Letters

Mexico’s COCEI
I’m embarrassed to say that I just
got around to looking at your
December 1992 issue. Be that as it
may, I was delighted to see “A
Grassroots Challenge,” Alison
Gardy’s article on the COCEI in
Juchitdn. A visit to COCEI-con-
trolled Juchitin was the high point
of a trip around Mexico some
friends and I took in 1981. By
sheer accident, we arrived on a
fiesta night, and I ended up talking
with a young auto mechanic who
was a COCEI militant. While he
and his friends plied me with beer,
brandy and bull’s head, he told me
the already complicated history of
the COCEI up to that point.
He told me two things that Gardy
leaves out of her account. First,
from the start, the COCEI was
deeply involved in workers’ strug-
gles for unionization, wages and
dignity, as well as the peasant
struggles to which Gardy alludes.
Second, though Gardy refers to the
violent repression that the PRI
unleashed against the COCEI in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, she
omits the fact that when the
COCEI managed to claim the city
government in 1980, the PRI
promptly cut off all federal aid to
the city, and instead transferred the
aid to the PRI’s own party organi-
zation. In response, the city gov-
ernment launched a self-help-based
public works program. An interest-
ing sidelight on this: After
Nicaragua’s 1972 earthquake, left-
ist juchitecos organized a blood
drive for Nicaragua as a solidarity
action; when the COCEI was cut
off from federal aid, the
Sandinistas offered assistance in
return!
Chris Tilly
University ofMassachusetts
Lowell, MA
The Immigration Conundrum
Cecilia Mufioz (“Immigration
Policy: A Tricky Business,”
May, 1993) is to be commended
for wrestling with the contradic-
tions posed by Latin American
migration to the United States. As
human rights activists (see Robert
Self’s article, “Intimidate First,
Ask Questions Later: The INS and
Immigrant Rights,” in the same
issue, as well as much of “Coming
North,” the July 1992 NACLA
Report), we defend the rights of
refugees and the undocumented to
enter the United States. But as
allies of the labor movement, we
have to consider the impact of
large-scale immigration on U.S.
workers, particularly the most low-
skilled and vulnerable, at a time
when sweatshops are booming and
unions are in retreat.
Generally, NACLA has given
more attention to the rights of
immigrants than to the implica-
tions of their arrival in large num-
bers. Many of us assume that the
most important motive for restrict-
ing immigration is nativism and
racism. Yet enforcing borders has
also protected domestic workers
from competition with cheaper and
more exploitable foreign labor, as
the debate over the North
American Free Trade Agreement
makes clear. The growing audi-
ence for anti-immigration appeals
suggests that we need to discuss
some uncomfortable issues.
The most obvious is border
enforcement. Maria Jimenez
argues against militarizing the
Mexican border (“War in the
Borderlands,” July, 1992) on the
premise that “freedom to cross
international boundaries” should
be “recognized as a fundamental
human right.” Yet in the same
issue, Richard Mines, Beatriz
Boccalandro and Susan Gabbard
point out that illegal labor flows
have made it harder to organize
farmworkers, many of whom con-
tinue to face appalling conditions.
Realistically, how will farmwork-
ers ever extract significant conces-
sions from growers without limits
on the supply of labor, that is,
without militarizing what has been
a porous border? What ultimately
will be achieved by leaving open
the border to anyone who wants to
cross? Wage parity with Mexico?
Since the costs of mass immigra-
tion are spread so unevenly, those
of us who do not compete in the
low-skill end of the North
American job market should pay
special attention to those who do.
According to the Latino National
Political Survey, 75% of Mexican-
Americans-an even higher per-
centage than in the general popula-
tion-say there are too many
immigrants coming to the United
States. The reason is apparently
that many of these people are high-
ly vulnerable first- and second-gen-
eration immigrants themselves.
What their unease suggests is that
immigration needs to be looked at
in terms of class and labor supply
as well as identity politics.
A second issue that needs to be
discussed is the sanctuary move-
ment’s assumption that every
undocumented immigrant from
Central America deserves political
asylum. My acquaintance with the
immigration stream from
Guatemala suggests that many of
the people applying for asylum
have not been at any particular
risk. Sanctuary activists have been
slow to question the motives of
applicants for asylum, and the lat-
ter can learn to present themselves
as human rights victims. In one
town where I’ve worked, the immi-
gration stream to the United States
consists mainly of small business-
men and owners of television sets
who are dissatisfied with their level
of consumption. By U.S. standards
these people are not well-off, but
they are by the standards of the
community from which they come.
In the middle of a human rights
crisis, you may say, it’s better to
err on the side of generosity. But if
immigration policy is to be consis-
tent-and equity is a major argu-
ment of immigration lobbyists–
the definition of any undocumented
Guatemalan or Salvadoran as a
political refugee can be applied to
anyone in economic difficulty
under an authoritarian regime.
Partisans of blanket admission of
Central Americans need to consid-
er how their constituency will fare
in competition with the millions of
immigrants arriving for similar rea-
sons from other parts of the world.
Robert Smith raised a third issue
in “New York in Mixteca; Mixteca
in New York” (July, 1992): the
implications for the Third World
societies sending immigrants here.
For one, the homeland is saturated
with “talk and images and evi-
dence of life en el norte”-that is,
with misleading symbols of con-
sumption far beyond local means
of attainment. For another, cash
sent home from the United States
sets up highly dependent remit-
tance economies which deepen
inequalities and create new under-
classes which do not share in the
bounty. Knowing what consumer
society has done to popular con-
sciousness in the United States, we
should greet migratory responses to
the imagery of consumption with
profound reservations.
A fourth issue is the environ-
mental impact of turning low-con-
sumption Third Worlders into
high-consumption First Worlders.
Unfortunately, every Third World
immigrant who settles in the
United States is likely to became
another car-driving, beef-eating
resource hog like most of us. The
ecological implications are com-
pounded by the higher birth rates
of immigrants. If 250 million
North Americans are already an
unsustainable burden on the planet,
what about the Census Bureau’s
new mid-to-high range projection
of 380 to 500 million of us by
2050? The reason for the steep
increase over earlier projections is
heightened immigration and the
effect on birth rates.
Questioning population growth
is almost a taboo subject on the
U.S. Left. Worrying about popula-
tion is considered Malthusian,
reactionary and racist, and that’s
supposed to be the end of the dis-
cussion. But I hope it won’t be in
these pages. High fertility rates are
a feminist issue, because they are
associated with lack of schooling
and unequal opportunity for
women. High fertility rates are also
a labor issue, as it is hard to imag-
ine a better way to keep workers in
their place than to encourage them
to outbreed the demand for their
labor. Finally, rapid population
growth is a basic ecological issue,
as its consequences will outlive the
social system and historical period
that spawned it.
Obviously, immigration and
population debates have great
potential for bigotry. It’s good that
many members of the NACLA
community are involved in defend-
ing the rights of refugees. But we
ignore the awkward ramifications
at our peril, because downplaying
them leaves more room for unbri-
dled nativist reactions.
David Stoll
Davis, California
Shining Path
n her letter to NACLA [July-
August, 1993], Carol Andreas
tries to justify Shining Path’s cold-
blooded murder of Maria Elena
Moyano, the Peruvian feminist
leader. “Revolutionaries,” she says,
“had no alternative but to end her
life.” For Andreas, all of the
achievements she grudgingly
allows Moyano-her leadership,
her advocacy on behalf of poor
women like herself-were worth
not a single hair on her head.
Moyano crossed that most sacred
of boundaries: the limits of what
46 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 46
LETTERS
Andreas and those she champions
believe is right and wrong for Peru.
Who else should die, according
to Andreas? For the sake of schol-
arly debate, perhaps she could for-
ward to NACLA her personal list.
And does she, in the end, prefer the
method employed by Moyano’s
killers-beating an unarmed
woman to her knees in front of her
children, a rapid shot to the base of
the neck, close enough to leave a
powder bum and that slight, satis-
fying scent of burned hair-or
would others suffice?
It might be in Andreas’ profes-
sional interest to tour this country’s
busiest death states and report
back. In the utopian society she
envisions, just how would other
Peruvians die (for Moyano is just
one in a list of thousands murdered
by Shining Path since 1980): in the
electric chair, the gas chamber, or
at the point of a sterile needle?
Lamentably for her, no state advo-
cates mutilation before execution,
unlike Shining Path, which cut off
the ears of many of the 62
Ashaninka Indians killed in
September. I fear Andreas may
also be disappointed to learn that
even gas-happy states like Florida
have something they call appeal
and mercy.
Abuses by Peru’s government
continue, and are egregious and
deplorable. Yet they do not justify
murder. I find it ironic that Shining
Path supporters in the United States
have tried to further their campaign
to “defend the life” of Abimael
Guzmin, Shining Path’s founder
and leader, by appealing to death-
penalty abolitionists. In fact,
Shining Path is an enthusiastic
practitioner of the death penalty.
This was pointed out to Shining
Path supporter Heriberto Ocasio
during a recent radio interview.
Perhaps only Andreas would be
charmed by his blunt reply: “That’s
what you do with snitches.”
Robin Kirk
Americas Watch