrant men, still others had nuclear or extended families. On average, adult male and female tenants were in the mid-thirties. The couples, many of whom were married, because of their young age also had young children though there were also older parents with teenager some which were U.S.-born. The length of U.S. residence ranged from new arrivals to inhabitants of a decade with their entrance into the country varying from undocumented passage, over staying a visa, and thus varying degrees of possibilities for legalization. The women and men living the apartment complex worked throughout the Los Angeles area in a variety of jobs including warehouses, light manufacturing jobs, and service sector jobs, with recent, undocumented immigrant women often working in sweatshops. Despite steady employment and dreams for homeownership, the $165,000 median home value of homes in Pico Rivera and similar figures in surrounding areas precluded many of them from ever being able to afford a mortgage payment due to their working-class and working-poor wages. 68 Sometimes having enough money to pay the $600 to $1200 rent was hard enough and did not allow for much saving. 68 Ibid. 226 The California recession of the early- to mid- 1990s made the situation dramatically worse. 69 The economic downturn hit everyone hard; many lost their job(s) and were unable to find employment that offered a decent salary, not to mention benefits. If it was possible they tapped into their unemployment benefits while working jobs that paid meager earnings, worked up to four part-time, low-wage jobs, and did the best to make it through the next month. With no end in sight, people began following leads from friends and relatives about jobs in other parts of California or looking for cheaper rents or better pay or both; some even ventured outside of the state. Moving to the South In 1994, Javier’s brother, a resident of La Blanca and los Samoas found his way to Fort Smith, Arkansas. 70 He quickly found a job in a poultry processing plant and one- bedroom apartments as cheap as $230, in other words, affordable for a working-class salary. He told Javier about the opportunities and encouraged him to make the trip. 71 Moving was not in Javier and Andrea’s plan but when Javier could not find work that paid more than $6.50 he earned as a forklift driver they decided to find out if the rumors about the plethora of jobs were true. He and Andrea, now with two young boys, moved to Fort Smith in 1995. Javier found a job his first day in the same poultry processing plant where his brother worked and also an affordable apartment for their nuclear family to live alone. Now Andrea and Javier contributed to the buzz in their social network about the 69 Nancy Rivera Brooks, “Area's Rebound Expected to Continue,” Los Angeles Times, 26 November 1996, part D. 70 I need to conduct an interview with him in order to get precise information as to how or where he heard of Fort Smith. 71 Andrea, personal interview. 227 opportunities in the state called Arkansas. My parents, Jesus and Enriqueta, received such a phone call. We lived in los Samoas since 1985 and arrived within months of Andrea’s arrival, Javier had lived there before when he was single and shared an apartment with other men. Los Samoas are where my mother, brother, and I arrived when we joined my dad in the United States, five years after he left Mexico. Jesus arrived in Los Angeles in 1980 from Guanajuato, Mexico and within a few months found a job at a manufacturing company; he worked there until the company filed for bankruptcy in the early 1990s. What ensued then was a cycle where the company got bought out by another, that in turn went bankrupt, and so on. Each time the new management cut salaries and personnel. By then, Jesus had some seniority so he was able to hold on to his job until the last company took over and until they filed for bankruptcy. For a couple of years he worked through unemployment agencies, taking a severe pay cut, and drew on his unemployment benefits, my mother, who had never worked in the United States, took a part-time job in retail but the situation had no end in sight. Then Javier and Andrea called to let them know that what they had all heard about Fort Smith was true—there were jobs and housing was cheap. Jesus made a trial trip to Arkansas because he thought people often exaggerated the opportunities in other places and he did not want to move us without being sure that what La Blanca’s social network said was true. He took the bus and arrived at Javier and Andrea’s apartment. The next day, Javier took him to the poultry plant where he worked and Jesus got a job on the spot. He worked a few months before calling my mom and 228 telling her that we were moving. By then my brother was enrolled at a university and he stayed in California while my mother and I joined my dad in Fort Smith in late 1995 along with other people from California, Los Angeles, los Samoas, and from La Blaca. By this time a snowball effect led people to Fort Smith where we found a nascent but growing Latina/o community. Many of the arrivals consisted of long-time immigrants living in the United States and increasingly of recent immigrants from Mexico who no longer bothered going to or through California after their relatives told them not to bother, to go straight to Arkansas. 72 After word of the opportunities in Arkansas—plenty of jobs and low cost of living—spread through the social network people established another hub in the U.S. migrant network. Additionally, La Blanca’s social networks reported that work would be in polleras, there was a low cost of living, and that “no checan papeles” (“they don’t check papers,” i.e., legal documentation). For at least some of the initial immigrants moving from California to Arkansas, the lax enforcement of immigration documents was not a draw because they had adjusted their status to legal permanent residents with IRCA, as was the case for Javier and Jesus. But it was very important for those who were undocumented or for those wishing to emigrate from Mexico but had no legal means to do so. What was central to everyone was the low cost of living and the possibility of homeownership with a working-class salary. When I asked Andrea why they left California, she said it was “due to high rents and law salaries” and this was the overwhelmingly the reply that I received from the 72 Ibid. 229 people interviewed. 73 In Fort Smith, Javier was the sole economic provider for the family like in California; unlike that experience, however, in Arkansas this meant his family could live on its own without the economic necessity to share their living quarters with other people. Jesus was again able to become the sole provider and we moved into a one bedroom apartment (as opposed to the studio we rented in los Samoas) and paid $230 per month. 74 The recession forced a lot people to leave a comfortable space they knew for unfamiliar territory and for many men and women there is no question that if they could have the economic advancements and job security in California that they have in Arkansas they would return. However, one aspect that Fort Smith provides that Los Angeles lacked was tranquilidad. This is a word that frequently came up in my interviews, it literally means “tranquil” but the majority of my respondents connect it with the absence of violence, specifically gangs (“no hay pandillas”), and bad influences. 75 Tranquilidad is also something Latina/o immigrants have told other scholars in Georgia and North Carolina. Rebecca M. Torres, E. Jeffrey Popke, and Holly M. Hapke interviewed 136 Latinas/os in rural Greene County, North Carolina and the number one response to the open-ended question of “What do you like about living in Green County?” was tranquilo. The authors go on to note that to the migrants it mean 73 “Debido al alto de la renta y lo bajo de los sueldos.” 74 Various owners maintained this price until 2006 when Jesus retired, left his job in a pollera, and moved back to Mexico with Enriqueta in order to live more comfortably off of his Social Security income. 75 Personal interviews and surveys, August 2004. I have about 20 interviews with Latinas/os in Arkansas. Given the small size of the pool, the interviews are not statistically sound, but I occasionally use quotes from them because these are the reasons people gave and their experiences are supported by other researchers who have studied the migration of Latinas/o s to the South. 230 peaceful or calm in a variety of ways including less crime, gangs, noise, traffic and overpopulation and less danger of being harassed by local police or being detained by immigration officers. 76 Latina/o parents that moved to Dalton, Georgia sought to leave impoverished neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Houston and have a safer environment and better schools for their children. 77 Many immigrant parents in Arkansas had heard horror stories about youth que se descarrilan (they go down the wrong path) or knew parents that struggled with their kids in terms of gang activity, alcohol abuse, drug use, and premarital sex and sought to avoid these struggles in their own families. Many parents liked Pico Rivera, mine included, because as a suburb it largely lacked the rough and “bad” neighborhoods they associated with other parts of Los Angeles, nevertheless, they sought to limit their children’s exposure to “bad influences” and in Arkansas those were also largely lacking. At the beginning it was because it was single men who lived there, then it was a lot of young families with very young children, but eventually teenagers that had lived throughout Southern California or other larger U.S. urban areas began moving with their families and, according to most Latinas/os, brought their gang affiliations with them. Many Mexicans argue that they arrived first and no gang activity existed until the arrival of Salvadorians a few years later. 78 In the 76 Rebecca M. Torres, E. Jeffrey Popke, and Holly M. Hapke, “The South’s Silent Bargain: Rural Restructuring, Latino Labor and the Ambiguities of Migrant Experience,” in Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place, eds. Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 51-53. 77 Rubén Hernández-León and Víctor Zúñiga, “Making Carpet by the Mile: The Emergence of a Mexican Immigrant Community in an Industrial Region of the U.S. Historic South,” Social Science Quarterly 81, no. 1 (2000): 49-66; and idem., “Mexican Immigrant Communities in the South and Social Capital: The Case of Dalton, George,” Southern Rural Sociology 19, no. 1 (2003): 36 78 Interviews and surveys, August 2004. 231 mid-1990s, Fort Smith also lacked the type of urban disinvestment found throughout Los Angeles. The city was definitely divided into working-class, middle-class, and upper- class areas and the concomitant White and Black areas but the “bad” part of town was simply working-poor with very affordable apartments. This area was fairly close to downtown and it was also the area where Latinas/os began to concentrate. Before them, Asian refugees had used this as transitional housing, living there to save enough money to move to nicer apartments or even to rent or buy a house in another part of town. The pattern of emigration from Mexico to at least two sites of residence in the United States also came up for the earliest known immigrant Latina/o residents of Fort Smith. Genoveva’s and Gustavo’s families knew each other from a glass factory in Brooklyn, New York and each family ended up in Arkansas for the same reason—work. When the factory in Brooklyn closed, the owner told his workers there were a few other sites in the county where they might be able to find work; one such place was in Van Buren which neighbors Fort Smith. Both families arrived between 1978 and 1979 and told friends and relatives about the nice and quite place they found. Yet, no other people joined them because, according to them, there was no need for them to leave their respective homes since they had jobs. In other words, having a social network which reported a lower cost of living and employment opportunities was not persuasive enough to move to Arkansas because there was no concomitant structural force such as job loss or low wages. 232 “Life is worth living in Fort Smith, Arkansas” Fort Smith, which borders the Arkansas-Oklahoma state line, was the third largest city in the state, following Little Rock and North Little Rock. City officials touted Fort Smith’s wholesome environment as ideal for raising children and cited the low unemployment rate and low cost of living, generally 12 to 14 percent below the national average, as a means to demonstrate its economic opportunities. 79 In fact, long-time Mayor Ray Baker emphasized this take by frequently proclaiming, “Life is worth living in Fort Smith, Arkansas.” The dynamic growth of the Latina/o community can be observed most remarkably in school district enrollment between 1990 and 2004 (Table 4). In 1990, Latina/o pupils made up only one percent of district enrollment, by 2000 that percentage grew to eleven, and by 2004 to nearly twenty percent, or more than 2,000, of the 12,871 students. 79 “Frequently Asked Questions.” Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce. <http://www.fschamber.com/ goodquestions.asp>. 8 November 2004. 233 1.2 1.2 1.6 1.9 2.8 4 5.1 6.2 7.5 8.9 11.1 12.7 14.9 16.6 19 77.4 77.4 76.1 75 72.8 71.2 69.8 68 67.2 65.7 64.2 62.4 61 59 56.6 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Latina/o White Table 4: FSPS Enrollment of Latina/o & White Students, 1990-2004 In 2000, Fort Smithians’ median family income was $41,012 with the median value of homes at $74,200, almost half of what it was in Pico Rivera. 80 Smaller yet still nice homes were available for about half the sum and thus within the reach of immigrants, working-class people, and even single-income households. Manufacturing is an extensive resource and economic base for Fort Smith which is home to poultry processing plants, furniture factories, refrigerators and air conditioner manufacturing, and liquor producers. 80 “Fact Sheet: Fort Smith city, Arkansas,” U.S. Census Bureau. <http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts? _event=Search&geo_id=01000US&_geoContext=&_street=&_county=&_cityTown=fort+smith&_state=0 4000US05&_zip=&_lang=en&_sse=on> 9 November 2004.; “Perfect Homes.” Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce. <http://www.fschamber.com/perfecthomes.asp>. 8 November 2004. 234 Major corporations such as Whirlpool, Rheem, Trane, Georgia-Pacific, Gerber, Kraft- Planters, and Tyson Foods have locations in Fort Smith. The city also serves as home to the national headquarters of corporations such Baldor Electric, Arkansas Best, OK Foods, and Golden Living, the country’s largest nursing home healthcare provider. In 2004, eleven out of nineteen top employers listed by the city were manufacturing companies while the remainder consisted of healthcare, education, and government institutions. 81 In 2007 the list grew to twenty-two companies; this time twelve were manufacturing or industrial employers. Poultry company O.K. Foods was first with 4,748 jobs, followed by Whirlpool with 3,000, and Baldor Electric with 2,262. In total, those twelve companies hired 16,224 workers and held more than sixty percent of the employment opportunities of all of the companies on the list. 82 The Fort Smith and Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers MSAs industrial bases were diverse in the 1990s but where Latinas/os found the most opportunities initially was in the poultry industry. According to The Economist, Latinas/os saved the industry and created the economic boom. The cause and effect might not have been so direct but Latinas/os moved to the South at a time when the poultry companies were desperate for workers to keep up with nationwide demand so they if they did not save the entire industry from collapse, they facilitated its expansion. Georgia’s Agricultural Commissioner Tommy Irvin concurred and said the industry would collapse with 81 “Frequently Asked Questions,” Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce. <http://www.fschamber.com/faq/#q4> (8 November2004). 82 “Top Employers, Fort Smith, Arkansas,” Document downloaded, Oct. 5, 2008 http://www.fortsmithchamber.org/WhitePapers/WhitePapersDisplay.asp?p1=2043&p2=Y&p9=&Sort= More research needs to be conducted about Fort Smith’s political economy in order to understand why major corporations have locations in this city. 235 Latinas/os: “It would have to close down. You’d see poultry prices for the consumer shoot out the sky. The Hispanics have saved the industry.” 83 By 1994, Tyson’s twenty- thousand Arkansas workforce was eighteen percent Latina/o. 84 They also helped the area’s economic growth as some immigrants eventually worked in other manufacturing as well as construction and landscape and some of their children in the service industry. But initially, and still for many, polleras were where they expected to get jobs while the area’s low cost of living and possibility of homeownership completed the picture. Working in the Poultry Industry: “No checan papeles” and Raids The Latinas/os who arrived in Fort Smith in the 1990s were documented and undocumented immigrants; the latter in particular moved for employment opportunities since La Blanca’s social networks were reporting was that, “no checan papeles” (they don’t check papers, i.e. legal documents). This meant the real possibility of steady employment and a weekly paycheck regardless of legal status, something which was increasingly difficult in areas like Los Angeles. 85 Moreover, “there are too many damn Mexicans in California. I’m not kidding. We are all trying to get the same jobs.” 86 Sometimes companies hired recruiters to get them laborers from Texas, California, or even from south of the border. But in the case of La Blanca’s folks, it was the social 83 Mark Bixler, “Hiring of Illegals Props Poultry “Culture,’” The Atlanta Journal-Constitutions, December 23, 2001, sec. A. 84 Mike Rodman, “Springdale Up In Arms Over Aliens; Parties, Crowding Spark Call For Additional Police," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 24, 1994, sec. B.; D.R. Stewart, “INS Defends Efforts To Weed Out Illegals,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 25, 1995, sec. D. 85 Personal interviews and surveys. 86 Arturo, quoted in Striffler, Chicken, 103. 236 network that did the recruiting. Striffler also found a similar effect in the Latinas/os he interviewed that also lived in northwest Arkansas. At first people heard rumors about work in “chicken” in Arkansas, some made the trek, and then provided more concrete information to their social networks. “[T]he Christopher Columbus of Arkansas. That’s what they call me because I discovered Arkansas for my pueblo (in Mexico)” in 1987 or 1988. 87 He broke a twenty-year pattern of circular migration from his home state in Mexico to agricultural labor in California when a friend, a fellow worker, told him about “chicken” jobs in Arkansas. He said immigrants heard rumors about better jobs all the time, so he decided to go with one son to see if they could find work in Arkansas while two sons remained working in California. “The first day Tyson hired us. There were ten Mexicans in the plant. Pure gringos….Now it’s all Mexican.” He immediately told the two sons in California to leave immediately and go to Arkansas and they rented a trailer for two years. “Then my sons and I brought our wives and kids. Within four years we bought a house. Then the whole town (in Mexico) stopped going to California and started coming to Arkansas.” 88 It is unclear whether companies at the beginning of Latina/o migration knowingly and willingly hired undocumented workers or whether the latter duped the former with false documents. In 1993 state newspapers began reporting that Northwest Arkansas was becoming home to large numbers of undocumented people. According Jessee F. Tabor, chief patrol agent of the New Orleans office of the Border Patrol and responsible for 87 Gustavo, quoted in Striffler, Chicken, 103, parenthesis in original. 88 Ibid., 103-104, parenthesis in original. 237 Arkansas, “illegal aliens” were increasingly a “very significant” part of the poultry industry for three interrelated reasons, “First, the 3 percent unemployment rate in Northwest Arkansas means poultry processors are having a heck of a time making up a workforce. Second, poultry processing and agriculture in general have traditionally drawn a large number of illegals. It’s labor-intensive work and there’s a very high attrition rate in the work force.” 89 According to Striffler, White workers left plants in northwest Arkansas during the area’s economic boom of the 1990s. He estimates that by 2000 when he did field work and labored in one of Tyson’s northwest Arkansas plants, its workforce was three-fourths Latina/o, Southeast Asians and Marshallese accounting for most of the remainder of the workers, and very few White folks on the lines though management was overwhelmingly so. 90 Tabor was quick to point out that companies were following the rules: “Employers (in Northwest Arkansas) are complying with the law. To them, the documents appear to be genuine. We cannot expect them to be experts in counterfeit documents.” 91 With these words Tabor, a federal employee and authority figure, depicted “illegal aliens” solely as a hungry and readily available workforce who coned their law- abiding employers into hiring them. He also depicted the poultry industry sympathetically 89 Stewart, “Rich in jobs, Northwest Arkansas Becomes Mecca for Illegal Aliens.” 90 Steve Striffler, “We’re All Mexicans Here”: Poultry Processing, Latino Migration, and the Transformation of Class in the South,” in The American South in a Global World, eds., James L. Peacock, Harry L. Watson, and Carrie R. Matthews (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 153-156. Springdale is believed to have the largest concentration of Marshallese in the continental United States. In 2005, a special census counted two thousand but other estimates put the number past six thousand, “Film Documents Springdale ‘Island’,” Daily Headlines, University of Arkansas, May 25, 2006. 91 Stewart, “Rich in jobs, Northwest Arkansas Becomes Mecca for Illegal Aliens,” parenthesis in original. 238 by talking about the difficulties they faced in finding workers locally. Tabor also said that, “Employers are doing an excellent job but as long as they have a significant number of illegal aliens, there is a chance that we might arrest a significant number all at one time and it could have a very adverse impact on their operation.” 92 Based on this logic the poultry industry was an innocent victim and twice over because the arrest of their workforce would cause them business difficulties. Social networks are important for providing information about local settings including employment information but whereas in Tabor’s description all Latinas/os are con artists, individuals reported how thorough employers checked employment eligibility including when business owners “no checan papeles.” Soon some Arkansans welcomed federal officers with applause, literally. 93 In 1995 Operation SouthPAW raided worksites throughout Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. SouthPAW was a multi-agency task force which included the INS, Border Patrol, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Public Health Service, and state and local police authorities. By the end of the operation 3,000 suspected undocumented workers were caught in those states based on the four-month investigation and tips from the public. In Arkansas, the task force raided more than two dozen food- processing (mainly poultry) and light manufacturing plants in September and caught about 600 undocumented workers. According to federal officials the wages of those apprehended ranged from $4.50 to 10.50 per hour and averaged $6.05. Based on an 92 Stewart, “Rich in Jobs, Northwest Arkansas Becomes Mecca to Illegal Aliens.” 93 D.R. Stewart, “‘Southpaw’ Pinches Illegals—613 in Week,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 14, 1995, sec. A. 239 average work year of 2,000 hours, they estimated they opened up between $8.5 and $11 million in salaries for legal workers in Arkansas. 94 The poultry industry, however, said there were already jobs available beforehand. Archie Schaffer, Tyson spokesman said: “The suggestion that any of these Hispanic workers are taking jobs away from Americans is absolutely nonsense….Anybody in Northwest Arkansas or Clarksville or Dardanelle who wants to work, we have the jobs available.” 95 Doug Siemens, spokesman for Simmons Foods, said: “There’s a very tight labor market in this area. There is not an easy answer. Jobs are available, and we’re looking for workers currently. But we had jobs available before Wednesday. I’m not going to blame INS or say INS is causing us a problem, but this is something we’ve got to work through.” 96 What Siemens came short of suggesting is that INS should leave poultry companies alone because local people were not available or did not take those jobs. But Joseph Gavalis, Special Agent with the Labor Department’s Office of Labor Racketeering, said the deterrent value of the operation was more significant than the number of undocumented workers apprehended. “What difference does it make if we get 200 people and 400 people don’t show up for work? We don’t count people. We count jobs. That’s 600 jobs that can go to Americans….All we want to do is level the playing 94 D.R. Stewart, “Raids Net 350 Illegals at Plants,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 9, 1995, sec. A.; idem, “INS Defends Efforts To Weed Out Illegals.” 95 Associated Press, “Poultry Firms: INS Raids Don’t Level Field on Jobs,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 10, 1995, sec. B. 96 Ibid. 240 field—for employees, employers, and businesses.” 97 This is a familiar discourse of White victimization because when Gavalis talked about leveling “the playing field” and about “American” jobs he is talking about the local White workforce and it was irrelevant if, as the poultry industry claims, they did not want the jobs because the businesses struggled to find workers. But the poultry industry was not alone in responding less than enthusiastically to the raids. Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, responded to the operation by saying, “Six hundred workers…compared to what?...The attention has been focused on what seems to me a relatively small number of employees who are illegally working. No one’s attention has been given to how many were lawfully there, had their papers, had the proper documentation by their employer and so forth.” 98 During Operation SouthPAW most of the articles did not talk about “illegal aliens” but about “illegal workers” which was a minor but important distinction if for no other reason that the latter designation constructs Latinas/os at the very least as contributing to the economy by their participation in the labor sphere. Likewise, Governor Tucker talked about workers and not people or families but he did point out that 600 was a small number compared to Latinas/os that worked in poultry processing but were legally in the United States. The year before the Hispanic Relations Task Force estimated forty-two thousand Latinas/os lived in Arkansas and thus Governor Tucker had a point because there was very little talk of the other forty-one 97 Ibid. 98 Stewart, “INS Defends Efforts To Weed Out Illegals.” 241 thousand, four hundred people. 99 Even if the discussion was limited to undocumented immigrants, a 1993 Border Patrol estimate was that there were twelve thousand “illegal Mexican aliens” in northwest Arkansas yet raids at their preferred industry captured only six hundred. 100 During the month-long coverage of Operation SouthPAW in Arkansas employers were often praised for their good work in checking that applicants had the correct documentation; none of the Arkansas plants received fines from the raids. 101 Part of the difficulty, according to INS spokesman Ben DeLuca was that federal authorities “have to prove they [employers] knowingly hired illegal workers. If the illegal workers present fraudulent documents—unless the fraudulent documents were given to them by the employers—it’s difficult to prove the employer knowingly hired undocumented workers….There is a lot of document fraud out there that only an immigration officer is able to detect from a valid document.” 102 This reasoning portrayed Latinas/os as experts in deception, law breakers that took advantage of naïve and unsuspecting employers. If Latinas/os and Mexicans were undocumented, then they had to purchase documents to present to employers and maybe the latter truly had no idea that some of the credentials were counterfeit. 99 Mike Rodman, “Northwest Wants Language Barrier to Add Up in School Formula,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 24, 1994, sec. B. 100 Julieanne Miller, “Poultry Jobs Lure Aliens, Agent Says,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 5, 1993, sec. B. 101 Don Johnson, “Northwest Passage: Being Illegal – It’s a Job,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 24, 1997, sec. A. 102 Stewart, “Raids Net 350 Illegals at Plants.” 242 However, that does not stand when businesses began accepting new documents from workers that had been deported only days before. Don Johnson cites an instance where a man was deported after a raid but was able to get back in a few days. He then showed up at his old worksite with new documentation and a different name but nobody asked him any questions and he was rehired. When Johnson asked him why company officials were not curious about his new name, he smiled and said, “They know.” Ron Kidd, INS Supervisory Special Agent for Investigations in Memphis, also began to have some doubts: “What I find hard to believe is a personnel office where they hire umpteen thousand people and they see a good Social Security card and good green card, and they accept some of the other cards as being good as well. I find it difficult to believe that they believe these people aren’t illegal aliens.” 103 For Kidd, the personnel office has enough experience that they should know how to differentiate valid from invalid documents but the human eye is no substitute for searching a government data base. Relying on another person to recognize the validity of documents would be erratic—Javier and Jesus still laugh about being turned down for jobs at an employment agency because according to the interviewer, their resident alien cards were counterfeit. It was a seeming contradiction that undocumented immigrants continued to move to northwest Arkansas when raids took place or in the aftermath. However, poultry industry representatives were correct in asserting that there were plenty of jobs, so many that immigrants could risk deportation because they knew that if they were able to get back to Arkansas, they were very likely to find another job almost immediately, 103 Ibid. 243 sometimes even in the same plant like the example above. This is not to say that deportation is not a traumatic event because it is. It increases immigrants to premature death as crossing the border is a grueling endeavor and one where they inherently risk their lives. Raids took place all over the United States, including California and Florida, but if an immigrant was caught there, it was harder for them to find a job if they managed to get back. Latinas/os, especially resident aliens and naturalized citizens, also reaped the benefits of such a needy labor market and took trips to Mexico for Christmas, their town’s fiesta, or for other special occasions. Javier and Jesus asked for a leave a couple of different times and were told that the company needed them to work, that they could not leave, and that if they chose to do so, they would lose their job and be banned from working for the factory for at least a few months or more. For a few years, Javier, Jesus, and others did not worry about losing their jobs because they knew they would find another whenever they got back. Of course, if the company paid them a slightly higher wage then workers had to weigh their options. That took place in the 1990s but by the end of the decade, Latinas/os were reporting through their social network, like La Blanca’s, that there were still jobs in Fort Smith but it was a more difficult and that poultry companies were increasingly contracting with employment agencies to get their workers. A drawback for workers was that working through an agency paid less than if they were hired by the company itself, the company benefited because it paid less in salaries and they were not the employers which meant that they did not worry about 244 workers compensations claims, other grievances, and those workers could not participate in organizing a labor union. 104 A lot of suspicion would surround the poultry industry about whether they knowingly allowed people to work without the proper documentation, provided workers with a contact that sold them the documents, and even whether they organized a human trafficking ring to smuggle workers into poultry plants throughout the United States. As in so many other areas of the poultry industry where Tyson led the way, this was no exception. Tyson Foods Incorporated was indicted in December 2001 by the federal government for conspiring to smuggle workers into the United States. Following this indictment, former Tyson workers filed a class action suit in 2002 claiming that the company knowingly hired undocumented workers in order to depress wages. 105 Smuggling Undocumented Workers and Working Conditions In December 2001, the federal government sued Tyson Foods Inc., after a two- and-a-half-year investigation led by the INS and with the participation of the Department of Agriculture, Social Security Administration, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee with a thirty-six count indictment. The Justice Department claimed that fifteen of its plants in nine states had conspired since 1994 smuggle two thousand (Mexican and Guatemalan) undocumented immigrants into the United States and provided them with counterfeit papers so they could work at Tyson plants over a seven year span. The indictment named six managers in the largest case of 104 Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 165-166. 105 Wendy Zellner, “Hiring Illegals: The Risks Grow.” Business Week Online. <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_19/b3782091.htm>. 13 May 2002. 245 its kind against a U.S. corporation. The suggestion was that the managers acted on orders from top officials in corporate headquarters. 106 Amador Anchondo-Rascon had moved to Tennessee from Florida after he heard that nurseries in the area paid better and to Shelbyville when he heard the Tyson plant paid better wages than the nurseries. Like so many others before and after him, Tennessee was at least a second area of settlement. He started working in Florida’s agriculture circuit until his move west. When he got to Shelbyville in 1989 there were only a handful of Mexican immigrants like himself but over the next decade the Latina/o community grew and he opened a grocery store to cater to his countrymen. He became a kind of middle man between Latin American immigrants, mainly Mexicans but increasingly Guatemalans, and the White community including being an translator in court and for police, taking new arrivals to landlords and vouching for them, to used-car dealers, and became “a perfect go-between from Tyson plant managers searching for low-wage workers.” 107 Two local police officers became suspicious of the documents Latinas/os handed them during stops for traffic and other offenses and when questioned, the immigrants would often reply “Los Tres Hermanos” (the name of Anchondo-Rascon’s grocery store). The officers called the INS and an under cover agent purchased counterfeit documents for one-hundred and fifty dollars each. That marked the beginning of the operation and in subsequent meetings Anchondo-Rascon told undercover agents that Tyson plant managers frequently asked him to supply undocumented immigrants and 106 Striffler, Chicken, 98. 107 Kevin Sack, “Under the Counter, Grocer Provides Workers,” New York Times, January 14, 2002, sec. A. 246 that the company paid between one-hundred to two-hundred dollars per worker with corporate checks for “recruitment fees.” 108 Before the case went to jury the judge dismissed twenty-four of the counts including the one about smuggling workers into the United States. One juror “was appalled that the government didn’t have more hard evidence.” 109 The evidence they had was testimony from former Tyson employees who pled guilty to violating immigration laws and on undercover immigration agents who secretly recorded conversations with Tyson officials. Defense lawyers argued that none of the evidence linked Tyson corporate management to the crime; company officials were mentioned by other people but never directly implicated. The jury acquitted Tyson and three managers and the company maintained that rouge employees had taken matters into their own hands without approval of headquarters. Mark D. Hopson, a lawyer for Tyson, said that “Tyson was the absolute wrong test case for this” because “Tyson was in the 1 percent of employers who volunteered to got on a computerized identification checking system,” a government- sponsored program to check for fraudulent documents. 110 The company had enrolled in INS’s “Electronic Verification Program” or and reported doing so in its 1997 Annual Report where they concluded that “the program allows us to verify the validity of team members documentation, thus ensuring our compliance with the law.” 111 However, John 108 Sack, “Under the Counter.” 109 Sherri Day, “Jury Clears Tyson Foods in Use of Illegal Immigrants,” New York Times, March 27, 2003, sec. A 110 Quoted in Day, “Jury Clears Tyson.” 111 “The Changing Face of Our Workforce,” Tyson Foods, Incorporated, Annual Report –1997, Springdale, Arkansas, 25. 247 MacCoon, assistant U.S. attorney in Chattanooga said Tyson would sometimes circumvent the system by hiring workers through temporary agencies who did not have access to the system. 112 Hopson was right in referring the lawsuit was a “test case” because that kind of indictment rarely occurred for such a big company. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said that they were “committed to vigorously investigating and prosecuting companies or individuals who exploit immigrants and violate our nation’s immigration laws” while INS said they were “committed to enforcing compliance with immigration law” but Striffler points out that “neither agency has done much to protect low-wage workers of any nationality.” 113 Yet INS and DOJ are not the only government agencies that consistently fail to protect workers. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that is responsible for developing federal policy on farming, agriculture, and food had intimate connections to the agribusiness. By the late 1970s and most clearly in the 1980s there was a “revolving door” that led department officials back and forth between the USDA and posts in agribusiness firms. By the 1990s this relationship became even clearer. Brent E. Riffel argues that “Tyson managers formed alliances both in congress and at upper levels of regulatory agencies that allowed them to advance the company’s interest under the guise of protecting the consumer or the industry as a whole.” 114 In the 1990s new way to inspect food, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HAACP) was apparently a 112 Mark Bixler, “Hiring of Illegals Props Poultry ‘Culture,’” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 23, 2001, sec. A. 113 Quoted in Striffler, Chicken, 99. 114 Riffel, Feathered Kingdom, 26. 248 tougher position, “but inspectors quickly noted that it actually weakened controls because each plant was allowed to design its own inspection plan which would then be approved by a largely compliant USDA.” 115 The organization, Human Rights Watch put the relationship between federal agencies, like the USDA, and the meat industry as follows: “Federal authorities regulate line speed, for example, only in light of two considerations: avoiding adulterated meat and poultry products and not hinder companies’ productivities and profits. Workers’ safety is a non-factor.” 116 This lack of concern for worker safety means there are “extraordinary high rates of injury. Workers injured on the job may then face dismissal. Workers risk losing their jobs when they exercise their rights to organized and bargain collectively in an attempt to improve working conditions.” 117 Managers constantly demand more production and mandate their people work faster. A woman in northwest Arkansas left for a year to have a baby and returned to find the line producing forty-two birds per minute as opposed to the thirty-two they did when she left. The repetitive motions which reach up to thirty-thousand per day leave even young people with limited mobility after a few years: I hung the live birds on the line. Grab, reach, lift, jerk. Without stopping for hours every day. Only young, strong guys can do it. But after a time, you see what happens. Your arms stick out and your hands are frozen. Look at me now. I’m twenty-two years old, and I feel like an old man. 118 115 Riffel, 29. 116 Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 24. 117 Ibid., 1. 118 Ibid, 24. 249 By 2000, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration reported that one out of seven poultry workers was injured on the job and they were fourteen times more likely to “suffer debilitating injuries stemming from repetitive trauma—like ‘claw hand’ (in which injured fingers lock in a curled position) and ganglionic cysts (fluid deposits under the skin). 119 These working conditions are a harsh way to achieve upward mobility or homeownership; nevertheless, for many Latina/o immigrants they have done just that. But Latinas/os whether undocumented or legalized U.S. residents or citizens were always looking for other opportunities, better jobs, and more pay. The poultry industry is one of the lower paid industrial jobs in the Fort Smith area, workers instead sought to get a foot in the door at a Rheem, Whirlpool, or Gerber that had better wages and less dangers working conditions but those jobs were difficult to obtain. The area’s economic boom also created demand for housing which in turn meant the need for construction workers. Again, this paid better than polleras and many men chose to do those jobs instead. 120 Landscaping also grew in tandem to construction and created another possibility for Latina/o workers. Javier, for example, worked in landscaping after a friend introduced him to a small business owner. They go along well and the boss asked him to recruit reliable workers and put him in charge of work crew. Javier told Jesus that that pay was much better than poultry—again La Blanca’s social networks were at play—and asked him to 119 Nicholas Stein, “Son of a Chicken Man,” Fortune, May 13, 2002, 136. 120 Riffel, 259. 250 join the work crew. But Jesus was approaching sixty years of age and thought he would be unable to work eight, ten, twelve-hour days in the Arkansas heat, so he stayed at a Tyson plant where he had worked for several years. Javier did such a good job running the work crew that when the owner sought to expand his business and move to Tulsa, Oklahoma he asked Javier to join him. In the meantime, their time in Arkansas had allowed Andrea and Javier to save enough money for a decent down-payment on a home and they had become homeowners. At first Javier turned down his boss precisely because they had finally achieved that goal, but the boss offered to pay him more. So they went to Tulsa, Oklahoma where they knew they would find other folks from La Blanca that had also moved from Arkansas as they followed leads to better paying jobs. Conclusion Still many Latina/o immigrants worked at least a few years in polleras out of necessity. The social networks also ensure that the circuit of information is up to date— they rank poultry plants or warn workers not to go to certain ones unless their situation is dire. Tyson managers in 2003 told Human Rights Watch: “It is a myth that we are trying to bring in Hispanic employees at the expense of local workers, that we want Hispanic workers so we can exploit or mistreat them. That is absolutely untrue, total nonsense. The increase of Hispanic workers in our plants is a result of us needing workers and Hispanic workers needing jobs.” 121 That last part of the statement is correct; Latina/o immigrants, undocumented and legalized, discovered the poultry industry at a time when it was desperate to grow to meet national demand for chicken. The industry would be willing to 121 Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 108. 251 exploit any worker, from any part of the world but immigrants that are undocumented have an immense vulnerability that the industry exploits. A plant manager in the South straightforwardly told Striffler, “I don’t want them after they’ve been here for a year and know how to get around. I want them right off the bus.” 122 Tyson threatens to fire workers (and follow through) if they protest changes in work pace or hint at organizing a union. 123 A Tyson worker from a Rogers plant said: Tyson always gets rid of workers who protest or who speak up for others. When they jumped from thirty-two chickens a minute to forty-two, a lot of people protested. They company came right out and asked who the leaders were. Then they fired them. They told us, ‘If you don’t like it, there’s the door. There’s another eight hundred applicants waiting to take your job.’ They are the biggest company so what they do goes for the rest. 124 Indeed, Peterson Farms (in Rogers) sent a notice to its third-shift sanitation crew that any worker who was organizing a strike would be fired. 125 Managers knew there was a willing labor pool to replace laborers that complained about the working conditions but Tyson lost about $4,000 for every worker it had to retrain while the industry average of nearly one-hundred percent turnover rate made this costly. 126 At the same time John Sampier, Mayor of Rogers for thirteen years, sought to integrate Latinas/os into the community. The Rogers Chamber of Commerce came up with a plan in 1994 that placed high priority on “the integration of the Hispanic 122 Quoted in Striffler, Chicken, 98. 123 Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 77-84. For an in-depth discussion of Tyson’s anti-union maneuvers and workplace violations of labor law, see Feathered Kingdom, 173-199. 124 Blood, Sweat, and Fear, 80. 125 Ibid. 126 Riffel, 259. 252 community” throughout the city and in order to “keep Rogers a desirable place to live.” 127 As part of the endeavor the Chamber encouraged developers to build affordable housing and they got the area’s largest bank to provide mortgage loans for two-worker immigrant families who earned more than seven dollars per hour at the area’s poultry plants. 128 Despite a seemingly endless and willing workforce, Rogers poultry plants still had high turnover rates and some were considering relocating but then Sampier’s efforts kicked in. Arvest Bank (owned by Wal-Mart) participated in the endeavor by establishing a financial literacy training at plants and the plants provided the classroom space and paid workers to take the classes on U.S. banking and homeownership. 129 Arvest Bank also created a program to help immigrants establish a credit history which in turn helped qualify them for home mortgages. Five hundred eighty-six loans were provided with the program with zero defaults in eight years. The effort earned twenty-six million dollars for the bank and the poultry plants’ turnover dropped from two-hundred to fifteen percent from 1992 to 1999. 130 According to Sampier, by 1998 forty percent of Rogers’ forty-five hundred Latinas/os were homeowners. 131 In this way the poultry industry was a key actor 127 Quoted in Dick Kirschten, “A Melting Pot Chills in Arkansas,” National Journal, November 14, 1998, 2728. 128 Kirschten, “A Melting Pot Chills in Arkansas.” 129 “A Quick Look at U.S. Immigrants: Demographics, Workforce, and Asset-Building,” National Conference of State Legislatures, June 17, 2004. 130 “Demographics, Workforce, and Asset-Building”; “Bridging the Information Gap: How Bankers Can Help the Hispanic Population Realize the American Dream of Homeownership,” Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, March 22, 2005. 131 Kirschten, “A Melting Pot Chills in Arkansas.” 253 in efforts to smooth over tensions between Latina/o immigrants and White Arkansans while keeping a much needed supply of laborers. Tyson, after invoking that “America’s labor force has historically been fueled by newcomers,” put it to their stockholders as follows: “Tyson Foods has accepted a responsibility to these communities [the ones experiencing changes] by making a vigorous commitment of human and financial resources to assist in assimilating the newcomers in our workforce into American culture and society. 132 The company goes on to say that they have “initiated and sponsored” multicultural centers and forums and help community organizations to provide various services such as ESL and citizenship classes and provide opportunities for teachers to achieve ESL accreditation. They also provide translation and interpretations services to law enforcement, schools, and health care providers. They close by noting that they also participate in the Electronic Verification Program and thus ensure their compliance with the law. In other words, Tyson was being a good corporate citizen to immigrants and to long-time residents. Tyson supported Sampier in his run for re-election against Steve Womack who ran on a strong anti-immigrant platform; Womack won. The election will be discussed more fully in the chapter that follows but for now it suffices to say that the poultry industry’s privileged status began to wane because Arkansans noted how important Tyson and other plans were for drawing Latinas/os to their neighborhoods. Tyson, like other poultry companies, had for the most part been allowed to dictate how they got rid of the immense chicken waste with dire consequences for the areas waterways and the 132 “The Changing Face of Our Workforce,” 25. 254 company increasingly faced scrutiny for its waste management practices, but it was Tyson’s connection to the racial and ethnic diversification of the northwest area of the state that made Arkansans more leery of this corporation. 255 CHAPTER 5 “Northwest Arkansas’ No. 1 Societal Concern”: “Illegal Aliens,” Acts of Spatial Illegality, and Political Mobilizations The 1990s was a period of great change for northwest Arkansas as it went from being an overwhelmingly White area to one that had tens of thousands of Latinas/os. Two central questions guide this chapter: How did the community and state respond to the presence of Latinas/os? How did the responses racialize Latinas/os? I understand racialization as the process by which institutions and individuals form, establish, invoke, adapt, reformulate, and strengthen racial meanings. This happens at different and interconnecting spheres which include juridical, legislative, economic, political, cultural, and social. Some of these are formally part of the state, others are not; at different points in time individuals either corroborate with the state’s efforts and or do not. As Latinas/os made Arkansas home, as they rented apartments, bought houses, sent their kids to school, attended church, bought cars, shopped for clothes and groceries, and worked at polleras, they caught the attention of the statewide press and community members who talked about “aliens,” “illegals,” “illegal aliens,” and “illegal Mexicans.” I use discourse analysis to explore newspaper articles, opinion and editorial pieces, and letters to the editor published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette which has state-wide distribution. As Otto Santa Ana, Juan Morán, and Cynthia Sánchez argue, the “language in newsprint is a mode of social action that serves to articulate, affirm, and legitimate the social order” since news writers tend to conform to established ways of speaking. By using “language in specific ways, newspapers present the common 256 viewpoint. In this way, news media formulate public opinion.” 1 Lisa Marie Cacho put in another way: “Newspapers provide a way to examine how storytelling relies upon a shared social language that is in itself racialized….The written word documents and universalizes language, telling and re-telling stories that already exist within American narratives.” 2 Newspaper stories also present people’s points of view albeit in an edited fashion since the reporter decides what is written and the editor decides what is printed. The newspapers are a node in a communication system that both puts forth information to and receives it from its readers and where all are aware of and connected to relevant debates occurring at regional and national scales. By focusing on the newspaper I was able to access the knowledge and thoughts circulating in the 1990s about the diversification of northwest Arkansas. The reports were about Latina/o immigrants and did not include coverage of or discussions about Cubans from the Mariel boatlift. This absence reinforces other evidence that indicates that few of the four-hundred and two Cubans who were sponsored in Arkansas permanently stayed in the state. 3 The racialization process of Latinas/os in Arkansas drew from national narratives about racial meanings, from White migrants who brought their conceptions with them, and from communities as people made sense of the Latinas/os that moved to the area. 1 Otto Santa Ana, Juan Morán, and Cynthia Sánchez, “Awash Under a Brown Tide: Immigration Metaphors in California Public and Print Media Discourse,” Aztlán 23 (1998): 138. 2 Lisa Marie Cacho, “‘The People of California are Suffering’: The Ideology of White Injury in Discourses of Immigration,” Cultural Values 4 (2000): 389-418. 3 Associated Press, “Two Decades Later, Mariel Boat Lift Refugees Still Feel Effects of Riot,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2001, sec. A. 257 Although there were some varied responses to Latina/o immigrants, they were overwhelmingly constructed as “illegal aliens.” The discourse of “illegal aliens” racialized all Latinas/os as undocumented, criminal, and Mexican. Informed by Mae Ngai’s and Nicholas De Genova’s work, I argue that the construction of Latina/o immigrants as “illegal” became a defining characteristic; it ceased being one part of a whole and became the whole that defines the parts. 4 In other words, Arkansans work from the premise that all Latinas/os are “illegal” and Mexican. It is a myopic vision that does not allow for the heterogeneity inherent in Latinas/os who are immigrants with varying legal statuses (undocumented, temporary resident, permanent resident, and naturalized citizen) and migrants that are native-born U.S. citizens. Moreover, their supposed undocumented status marks them as criminals or people with tendencies to break the law. Latina/o immigrants’ construction as “illegal aliens” draws on notions of citizenship, belonging, and exclusion. This discourse is about the parameters and preservation of community at a variety of scales including the local and national. Moreover, it is a racialized discourse that marks Latina/o bodies, particularly Mexicans, as foreigners and outsiders. As critical geographers point out, debates about community are about identity and space, place, race, and landscape. One can approach these relationships as constantly changing and dynamic and thus define a community as amorphous, its outlines constantly moving. Or, one can attempt to make static the definition of community and who belongs, reifying and reproducing markers of 4 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Nicholas De Genova, "Migrant "Illegality" and Deportability in Everyday Life," Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002): 419-47. 258 separation. I argue that the articles in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette are attempts to construct community in the latter sense. In order to maintain this strict definition, behaviors are monitored to assure they conform to the norm. However, when new people arrive and are seen as “foreigners” (Latinas/os) their conducts are scrutinized much more intensely. And if the community has the power to do so, they will find ways to police behaviors and/or enact laws in order to protect and preserve their desired lines of community and identity. White Arkansans policed their community borders based on who belonged (White folks) and who did not (Latinas/os); consequently, nearly all of Latinas/os’ behaviors were understood as “acts of spatial illegality.” I define this as any instance where Latinas/os do not break laws, customs, or social norms of the community yet their activity is constructed as objectionable and illicit, where their mere presence is a violation of community. It is when Latinas/os engage in the same behaviors as their White neighbors, accepted comportment such as going to the park with their family but where the acts are constructed as objectionable and ones which taint that place. In other words, because Latinas/os are racialized as “illegal aliens” their use of spaces does not depend on the law or social norms in order to be deemed a violation. The result is that Latinas/os themselves become illicit within those spaces. The reactions toward Latina/o immigrants also mobilized grassroots responses from the Arkansas electorate, especially in the Third Congressional District. In 1997, Dan Morris, a Rogers resident formed Americans for an Immigration Moratorium (AIM), the following year Rogers Mayor John Sampier, a seventeen-year incumbent who had led 259 efforts in northwest Arkansas to incorporate Latinas/os to the area, lost to Alderman Steve Womack who ran on an anti-immigrant campaign. By 2001, Gunner DeLay, a Republican from Fort Smith, declared “illegal immigration” the “defining issue” in the district. Most politicians responded harshly toward Latinas/os though in 2000 Governor Mike Huckabee eventually welcomed them to the state as “friends and neighbors” and by 2005 some Black legislators attempted to create opportunities for undocumented students to pay in-state tuition in Arkansas’ state colleges and universities. I begin the chapter by laying out the theoretical framework of Latinas/os’ racialization as “illegal aliens” and follow it with an analysis of newspaper stories that demonstrate how Arkansans made sense of these new southerners. From there I explore Latinas/os in public space and the construction of their activities as spatial acts of illegality. The last half of the chapter investigates nativist responses and political mobilizations in northwest Arkansas and how these issues reached statewide politics. The final section addresses the future of Latinas/os in Arkansas. Racialization and “Illegal Aliens” As Mae Ngai argues, U.S. immigration law has racialized Mexicans, Filipinos, and Chinese as undesirable aliens. In the case of Mexicans, increased border restriction produced the “illegal alien”—a “new legal and political subject, whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and a legal impossibility—a subject barred from citizenship and without rights.” 5 Eventually Mexicans emerged as the “iconic illegal aliens” as opposed to Europeans and Canadians who tended to be disassociated from the 5 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 4, italics in original. 260 category and thus able to assimilate as white American citizens. More significantly, however, “illegal status became constitutive of a racialized Mexican identity and of Mexicans’ exclusion from the national community and polity.” 6 Nicholas De Genova also argues that one key aspect to the racialization of Latinas/os, particularly Mexicans, is the discursive and legal power of illegality. He argues that the category of “illegal alien” has served as a means to racialize all Mexicans in particular ways. Furthermore, illegality is primarily a political identity because it is a juridical status that necessitates a social relation to the state. In this way, illegality is similar to citizenship because both are political identities formed through juridical status. But whereas the latter defines inclusion, the former defines exclusion and the erasure of legal personhood. Categories have been collapsed so that illegality is equated with “Mexican” as opposed to only being one element of racialization. 7 While it is true that some Latinas/os in Arkansas were undocumented immigrants, many were also U.S. legal residents, naturalized citizens, and among the younger generation, U.S.-born nationals. The inability of most Arkansans to fathom that many of the new arrivals were legally present demonstrates Ngai’s concept of “alien citizens.” This category is based on the “legal racialization of these ethnic groups’ [Asians and Mexicans] national origin [and] cast them as permanently foreign and unassimilable to the nation.” 8 More specifically, alien citizens are “persons who are American citizens by 6 Ngai, 58. 7 Nicholas De Genova, "Migrant "Illegality" and Deportability in Everyday Life," Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (2002): 419-47. 8 Ngai, 7-8. 261 virtue of their birth in the United States but who are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state.” 9 The result of such constructions is the denial of “substantive citizenship.” 10 Substantive citizenship is both “the capacity to exercise rights to which one is formally entitled” and the “enforcement or lack of enforcement of formal citizenship rights by the national, state, or local government or by members of the public.” 11 Evelyn Nakano Glenn posits that “at the most general level is the notion of citizenship simply as belonging—membership in the community, sometimes defined as the nation” in addition to other “sub-meanings” including “the notion of nationality (being identified as part of a people who constitute the nation).” 12 The issue of belonging includes civil, political, and social citizenship where boundaries are or are not enforced by individual actors at a local level that then creates local, regional, and temporal variability. 13 Her discussion of citizenship parallels Ngai’s concept of “alien citizens,” both argue that some groups, including Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans, lack recognition of formal and substantive citizenship through denial of membership in the community and nation. 9 Ibid., 2. 10 Glenn. 11 Ibid., 53. 12 Ibid., 54; parenthesis in original. 13 Ibid., 53-54. 262 According to Jonathan Xavier Inda, the construction of “illegal aliens” is rendered in ethical terms. 14 The clearest indication that ‘illegal’ immigrants have been constructed as unethical comes from the widespread tendency to cast them as lawbreakers. Indeed, the propensity has been to characterize them as criminals. Their criminality is generally attributed to the simple fact that they have no legal right to be in the United States. 15 Ultimately, Inda argues that “‘illegal” immigrants – typically imagined as criminals, job takers, and welfare dependents – have essentially been constructed as imprudent, unethical subjects incapable of exercising responsible self-government and thus as threats to the overall well-being of the social body.” 16 As we shall see, in Arkansas the threat to the “social body” took places at different scales—community, state, and nation. The implications of foreignness and criminality that accompanied the process of racialization through the construction of illegality affected Latinas/os’ uses of private and public spaces. Initially, white residents often complained about Latinas/os for simply being in and making use of front yards and parks, and engaging in the same type of activities that White residents undertook. De Genova argues that the spatialized difference between the United States and Latin America, especially Mexico, is socially inscribed on people because the physical borders of nation-states are reproduced “in the everyday life of innumerable places throughout the interiors of the migrant-receiving states. Thus, the legal production of ‘illegality’ as a distinctly spatialized and typically 14 Jonathan Xavier Inda, Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006). 15 Ibid., 108. 16 Ibid., 177. 263 racialized social condition.” 17 For example, mundane activities such as driving to work become illicit acts that limit mobility. De Genova argues that differences are inscribed on bodies but ultimately posits that everyday activities like driving become illicit acts as people are forced to break the law in order to survive. I argue that the “illegal” dimension occurs even if Latinas/os do not break laws, customs, or social norms of the community, state, or nation. Instead, because Latinas/os are racialized as “illegal aliens” their use of spaces does not depend on the law in order to be deemed a violation. In addition, Latinas/os themselves become illicit within those spaces. The mere presence of beings racialized as undesirable violated the community and turned their occupancy of those places into objectionable, illicit acts or acts of spatial illegality. Making Sense of Latinas/os: “We Just Don’t Run Across This Every Day” In the 1990s, Latinas/os came from various places but seventy percent had Mexican ancestry and the next largest group had Central American, especially Salvadoran, origins. 18 The estimates about the number of undocumented immigrants in the area varied widely. According to a U.S. Border Patrol estimate in 1995, about thirty or forty percent of Latinas/os in Arkansas were undocumented. 19 However, some scholars argue that the undocumented population comprised about ten percent based on state data, 17 De Genova, 439. 18 Jeralynn S. Cossman and Edward L. Powers, “Dynamics of Hispanic Population Growth in Arkansas,” Arkansas Business and Economic Review 33 (2000); Shbikat and Striffler. 19 Michael Whiteley, “Illegals Find Haven in Ozarks,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 23, 1995, sec. A. 264 INS estimates, and community and religious organizations. 20 The percentage of undocumented Latinas/os in Arkansas is not important to this project. What is vital is the material force Latinas/os’ construction as “illegal aliens” exerted on them in the process of racialization. Arkansans that encountered Latinas/os at parks, in stores, on the playground, or in other public spaces could not identify their legal status but operated under the assumption that all Latinas/os were “illegal” and that all “illegals” were Mexican. Even if the higher estimate of the number of undocumented people is correct, it does not change how Arkansans made sense of Latinas/os. The best indicator as to the relationship between race and documentation is that generally White and Black immigrants are not assumed to be undocumented nor necessarily immigrants. White immigrants in particular can skirt being recognized as such—in public they are just another White person unless they speak their native language or have other markers such as dress that indicate their origin. Black immigrants are often constructed as African Americans unless they too have other markers that suggest otherwise. Asians, both immigrants and U.S. born citizens, are often seen as foreigners though not necessarily undocumented. 21 Because Latinas/os can be of any race, lighter skinned Latinas/os with more European features are not necessarily identified and racialized as Latinas/os unless other markers are present such as speaking Spanish or being with Latinas/os that have 20 Cossman and Powers. 21 Colleen Lye, America’s Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996). 265 darker complexions, more indigenous or African features. Most of the Latina/o immigrants who moved to Arkansas in the 1990s were native Spanish speakers, with darker complexions, and more indigenous features so they were frequently identified as Mexicans and “illegals aliens.” Arkansans in the northwest had limited personal interactions with Mexican immigrants prior to the late 1980s but had been exposed to national debates and discussions about Mexicans and undocumented immigration and already had firm ideas as to what the federal government needed to do in terms of lawful and unlawful immigrants—close the border and deport them all. In 1975, when some Arkansans were sponsoring Vietnamese refugees, C.L. Justin of Winslow in Washington County wrote to Governor David Pryor and told him that the United States would have more than enough room for Southeast refugees if lawful and unlawful Mexican immigrants were barred from entering the country. In Justin’s configuration, the number of unemployed Americans matched with the number of undocumented Mexican immigrants creating a causal relationship where if the latter were denied entry into the country, the former would be employed. Moreover, if undocumented Mexicans were not in the country, then there would be plenty of room for Southeast Asian refugees. For Wilson the national body was damaged by the voluminous numbers of Mexican immigrants: When we note that the number of unemployed Americans is estimated at 6 to 10 million, and then see that there are thought to be 6 to 10 million persons entered here illegally from Mexico, ought we not to take some actions? This is in addition to now 400,000 a year entering legally. 266 If we can curtail this, in fact stop all legal and illegal immigration from that one country alone, will we not have ample room for the perhaps 100,000 refugees from Indo-China, who need our help to save their lives. 22 During the Mariel boatlift some Arkansans objected to aiding any “aliens.” E.S. Gates from Siloam Springs in Benton County wrote to Governor Bill Clinton to vehemently object to helping Cubans because: “We are overpopulated and under- employed now, and people around here are really angry that ‘refugees’ are invading the U.S. on every side and we want it stopped. Also illegal aliens. We want Mexican and all other illegal aliens deported….these aliens populate like flies and cost us far more tax money to keep them than to deport them.” 23 Drexel Atkinson from Little Rock said: “I protest the lack of enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and the flood of aliens in the U.S. from Cuba and Asia. In addition to this we have immigrants coming in from South America and Mexico both legally and illegally.” 24 He pledged not to vote for any federal official if aid to refugees continued as well as contacting people in Arkansas and other states thereby suggesting that he was going to start a grassroots anti-immigrant, anti- refugee movement. In a time when the issue in Arkansas was not immigration and when the people in question were not from Mexico, Arkansans nonetheless centered their objections and fears on Mexican immigrants regardless of status. Although Gates and Atkinson recognized that undocumented people could be from other countries, by 22 C.L. Justin to Pryor, May 1, 1975, DHPP, MC 336, Box 67, Folder 30 “Vietnamese Refugee Program- Unfavorable.” 23 E.S. Gates to Clinton, May 11, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 18 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee—File 9,” quotation marks in original. 24 Drexel Atkinson to Clinton, no date, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 6 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – Memos and Notes.” 267 mentioning Mexico by name they demonstrated how it and its and its people were the primary targets of their fears and apprehensions. These Arkansans anxieties were likely heightened during the 1980s when the national immigration conversation focused the millions of undocumented people in the United States and with the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which allowed many people to legalize their status. By the 1990s, press coverage about Latinas/os began to appear in newspapers with increasing frequency, especially as they began to settle in the state. With the first few stories printed in the 1990s about Latinas/os we can see an evolution in the way they were portrayed from legal migrant workers, to undocumented Hispanics, to “illegal aliens.” 25 The latter construction proved to be long-lasting as the Latina/o community grew. In May 1990 the Arkansas Gazette published, “Migrants Fill Summer Niche,” that focused on men (they were the only ones mentioned while wives waited elsewhere) who worked on fish farms during spring and summer in Lonoke County. According to the reporter, Mayor Jack Wheat of Lonoke, where most of the farms were located, said that there were “35 to 50 migrant workers from Spanish-speaking countries” including Mexicans and Guatemalans. Wheat added that the work “demands a lot of manual labor and they’re legal immigrants. The demand here is so great seasonally that apparently 25 These are the stories as they appeared in the newspapers’ indexes; I have not knowingly omitted a story. These were in the Arkansas Gazette which folded in 1992 and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the result of a merger between the former and the Arkansas Democrat. 268 there are not enough people in the area to fill the jobs.” 26 Employers liked the migrants because they were quick learners and did not “need breaks for summer vacations or summertime football practice.” Wheat eased any local anxieties by addressing two key issues—that these workers were not hindering Americans’ opportunities and that they were not undocumented immigrants. 27 The story also included a picture of two men laughing with the following caption: “LIGHT MOMENT: Juan Negrete, a migrant worker from Mexico, shares a light minute with his friend and coworker Roy Lewis, during a lunch break. Migrant workers are in demand in Lonoke in the summer.” The picture captured camaraderie between the men as they shared a moment in the lunch room, cited friendship, and the shared struggle of getting through the work day. The reporter began the story by recounting an instance in the lunch room where Negrete told Lewis about a home remedy for a sore throat. “Spanish 101” and “cultural lessons” are what migrants bring to Lonoke as well as spending money at a local Wal-Mart where they buy gold chains, charms, earrings, and watches. Jewel Ashmore who works at the store says the migrants’ presence “makes my job a whole lot more interesting. And it has been educational for me – I can count to 10, and learned the words ‘dinero’ for money and ‘agua’ for ‘water’.” The story ends by citing the various things that Arkansans learn from migrants—about “beans, rice, hot 26 Phoebe Wall Howard, “Migrants Fill Summer Niche,” Arkansas Gazette, May 2, 1990, sec. B. 27 In March, the unemployment rate in the county was 6.8 percent, higher than the United States’ 5.2 but lower than the state’s 7.3 percent; Gazette Staff, “March Unemployment Rates (Percent), Arkansas Gazette, May 3, 1990, sec. C. 269 peppers and tortillas” while the townsfolk are “eager to make friends” and Negrete enjoys “going to high school baseball games with Lewis.” 28 The sketch of these Latina/o migrants is short but covers various points and hints at their diverse origins. Migrants are legally present in the country, they are hard workers who learn quickly and are available at times when local workers want to take time off or do other activities. As migrant workers, they presumably leave whenever they are not needed, they are disposable workers. They are also consumers who spend money at the local Wal-Mart or deposit it in local banks as they save up money to buy a truck though some send money home to wives and parents. The report is a short one and it reads like a human interest story where new people arrive and teach locals about their culture and language and vice versa. After all, baseball is “America’s pastime.” That story stands in contrast to the next one that centered on immigrants because it presented Latinas/os in an overall positive light—they were legally present in the country, good workers and consumers, and willing to learn about local culture. “Immigration Officials Arrest Hudson Workers,” appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette almost two years later. Hudson Foods is a poultry plant located in Noel, Missouri less than thirty minutes from the state line and northwest Arkansas. The focus of the story was about ongoing INS raids in the area’s poultry plants as “they check for illegal aliens, most of whom are Hispanic.” The reporter wrote that several workers from the area’s poultry plants said that the INS made surprise inspections in northwest Arkansas poultry plants in those weeks, though no other story appeared or cited that any 28 Howard, “Migrants Fill Summer Niche.” 270 undocumented immigrants were found. In order to relate the raid in Missouri to Arkansas the journalist wrote that “the Hispanic population in Northwest Arkansas has grown at such a clipping rate that in the past two years” in towns like Rogers that police officers were required to learn Spanish while Tyson Foods started offering Spanish classes to their supervisors “to accommodate the growing Hispanic workforce.” 29 Unlike its predecessor, this story presents no human face. It is about the INS, the poultry industry, and “illegal aliens, most of whom are Hispanic.” No estimates are given for the growth of Latinas/os though the implications are clear: they get in trouble with local police departments and they work in the poultry industry. They are no longer legal migrant workers, now they are “illegal” permanent workers; there is no friendly moment between coworkers at poultry plants. If there was some doubt as to their activities after they presumably crossed the border, the next story made it clear they were not beyond breaking the law (again). On May 28, 1992 a story appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette titled, “Osceola Wants Aliens Off its Hands; INS Refuses to Take Penniless 11 Held in Break- in.” According to the article, the police department in northeast Arkansas arrested eleven “illegal aliens” after they received a call that “Spanish-looking people” were breaking into a truck. They were accused of stealing a battery, cables, and shoplifting food. “We just don’t run across this every day. The numbers we were dealing with kind of caught my attention,” said Police Chief Phil Johnson. The Osceola Police Department in Mississippi County called the Little Rock and Memphis INS offices to have the men 29 Andrea Harter, “Immigration Officials Arrest Hudson Workers,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 14, 1992, sec. D. 271 deported but were told to let them go because employed “illegal aliens” were “the lowest level” on the Border Patrol’s list. Jim Hipple, agent in charge of the Border Patrol in Little Rock, said, “That [the undocumented men] sounds like Osceola’s problem to me.” Then he added that the agency could pick them up and send them back to Mexico but “those offenses are the least of our worries. We are dealing with [other] criminal adult illegal aliens who commit heinous crimes, or those of a serious type.” Osceola’s Mayor, Dick Kennemore was surprised at the response; “I couldn’t believe it. Here President [George H.] Bush is sending the Haitians back, we are spending huge amounts of money on a super collider, and they told me to just let them go.” 30 Jessee F. Tabor, chief patrol agent with the U.S. Border Patrol’s New Orleans office, said the prior article misrepresented the agency and that it was “normal procedure not to interfere until local disposition has run its course.” However, Osceola Police Captain, Arthur Pugh stood by city officials and added: “That’s the first time a law enforcement agency told me to let lose a criminal.” Four of the eleven suspects were sixteen years old boys who were transferred to the county’s juvenile authority and released to relatives living in Alabama “who are U.S. residents.” The remaining men, ages seventeen to twenty-three were released on their own recognizance. 31 Two were 30 Larry Young, “Osceola Wants Aliens Off its Hands,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 28, 1992, sec. B. 31 Andy Gotlieb, “Osceola Police Arrest 11 Mexicans in Theft,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 30, 1992, sec. B 272 charged with theft—one adult and one juvenile—for taking battery cables and the Border Patrol had no plants to deport them to Mexico. 32 Historically in the Southwest the Immigration and Naturalization Service and then the Border Patrol exercised latitude in terms of how they enforced immigration laws. For example, as far back as 1910, officials let Mexican immigrants enter the United States event though there were statutes on the books that prevented the entry of those “likely to become a public charge” or others who were infirm, whose morality was in question, or contract laborers. F.W. Berkshire, the supervising inspector at El Paso, told his superior in Washington that “all of the Mexican aliens of the laboring class” could be denied entry under the “likely to become a public charge” statute but they both knew that the Mexicans could find transportation to areas where they would find employment. 33 As George Sánchez put it, “Both American officials and entering aliens understood that it was the labor needs of the American Southwest that defined Mexican immigration to the United States and not laws drawn up in Washington.” 34 In her study of the Border Patrol, Kelley Lytle Hernández argues that “the U.S. Border Patrol’s rise in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands not only evolved according to economic demands and nativist anxieties but 32 Gotlieb, “Osceola Police Arrest 11 Mexicans in Theft,” May 30, 1992, sec. B; Unknown, “11 Illegal Aliens Freed,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 11, 1992, sec. B. 33 George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 51. 34 Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American, 51. 273 also operated according to the individual interests and community investments of the men who worked as Border Patrol officers.” 35 According to U.S. policy, the Border Patrol is responsible for removing undocumented people from the country, yet at various points in time its officers have chosen to overlook those laws because they understand the service that able-bodies provide, usually to agriculture. The case in Arkansas is similar because the regional offices are not concerned with the eleven employed undocumented Mexicans, but the local law enforcement office was because they were unaccustomed to seeing such large numbers. Moreover, the agencies had differing hierarchies of criminality where undocumented border-crossers were a low priority in to the Border Patrol in contrast to those border crossers who committed serious crimes. To the local police department, however, the fact that the men had broken the law by crossing the border was sufficient enough to cast them as threatening criminals. This is a moment where various institutions working at different scales attempt to uphold federal laws, or not. The seeming contradiction can be found in Mayor Kennemore’s comment about the United States actively turning away and returning (some) people who are trying to enter the country while simultaneously allowing others to remain. Kennemore invoked the example of Haitians because in that moment they were national news. In 1991 a military coup d’etat unseated democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide and in its aftermath thousands of Haitians took boats, arrived on U.S. soil, and sought to enter as asylees. By May 24, 1992, President Bush 35 Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 5. 274 ordered the Coast Guard to intercept all Haitians at sea and return them without determining the legitimacy of their claims for asylum. 36 Haitians have historically been denied equal treatment as refugees or asylees. The federal government argued that they were economic migrants despite evidence of persecution especially under the repressive regimes that had a hold on the country since the late 1950s. The unfair treatment of Haitians continued in the 1990s. For example, in December 1992 when a Cuban pilot diverted a plane to Miami after gagging and handcuffing the co-pilot and the security guard, he and all the Cubans were given the opportunity to stay in the United States if they so wished. A few months later, a Haitian man also diverted a plane to Miami but he was accused of piracy, jailed, and threatened with a twenty-year sentence. 37 In 1995 President Bill Clinton changed longstanding policy toward Cubans during the so-called balsero crisis (from the Spanish “balsa” for boat, i.e. boat people) when many poor and working class islanders fled for the United States. The administration ordered Cuban balseros to be intercepted at sea and repatriated to Cuba yet those who reached U.S. soil were allowed to stay and begin their paperwork for legal entry. Mariel Cubans in 1980 and balseros in the 1990s had similar backgrounds and differed to the first waves of Cubans that arrived in the United States post-Castro, those for whom special legislation was enacted. The exiles in the 1960s were part of the island elite and largely of European ancestry, while Cubans in the last two decades of the 36 Ruth Ellen Wasem, “U.S. Immigration Policy on Haitian Migrants,” CRS Report for Congress, January 21, 2005, 3. 37 Alex Stepic, Pride Against Prejudice: Haitians in the United States (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), 108. 275 twentieth century were largely working-class people with more African ancestry. Clinton’s abrupt change on Cuban admission policy might reflect a fear of poor immigrants of color. At the same time, Cubans that reached U.S. soil were allowed to stay. This policy stands in sharp contrast to procedures that remove others who attempt to reach the United States in a similar fashion such as Haitians and Dominicans. 38 The incident in Osceola took place only four days after President Bush essentially closed the U.S. border to Haitians, yet the federal agencies were unwilling to deport the handful of undocumented men already in Arkansas. Ngai notes that “the illegal alien cannot be constituted without deportation—the possibility of threat of deportation, if not the fact.” 39 This happens because the state has a system in place to detain and deport individuals. It is a looming threat that may, in fact, never take place. Yet the threat alone can leave psychological and cultural consequences in the form of “community vulnerability and isolation, and the use of undocumented workers as a highly exploited and reserve labor force.” 40 According to De Genova, “What makes deportability so decisive in the legal production of migrant ‘illegality’ and the militarized policing of nation-state borders is that some are deported in order that most may remain (un- deported)—as workers, whose particular migrant status may thus be rendered ‘illegal,’” “a distinctly disposable commodity,” and “keeps a cheap labor reserve.” 41 For 38 Ted Henken, “Balseros, Boteros, and El Bombo: Post-1994 Cuban Immigration to the United States and the Persistence of Special Treatment,” Latino Studies 3 (2005): 393-416. 39 Ngai, 58. 40 Ibid. 41 De Genova, 438-440. 276 Kennemore, the Osceola incident was a moment of rupture and contraction because he knew the U.S. president was returning thousands of Haitians to their country but was told to allow a handful of men to continue their undocumented journeys. What Kennemore and Pugh did not understand were the purposes these men served by remaining in the United States; they were going to be, if they had not already been, a cheap and disposable workforce. Work was central to the construction of Latinas/os, but as the community grew and women and children joined their husbands and fathers, Latinas/os expanded their activities beyond the work in polleras. 42 They moved into a variety of neighborhoods and partook of an assortment of daily activities. The three newspaper articles in the 1990s that talked about Latinas/os suggest that Arkansas were quite accepting of migrant workers, people who would toil the land or water when necessary but leave after the season passed. Learning how to say “dinero” and count to ten in Spanish was alright, so was learning about “rice, beans, and red peppers” but once Latina/o immigrants began to permanently work in the poultry industry, once they put down roots in Arkansas as they rented and bought homes, they were no longer curiosities and instead were constructed as “illegal aliens.” While newcomers are supposed to adapt to their surroundings, not everyone was pleased with Latinas/os’ participation in ordinary activities. The next section demonstrates how Latinas/os’ use of public and private spaces thorough housing occupancy, the use of front yards, and driving were deemed spatial acts of illegality. 42 For more information about the role of work in Latina/o migration and racialization, see Chapter 4. 277 Contours of Spatialized Illegality and Public Space Only a year after eleven undocumented Mexicans caught the attention of the Osceola Police Department due to the sheer numbers, Julieanne Miller reported that “Northwest Arkansas is encountering a large influx of illegal Mexican aliens the past 16 months.” By her estimations, “12,000 illegal Mexican aliens” in the area led federal authorities to conduct raids in Fort Smith. After the raids “citizen complaints” led the U.S. Border Patrol to return to search apartments on the city’s north side (these are working-class neighborhoods). According to Miller, “the complaints regarded overcrowded residences or illegal aliens using public facilities. Almost all of the illegal aliens survived in dirty, squalid living conditions in low-rent housing near their jobs or in the downtown areas of Fort Smith and Van Buren.” 43 The quote presented two issues. The first regarded “overcrowded” housing or non-normative behaviors that painted Latinas/os as unsanitary, unhygienic, poor, and living too many to an apartment. The comment on the type of housing they occupied made it seem as if the unhygienic living conditions should have been expected from people who inhabited the lower strata of society and contributed to their racialization. Overcrowding is presented as a cultural trait in these stories because there is no suggestion that Latina/o immigrants live in this manner as a means to save rent money or that it is a temporary solution as people save enough to live on their own or buy a house. Instead it is pathologized as something threatening to the rest of society, especially in conjunction with the state of their supposedly filthy living quarters. 43 Julieanne Miller, “Poultry Jobs Lure Aliens, Agent Says,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 5, 1993, sec. B. 278 The second part of the quote was a complaint about “illegal aliens using public facilities.” In other words, the objection was about supposedly undocumented people using public facilities as opposed to the misuse of them. However, it is impossible to visually or aurally identify undocumented immigrants since they can be of any phenotype and people legally present in the United States can also speak Spanish. White Arkansans rejected Latinas/os’ patronage and participation in the community, and I argue, constructed their activities as spatial acts of illegality precisely because the group often did not break social rules or norms in their use of public amenities or while engaged in other activities. Being in public view increasingly became a loaded issue where Latinas/os encountered hyper-visibility as many Arkansans objected to their presences. Concerns about housing were rampant in relation to Latinas/os and in 1994 Springdale residents and several members of the Springdale City Council knew “how to handle overcrowded housing caused by a growing Hispanic population: Hire an officer with a gun.” 44 They proposed the lawman go door-to-door to enforce housing codes. According to Mike Rodman the debate was part of what many considered “Northwest Arkansas’ No. 1 societal concern: How to deal with an influx of Mexicans.” Springdale residents complained about “too many Mexicans living in the same house” with overcrowding leading to “unhealthy conditions” and “slumlike conditions.” Alderman Howard Cook said that the officer needed to be “forceful, carry a weapon and be tied to the Police Department” because in enforcing the law he “will eventually run into a drug deal.” The presence of Latinas/os was cause for distress not only because they supposedly 44 Mike Rodman, “Springdale Up In Arms Over Aliens; Parties, Crowding Spark Call For Additional Police," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 24, 1994, sec. B. 279 broke sanitary norms through their living arrangements but also because, according to Cook, they were drug dealers. Here we see the conflation of living arrangements with a person’s character as everyone who shares an apartment with more people than the norm becomes a drug dealer. Cook went beyond racializing Latinas/os as undocumented, unhealthy or unsanitary. Inda argues that the construction of immigrants as “illegal” also serves to substantiate the belief that they will break other laws and create crime. 45 The Springdale alderman demonstrated this process quite clearly since he cited no evidence to support his claim. Complaints about housing extended beyond the occupation of certain structures to issues about the use of space within private property. In June 1994, Springdale resident Karen Wolf complained: “they [Latinas/os] congregate in the front yard instead of in the back yard like normal people….There’s loud music late at night, and it’s like they’re trying to take over. If they would just stay inside it wouldn’t bother me, but it’s very unnerving.” 46 In her comment Wolf described Latinas/os as threatening and dangerous individuals on a variety of ambiguous fronts and extended her complaints to the use of space on private property that they are allowed to occupy by renting and owning. Although Wolf also complained about loud parties, her statement demonstrated the extent 45 Inda, 108-112. 46 Mike Rodman, “Springdale Up In Arms Over Aliens" Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 24, 1994, sec. B. 280 to which an everyday activity became suspect when a particular behavior was deemed non-normative as opposed to the behavior Wolf and other White residents engaged in. 47 Wolf did not say what (else) Latinas/os were doing to try to “take over” or if a determinate number of Latinas/os would be acceptable. Instead, the presence of some Latinas/os in her neighborhood was alarming enough to feel menaced and unnerved. Wolf simply did not like the sight of Latinas/os, since for her own reasons and according tot her logic she would allegedly have no problem if they were inside—completely out of sight—and virtually locked in their homes. In this scenario, Latinas/os acts of spatial illegality would be muted, hidden behind closed doors and out of public space. In moving to Arkansas, Latinas/os moved into the “Natural State”—as proclaimed on license plates. This nickname suggests a high regard for outdoor activities such as fishing, bike riding, or the use of its many parks and waterways. Yet some Rogers’ residents complained of “heavy Hispanic patronage of parks, lakes, and streams in the area.” Dana McCoy, who moved to Rogers from California five years prior said: “I don’t have a problem with anybody being at places….It’s just that things have changed so much. You go over to Prairie Creek on a weekend now, and it feels like almost all is Hispanic.” 48 This is particularly significant because one strong objection about Latinas/os regarded their lack of assimilation. McCoy herself said, “I don’t see Hispanic people 47 James Rojas argues that Latinas/os, particularly immigrants, interact with space differently than White folks because the former come from places whose social structures serve different purposes. He posits that front yards are used as extensions of the home and meant to be shared by both those inside the perimeter and those on the sidewalk. Moreover, they use props such as chairs to make multi-functional spaces to serve their needs. See James Rojas, “The Enacted Environment: The Creation of ‘Place’ by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles,” (Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991). 48 Michael Leahy, “Northwest Passage: When Cultures Collide,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 25, 1997, sec. A. 281 trying to meet people halfway here. Some aren’t making an effort to adapt,” yet she found an Arkansan activity like going to the park on a weekend an objectionable behavior when practiced by Latinos/as. 49 McCoy, like Wolf, complained about the use of public space and suggested that if the park had not “changed so much” then everything would have been fine. Of course, for the park to remain what it was it would have had to remain White, at least overwhelmingly. Complaints about the use of public and private space demonstrated the nativist responses of many Arkansans who did not object to such activities from those they deemed insiders or citizens, both figuratively and literally. What McCoy, Wolf, and others objected to was the change in scenery, if you will; they did not like seeing Latinas/os, people deemed “illegal aliens” and outside of their community, using public space regardless of their right to do so. For Latinas/os, going to the park in Rogers on a sunny afternoon became an act of spatial illegality. Exclusionary responses were not limited to housing or the use of park space. In November 1996, Alberto and Bertha De La Torre filed the proper paperwork with Springdale to open a club geared toward Latinas/os. They were given a license to operate such a business but by February 1997, after neighbor complaints about “loud Mexican music” and “handguns” the city informed the De La Torres’ that their permit was being revoked. According to the city, someone made a mistake when they authorized that type of establishment in the area and invalidated the permit based on zoning laws. Significantly, this was the second business venture the couple engaged in that was 49 Ibid. 282 curtailed. Prior to opening the club they organized dances at the Springdale Rodeo Grounds only to have the Rodeo of the Ozarks, the organization that ran the grounds, halt their activities. According to John Gladden, a board member, dances were being held every weekend with no opportunities for other community groups to use the venue so they limited “profit-making ventures to one use a year” in order to make it “more beneficial to the whole community.” 50 In one instance “loud Mexican music” served as the cloak with which Latinas/os were rejected and denied their rights as ethnic entrepreneurs to cater to their clientele. In the other, their rights as citizens or members of a community were denied because their events were detrimental “to the whole community.” Both of these instances constituted acts of spatial illegality as Latinas/os use of space threatened the larger community. Struggles around issues of space continued ten years after Latinas/os moved into Rogers when they realized they were closely monitored and targeted in public spaces as they engaged in daily activities. By 2001 local Latina/o leaders and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) had received a barrage of complaints about racial profiling. In one case, Miguel Lopez, 36, and Nora Virginia Lopez, 45, were driving home with their kids in July 2000 when they passed a police vehicle heading in the opposite direction. The police passed them, turned around, followed them, and without motive pulled the couple over. There were two uniformed officers and a plain clothes person; one asked for immigration papers and questioned them while the other 50 Greg Harton, “Springdale Officials Deny Race Played a Role in Order to Close Hispanic Club,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 16, 1997, sec. B. 283 two searched the car without permission. The officers left without issuing a citation. 51 That the officers asked for immigration documentation made it clear they sought to apprehend “illegal aliens.” By March 2001 the Rogers Police Department faced a class-action racial profiling lawsuit. Joe Berra of the San Antonio office for MALDEF and Gary Kennon of Bentonville filed the suit in Western District Court in Fayetteville. Three Rogers’ residents, including the Lopez’s, claimed they were illegally stopped, detained, and asked for identification. The suit named Police Chief Tim Keck, Mayor Steve Womack, the Rogers Police Department, the city, and fifty officers listed as John Doe. Keck said he had met with Latina/o community leaders four times in the year prior to hear complaints but did not see any unconstitutional or bad policy. His response was: “In this business, if you’re doing your job right, somebody’s going to be unhappy because you’re enforcing the law.” 52 According to MALDEF, “Rogers police have been unlawfully targeting Latinos for stops, searches, and investigations in a form of racial profiling, frequently linked to the improper entanglement by local police in immigration enforcement.” 53 These events exhibited two developments: the institutionalization of discrimination aimed at Latinas/os and their fight for rights despite having no Latina/o elected public officials. As MALDEF pointed out, “some anti-Latino and anti-immigrant bias has unfortunately made its way into local structures of government. This was the 51 Kirstan Conley, “Suit Claims Rogers Police Profile Hispanics,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 24, 2001, sec. B. The immigration statuses of the Lopez’s are unknown. 52 Ibid. 53 MALDEF, “Latinos To Bring Class Action Lawsuit Alleging Racial Profiling By Police In Rogers, Arkansas,” March 23, 2001. http://www.maldef.org/news/press.cfm?ID=48. 284 first serious challenge by the Latino community to this type of discrimination by government officials in the area.” 54 The alleged actions by police officers were based on “fears and unfair perceptions” of newcomers. According to Berra Latinos stopped by Rogers police are being asked to show immigration documents or social security cards….Local police have been misguided into thinking they can somehow control the growing Latino population by holding over them the threat of immigration enforcement. Berra’s description of police behavior demonstrated that the construction of Latinas/os as “illegal aliens” continued as they were stopped and asked to prove their legal status and right to be in the country. In this way police officers attempted to enforce the imaginary border of their community by weeding out people they deem undesirable. For at least a decade Latina/o use of roads in Arkansas were seen as acts of spatial illegality with officers ultimately violating their constitutional rights in demanding immigration documents. The lawsuit was settled in 2003 after an agreement was reached between MALDEF and the City of Rogers. 55 It provided that the Rogers Police Department publish a general order regarding “prohibition and prevention of racial/bias profiling” in its “Policy and Procedures” manual. “The order prohibits officers from engaging in profiling persons based on race, national origin, citizenship, religion, ethnicity, age, gender or physical or mental disability for the purpose of initiating law enforcement action – except to determine whether a person matches a specific description of a 54 Ibid. 55 MALDEF, “MALDEF Settles Police Abuse Case In Rogers, Arkansas,” November 14, 2003. http://www.maldef.org/news/press.cfm?ID=194. 285 particular suspect.” Among other processes, the settlement also established a means of tracking racial profiling and an ad hoc monitoring/advisory committee. Perhaps the most significant part of the agreement was that “local police enforcement of federal civil immigration laws will be strictly prohibited, because this is what led to the racial profiling of Latino citizens and immigrants alike.” 56 The ruling was an important win for immigrants because it was rendered post-9/11 when anti-immigrant sentiment was severe at the national level. Historically, law enforcement agencies enforced city, county, state, or national/federal laws but they had no authority outside of their jurisdiction. In terms of immigration and its laws, a police department had to call the Border Patrol or INS if in processing a suspect they realized he or she was an undocumented immigrant. Community activists and police officers tried to let immigrants know that their legal status was irrelevant if they had experienced a crime, that police officers were not immigration officials and would not deport them. This stance also aided investigations because if immigrants feared deportation crimes were unreported and other situations created which made law enforcement officers’ jobs more difficult. At the turn of the century as the immigration debate once again became heated, some politicians and law enforcement officials thought it made sense for local officers to aid the federal government in capturing undocumented people. In 2003 there were efforts to expand the reach of federal authorities by using local and state agencies to enforce immigration laws as part of the “war on terror” enacted by President George W. Bush. 56 Ibid. 286 The federal government used the Immigration and Nationality Act’s Section 287(g), added through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which provided for the “performance of immigration officer functions by state officers and employees.” 57 The provision authorized the Department of Homeland Security to enter agreements with local law enforcement agencies so they could enforce immigration laws as long as officers received training and were supervised by ICE. By February 2005 two Republicans, Representatives Jeremy Hutchinson and Timothy Hutchinson (brothers), proposed House Bill 1012 which sought the participation of Arkansas State Police officers in ICE’s 287(g) training program. 58 It passed and became Act 907 of 2005 making Arkansas the third state, after Florida and Alabama, to participate in the program. By September 2007 four northwest Arkansas law enforcement agencies—the Benton County Sheriff’s Office, the Rogers Police Department, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, and the City of Springdale Police Department— signed the Memorandum of Agreement that defined the scope and limitations of their authority. 59 In this situation, northwest Arkansas law enforcement agencies eagerly signed up to help the federal government police the United States’ borders and in the process 57 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g) Immigration and Nationality Act,” October 28, 2009. http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/section287_g.htm 58 Jake Bleed, “Bill Would Let State Police Enforce Immigration,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 5, 2005, sec. A. 59 Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g). As of late October 2009, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia had from two to nine law enforcement agencies participating in the program. 287 attempt to halt that changers occurring in their community. At first it might be surprising that southern officers would be so willing to participate in a federal program given their fierce independence and anti-federalism. Upon closer inspection, however, we can see that this is just another way of obtaining federal largess. The state actors finally get what they want—the authority to check immigration documents and attempt to remove people from the United States. For northwest Arkansans the change from an overwhelmingly White area to one with Latina/o immigrants and migrants was too much to bear. The change in their public spaces brought on by Latinas/os’ presence was objectionable. Consequently they mobilized through the city council, by strictly enforcing zoning laws, by dictating what kinds of events could be held at a venue for community organizations, and by literally policing Latinas/os as they drove to work, school, and shopping centers and eventually obtaining the authority to check for immigration documents. Their effort to curb the area’s diversification did not stop there, however. They mobilized grassroots nativist responses similar to those in California and Arizona and took the debate over “illegal aliens” to the local and state political scale. Nativist Responses and the Political Mobilizations Nativism, Americans’ efforts to define themselves and the United States in a narrow way that excludes foreigners, usually the most recent ones, has long been present in the country. As Peter Schrag argues, many of the men foundational to the United States government and country were nativist. Benjamin Franklin worried about Germans and wrote various pieces foretelling the doom to come if they were not excluded from the 288 nascent nation. Later, once the German problem was averted others took their place— Irish, Italians, Jews. The fears and complaints were the same: their culture is too different, they will not assimilate, they will be detrimental to our way of life, and they will usher in the end of the United States (as we know it). 60 Nativism is supposed to be fear of foreigners but in the United States there is a relationship between nativism and racialization because complaints are aimed at people constructed as different than the mainstream. When the United States was predominantly British other Europeans were deemed too different based on characteristics used to define races. Over decades, in relationship to African Americans, and in a long process involving the social construction of race Irish, Italians, and Jews once understood to be of different racial stock than Anglo-Saxons were admitted into the “White” category in the United States. 61 Today descendents of Germans, Italians, and Jews as well as Native Americans and African Americans contribute to the new chorus of nativist fears about (“Third World”) immigrants. At the turn of the twenty-first century, nativist fears, mobilizations, and organizations were extensive. In June 1997, Dan Morris, a Rogers resident who moved to Arkansas in 1988 from New Mexico, formed Americans for an Immigration Moratorium (AIM). They proposed a five-year halt on immigration, a more selective policy as to who could immigrate, and more assimilation of “Hispanics” into the region’s culture. Morris 60 Peter Schrag, Not Fit For Our Society: Immigration and Nativism in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 61 Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color : European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). 289 also wanted immigrants to be unable to sponsor family members. He argued his experiences in New Mexico and California convinced him that a heavy flow of immigrants caused more crime, poorer schools, and lower property values. 62 Local law enforcement officials, however, reported that Latina/o growth had not created more crime and that they were often blamed for crimes they did not commit. 63 Morris’s wife was so displeased that she threatened to leave the area. She wrote to Rogers Mayor John Sampier in March 1997 saying that longtime residents would leave the region if Latina/o growth continued. Some Rogers residents did not wait and moved out of neighborhoods where Latinas/os were buying and renting homes. 64 As Morris’ case suggests, White migrants who moved from other states brought their racial ideologies and prejudices with them to northwest Arkansas. Morris made it clear that his experiences in New Mexico and California led him to his current beliefs about the danger that immigrants posed suggesting that he and his wife left the Southwest because it had too many immigrants and they settled in northwest Arkansas because in 1988 it did not. A. Lee Smith who wrote a letter to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette clearly stated that he and his family left California because of immigrants and added that Florida had been “ruined” as well. 65 Even in 1980, Carroll L. Gates from DeQueen in Sevier County said they moved to Arkansas from Arizona in 1964 because it was not 62 Greg Harton, “Shut Door to Aliens, Rogers Group Says,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 8, 1997, sec. B. 63 AP, “Immigration, Crime Not Tied, Police Say,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 16, 1997, sec. B. 64 Harton, “Shut Door to Aliens”; Leahy, “When Cultures Collide.” 65 A. Lee Smith, “Stop All U.S. Immigration,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 2, 1998, sec. B. 290 “overpopulated” and added that relatives in Miami said Cubans had “ruined” the city. 66 More research has to be conducted in order to determine how many White migrants with negative ideas about immigrants became active in the grassroots mobilizations of the late 1990s and 2000s or if the most outspoken Arkansans were these transplants from other states. Morris definitely made an effort to stem the diversification of his adopted home. In July 1998 AIM allied with five other anti-immigrant organizations in support of federal legislation to have a five-year moratorium on immigration, running a two-week radio, television, and newspaper ad campaign in Arkansas. 67 According to Morris, “the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens are being forced to finance what many believe is the destruction of their own community” and that promoting immigration to fill low-wage jobs is like “committing national suicide.” 68 Morris was also concerned about how many “illegal aliens” were “drug smugglers, terrorists, carriers of disease, thieves, and murders.” 69 In the anti-immigrant groups’ construction, Latina/o immigrants were a threat to the national body and to their community. They racialized Latinas/os as criminals and a threat to a way of life in terms of safety, child rearing, finances, and health. As Inda points out, this framework constructs immigrants, particularly Latinas/os and Mexicans, a threatening horde, as public burdens due to population growth which causes urban sprawl 66 Carroll L. Gates to Clinton, May 11, 1980, BCSGP, Box 2, Folder 18 “Cuban Refugees/Fort Chaffee – File 9.” 67 The organizations were: the Federation for American Immigration Reform, American Immigration Control Foundation, Negative Population Growth’s Immigration Reform Project, Population-Environment Balance, and Americans for Better Immigration; Rachel O’Neal, “6 Groups Fighting Influx of Aliens,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 29, 1998, sec. B. 68 Ibid; Laura Kellams, “Immigration Heats Debate at Assembly at Bentonville,” Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, October 31, 1997. 69 O’Neal, “6 Groups Fighting Influx of Aliens.” 291 (and problems associated with “inner cities” including “overcrowded housing”), unemployment, wage depressions, and crime. 70 Morris was not the only migrant from the United States who felt immigrants were a peril. A. Lee Smith of Hot Springs, in central Arkansas, wrote the following letter to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after the editors asked readers whether the number of immigrants to the United States should be cut. 71 For Smith, California and Florida were ruined by immigrants of any legal status who came from various parts of the world; noticeably however, he did not mention Europeans, Canadians, or any other White immigrants. He deployed familiar tropes of white victimization, abuse of the system, overcrowding, and an overall threat to the nation even in electoral politics. His solution was to use any able-bodied military and pseudo-military outfit in order to deport any and all immigrants. And to protect himself from accusations of racism he argued he was not the only one to feel that way and was “justified” because his father was three-fourths Native American. Your request for opinions on the immigration problem hit a nerve with my family. We left California for this very reason. Illegal immigration has ruined California and Florida. The homes of many of our relatives in Marysville and Downey, Calif., are practically unsalable [sic] because they are surrounded by Vietnamese and Hispanic and God only knows what else. Minorities outnumber Native Americans and Caucasians badly. If you think they are here just to work, think again. They came with printed booklets telling them how to get welfare and food stamps and hospitalization. 70 Jonathan Xavier Inda, “The Value of Immigrant Life,” in Women and Migration: In the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, edited by Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 142-143. 71 Editors, “Immigration: Should Numbers be Cut?” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 18, 1998, sec. B. 292 Many illegal immigrants voted in the last election. We are being flooded here in Hot Springs with illegals: Hispanic, Chinese, Vietnamese, Central Americans, Iranians. There are 18 living in one small two- bedroom house. I want every illegal alien rounded up and deported. If they come back give them six months of hard labor. I don’t care if they have been here six months or 40 years if they came illegally. Use the Marines, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, police and Boy Scouts, but catch everyone and deport them. Stop all immigration for at least 10 years. Congressmen and senators should pay attention: We will note accordingly. If I were the only one in our community who felt this way, I would think it was only me, but my friends and most people I talk to agree with me. Let the illegals and all immigrants build their own country. I feel justified in feeling this way. My dad was three-quarter Cherokee, American Indian. 72 Smith deployed his race and ethnicity as a shield where his Indian background was supposed to make evident that he could not be racist because he was a person of color. At the same time, if anybody had a right to be defending this land it was Native Americans who were the people that lived here prior to Europeans’ arrival. Smith’s response might, at first, seem extreme and the ranting of a disgruntled individual, but it had remarkable similarities to another nativist response. In April 1999 the Washington County Republican Women adopted a resolution which called for tighter limits on legal immigration and more effective enforcement against undocumented immigration. Whereas the escalating influx of legal and illegal immigrants into Arkansas since the 1980s and particularly during the 1990s—most from the Third World—is of grave concern to the state’s residents….Whereas residents’ concerns are directly ascribed to cultural and language tensions, overcrowded schools, loss of American jobs and consequent assurance that local wages remain low due to overwhelming hire of immigrants, gangs, increasing crime, graffiti, and urban sprawl, all resulting in massive 72 A. Lee Smith, “Stop All U.S. Immigration,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 2, 1998, sec. B. 293 expenditures of taxes to deal with these problems and a continual erosion of the traditional American way of life... 73 Significantly, the group objected to both legal and undocumented immigration, but they singled out so-called Third World immigrants suggesting that it was principally racial and class characteristics that contributed to the erosion of the “traditional American way of life.” And like Morris and AIM, immigrants were threatening culturally, linguistically and criminally. Notably the resolution emanated from within the ranks of one of the major U.S. political parties and sought to push institutional responses to Latina/o immigrants. The Washington County Republican Women’s resolution and AIMs complaints about immigrants parallel the logic and words used in 1994 to pass Proposition 187 in California and later in Arizona to pass Proposition 200. Inda posits that “It [racialized nativism] constructs a marked division between the dominant traditions and ways of life of the Untied States and the cultures of the Third World immigrants. Given their cultural difference, the latter populations are often construed as incompatible with and as a threat to the integrity of the national body.” 74 The United States has experienced long moments of nativism and the turn of the twenty-first century was such a time with politicians and scholars alike fanning the flames. Patrick Buchanan who tried in 1992 and 1996 to secure the Republican nomination for President and eventually ran for that office under the Reform Party is a pillar the conservative Right and nativist mobilizations. Buchanan follows in the 73 Editorial, “Immigration Wars: The Latest From the Front,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 22, 1999, sec. J. 74 Inda, “The Value of Immigrant Life,” 140. 294 footsteps of prior nativists by decrying about how “immigrant invasions imperil our country and civilization.” But beyond talking about how the United States will no longer have a White majority he paints a picture not just of “illegal aliens” but of enemies within the country—“tens of thousands are loyal to regimes with which we could be at war, and some are trained terrorist sent here to murder Americans.” 75 To Buchanan every non- White immigrant is the epitome of a criminal—a terrorist—who threatens (White) Americans’ safety, their culture, and ultimately the nation. Samuel P. Huntington, professor at Harvard University, holds Latinas/os responsible for threatening “to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages.” 76 He cites lack of assimilation of the “Anglo-Protestant values that built the American dream. The United States ignores the challenge at its peril.” Again, immigrants, especially Mexicans, threaten the coherence of the country, the legacy and culture of a great nation founded by “overwhelmingly white, British, and Protestant” settlers. Huntington posits that “the most powerful stimulus to such white nativism will be the cultural and linguistic threats whites see from the expanding power of Hispanics in U.S. society.” 77 In other words, Latinas/os are at fault for making White nativist react with such vehemence. Northwest Arkansas’ racial and ethnic diversification in the 1990s began to show some of these strains and anti-immigrant sentiments increasingly began to shape local and regional political campaigns. 75 Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), 2. 76 Samuel P. Huntington, “The Hispanic Challenge,” Foreign Policy (March/April 2004), www.foreignpolicy.com, accessed June 5, 2009. 77 Huntington, “The Hispanic Challenge.” 295 The area is a Republican corner in an otherwise solidly (conservative) Democratic state but native Arkansans are not the only ones responsible for this shift. From the 1960s onward, the area became the adopted home of many White retirees from the Midwest. According to Brooks Blevins, Ozarkers reacted to the arrivals with curiosity and sometimes even resentment though both eventually came to a live and let live mentality. These Midwesterners brought more religious diversity to the Protestant area as well as their Republican beliefs which contributed to making “northwest Arkansas a stronghold of republicanism” in the late twentieth century. Blevins posits that these White Midwestern retirees might have been responsible for electing John Paul Hammerschmidt as the first post-Reconstruction Republican Congressman in 1966 and thirty years later sending Tim Hutchinson as the first-post Reconstruction Republican Senator. 78 They would also shape the area’s political response to Latinas/os though more research needs to be conducted to determine if there were differences between how native Ozarkers and Midwestern migrants reacted to Latinas/os. What is clear is that anti-Latina/o sentiments began to play out in the political arena. In the Rogers mayoral election of 1998 John Sampier, a seventeen-year incumbent, lost to former Alderman Steve Womack. The latter ran the campaign on a platform of “zero tolerance” for undocumented immigrants, depicted Sampier as supporting “illegal immigration,” and insisted that legal immigrants “speak the language” 78 Brooks Blevins, Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and their Image (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 204-206. 296 and conform to community norms. 79 However, when Latinas/os complied with standard behaviors such as going to the park during the weekend, White Arkansans objected to their presence and constructed their acts as spatial illegality. Nonetheless, Sampier posited that the “right” behaviors and language spoken would lead to immigrants’ acceptance, as long as they were not “illegal.” In contrast to Womack, Sampier had been at the forefront of attempts to incorporate Latinas/os and had been co-chairman of the Governor’s Hispanic Relations Task Force. In Rogers, he supported efforts of English as a Second Language in the public schools and getting paraprofessionals in the classroom in order to more quickly address the needs of Spanish-speaking students whom he said did not need to “sacrific[e] their culture or native language.” 80 In response to the letter written by Morris’s wife where she said longtime residents would leave if the Latina/o growth continued, he replied: “If unhappy longtime residents or any others are discontented for unchristian, racist attitudes and choose to leave for such reasons, then I believe my city will be the better for their departure.” 81 During the election, however, the majority of Rogers’ residents decided it was time for him to leave office. In another election in 2001, Gunner DeLay, a Republican from Fort Smith, said at a forum sponsored by the Washington County Republican Women that “illegal immigration” was the “defining issue in the race” for Arkansas 3 rd Congressional District. 79 Joel Kirkland, “Hispanics Were Issue in Rogers,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, November 6, 1998, sec. B. and Dick Kirschten, “A Melting Pot Chills in Arkansas,” National Journal 30, no. 46 (1998): 2728. 80 Mike Rodman, “Northwest Wants Language Barrier to Add Up in School Formula,” December 24, 1994, sec. B. 81 Harton, “Shut Door to Aliens.” 297 The issue needed an immediate remedy and he said he would consider using the military to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. 82 The other candidates considered undocumented immigration to be important but asked voters to remember that Latina/o growth in the area was also due to legal immigration and to Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens. 83 Ultimately, DeLay lost the race and John Boozman of Rogers won. Boozman then joined the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus which proposed denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. 84 In 2005, State Senator Jim Holt, a Republican from Springdale, announced the formation of Protect Arkansas Now which was modeled after the Arizona group which successfully lobbied to pass Proposition 200. 85 Joe McCutchen of Fort Smith and chairman of the organization said President George W. Bush was not protecting the nation from “Mexican invaders” and that “no society can withstand this type of invasion, particularly Third Worlders, who are uneducated and very poor.” 86 Holt proposed the Arkansas Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act which would halt state spending on undocumented immigrants. Some wording copied the Arizona legislation and argued that 82 Doug Thompson, “Illegal Immigration a Priority in 3 rd District, Hopefuls Say,” Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, July 27, 2001, sec. B. 83 Doug Thompson, “Immigration Pushed to Forefront,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 5, 2001, sec. B. 84 Laura Kellams, “Boozman Joins Caucus to Reform Immigration,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 11, 2002, sec. B. 85 That proposition required people to produce citizenship documents when voting or receiving government and social services and threatened government employers with misdemeanor charges if they provided services to undocumented people. 86 Laura Kellams, “Arizona Alien Law fuels State Lobbyists,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 22, 2005, sec. B. 298 Arkansas was a “safe haven” for “illegal immigrants.” Among other provisions, the law would require state employees to report suspected immigration violations or face misdemeanor charges. 87 The bill died in that session but the issues have not disappeared. Conclusion: The Future of Latinas/os in Arkansas Anti-immigrant sentiments, however, were not the only responses to Latinas/os and Republican Mike Huckabee, Arkansas Governor from 1996 to 2007, eventually gave Latinas/os an “official” welcome. At the second Cinco de Mayo Festival in Little Rock in 2000 Governor Huckabee announced the statewide Hispanic Assimilation Program which emphasized workplace English skills and said: “We have a very special word for you today. That word is: welcome. We think it’s very important Arkansans roll out the red carpet for our Hispanic friends and neighbors.” 88 He added that residents should recognize the value and impact of the Hispanic community and learn from their devotion to God and family. In part what was noteworthy about Huckabee’s remarks was that he did not refer to “illegal aliens,” “illegal workers,” or even solely to Latinas/os but to “friends and neighbors” suggesting that the newcomers had more to offer than their labor and were not going to destroy the community or the nation. Instead, he sought to put Arkansans at ease about Latinas/os by referencing their religious beliefs and close families—values that paralleled ideals touted throughout the Bible Belt. There was however, a caveat; Latinas/os needed to “assimilate” to Arkansas and presumably the 87 Laura Kellams, “Senators Research U.S. Law on Aliens,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 27, 2005, sec. A. 88 Jennifer Stump, “Huckabee Announces Hispanic Program at LR Festival,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, May 8, 2000, sec. B. 299 country and the first step was language acquisition in order to be productive workers. As tenuous as this kind of acceptance was, it did contrast sharply with the intense anti- immigrant sentiment that gripped Arkansans since the early 1990s. Huckabee, to his credit, eventually helped to propose an initiative aimed at aiding undocumented immigrants. In 2005 he and Representative Joyce Elliot, a Democrat from Little Rock, proposed House Bill 1525 which would allow undocumented immigrants who attended at least three years of high school and graduated from an Arkansas school to qualify for in-state tuition and tax-payer funded scholarships at state universities. Huckabee compared the situation to the Central High School crisis and said that if the state would have handled it differently, it would have been something to be proud of. Elliot, a Black woman, compared the situation of undocumented pupils to the struggles of Black students in the 1950s. When she addressed the House, she recalled her childhood in Arkansas and said she grew up “with the boot of the government on my back and I was a mere child.” 89 This image suggests that the federal government attempted to keep her down and she does not want undocumented students to face a similar situation if they are denied a college education. This effort passed the House but fell five votes short of those needed in the Senate. 90 The alliance in Arkansas between a White man and a Black woman, the former representing what might be the epitome of privilege in the United States and the latter the struggles for gender and racial equality, and their invocation of 89 Jake Bleed and Michael R. Wickline, “House Clears Illegal Aliens for College Aid,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 24, 2005, sec. A. 90 Laura Kellams, “Holt Yanks His Bill On Illegal Aliens,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 8, 2005, sec. B. 300 African American struggles for equal opportunities draws on historical legacies of oppression and injustice. This theme is one which Huckabee had spoken about a few years prior at the Arkansas Baptist convention, where he received a standing ovation. He said Baptists had a second chance to make amends for the “evil and wrong” done against African Americans by welcoming Latinas/os. We as Christian people—even we as Baptist people—we have made some horrible mistakes over the last couple of hundred years in the way we dealt with African-Americans, and even the very way racism was preached and advertised with a twisted version of God’s word….We’d better look at the curve ahead. Arkansas has (one of the) largest growing Hispanic populations in the country. God might be giving us a second chance to do right….I’m not saying to support illegal activity….I’m saying act like loving Christian people. 91 In calling on Baptists and Christians to act lovingly toward the newcomers, Huckabee explicitly racialized Latinas/os in relation to African Americans as an oppressed group and white people as oppressors and racists. When he suggested that the “evil and wrong[s]” against Black folks were in the past he chose to ignore ongoing struggles and failed to locate Latinas/os as only the newest group in Arkansas who deserved equal treatment and did not receive it. After all, it was only ten years prior that African American Arkansans were fighting to gain true electoral voting power through court-ordered redistricting as well as (still) fighting to end school segregation. Moreover, Huckabee’s call to action cast Latinas/os within a framework of illegality since he 91 Bill Reiter, “Baptist Convention; Welcome Urged for State’s Hispanic Influx,” Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, November 6, 2001, sec. B., parenthesis in original. 301 specifically mentioned “illegal activity” as if one (Latina/o people) was yoked to the other (criminal deeds). By 2005, the Arkansas legislature began to address what it meant to have not just undocumented workers but college-age students. Representative Sam Ledbetter, a Democrat from Little Rock, supported the bill in part because he believed that students who did not receive an education would be more likely to commit crimes and be sent to prison where the state would have to pay for their stay. Representative Bill Pritchard, a Republican from Elkins who opposed the bill, worried that if approved the legislation would encourage other “illegal aliens” to move to Arkansas. Elliot responded that she doubted that immigrants would see the state as “the promise land” but even if they moved to Arkansas to take advantage of the law, legislators had to keep in mind that children did not break the law. 92 These positions broadly represent the fears present in states throughout the country as legislatures take a stand and attempt to police their communities and the nation not just by deporting undocumented Latinas/os but by creating a hostile environment with the hope that immigrants will move out and or never move in. California’s Proposition 187 and Arizona’s Proposition 200 are just two examples of that approach. Robin Dale Jacobson who interviewed activist that helped pass the California ballot initiative found that the advocates knew that much of what they proposed would be found unconstitutional but they believe it was important to include 92 Bleed and Wickline, “House Clears Illegal Aliens for College Aid.” 302 such measures so they could serve as deterrents to immigrants and reify who could be a United States citizen and be considered a member of society. 93 93 Robin Dale Jacobson, The New Nativism: Proposition 187 and the Debate over Immigration (Minneapolis: Unviersity of Minnesota Press, 2008). 303 CONCLUSION “Immigrants in Arkansas, Illegal but Useful” Governor Mike Huckabee saw in Latinas/os a possibility for racial redemption, to avert the mistakes of the past as they relate to African Americans. He might have been positioning himself for the 2008 presidential bid, but he nevertheless implemented a program that sought to incorporate Latina/os into the state. For her part, Joyce Elliot understood the plight of Latinas/os, especially students, as reminiscent of Black struggles for equality. Whether African American leaders and politicians will continue to support Latinas/os and/or build alliances with them remains to be seen. However, what is clear is that the northwest Arkansas in 2005 looked much different than it did thirty years prior. In the early 1970s Arkansans living in the predominantly White Ozarks probably had no idea about the changes that they would see in their lifetime, that Rogers’s and Springdale’s population in 2000 would be at least 20 percent Latina/o or that half Latinas/os in Arkansas would live in the northwest. They had no way of knowing that Spanish would be spoken throughout the area and that their children would go to integrated schools with Asian and Black kids, but mostly with Latinas/os. They were unaware that their corner of Arkansas was going to become the “corridor of prosperity” with Walmart and Tyson Foods bringing in investments and people. Or that the very success of their native sons would mean the racial and ethnic diversification of their historically White communities. In the last quarter of the twentieth century northwest Arkansans were faced with a challenge—how would they respond to changes in their 304 communities? How would they react to refugees and immigrants, Asians and Latinas/os that would be placed in and moved to Arkansas? What this dissertation has tried to demonstrate are the factors that coalesced with the arrival of Vietnamese, Cubans, and ethnic Mexicans that led Arkansans to understand each group differently and racialize them in particular ways. The relationship between the State of Arkansas and the federal government shaped the mood and reception of the groups in some important ways. Arkansans did not want to carry more than their fair share of the “burden” for processing refugees, but it was when the former thought they were in physical danger or when they feared the takeover over of their community by Asians and Latinas/os that Arkansans became irate at the federal government. In hindsight and with some limitations, it appears that the case of the Vietnamese was the least contentious of all the groups because despite fear of “yellow peril” and their unassimilability, many Arkansans mobilized around Christian responsibility and morality. Plus, at least initially, Vietnamese were middle to upper-class, were largely family units, and did not have uprisings during their time in Fort Chaffee. In the end, 2,061 Vietnamese people were sponsored into Arkansas with about five hundred in the northwest, a number of “foreigners” that appeared to be manageable. Contrary to the rampant fear at the time, an Asian horde did not take over Arkansas when Fort Chaffee closed and the community grew steadily and manageably and eventually grew ten-fold by the 2000 Census. Cubans served as a transition between Vietnamese refugees and Latina/o immigrants because the rhetoric of criminality is one that was absent from the Southeast 305 Asian debate but very salient for ethnic Mexicans. Similarly, questions regarding the legal status of Asians were nonexistent—they were firmly designated refugees—but were central to Cubans and to Mexicans. In the case of the Cubans, questions over their legal status and detention strained the relationship between the state and the federal government as Arkansans tried to secure their state and community borders from “illegal aliens”—as the U.S. government had decreed these Cubans to be. Arkansas politicians tried to close the Fort Chaffee as soon as possible and eventually the remaining population was moved to federal prisons and psychiatric facilities. In other words, Arkansans successfully removed “illegal aliens” from the state. However, this maneuver was largely unobtainable for Latinas/os in the 1990s. Twenty thousand Cubans placed inside an encampment could not compare to the more than eighty thousand Latinas/os that chose to move to Arkansas in one decade alone, entered the labor sphere, and sent their children to school. Because Latina/o immigrants were not sponsored into Arkansas or removed from the state like Cubans, Arkansans protected their state and communities by intensely policing Latinas/os’ actions in public and private space. But as John Sampier demonstrated, change does not have to be defined solely in terms of hostility and rejection. As Mayor of Rogers he tried and, to some extent, succeeded in incorporating Latinas/os into their new town. He understood that in order to keep Rogers a desirable place to live for long-time residents and newcomers, White folks and immigrants, he would have to make sure that the latter were integrated in schools and in neighborhoods throughout the city. Then Steve Womack provided a platform for a strong anti-immigrant sentiment and Rogers went from being a community struggling to 306 adapt to one that went to great lengths—including more than a questionable one like racial profiling—to attempt to remove Latinas/os from their homes. At the very least, what happened in Rogers demonstrates that the reactions to Latinas/os are shaped as much by area leaders as they are by nativist, xenophobic, or racist feelings and legacies. In 2008, the Arkansas Times chose immigrants as “Arkansans of the Year” because “The Immigrant is numerous and growing in number, and that in one way or another, he’s changing the face of Arkansas.” 1 The article addressed what was at stake for some people in the immigration debate: “A fair number of inhospitable Arkansans see a brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking newcomer taking over a state that rightfully belongs to white-skinned Anglophones.” 2 The debate—as this dissertation has tried to show—is about community and identity, about who is seen as “rightfully” belonging, what they look like, and what language they speak. The article approaches the topic in three ways: by telling the story of a legal Mexican immigrant, by reporting on the ongoing anti-immigrant stance of Womack, and by describing a newly formed pro-immigrant alliance. The Arkansas Friendship Coalition is formed by businesses (including Tyson Foods, Alltel a wireless provider, and Stephens Inc., one of the biggest investment firms outside of Wall Street) and religious and community members who oppose state or local governments from enacting immigration legislation. This alliance is similar to the one that existed in Rogers where civic and community leaders and businesses worked together to try to generate understanding 1 Doug Smith, “We’re Coming Here to Pick the Country Up,” Arkansas Times, January 24, 2008, 10-11, “The Immigrant” capitalized in original. 2 Ibid., 10. 307 between Arkansans and their new Latina/o neighbors. At the same time, the stakes are higher because the Arkansas Friendship Coalition is attempting to impede city and state governments from implementing immigration statutes—they are moving beyond creating understanding between groups to more directly participating in the political arena to keep Arkansas as desirable place for immigrants to live. This suggests that Tyson Foods and other businesses have more to lose if Latinas/os move out than they have to gain by keeping anti-immigrant Arkansans happy. The coalition is the response to strict anti-immigrant legislation enacted in Oklahoma and Missouri. 3 The Oklahoma “Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act” went into effect November 1, 2007 after a lawsuit failed to stop it. It demands tighter screening on employers and makes it harder for undocumented immigrants to get jobs. Some anti- immigration advocates want Arkansas to have similar legislation but, in the words of The Economist, “immigrants in Arkansas [are] illegal but useful.” According to one of their sources, immigrants, most of whom are Latina/o, indirectly and directly contribute $2.9 billion to the state’s economy each year. 4 And the Latina/o population keeps growing. In July 2006, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock data center estimated that there were 141,000 Latinas/os making them five percent of the 2.8 million people in the state. One estimate posited that in 2008, there were between 180,000 to 200,000. 5 3 “Immigrants in Arkansas,” The Economist, November 3, 2007- November 9, 2007. Podcast, MPEG file (3:04 min). 4 Ibid. 5 Smith, “We’re Coming Here to Pick the Country Up.” 308 In 2005 federal officials raided the Petit Jean poultry plant in Arkadelphia and many in the community were outraged. "What was the purpose of the raid? It appears to be more of a political ploy to make people look like they're doing a great job,” said Debbie Kluck. The county sheriff, Troy Tucker put it this way: "We take them [immigrants] into our public schools. We accept them into our churches. They play on our football, soccer teams….And then one day Immigration comes in and sweeps them all away." 6 In the wake of the raid, Kluck, Troy, and other community members helped some families fight deportation proceedings, helped take care of children left behind, and at least in one case, gave an immigrant the money necessary to pay a coyote to smuggle them across the U.S.-Mexico border. All these are good signs that immigrants were truly accepted as friends and neighbors and hint at the possibilities of a future where Latinas/os can partake of public life and be part of the communities where they work. How will structuring principles outlined in this study influence the future of Latinas/os in Arkansas? Are Arkansans going to continue to mobilize and push through anti-(Third World) immigrant and anti-Latina/o legislation like denizens in Arizona? Will alliances be built between the Black and Latina/o communities like they have in some urban areas across the United States? Will coalitions between business interests and religious and community organizations lead the way in terms of incorporating Latinas/os and fighting anti-immigrant mobilizations? Will local people aid the immigrants in their community? Or will matters take a different turn altogether? 6 Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “The Town That Didn’t Look Away,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2006, sec. A. 310 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Alina Fernandez Papers, Special Collections Department, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, Arkansas (AFP). Bill Clinton State Government Project, Unprocessed Papers, William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum, Little Rock, Arkansas (BCSGP). Bennett Jr., W. J., et al. 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Creator Guerrero, Perla M. (author)

Core Title Impacting Arkansas: Vietnamese and Cuban refugees and Latina/o immigrants, 1975-2005

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program American Studies and Ethnicity

Degree Conferral Date 2010-12

Publication Date 09/22/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag ethnic Mexicans,illegality,immigration,OAI-PMH Harvest,place,race,racialization,space

Place Name Arkansas (states)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Sanchez, George J. (committee chair), Gilmore, Ruth Wilson (committee member), Pulido, Laura (committee member), Seip, Terry (committee member)

Creator Email perlalaguerrera@gmail.com,pguerrer@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3467

Unique identifier UC1121225

Identifier etd-Guerrero-4108 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-414418 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3467 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Guerrero-4108.pdf

Dmrecord 414418

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Guerrero, Perla M.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu