Oregon Humanities

A Borderless World

A Lewis & Clark College professor wants Oregonians to talk about immigration, globalization, and changing communities.

Eric Gold

On September 15, 1891, the Mexican journalist Catarino Garza put down his pen and picked up a Winchester rifle. It was the eve of Mexico’s Independence Day. Garza led a band of peasants, merchants, and former soldiers from both sides of the border across the Rio Grande from Texas into Mexico with the aim of overthrowing the dictator Porfirio Diaz. Their hatbands bore the words libres fronterizos—“free border-people.” The Garzistas, as the group was known, battled the armies of both nations, as well as the Texas Rangers and local police, for two years before their revolution was put down. In 1895, Garza was killed while in exile in Panama.

Though Garza’s story lived on in border community song and legend, his failed revolution was largely forgotten by history until, in 2004, Lewis & Clark College professor Elliott Young published the first lengthy study of the man and his mission: Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border. The book isn’t just about rescuing this fascinating, if short-lived, movement from obscurity. Young sees parallels between that time, more than a hundred years ago, and today. “It was a moment when the border [between the U.S. and Mexico] didn’t really exist, or was just coming into being,” Young says. “It existed on the map, but the cultural and economic connections across the border meant that people living on the border lived on both sides. And today, despite the militarization of the border, because we live in such a globalized world, borders are becoming less meaningful, or meaningful in a different way.” By studying the genesis of the border, Young hopes to better understand how the boundary was and is used as an instrument of nationalism, and how, in spite of that, many people continue to live transnational lives.

Politics have been at the center of Young’s interest in Latin America since the 1980s. That’s when he became involved in efforts to oppose the United States–sponsored wars in the region. “Right from the beginning, there was always a political motivation for me,” he says. “The academic part of my life is a way to pursue that, but to do that divorced from the politics would take away the motivation.” So while he teaches courses on Mexico, Cuba, and borderlands history to students at Lewis & Clark, Young is also active in local organizations that seek to promote workers’ and immigrants’ rights. As a member of Jobs With Justice’s Workers’ Rights Board, for instance, he investigates allegations of bad labor practices. Young also raises funds for VOZ, which advocates for the rights of day laborers, and he has made presentations to PCASC, the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee.

Now, as a scholar-facilitator in Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project: A New Chautauqua, Young will be traveling around the state leading discussions about the impacts of immigration and globalization on local communities. Young knows that some residents in the cities and towns he visits are opposed to immigration or have concerns about its effects, and he looks forward to meeting them. “The point is,” he says, “I’m a little tired of speaking to the people who already agree with me. I think you’ve got to confront the real issues that people have about immigration, and talk about alternatives to policies of deportation and criminalization, which have been tried for a hundred years and don’t really stop immigrants from coming.”

A scholar in the former Oregon Chautauqua program, Young will use a similar approach in facilitating Conversation Project programs. After a brief presentation to the group, he hopes to encourage the participants to discuss among themselves what they want their community to look like going forward. Just as in the college classroom, the overall goal is critical reflection. “I would argue that Oregon already has been a part of these waves of migration, and people living here are themselves migrants,” he says. “Even if they’re Native Americans, they came from somewhere else. So if we understand that in the most generic sense all of us are migrants, then maybe people could begin to identify more with the stories of the newer migrants.”

Young’s latest academic project concerns Chinese immigration to the Americas, which serves as a reminder, he says, that there is more to the history of cultural diversity in Oregon than most people realize. “The Chinese were one-tenth of Portland’s population in the 1890s,” he says, “and 30 percent of Grant County.” Through his work in the classroom and the community, Young hopes to encourage meaningful reflection about immigrants and immigration. “I think it’s an interesting moment,” he says, “for people to take the time to think about what they really want in their communities.” If they do, he says, they might “see immigration not just as a sort of drain—people taking away our jobs—but as a cultural gain. What do you gain from people from other cultures living in your midst, and being part of your community?” In an increasingly borderless world, this kind of thinking might lead us all to feel more like libres fronterizos.