Latinx encounters : how Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans made the modern Midwest / Juan Ignacio Mora

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mora, Juan Ignacio, author.

Series:

Latinx histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agricultural laborers--Labor unions--Organizing--Middle West--History--20th century.

Agricultural laborers.

Mexican Americans--Middle West--Social conditions--20th century.

Mexican Americans.

Mexicans--Middle West--Social conditions--20th century.

Mexicans.

Migrant agricultural laborers--Middle West--History--20th century.

Migrant agricultural laborers.

Puerto Ricans--Middle West--Social conditions--20th century.

Puerto Ricans.

Agricultural laborers--Labor unions--Organizing.

Mexican Americans--Social conditions.

Mexicans--Social conditions.

Puerto Ricans--Social conditions.

Middle West.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2026]

Summary:

"The fields and orchards of the Midwest have offered seasonal agricultural work for countless Latinx migrant laborers. For more than a century, Mexican, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican migrants converged in the heartland to perform some of the most grueling labor needed to sustain the region’s vital agribusiness. In return, they were rewarded with dismal working conditions, poor government protections, and fierce hostility toward their organizing efforts. Juan Ignacio Mora uncovers the everyday strategies these migratory laborers employed to fight for better economic conditions, offering a new history of the farmworker justice movement that transforms our understanding of the US heartland. Mexican, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican migrants arrived in the Midwest with vastly different circumstances of class, ethnicity, and immigration status, which fueled complex collaborations and conflicts. Contested notions of race challenged their relationships, but migrant workers and their families made inroads in workers' rights and nurtured a shared culture, negotiating collective bargaining agreements and forming the first punk rock band. Capturing the relationship between the Midwest, the Texas-Mexico borderlands, Mexico’s interior, and the colonial archipelago of Puerto Rico, Latinx Encounters unravels a transnational history of migratory labor, farmworkers' rights, and the rapidly changing food industry"-- JSTOR

Contents:

Introduction. Migrant farmworkers and the modern Midwest

Harvesting power : Latinx intermediaries and Midwest migratory labor, 1917-1949

Sugar beets not so sweet : Race, citizenship, and the Truman Commission on migratory labor, 1948-1951

A migrant public sphere : Networks of exposure and institutional interventions

Beyond a one-hit wonder : Question Mark and the Mysterians, interstate music networks, and a Latinx cultural infrastructure

Migrant rights, migrant justice : The Farm Labor Organizing Committee and the making of a Midwest movement, 1967-1991

Conclusion. The permanence of temporary farmworkers

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed October 2, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Mora, Juan Ignacio Latinx Encounters

ISBN:

9781469693873

1469693879

9781469693866

1469693860

9781469693897

1469693895

9781469693880

1469693887

OCLC:

1610427240

Publisher Number:

CIPO000417594

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license