La Virgen Meets Eliot Spitzer - Lehman College

Transcription

La Virgen Meets Eliot Spitzer
A r t i cu l at i n g La b o r R i g h t s fo r M e x i c a n Imm i g r a n t s
“We’re being taken advantage of. We’re not being respected. If you’re
undocumented, you have no rights.”1 This is a common refrain among
undocumented Mexican immigrants and often signals the start of a struggle against exploitative employers or landlords. 2 Indeed, it would seem
that undocumented immigrants do not enjoy many rights. After crossing
the border, they are told by other recent immigrants that they must avoid
detection by and interaction with the state at all costs, or risk deportation. In the five years María Ramírez, 3 a young mother who migrated
from Puebla, Mexico, and her husband have lived in New York City, they
have never visited the Statue of Liberty, the Bronx Zoo, or their cousins in New Jersey. They fear that even buying an admission ticket on a
commuter rail train, they might be forced to reveal their lack of English
proficiency, asked to show identification, or otherwise risk revealing their
undocumented status. Many immigrants report that they are mistreated
by employers, refused services by medical providers, and charged exorbitant rents for ill-maintained housing by landlords on the premise that
they are undocumented. Further, their undocumented status is given as
a rationale by those who tell immigrants that they not only must accept
such treatment but have no one to whom they might complain. The U.S.
news media circulate xenophobic opinions about immigrants: that they
gave up their rights by crossing the border illegally, and their status as
“lawbreakers” makes them undeserving of any consideration, rights, or
benefits.
While many immigrants do live in constant fear and under the impression that they have no rights, there are many other immigrants who claim
that they deserve respect, humane treatment, and services. There is a long
history in New York City, and indeed in every city that has received massive influxes of immigrants, of organizations that advocate for immigrants’
rights and services provision. Churches have long provided services and
space for immigrant conviviality and religiosity. Many of the large agencies that continue to serve immigrants today began as mutual aid and
philanthropic organizations to serve the waves of immigrants to the city
at the turn of the twentieth century. Each immigrant group also forms its
Social Text 88, Vol. 24, No. 3, Fall 2006
DOI 10.1215/01642472-2006-007 © 2006 Duke University Press
Alyshia Gálvez
own civic and cultural organizations. Mexican immigrants have formed
hometown associations, which work to advance public works projects
in Mexico and serve as a site for social organization in New York City.4
Organizations of entrepreneurs such as the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of
Commerce, the nonprofit organization Casa Puebla, or CECOMEX (El
Centro de la Comunidad Mexicana de Nueva York) fulfill various roles
in organizing and promoting the interests of the Mexican community,
ranging from promotion of business partnerships to folkloric pageantry
and goods, and the Mexican Independence and Cinco de Mayo parades
and celebrations. In this essay, I focus on two organizations that dedicate
themselves primarily to the acquisition of rights and provision of services
to undocumented recent immigrants (averaging seven to ten years), who
constitute the majority of Mexicans in New York: Casa México and Asociación Tepeyac de New York. These two organizations, in spite of their
shared constituency, have very different modes of activism and perspectives on the best ways to achieve gains for their constituency. Even though
these two modes produce different kinds of activism, activists, and activist communities, they are both valuable and complementary. These two
approaches not only achieve great gains for Mexican immigrants; they
provide powerful modalities for the formation of leadership and empowerment in general. One point of bifurcation between the two organizations is
their invocation of two different and powerful advocates with great sway
and authority to support their claims: Our Lady of Guadalupe and New
York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
It is a truism that politics makes strange bedfellows. In this essay, I
will demonstrate how in New York State, in Mexican immigrants’ efforts
to assert their rights and demand fair treatment, many have come to rely
on Our Lady of Guadalupe and New York State Attorney General Eliot
Spitzer as advocates and arbiters of rights. I will describe the ways these
two figures are perceived and called upon to act by immigrant members of
the two organizations I focus on here. While it is quite obvious how Spitzer
acts in the world as a sentient, coeval person, the ability of a religious icon
to act in the world is, clearly, a matter of faith. Yet I am interested less
in demonstrating tangible proof of action than in examining the effect
of devotees’ faith in the Virgin’s agency. Within Catholic saint-worship
traditions, devotees’ expectations of prompt or tangible material results to
prayer and promesas are sometimes said to be impertinent, self-centered,
even sinful and offensive to the saints. Devotees’ faith and prayerfulness,
even without evidence of the saints’ intervention, is encouraged.5 Similarly, social scientists have shown that in activism sometimes the feeling of
solidarity, of acting in the world, of rejecting complacency or impotence,
offers more fulfilling and enduring rewards than the accomplishment of a
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social movement’s principal goals.6 This separation of action, expectations,
and results is one of the distinguishing characteristics of activism within
Asociación Tepeyac, which I will detail below. Casa México, in contrast,
is profoundly results-oriented and works with an advocate, in the person
of Spitzer, who is seen to act quickly and aggressively.
Reliance on these two advocates corresponds to two very different
modes of mobilization. While these two modes may be viewed as complementary, for those who subscribe to them they are quite distinct, even oppositional. I describe these two figures of protection and the discourses they
evoke and then illustrate the modes of activism which correspond to them.
I rely on data gathered from fieldwork in two organizations founded by and
for Mexican migrants in New York City: Asociación Tepeyac de New York
and Casa México. While in the offices of Asociación Tepeyac, the Virgin
of Guadalupe is visually ever present as patroness of the group’s endeavors,
Spitzer’s advocacy of Casa México’s work is not so obviously attributed in
the visual space of the organization. In the secular sphere of law enforcement, political lobbying, and coalition building with unions and political
parties, adulation of Spitzer cannot be expected to resemble, visually,
devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe — who, after all, exists in the hearts
of believers, and in the sacred residue of her ubiquitous two-dimensional
image. Nonetheless, these two organizations call on these advocates in
their production of discourses that reflect their philosophies, and their
definitions of their constituencies and their allies.
Asociación Tepeyac de New York comprises approximately forty
parish-based comités guadalupanos (Guadalupan committees) throughout
the city. The primary purpose of most of the comités is devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe. They also offer places for Mexican immigrants to organize activism and activities dedicated to their empowerment. As a network
organization, Tepeyac coordinates activism, lobbying, and advocacy, and it
provides services to its constituency, including assistance in labor disputes,
housing and health care, ESL and other education programs, counseling,
and more. For Tepeyac, immigrants’ rights are associated with their status
as human beings and are couched in a theologically informed humanism,
vouchsafed by the figure of the Virgin Mary, the universal mother figure,
in her manifestation as Our Lady of Guadalupe. This articulation of rights
seeks to supersede the nation-state and render moot its laws, which cast
undocumented immigrants as juridical personae non gratae.
Casa México, a nonprofit organization founded by former union
leaders and activists, offers similar services and activism as does Tepeyac
(employment services, labor advocacy, and educational programs), but
on a smaller scale, and without a network of membership organizations.
Unlike Tepeyac, Casa México is not affiliated with the church. It is closely
Articulating Labor Rights for Mexican Immigrants
For Tepeyac,
immigrants’ rights
are associated
with their status
as human beings
and are couched
in a theologically
informed
humanism,
vouchsafed by
the figure of the
Virgin Mary, the
universal mother
figure, in her
manifestation
as Our Lady of
Guadalupe.
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linked with the Democratic Party and unions (especially UNITE and the
New York State AFL-CIO). Casa México works closely with State Attorney General Spitzer, who wields political power and juridical legitimacy
and has consistently demonstrated compassionate understanding of the
particular difficulties faced by immigrants.
After discussing how the figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Eliot
Spitzer are perceived by Mexican immigrant activists in two very different sites, I examine the mobilization strategies employed by members of
the two organizations and how their choice of advocates reflects different
approaches to the project of rights acquisition for the Mexican immigrant
community in New York City. Both figures, and both organizations, build
on the premise that undocumented immigrants have certain inalienable
rights. According to Catholic humanism, the Virgin of Guadalupe guarantees the humanity of her devotees. All human beings are her children and
thus deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. This rather inviolate
assertion takes tangible shape and counters U.S. law when coupled with
very specific pastoral initiatives like the Strangers No Longer campaign
led by the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops and the Episcopado Mexicano.
This campaign acknowledges the human right of people to seek a living
wherever they may find it, even if it takes them across national borders. In
the other case, according to the legalistic humanism, if you will, of Spitzer,
New York State labor law does not differentiate between citizens and noncitizens, nor, as a matter of fact, do laws pertaining to housing, education,
and health care. Immigration law is a federal domain and thus unrelated to
his obligation to defend the rights of all members of his constituency.
I expect to offer insight into the efforts by Mexican immigrants in
New York to achieve greater rights and also suggest that these two strategies need not exist in competition or mutual exclusion, but rather together
offer a comprehensive means for immigrants to further their claims.
This essay is based on ethnographic research completed over three years
(2000 – 2003) in Asociación Tepeyac de New York and two of the parishbased community organizations located in the Bronx, as well as with other
Mexican migrant rights organizations including Casa México.
Background
Mexican immigrants in New York City number between 300,000 and
500,000.7 While modern migrant flows by Mexicans to many parts of the
southwestern United States and Chicago date back generations, 8 in New
York State, Mexican migration is a relatively new phenomenon, with the
very first pioneers only now reaching their fifties and sixties.9 In spite of
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the newness of Mexican migrant flows to New York State, analysts classify them as accelerated,10 doubling in the period 1990 – 2000,11 with the
majority of this community having arrived only in the last eight to twelve
years.
Of all Latino groups in New York City, Mexicans have the highest percentage of immigrants among them (70 percent),12 an indication
of the recentness of migration and the still nascent second generation.
Seventy-six percent of Mexicans in the Bronx, the borough where the
two comités I researched are located, arrived after 1990, and few of them
are citizens. While the U.S. Census does not control for those who might
be legal permanent residents or holders of any number of different kinds
of visa, I estimate that at least 75 percent and as many as 95 percent are
undocumented, given the time in which they arrived. Time and status are
intertwined categories: the year immigrants arrived is often an accurate
indicator of their ability to legalize their migratory status. Except under
sweeping legislation like IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act of
1986, popularly called “Amnesty”), immigrants who entered the United
States illegally in the past few decades are automatically barred from
adjustment of status, and for the vast majority of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, there is no way to regularize their status,
however much they may desire to do so.13
Contrary to popular thought, undocumented immigrants are not a
transient population of newcomers who have failed to “put down roots”
and “become American,” nor are they predisposed to illicit activity. Rather,
undocumented immigrants have few possibilities for legalization, even
though most have a very strong desire for it.14 Nonimmigrant visa categories include student visas and specialized work permits, which usually
require monetary resources and skills unavailable to the poor and poorly
educated, who constitute the majority of undocumented immigrants. Further, visas usually require that applicants visit the U.S. embassy in their
home country and wait for approval — another impossibility for those who
are already here. In spite of the fact that there are as many as 10 million
undocumented immigrants in the United States, permanent residency,
or a green card, is routinely granted to only 475,000 new applicants per
year, and only 144,000 of these are employer-sponsored.15 Marriage to a
U.S. citizen is still an available means of regularizing status, and some
individuals have gained residency by marrying a U.S.-born or naturalized citizen, often someone who had qualified for the amnesty in 1986. In
the course of my research, I met no one who had engaged in a green-card
marriage solely for the purpose of obtaining legal status. In a community
in which endogamous marriage is still the norm, this option is available to
only a small minority of people.16 New York City is also not a destination
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for H2-A and H2-B visa holders (for low-wage agricultural guest work),
although the social networks of Mexicans in New York frequently extend
to agricultural workers in North and South Carolina, the Hudson River
Valley, and other more traditional destinations in the Southwest.
Because so many of them lack authorization to work in the United
States, Mexicans in New York often work in the most exploitative and
dangerous labor sectors. Men often work in construction, restaurants, and
small grocery stores. Women often work in garment factories, laundries,
and as domestics. Both men and women frequently offer their services as
day laborers, jostling with other immigrant workers for elusive day-to-day
work with contractors or in homes. Frequently, workers complain that
employers do not pay them in a timely fashion (and sometimes not at all),
that they pay less than minimum wage, force them to work in inhumane
and dangerous conditions, and do not provide them with even the most
basic benefits such as a lunch break, overtime pay, a day off, protective
gear, sick days, not to mention health insurance, disability insurance, or
vacation time (even unpaid). One in four fatal occupational injuries in
New York City in 2003 occurred in construction, one of the industries
in which Mexican men most often work,17 and it is estimated that, in the
United States as a whole, one Mexican worker dies each day.18 In spite of
the dangers, when asked why they came, the vast majority of Mexican
immigrants reply, “Para trabajar, pues” (To work, of course).
The Virgin of Guadalupe and Guadalupanism
“Esperemos que la Virgen nos abra el paso” (Let’s hope the Virgin will
clear a path for us). These were the words of Alberto, president of the
comité guadalupano of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, at the group’s
meeting a month before the Guadalupan Torch Run (La Antorcha Guadalupana) would reach New York City from Mexico. In the run, a flame
is carried overland by family members of migrants and migrants themselves from the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, arriving at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City for Guadalupe’s feast day. The “path”
Alberto refers to has more than one meaning. First, he was referring to
the hope that the Torch Run’s organizers would still manage to obtain
a permit from the city to circulate through the streets of midtown on a
weekday. He was angry when he told the group that even in Washington,
DC, a permit had been given to run the torch past the White House and
to rally on the Mall, but that in New York, the torch’s destination and
home of the organizers, they had not had luck with the NYPD and the
mayor’s office. He also referred to the struggle for amnesty, which was
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offered by organizers and participants as the purpose of the Torch Run,
who called themselves “mensajeros por la dignidad de un pueblo dividido
por la frontera” (messengers for a people divided by the border).
A distinguishing characteristic of Catholicism is the belief in mediators, accessible intercessors to whom the faithful can pray, without pestering God with individual desires and needs. In some cultures, Catholics
put great stake into the ability and willingness of the saints and the Virgin
Mary to act on their devotees’ behalf. Likewise, within these cultures, the
saints have varying reputations in terms of their efficacy in accomplishing
the tasks they have been given. For many Mexicans, even skeptics, the Virgin is known to have intervened in some way in an affair that was important
to them. In the course of my research, many people spoke of prayers they
had made to the Virgin with the sober expectation of concrete results; and
likewise, many people give thanks to the Virgin for specific intercessions.
Javier, one of the organizers of the first international Guadalupan Torch
Run, recounted that it was the Virgin who intervened when their van broke
down in Maryland almost making the torch late in arriving to New York
City; she made the rains stop in Mexico so that upon arriving in each city,
the huge oil painting of the Virgin could be carried in procession; and she
protected them from getting stopped by highway patrol in a South Carolina
city where they had been unable to obtain official permission to run.19
The Virgin is also prayed to for less concrete assistance, such as health
and well-being. Devotees say Mary is the one willing to come to one’s aid
in matters great or small. She loves her children indiscriminately, sees
them all as equal, and is willing to intervene if her children are mistreated.
Nonetheless, it is not what is asked of the Virgin or what devotees say she
has given them, but how they view her ability to act, the sphere in which
she is deemed to have power, and her reasons for acting on their behalf
that are relevant to this essay.
The apparition legend of the Virgin of Guadalupe holds that the
Mother of God appeared to an indigenous man, Juan Diego, a few years
subsequent to the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish. She asked the recent
convert to Christianity to transmit to Archbishop Zumárraga her request
that a basilica in her name be built on the same hill, Tepeyac, on which
she appeared. Juan Diego demurred, insisting that a lowly indio such as
himself could never get an audience with the bishop, and that it was best
if she send someone more noble and powerful. She insisted, reappearing
over the course of three days, until finally Juan Diego agreed. When he
entered the bishop’s chamber, as proof of the divine source of his message, Castilian roses spilled out of his woven tilma, and an image of the
Virgin was imprinted on it. 20 Following the devastation of the conquest, the
apparition of the Virgin has been held as an affirmation of the humanity
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Figure 1. Man holding a sign asking the Virgin of Guadalupe to intervene in
immigrants’ struggle for legalization. Photo by the author
of the indigenous people and a special message of reassurance that they
were worthy and deserving of grace.
In the accounts of the apparition, the Virgin speaks to Juan Diego in
his native tongue, Nahuatl, using language one would use with one’s own
child, full of diminutives and terms of affection. Her insistence on appearing to a man such as Juan Diego is said to have settled the debate that
indigenous people were human beings, children of God equal in Mary’s
eyes to all others, and worthy of dignity, respect, and salvation. The apparition legend is recounted frequently by members of Asociación Tepeyac and
the comités guadalupanos. A direct parallel is drawn between Juan Diego
and his indigenous brethren in early colonial Mexico and undocumented
immigrants in the United States. Brother Joel Magallán, executive director of Tepeyac, told the runners at the launch of the Torch Run in Mexico
City on 29 October 2002, that just as Juan Diego knocked on the door of
the authorities to ask that a temple be built in the name of the Mother of
God, that they were “messengers” knocking on the doors of the authorities
of the United States, asking for more humane immigration laws. And so
are the members of the comités that visit congresspeople in Washington,
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Evoking the
language of
devotion, and
a particular
theological
construction of
the equality of all
human beings
in the eyes of
God, immigrants
make claims that
supersede the
authority of the
nation-state.
Figure 2. Image of the Virgin of Guadalupe outside St. John
Parish. Photo by the author
DC, for whom they are unable to vote. So are all of the members of these
groups when they seek greater rights for undocumented immigrants.
Evoking the language of devotion, and a particular theological construction of the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God, immigrants make claims that supersede the authority of the nation-state. While
few would argue against the basic Catholic humanist premise that all
human beings are equal in the eyes of God, in the particular context of
immigration, this argument posits a very specific contestation of the notion
that undocumented immigrants, by virtue of crossing the border illicitly,
are unworthy of rights.
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Further, in the particular context of the United States in which religion is an inviolate and legitimating force, assumed but rarely explicit,
demonstrations of faith and congregationalism are perceived by immigrants as a means for them to incorporate themselves into civic life in the
United States, even while lacking the juridical authorization (citizenship)
to participate in many civil processes. As Will Herberg wrote four decades
ago:
Of the immigrant who came to this country it was expected that . . . he
would give up virtually everything he had brought with him from “the old
country” — his language, his nationality, his manner of life — and would
adopt the ways of his new home. Within broad limits, however, his becoming
an American did not involve his abandoning the old religion in favor of some
native American substitute. Quite the contrary, not only was he expected to
retain his old religion . . . but . . . it was largely in and through religion that
he, or rather his children and grandchildren found an identifiable place in
American life. 21
American associational life has always been profoundly intertwined
with modes of religious participation, a fact that was remarked upon by
Tocqueville and Weber, and continues to be remarkable to observers of
U.S. society today. 22 James Hunter has asserted how in contemporary
U.S. society, “culture wars,” the debates over issues like race, politics, art,
privacy, and so on, tend to be articulated within and by “communities of
moral commitment,” “distinct from yet integrated within their involvement in neighborhood, city or region.” 23 Herberg’s observation that it is
precisely as members of a religious tradition that immigrants can insert
themselves in U.S. civic life is pertinent here. Following on Herberg and
Talcott Parsons’s theories of processes of inclusion, Peter Beyer sees religion as a means by which collective identities are formed and made to act
in political ways: “Religion, in other words, like the political system, is
a social sphere that manifests both the socio-cultural, political and the
global-universal.”24 It makes sense then that religion would provide power
ful idioms for activism and that the church would become a key space
for the Civil Rights Movement, Puerto Rican assertions of rights in New
York City in the 1960s, César Chávez’s United Farmworkers, the Chicano Rights Movement in the Southwest, and now, recent undocumented
Mexican immigrants’ mobilizations for rights in New York City.
It is in these social spheres comprehensive of “the global-universal”
and “the socio-cultural, political” that Tepeyac is able to work. In these
spheres, it is possible to imagine the nation-state’s jurisdiction as limited
and its laws as trivial. Likewise, many of the pastors and laypeople who
work with the comités guadalupanos reiterate these views, lending them
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greater credibility as truth. Patricia Ballner, an attorney and lay minister
who works as a litigator in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi’s immigration center, described the moral basis for her work: “When you work for
a person and you can actually help in some way to get what they deserve
as a human being, it is extremely rewarding and satisfying. I think that’s
the Church’s message of working for social justice and being dedicated to
the dignity of each human life.” 25
In this way, immigrants disengage from the narrowly constructed and
xenophobic debates about law and juridical status in which, by virtue of
their being undocumented, their claims for rights are perceived as illegitimate by many in the United States and, when granted, are understood as a
favor to the sojourners in our midst, voluntarily ceded by a benevolent state
and populace. 26 This is frequently coupled with the idea that society owes
immigrants nothing and can at any time revoke whatever benefits might
have been granted in moments of largesse or economic expansion. 27
Asociación Tepeyac insists that the rights they claim are already preexisting. Thus, much of their activity is directed at convincing agencies,
individuals, and the state to recognize the rights of immigrants, especially
the right to freedom from exploitation, which is cast as a human right. In
contrast, Casa México offers an alternative mode of mobilization among
Mexican migrants in New York City, which does not attempt to transcend
local and national politics but instead involves activists rolling up their
sleeves and getting involved in rough-and-tumble contests over representation and rights. In this model too, rights are perceived as preexisting, but it
is acknowledged that they must be fought for incrementally against those
who chip away at them. Further, they do not exist in an imagined universal
moral space, but in the concrete realm of the law. In this approach, it is
not the Virgin Mary but a very earthly figure that has emerged as a leading advocate for immigrants’ struggles: New York State Attorney General
Eliot Spitzer.
Eliot Spitzer, “The People’s Lawyer”
In 2002, Eliot Spitzer, attorney general of New York State, in a coalition
with a few disgruntled workers, Casa México, representatives of Korean
American associations, and the New York State AFL-CIO, managed to
negotiate an unprecedented agreement with the city’s greengrocers, one
of the sectors where Mexican labor predominates, to pay their workers
the minimum wage and grant them the benefits provided by labor law:
meal breaks, sick days, vacation, overtime pay, and so on. Deflecting
criticism that he defended one group of immigrants by unfairly targeting
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By teaming
up with Casa
México and other
groups to crack
down on labor
violations against
undocumented
workers, Spitzer
situated himself
in a unique
moral space.
He makes clear
that he sees his
work as having
a humanistic
purpose, that
the humanity of
undocumented
workers can be
upheld through
enforcement of
the law.
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another — the Korean small business owners who survive by carving out a
minimal profit on the sale of produce and other goods — Spitzer promised
not to bring enforcement actions against those who agreed to cooperate in
developing, then complying with the Greengrocer Code of Conduct. In
the year preceding the greengrocer pact, Spitzer’s office came down hard
on a few markets, imposing penalties amounting to $100,000 in back pay
and damages. In a press conference following the crackdown, in which he
promised to go after dozens more markets already identified as engaging
in the same exploitative practices, Spitzer said, “The common denominator is that workers who are perhaps a little uncertain of establishing their
immigration status, who are afraid of going to law enforcement, are easily taken advantage of by employers. This is unacceptable. It’s wrong.”28
By agreeing to the Code of Conduct and signifying their compliance by
posting a seal on their door, grocers avoided enforcement actions by the
State Attorney General, which might have resulted in settlements in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay to workers for minimum
wage and overtime violations. 29
By teaming up with Casa México and other groups to crack down on
labor violations against undocumented workers, Spitzer situated himself
in a unique moral space. He makes clear that he sees his work as having a
humanistic purpose, that the humanity of undocumented workers can be
upheld through enforcement of the law: “We are pleased that our settlement will help make these workers whole.”30 While the attorney general’s
duty is to uphold and enforce the law, Spitzer is, by many accounts, an
activist who recognizes that the law is contradictory and that there is significant space for interpretation and moral action even in his post as “the
people’s advocate.” In prosecuting exploitative employers, Spitzer makes
a moral judgment call, enforcing laws in ways that few elected officials in
his position have chosen to do anywhere in the United States. The hiring
of undocumented workers by employers in the first place is illegal under
federal law. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act created sanctions for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, but this
violation of federal law does not bear on Spitzer’s enforcement of New York
State labor law, which makes no distinction between citizen and undocumented workers. 31 The New York State Department of Labor informs
employers, “The requirements of State Law do not affect an employer’s
obligation to comply with any provisions of Federal law.”32 Regarding
federal regulations that authorize or prohibit different categories of immigrants to work, M. Patricia Smith, the Labor Bureau chief appointed by
Spitzer, states, “[The employer] has an obligation I don’t have. . . . I don’t
enforce federal tax laws either, even though there may be federal tax vio-
Alyshia Gálvez
lations. They hire people off the books, but I don’t have the jurisdiction
to enforce federal tax laws.”33 Given the contradictions between federal
immigration law and federal labor law (such as the Fair Labor Standards
Act), there is clearly ample room for interpretation. Spitzer has a great deal
of discretion in choosing which and what kind of violations to prosecute,
and he has been described as charging his deputies “with cracking down
on labor law violators who prey on the poorest and most vulnerable.” 34
Smith states in no uncertain terms, “We don’t ask people whether they’re
undocumented or not — just like we don’t ask them their marital status, it’s
not relevant. The laws apply to all workers, including the undocumented.”35
This is a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and it enables the economy
to function on the basis of “illegal” labor, such that when workers provide
false papers the liability to prosecution rests with them, not the employers
who hire them.
In addition to working miracles with the city’s greengrocers, Spitzer’s
office has negotiated with and also prosecuted employers in many sectors
for the benefit of workers. Here, I intentionally use the term miracle, with its
religious connotations, because Spitzer is frequently described as prosecuting those who take advantage of the little guy with an almost religious zeal,
and the term crusader is used by both his proponents and his opponents, as
are the nicknames “Enforcer” and “Sheriff of Wall Street.”36 Aside from
the state attorney general’s highly publicized crackdown on the insurance
industry, other recent targets of Spitzer’s wrath include laundries, sweatshops, and employment agencies, which routinely defraud undocumented
workers. He was also the only state official to get involved in the struggle
over a center for day laborers in the Long Island town of Farmingville,
where two Mexican day laborers were nearly beaten to death by two white
supremacists in 2000. Discussing the Long Island anti-immigrant group
Sachem Quality of Life, he said, “You have individuals and groups that
are appealing to the worst nature of our society.”37 Spitzer has been credited with changing the lives of undocumented workers who, after being
persuaded to testify about labor exploitation, find their lives transformed
not only by reparation of abuses, but by the affirming and empowering
experience of being heard and felt to matter to a powerful representative
of the U.S. nation-state. 38
Contributing to this activism on behalf of workers are particular affinities and subjectivities strikingly and not coincidentally similar to those
I observed in the parishes that are home to active comités guadalupanos.
Spitzer is the grandson of Austrian Jews who immigrated to New York’s
Lower East Side via Ellis Island. He was told by his father that it was “not
enough just to make your own pile.”39 Similarly, Patricia Smith has been
described as “haunted by the crimes and sorrows of centuries past imposed
111
on the immigrant poor — her Irish great-grandmother in particular who
[sailed] past the Statue of Liberty and straightaway into indentured servitude.”40 Likewise, all of the priests who formed Tepeyac’s original steering
committee, Grupo Timón, to develop an archdiocese-level response to the
pastoral and social needs of the growing Mexican community in New York
City, also happened to be children of Irish immigrants. Many of them told
me in interviews that they recognized their own parents in the faces of the
Mexican immigrants who began to arrive in the parishes and remarked
that they saw great affinity between Irish immigrants of a century ago and
Mexican immigrants today in terms of Catholic faith, family values, and
willingness to work hard.41 Further, most of the Irish American parish
priests of Grupo Timón are Diocesan priests ordained during the tenure
of Cardinal Spellman, who required all seminarians to go to the Puerto
Rican countryside as mendicant missionaries, living on the charity of
rural people, ministering to their needs, and learning their language and
particular religiosity to better serve their migrant kinspeople in New York
parishes. And in another interesting parallel, as an undergraduate, Spitzer
left Princeton and his privileged existence to work as a migrant laborer in
upstate New York, picking tomatoes to “experience harder work, to see
the world from a different perspective.”42
With Spitzer and his team of driven and motivated deputies’ long
record of advocacy for undocumented workers, Mexican immigrants have
come to recognize that they have greater rights and agency to vindicate
mistreatment than they might have imagined upon their arrival to New
York. What are the differences in the kinds of activism and the kinds of
community formed by activists involved in organizations that construct
their arguments around a theologically infused philosophy of universal
humanism anchored on the image of the Virgin Mary and those who
have come to trust Eliot Spitzer and his office to advocate for immigrant
workers’ rights?
Agency and Contestation:
Los Comités Guadalupanos and Asociación Tepeyac
In spite of the high degree of exploitation and uncertainty faced by Mexican immigrants in New York City, activism exists. Activism significantly
alters participants’ perception of their own situation, awareness of and
willingness to assert their rights, and their overall sense of their own
agency. This process of conscientization, in the Freirean sense, is significant when migrants realize that they have powerful advocates. Nonetheless, even though the Mexican immigrant population in New York
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Alyshia Gálvez
is small and from a small number of sending states compared to older
migrant destinations in the southwestern United States and Chicago, the
organizations Mexican immigrants have formed and the methods of advocacy they prefer are not uniform or constant. Rather, as described above,
immigrant rights’ groups differ significantly in the modes of activism
they prefer and the advocates they rely upon. There is a correspondence
between the advocates that organizations perceive to support them, the
modes of activism they favor, and the ways that they measure success.
The mission of Asociación Tepeyac is “to promote the social welfare
and human rights of Latino immigrants, specifically the undocumented
in New York City,” as well as to “inform, organize, and educate Mexican
immigrants and their families about rights, resources, and processes to
develop leaders, organizations, and communities.”43 In their activism, the
comités guadalupanos and Asociación Tepeyac insist that the single most
important factor affecting the lives of the majority of Mexicans in New
York City is their undocumented migratory status. While they acknowledge that labor accords, acquisition of services for immigrants, and judicial decisions favoring immigrants are well and good, they insist that the
bulk of immigrants’ problems can be solved only by amnesty, which is the
organization’s principal goal.
The parish-based comités guadalupanos that constitute Tepeyac vary
in form and activities. Some comités resemble rosary societies; their activities are centered primarily on prayer, Bible study, and the celebration of
the Virgin’s feast day on 12 December. Most engage in a multitude of
cultural and social service activities, ranging from folkloric dance troupes
to disseminating information on the Mexican consular identification card
(matrícula consular) or how to open a bank account, to organizing protests
and lobbying trips to Washington, DC.
While the roster of member comités and staff shift frequently, Tepeyac
exudes an image of stability in the person of its director, Joel Magallán.
This has earned it a privileged place in the media and means its spokespeople are always sought for comments on news events that impact immigrants. It has also served it well in the acquisition of much-sought-after
foundation dollars, critical to the organization’s ability to function, given
the paltry operating budget provided by the archdiocese. While many
recipients of the organization’s services are not members of comités guadalupanos, the staff, board of directors, and members of the organization
insist that the association is only as strong as its member comités, and that
they are its base. Even as the staff has been increasingly professionalized and is no longer drawn entirely from the comités, staff members say
that their agenda and priorities are dictated by the comités. Likewise, the
ability of Tepeyac to mobilize hundreds, even thousands of its members
The comités
guadalupanos
and Asociación
Tepeyac insist that
the single most
important factor
affecting the lives
of the majority of
Mexicans in New
York City is their
undocumented
migratory status.
That the bulk
of immigrants’
problems can be
solved only by
amnesty, which is
the organization’s
principal goal.
113
at impromptu events and protests is a result of its ability to draw on the
leadership of the comités to organize at the grassroots level in individual
parishes, furthering the organization’s high public profile and power it
enjoys relative to other Mexican migrant groups.44
In most comités, participants are united by three commonalities: Mexican national identity, undocumented immigration status, and devotion
to the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico and object of one of
the largest devotional cults in the Catholic world. In many parishes, the
organization of devotional activities brought Mexicans together, and only
later was a common agenda related to their immigration status articulated.
Following on traditions from their home communities, many new Mexican
immigrants in New York City requested that an image of the Virgin of
Guadalupe be displayed in their local parish church. They would often
then request that the door of the church be opened before dawn on 12
December, so they might sing “Las Mañanitas” and bring flowers to the
Virgin on her feast day. In many cases the parish priest’s willingness or
refusal to respond to these two requests would determine whether the
Mexican parishioners would continue attending the church and eventually form a comité there or seek another home for their devotion. In other
cases, churches had images of the Virgin of Guadalupe that preexisted the
presence of Mexicans in the community, but the image itself is attributed
with the arrival of Mexicans who interpreted it as a signal that there they
would find a welcoming home. Some of the feast day celebrations organized by Mexicans in disparate parishes throughout the city date back a
decade, even two. In this way, through the idiom of guadalupanismo, faith
in the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexican immigrants found each other and
began a process that can be called community formation. As they learned
that the difficulties facing them individually were shared by the majority,
and that these difficulties derived mostly from their common condition as
undocumented immigrants, the comités often turned to organizing around
social problems related to labor, housing, education, and health care.
In 1997, Asociación Tepeyac emerged as a diocese-wide pastoral
project linking the existing comités and promoting the formation of more
in neighborhoods where large numbers of Mexican immigrants were arriving. Thus a network was developed spanning not only New York City, but
recently also the entire tristate area, including metropolitan New Jersey,
the Hudson Valley, Westchester County, and Long Island. Further, it was
initiated with collaboration between the Archdiocese of New York and
church institutions in Mexico, including the Archdiocese of Mexico City,
the Basilica of Guadalupe, and the Jesuit College of Mexico. It has always
been binational in its focus, and its claims are supranational and grounded
in Catholic humanism. Tepeyac uses the notion of Marianism and univer-
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Alyshia Gálvez
sal rights to argue that undocumented immigrants in fact have more rights
than the general public seems wont to accord them. As such, this becomes a
project of revindication of rights. On the other hand, Spitzer and his deputies imply they are not activist in their defense of rights that they interpret
undocumented workers already to have under state law. Tepeyac’s activism
is, then, directed at promoting a sense of empowerment among Mexican
immigrants — encouraging them to realize their rights — and pushing
dominant U.S. society to recognize immigrants’ rights as a moral imperative, while Spitzer’s tack is to avoid the controversial notion of activism by
positing that he is doing nothing but upholding the law and the rights it
already grants to workers. Should Spitzer win his election bid to become
New York State governor in 2006, it will be interesting to see if he alters
his approach, as a protagonist in New York state lawmaking, not simply
as an agent charged with enforcement of laws. While both Tepeyac and
Casa México’s work may result in equally effective gains for the Mexican
immigrant community, their approaches have quite different premises.
Tepeyac’s project of revindication is exemplified in the heavily symbolic political actions that constitute the most visible activities of the
organization, such as the Torch Run. In Mexico, torch runs are a common devotional practice, engaged in by individuals and groups annually.
In fact, as many as 12 million devotees visit the Basilica of Guadalupe
in the weeks preceding the Virgin’s feast day, many as a culmination of
a days-long torch run. While there are certainly political subtexts to this
action, explicit politicization of Guadalupan devotion is often aggressively criticized in Mexico.45 Through a skillful discursive shift, Tepeyac
prompts many immigrants who never considered themselves to be activists to understand their very circumstances as undocumented immigrants
in the United States as a political problem. Further, they draw people in
through practices consonant with their religious activities at home, but
layer them with an explicitly political content, as in the annual Viacrucis
del Inmigrante (Way of the Cross of the Immigrant), a passion play produced
in lower Manhattan’s financial district by immigrant actors. In this procession, the traditional text of the Stations of the Cross, recounting Jesus’
path to Calvary, is overlaid with testimonies about immigrants’ abuse and
exploitation in the United States. Devotional practices such as these facilitate Mexican immigrant community formation and produce theologically
informed discourses of empowerment. As such, just as Spitzer can argue
he is simply upholding the law, immigrant activists in Tepeyac argue they
are simply practicing their religion and advocating for universal human
rights.
Why is Guadalupe the choice for mobilization among all possible
figures of devotion? While there is no question that in Mexico, the Gua-
115
dalupan avocation is the main object of devotion among Catholics (who
constitute 98 percent of the population of Mexico), 46 many people I interviewed reported being only marginally involved in devotional practices
there. They might have attended mass on 12 December, and some even
joined youth groups running torches to the Basilica, but most participated
only because it was something everyone did. However, many Mexicans
in New York reported that the experience of migration made them more
guadalupano than they ever were before, in some cases awakening and in
others hardening their faith as an adaptation to the new context in which
they find themselves. Further, they often remarked that priests in their
home communities had little sympathy for their problems, but that here,
they found it refreshing to find priests talking about injustice and exploitation. Through the church, they have found an organization dedicated to
their own rights acquisition and empowerment.
In addition to the collective experience, there are also very individual
experiences that draw members to the comités. The process by which
migrants arrive to the United States is traumatic. Many immigrants report
that while crossing the Sonora Desert, experiencing unspeakable abuse,
dehydration, fear, and doubt, they prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe;
for the first time, many said, they really needed her. Carolina, who had
arrived in New York from Guatemala only two weeks prior to her first visit
to St. John’s parish in the South Bronx, said, pointing to a large image of
the Virgin of Guadalupe, “Es a ella que yo rezaba. A ella le rezaba, y fue
ella que me trajo hasta aquí” (It was to her, to her I prayed and it was her
who brought me here).47 Rocío, a single mother of three teen boys from
Mexico City, said she was always devoted to the Virgin, but particularly
in the decade since her arrival in the United States:
Aquí es diferente. Aquí vinimos y sufrimos. Así que aún más le pedimos a
la Virgen, que nos haga fuertes para poder resistir todo. No hay quien no le
pida a la Virgen. Aquí, por lo que sufre uno, la valoramos, rezamos más y
vamos más a misa.
[Here it is different. Here, we come, and we suffer, so we ask even more of the
Virgin, so she can make us strong, to tolerate everything. There’s no person
who doesn’t name the Virgin. Here, for what one goes through, we value her,
and look to her, pray more, attend mass more].48
Just as the crystallization of Jewish cultural identity is rooted in the story
of Exodus, for Mexican immigrants, the border crossing becomes the
marker of a specific individual and collective identity. As a “theologizing experience,” migration moves social actors not only to turn to their
traditions for answers to existential questions, but also to modify those
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Alyshia Gálvez
traditions and beliefs in the face of new questions and crises.49 Religion for immigrants, far from being a “holdover” of values, practices,
and forms of association from one’s country of origin, as has often been
assumed within a modernist paradigm of assimilation and secularization,
can serve as a vector for change, catalyzing it and serving as its idiom,
giving immigrants new options of ways to be in the diaspora. For many
Mexicans, Guadalupe is the only logical object of their devotion, yet the
ways in which they enact their devotion, the meanings it has for them,
and the community they find in her name are qualitatively different than
anything in their experience prior to migration.
While community formation would seem to be a precursor to action, in
many ways in Tepeyac, it also seems to be the end point. There is a strong
implication in Tepeyac’s work that if its members come to demand rights
and vindicate their dignity in the face of exploitation and discrimination,
the organization will have been successful in its mission, irrespective of
concrete change. For critics, this kind of conscientization is overly idealistic
and difficult to measure. Nonetheless, it helps to explain the insularity of the
organization, its infamous reluctance to join or stay in coalitions of immigrant and labor organizations, and the symbolic nature of many of its
campaigns. In the past, the Torch Run has served to raise awareness about
and support for various proposed immigration reforms. In 2006, for the
first time in a decade, concrete proposals for immigration reform have been
debated in Congress, and it is likely that changes to the law are imminent.
While this could be taken as a victory for the activists who have long been
working for such reforms, in fact, many of them seem more enthusiastic
about the numbers of people who have been willing to march in the streets
and work in solidarity with their compatriots and other immigrants, and
what this will mean for future mobilizations, than about achieving desirable legislative results at present. They credit activities like the Torch
Run with linking together new immigrant communities on the Eastern
seaboard and building the foundation for what many are now calling a
nascent social movement. They realize that immigration reform today is
not a guarantee that immigrants will be well treated tomorrow, and they
see the formation of an engaged community as the best insurance in the
struggles that lie ahead.
117
Of What Use Amnesty? Labor Rights in the Here and Now
Here we live, we work, and we suffer and everything and you’re going to tell
us, the governor of whatever state, that we need to bow and thank you. No
way, José. And that’s the message. We are not going to give away our labor,
if someone wants it, you have to pay a high price, we cannot sell ourselves
for cheap. . . . The attitude is now, you want to get close to my community?
What are you going to give to it? And you give me something, I’ll give you
something. You don’t give me something, I don’t give you something. That’s
the message.50
This quotation is from an extended interview with Jerry Domínguez, executive director of Casa México. While Asociación Tepeyac was founded
with aid of the New York City and Mexican archdioceses, its director
is a former Jesuit brother, and its member organizations are based in
Catholic parishes, Casa México is a nonprofit service organization without church or other affiliations. Its director is a straight-talking Zacatecan
who migrated as a teenager, and after years of seasonal migrant labor
picking tomatoes in Florida and South Carolina and washing dishes in
New Jersey eventually finished his college and graduate studies at John Jay
College. Using language strikingly similar to that of Rocío quoted above,
Domínguez recognized that undocumented Mexican immigrants suffer exploitation because of their vulnerable legal status. Nonetheless, he
scoffs at Tepeyac’s emphasis on amnesty as the ultimate goal, “the whole
enchilada” without which immigrants can never be enfranchised.51
Casa México represents one of a fluid set of organizations with differing approaches and emphases but founded by a small set of activists and
composed of many of the same members that all focus on empowerment
for Mexican immigrants. These organizations, including the Mexican
American Workers Project (AMAT), MAIZE (Mexican Americans Initiating Zealous Empowerment), and Casa México, often emerge around a
single pressing issue, flexibly and innovatively advocating for immigrants,
then disengage and sometimes disband after the issue is resolved or overshadowed by another. MAIZE, for example, was founded by veterans of
the City University of New York hunger strike to obtain in-state tuition
for undocumented students. In some cases, a new organization is founded
as a response to a fissure in an existing one, with dissenters splintering off
to form their own organization. Since these are organizations not principally dedicated to the development of a membership base but founded in
response to issues, this kind of restructuring does not seem to negatively
impact the ability of the activists affiliated with them to act, but it can
make it difficult for outside analysts to trace them through time, and it
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Alyshia Gálvez
means that they are often less prominent in the media than Tepeyac. It
is important to describe this ever-changing landscape, lest the reader be
given the impression that Casa México and Tepeyac are equally prominent
immigrant’s rights organizations. Further, I wish to point out that I am in
some sense conflating here Casa México and Jerry Domínguez, then leader
of it, which is no longer possible, as he has since left the organization. As
such, this section is in many ways a snapshot of a particular moment in
activism in late 2003.
Casa México’s programs and even its mission are very similar to
Tepeyac’s, but it imagines its constituency as composed of individuals.
Jerry Domínguez told me he is interested in the formation of leaders, but
not caciques, making a nuanced distinction, as I interpret it, between
people who wish to work hard as individuals for a larger cause, and people
who work with the backing of a certain fixed body of supporters, as in a parish.52 He says that he does not care if a workshop is attended by one person
or two dozen, as long as that one person benefits. As such, Casa México
presents itself as a space for people to come, work on projects whether they
are individual or collective, and, if necessary, move on. Indeed, he himself
has since moved on from Casa México, after a falling out with its board of
directors, who were working to shift the organization’s focus away from
undocumented immigrants. Likewise, as Domínguez makes clear in the
quotation above, he is not interested in loyalty or pandering but engages in
the strategic and fluid work of making and breaking alliances, with a keen
understanding of the realpolitik of labor and party politics.
On the afternoon of 4 October 2003, Domínguez could be found
angrily pacing at the rally in Flushing Meadows, Queens, which was the
culmination of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, modeled after the
Freedom Rides in the South in the 1960s in promotion of civil rights.
While Tepeyac’s director had been on the advisory board for this event,
the association eventually withdrew all but nominal support. Domínguez
and Casa México, however, saw it as a good opportunity to press Mexican immigrants’ needs with the Democratic Party and labor unions that
were organizing this national event. While labor unions have long been
ambivalent toward undocumented workers, in recent years, there has
been greater recognition of the two camps’ mutual interests. In the early
nineties, in the build-up to the North American Free Trade Agreement,
labor unions tended to demonize undocumented laborers as a signal of the
demise of industrial America and usurpers of unionized workers. Now,
after more than a decade of rampant globalization, union workers and
undocumented workers have perhaps found they are similarly vulnerable
in our late capitalist period and have come to work more closely together.
Further, in a moment when Republicans are at the forefront of immigration
119
Far from waiting
for a future
heaven in the
afterlife or after
an amnesty,
Casa México
advocates for
rights in the
near term.
Progress is
achieved in
small steps
and aggressive
gestures.
reform, with the guest worker program proposed by Republican lawmakers
being the closest thing to amnesty that anyone has seen in two decades,
Democrats have been playing catch-up and are sometimes imagined to be
more compassionate to the needs of immigrants, above and beyond their
expediency as workers. After months of heated negotiations, arguments,
and shifting coalitions, Domínguez, Casa México, AMAT, and MAIZE
were firmly behind the Freedom Ride. When Democrats got on stage,
however, and, in Domínguez’s view, spouted old-fashioned labor slogans,
failing to even mention immigrant workers’ agendas, Domínguez said he
regretted bringing his people. Another coalition was severed, and he was
clearly already plotting the next.
In terms of organizational strategies, while Domínguez recognizes
Guadalupan devotion as a profound characteristic of Mexican culture, he
has little patience for religion, clergy, and faith-based claims for rights.
Instead, he and his organization make very strong economic and political
arguments. About the emphasis on the Virgin of Guadalupe in Tepeyac’s
work, he says:
[Guadalupe] is the hope of the poor. It’s true, you know, in the minds of the
people, so you cannot play with that. The Virgin of Guadalupe goes beyond
time, church, and politics . . . many times priests abuse the people, but . . .
the people keep believing in them. In certain ways it’s bad, because you are
expecting something in the future once you die. . . . This is happening here
at this moment. . . . a rich person wins, and the poor man keeps suffering,
keeps being exploited, keeps being abused, keeps being beat up, ’cause he is
going to heaven.53
Far from waiting for a future heaven in the afterlife or after an amnesty,54
Casa México advocates for rights in the near term. Rather than dwelling on all of the things that an undocumented person is unable to do,
Domínguez insists, “An undocumented person can buy a house, can buy
a business. The undocumented person can get a driver’s license legally,
can sue the federal and city/state government. An undocumented person
has labor rights. The only thing an undocumented person doesn’t have is
a paper that is a green card [laughs] . . . it’s the only thing I see.”55 Within
this framework, morality is important to the degree it is efficacious. Traditional moral authorities, like the church and clergy, are characterized
as deceitful and untrustworthy. Coalitions can be made and broken. The
chances of sweeping immigration reform are deemed remote and the goal
of achieving it overly lofty. Instead, progress is achieved in small steps and
aggressive gestures. Even while the entire landscape of immigrant rights
remains largely unchanged, for many workers and other Mexican immi-
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Alyshia Gálvez
grants in New York City who have experienced exploitation and discrimination, life is a little bit better since Casa México and its representatives
helped them achieve minimum wage and sick days, helped them make a
claim in housing court, or encouraged them to buy a home or business.
Alliances are risky, Domínguez insists, but necessary, so when they are
made, action has to be quick in coming, or the alliance will be just as
quickly broken. While critics might say this kind of activism is opportunistic and amoral, for many it is quite effective and empowering.
Conclusions
Activists and advocates who speak of undocumented immigrants’ rights
or entitlements to services are accustomed to hearing a refrain that goes
something like this: “It was their choice to come here, they broke the
law, why should they have rights? They gave up those rights by entering
the country illegally.” Since the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform
Act, which simultaneously granted amnesty to millions of undocumented
immigrants and initiated employer sanctions for the hiring of undocumented workers, the term citizen has come to be hardened in both the legal
and commonsensical realms. While citizen once referred to a spatially
delimited notion of “us” versus an imagined, territorially distant “them,”
without significant juridical content, today it is possible for people to live
virtually their entire lives inside a nation-state without enjoying “citizenship” in it.56 According to Linda Bosniak, the existence of noncitizens
in a polity “poses a special challenge” to the nation and nation-building
projects, whether they are seen to threaten the basis of the nation’s own
charter myths of inclusion or they inject those myths with new vigor.57
Immigrants arguably stretch notions of citizenship from the inside and
the outside of the nation, bringing into question issues of borders as they
cross them and joining other ethnic or cultural minorities to challenge
the nation-state’s criteria of inclusion from the inside.58
One argument immigrants often make for amnesty is that they invest
the most productive years of their lives in the United States, paying a
“sweat equity” day in and day out with their labor; they pay taxes (sales tax,
property taxes, income taxes, and more) here, and then they often retire
in their home countries. They argue that their labor, which contributes to
the U.S. economy, constitutes a kind of symbolic and practiced citizenship, and they use it as the foundation for an argument for their access to
it in the juridical sense. There is an analogous relationship between the
way that Tepeyac has zeroed in on amnesty as the solution to what ails
undocumented immigrants and the way that Casa México and its allies
121
emphasize labor rights. This is evident in a comment by Patricia Smith:
“To me, it’s always been clear that making sure people have decent working
conditions and enough money means that a lot of other social problems
will be solved.”59 In the end, organizations like Casa México, the Mexican
American Workers Association, and Asociación Tepeyac all seek the same
goals: empowerment, rights, and humane treatment for Mexican immigrants in the New York metropolitan area. Nonetheless, the modalities
through which they organize their work and the advocates upon whom they
rely are quite different, and thus the communities of practice produced in
relation to them are also very different.
While Tepeyac and the comités guadalupanos’ faith in the Virgin of
Guadalupe appears to some labor activists as overly idealist, the construction of undocumented immigrants’ humanity vouchsafed by the Mother
of God in her manifestation as Guadalupe serves two specific purposes.
First, it delimits the jurisdiction of the U.S. nation-state, which makes
distinctions in rights and services based on mundane, juridical categories
of “citizens” and “noncitizens,” arguing that humanity is granted by God
and revocable by no worldly institution. It is a powerful argument for
universal human rights, which has been deployed with positive and tangible results by entities as diverse as Pope John Paul II, the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops, and local clergy members, on the topic
of undocumented migration, and countless others. Second, faith in the
Virgin of Guadalupe is an effective recruitment tool, drawing in undocumented Mexican migrants who might be attempting to conduct their lives
“under the radar,” who in the comités guadalupanos find fellowship with
others of the same nationality, devotional practices, and precarious legal
status. In the space of the comités, an activist community is formed, and
people learn they have rights and the power to claim them. This is coherent within understandings of cultural citizenship — for example, William
Flores and Rina Benmayor’s description of “a broad range of activities
of everyday life through which Latinos and other groups claim space in
society and eventually claim rights.”60 It also goes one step further in not
simply implying a rehearsal of citizenship in the hope of an “eventual”
revindication of rights, but actually constituting the basis for claims to
rights in the here and now.
Advocacy that hinges around labor rights and the fact that labor laws
make no distinction based on migratory status has produced different kinds
of alliances and subjectivities. Rather than attempting to supersede the
laws of the nation-state in favor of more universal moral regimes, activists
in this realm stage their fights in the space created between the letter and
the spirit of the law, and the fertile terrain of loopholes and contradictions between different domains of law. They are aided in this tricky task
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Alyshia Gálvez
by State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has made his willingness
to prosecute those who exploit undocumented workers abundantly clear.
While it is obvious that a moral law is seen to operate when it is the Virgin
of Guadalupe who is the advocate as in the example of Tepeyac and the
comités guadalupanos, what is less obvious is that morality plays an equally
important role in Spitzer’s advocacy. Spitzer has been described as organizing a “legal SWAT team” or “Delta Force” of “ideologically motivated”
bureau chiefs and attorneys. A profile in New York Magazine quotes David
I. Brown, head of the Investment Protection Bureau of the New York State
Attorney General’s Office, as saying, “Eliot has smart people thinking,
in a predatory way, where can we do good?”61 The author of the profile,
Steve Fishman, writes that for Spitzer, “law, not religion, not family, is
‘the civilizing force,’ the source of fairness and accountability.”62 Indeed,
while Spitzer is working strictly within the rule of law, it is clear that his
own interpretation of the law and his willingness to pursue the rights of
groups sometimes perceived as lacking rights establish him as a much
respected and trusted advocate for immigrants. Further, undocumented
immigrants do not vote; they represent a common bogeyman and even
scapegoat among voters, especially in local elections, according to polls. 63
His advocacy for them sets Spitzer apart from many of the other government officials and agencies who are not as morally driven in their enforcement and interpretation of the law. While immigrants often reported to
me in conversation and interviews that they had been in circumstances in
which a government official or service provider might have done something to aid them and chose not to, 64 the fact that Spitzer consistently and
proactively chooses to do things to help immigrants has earned him a very
admired reputation among immigrants and their advocates, even though
it also causes him to draw fire from critics who complain that “he has
unjustly put a priority on illegal immigrants instead of legal residents.”65
Former consul general of Mexico Arturo Sarukhan called him “a beacon
of progressive action and thought regarding the plight many migrant
communities face in New York City.”66 On 18 May 2006, his candidacy
for governor of New York was endorsed by Mexican community leaders
from Asociación Tepeyac, Casa México, Mexicanos Unidos de Queens,
Casa Puebla, and the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce, among
others.
As such, the key to mobilization within this sphere of advocacy seems
to be to convince government agents and political organizations that they
already have the power to do something to serve their (undocumented)
immigrant constituency and that the granting of rights need not be tied
to a sweeping immigration reform like amnesty, but can occur incrementally in all of the spheres in which immigrants make claims, including
On 18 May
2006, his
candidacy
for governor
of New York
was endorsed
by Mexican
community
leaders from
Asociación
Tepeyac,
Casa México,
Mexicanos
Unidos de
Queens, Casa
Puebla, and
the MexicanAmerican
Chamber of
Commerce,
among others.
123
labor, housing, health care, and education. This campaign “for hearts and
minds,” if you will, occurs on the rough terrain of party politics and labor
negotiations, and as much as it involves convincing people with power
that they have the choice to act, it also means making sure they know that
immigrants constitute a worthy constituency, and a bloc of influence and
power, even if most of them are not voters.
In these struggles, organizations like Casa México and the Mexican American Workers Project and leaders like Jerry Domínguez have
forged alliances with labor unions and political parties that have energetically ignored undocumented workers’ concerns in the past. Even though
undocumented people cannot vote, both the Republican and Democratic
parties have come to court them more frequently, perhaps in pursuit of
the enigmatic “Latino vote,” since so many undocumented people do live
in households with enfranchised citizens, and immigration, polls say, is an
issue of concern to Latinos across the board. Although since 2004, it has
become abundantly clear that the Latino stance on issues even as seemingly central as immigration is quite unpredictable and divided.67 Thus,
in October 2003, we saw the joining of all kinds of unlikely organizations
(including the AFL-CIO, the United Farm Workers, and hundreds of
Democratic politicians) in the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. At the
concluding event of the ride, when Domínguez expressed fears that his
organization had simply been used to recruit bodies for the rally, it became
clear that these kinds of coalitions tend to be as rife with opportunism and
back-stabbing as any political sphere. Nonetheless, as is clear in the person
of Domínguez himself, this arena of activism not only produces actors willing to leap on the national stage of labor relations and electoral politics, it
forces traditional unions and parties to reckon with undocumented workers
and their needs while organizations like Tepeyac may appear to be insular
and disinterested in broader coalitions and formal political spheres.
These two modes of activism and the activists and activist communities they produce are complementary, and both accomplish a great deal for
their shared constituency — undocumented Mexican immigrants — while
also providing two powerful means for the formation of leadership and
empowerment in general. Just as Joel Magallán tells members of Tepeyac
not to fear appearing in the newspaper at a protest or other event and
advises people to use their real names and admit their undocumented status, Jerry Domínguez says, “When we rally, we say, ‘No temas, no corras’
[Have no fear, do not run]. We have nothing to lose. What can you lose?
You can’t lose anything, you don’t have anything.” It is clear that this noholds-barred approach to activism is effective whether it is supported by
the Virgin of Guadalupe or by Eliot Spitzer.
124
Alyshia Gálvez
Notes
Research for this essay was generously funded by the Social Science Research
Council’s Program on Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector, the National Science
Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
1. Leslie Casimir, “Market Workers Win 100G Award,” Daily News, 31
August 2000.
2. I must briefly discuss my choice to use the term immigrant in reference
to the participants in my study. Roger Rouse advocates the use of the neologism
im/migrant in acknowledgement of how the term immigrant “suggests a process
of unidirectional movement in which people reorient to their destination, [while
migrant] suggests a process of movement back and forth in which they remain
oriented to their place of origin,” while “matters have rarely been this simple”
(Roger Rouse, “Thinking through Transnationalism: Notes on the Cultural
Politics of Class Relations in the Contemporary United States,” Public Culture
7 [1995]: 367n18). I agree with Rouse that neither term effectively acknowledges the complexity of most immigrants’ experiences. Further, migrant carries
an additional semantic load in its association with guest worker programs like the
Bracero Accord and farmwork generally, which continues to be a major industry
for undocumented laborers in the United States, implying seasonality and a lack
of rootedness. In a strictly legal sense, an immigrant is “a foreign national who
has been granted the privilege of living and working permanently in the United
States” (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “How Do I Become a Lawful Permanent Resident While in the United States?” uscis.gov/graphics/howdoi/
legpermres.htm [accessed 1 September 2004]). All others — whether undocumented or student, tourist- or work-visa holders — belong to the category of “nonimmigrant,” or are “illegal aliens.” Most of the people with whom this research
was conducted do not meet this definition of “[legal] immigrant.” Further, many
of them (possibly the majority) say they do not intend to live in the United States
permanently even if such status were made available to them. Nonetheless, because
of the elimination of most modes of legalization previously available and the
militarization of the border making circulation between the United States and
undocumented immigrants’ home countries extremely difficult, many people who
might otherwise have behaved like “migrants” are forced into semipermanent,
albeit undocumented, settlement. Asociación Tepeyac employs the term immigrant
or inmigrante, and I choose here to do the same, forcing, as that organization does
in its activist platform, the questioning of the status of this permanent and yet
disenfranchised population that lives within the United States.
3. This and all names have been changed to protect the identity of participants.
4. Robert Smith, Mexican New York (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2005).
5. Alyshia Gálvez, “In the Name of Guadalupe: Religion, Politics, and
Citizenship among Mexicans in New York” (PhD diss., New York University,
2004).
6. See for example, Marc Edelman, Peasants against Globalization (Palo Alto,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), and Judith Hellman, “Real and Virtual
125
Chiapas: Magic Realism and the Left,” Socialist Register, 2000, www.yorku.ca/
socreg/hellman.txt.
7. The 2000 U.S. Census identified 186,872 Mexicans living in New York
City (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Data Set: Census 2000 Summary File 1 (Sf1) 100Percent Data. Prepared by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Washington, DC, 2000,
www.census.gov). According to Joel Magallán, executive director of Asociación
Tepeyac, there are as many as a half million Mexicans in New York City, and 1
million in the greater tristate area, a full 50 percent of them undocumented. The
census itself estimates an undercount for New York City of 7.9 percent (Smart
Girl Technologies, Local Demographic Analysis [New York: Professional Workshop Series, 2002]), which, if Mexicans were undercounted at the same rate,
would make the Mexican population 201,635. Because Mexicans are probably
undercounted at a higher rate, an accurate estimate is probably around 250,000 to
300,000. The Mexican consulate reports issuing a half million consular identification cards (la matrícula consular) since 2001 (Anthony Depalma, “Fifteen Years
on the Bottom Rung,” New York Times, 26 May 2005). While activists have an
interest in larger numbers to convince others of the urgency of their claims, the
discrepancy between high and low numbers can also be interpreted as a function
of undocumented migration and the clandestine existence of many undocumented
immigrants who avoid detection by the state or its agents.
8. Here, I refer to the period after the territory that now constitutes the southwestern United States was taken from Mexico and the current line of demarcation
separating the two countries was drawn, prior to which seasonal and politically
driven migrations were constant by groups of people whose descendants sometimes now say, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”
9. This is not to say there were no Mexicans in New York prior to the recent
waves, which began in the 1980s. Some artists, writers, and diplomats have always
been attracted to New York from Mexico, as from so many other countries. Further, I found in archival research at the New York Historical Society evidence of
a small Mexican immigrant community in New York City dating at least as far
back as 1937, the year a group calling themselves Grupo Guadalupano celebrated
a mass for the Virgin’s feast day at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe on West
Fourteenth Street. The brochure celebrating this event also featured advertisements for Mexican restaurants and food stores in Chelsea, Washington Heights,
and the Upper West Side.
10. Sergio Cortes, “Migrants from Puebla in the 1990s,” in Immigrants and
Schooling: Mexicans in New York, ed. Regina Cortina and Mónica Gendreau
(Staten Island, NY: Center for Migration Studies, 2003); and Leigh Binford,
cited in Robert C. Smith, “Mexicans: Social, Educational, Economic and Political
Problems and Prospects in New York,” in New Immigrants in New York, ed. Nancy
Foner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 281.
11. Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, “The Socioeconomic Status of Hispanic New
Yorkers: Current Trends and Future Prospects” (New York: Pew Hispanic Center
Study, 2002), 4.
12. Ibid., 10.
13. An exception to this is Immigration Amendment 245i, signed at the very
end of President Bill Clinton’s administration, allowing those who could make a
legitimate claim for adjustment of status (e.g., being married to a U.S. citizen, or
126
Alyshia Gálvez
having a valid claim to family reunification) to file by December 31, 2000, and
overcome the bar of having been undocumented by paying a fine of $1,000.
14. U.S. Citizenship Immigration Services, “How Do I Become a Lawful Permanent Resident While in the United States?” www.uscis.gov/graphics/howdoi/
legpermres.htm (accessed 17 August 2006).
15. Richard Stevenson and Steven Greenhouse, “Plan for Illegal Immigrant
Workers Draws Fire from Two Sides,” New York Times, 8 January 2004.
16. Most of the participants in my study were married to someone very close
in age, very often from the same region, even the same small town. This does not
necessarily mean that they married or even knew each other in Mexico, but family
and in-law-based social networks mean people often associate with others from
the same place. Thus, there is little likelihood someone would meet and marry an
individual who qualified for the Amnesty of 1986 without also having qualified
themselves.
17. Stephen Schwartz, “Summary of Vital Statistics 2003: The City of New
York” (New York: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,
2003).
18. Justin Pritchard, “A Mexican Worker Dies Each Day, A.P. Finds,” Newsday, 14 March 2004.
19. Javier, interview with the author, New York City, 13 January 2003.
20. An object of the devotional cult, Juan Diego’s tilma is still housed in the
basilica, receiving millions of devotees each year.
21. Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious
Sociology (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1960), 27.
22. See Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and James Piscatori, Transnational Religion
and Fading States (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997); Peter Beyer, Religion and Globalization (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994).
23. James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New
York: Basic Books, 1991), 32.
24. Beyer, citing Herberg and Parsons, Religion and Globalization, 67.
25. John Woods, “Immigrants’ Faith in Attorney, Also a Lay Minister,
Rewarded,” New York Law Journal, 8 June 2001.
26. A review of statements to the press by Representative Tom Tancredo
(R-CO) provides a rich review of this line of thought.
27. The debate over immigrant access to health care is a good illustration of
this tendency to alternately grant then withhold services to undocumented immigrants. While it makes good public health sense for all of those living in a society
to have equal access to health care, especially treatment for infectious diseases and
immunizations, immigrants’ ability to obtain low-cost or state-subsidized health
care is often the first thing threatened by any surge in xenophobia, such as the
foiled attempt to ratify Proposition 187 in California, and similar moves in New
York State, following September 11 and the subsequent “belt-tightening” of the
city budget enforced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. At the moment, New York
State is in fact one of the most generous states in terms of state-subsidized health
care, offering free and low-cost health care to children and pregnant women with
or without a social security number (generally only work visa holders and permanent residents, in addition to citizens, are able to obtain social security numbers)
and more restrictive health insurance for other adults.
127
28. Casimir, “Market Workers Win 100G Award.”
29. Steve Greenhouse, “Korean Grocers Agree to Double Pay and Improve
Workplace Conditions,” New York Times, 18 September 2002.
30. Greg Wilson, “Back Pay for Grocery Workers,” New York Daily News, 21
November 2001.
31. Technically, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, federal law also upholds
minimum wage and other basic labor rights, even after the Hoffman Plastics decision. See “Fact Sheet #48: Application of U.S. Labor Laws to Immigrant Workers: Effect of Hoffman Plastics decision on laws enforced by the Wage and Hour
Division,” www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/whdfs48.htm (accessed 31 May
2005).
32. New York State Department of Labor, “Employment Laws/Labor Standards,”
www.labor.state.ny.us/business_ny/employer_responsibilities/labor_standards
.html (accessed 19 November 2004).
33. Daniela Gerson, “Spitzer Wage Violation Actions Win Him Illegal Immigrant Fans,” New York Sun, 23 January 2006.
34. Thomas Adcock, “Bureau Chief Targets Sweatshops for Abuses; State
Attorney General’s Office Is Seeking Young Idealists to Enforce Law” New York
Law Journal, 16 March 2001.
35. Ibid.
36. See www.spitzer2006.com/main.cfm (accessed 31 May 2005), and Adi
Ignatius, “Crusader of the Year,” Time Magazine, 21 December 2002.
37. Juan Gonzalez, “Vote Hints of Suburban Race Issue,” New York Daily
News, 19 April 2001.
38. Gerson, “Spitzer Wage Violation Actions Win Him Illegal Immigrant
Fans.”
39. Ignatius, “Crusader of the Year.”
40. Adcock, “Bureau Chief Targets Sweatshops for Abuses.”
41. There are problematic implications of this characterization of Mexicans as
model immigrants, not least in terms of how other immigrant groups are portrayed
in contrast, but viewed strictly in terms of the relationship between Mexican
Catholics and Irish clergy, this perceived affinity has resulted in the forging of
quite fruitful alliances.
42. Ignatius, “Crusader of the Year.”
43. Asociación Tepeyac de New York, “Mission,” www.tepeyac.org (accessed
2 October 2003).
44. Jerry Domínguez, discussed later, and others complain that Tepeyac
squeezes out alternative organization efforts. For example, in 2003, the Mexican
consulate organized local elections to choose representatives for the Mexican government’s newly forming advisory board on issues pertaining to Mexicans abroad.
Tepeyac was represented by its chosen candidate for this body and hundreds of
people who, opponents say, heckled and intimidated any other representatives who
might have sought the position. Members of other groups complained that they
are not able to draw out similar numbers of people, even though they might have
equally committed and capable candidates willing to serve.
45. See, for example, the extensive mocking in the Mexican media of the
Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) “Mass of repentance” for its undemocratic ways at the Basilica of Guadalupe in October 2002.
46. Josefina Estrada and Sandro Cohen, De Cómo los Mexicanos Conquistaron
Nueva York (Puebla, Mexico: Colobrí, 2002).
128
Alyshia Gálvez
47. Carolina, interview by the author, Bronx, New York, November 2000.
48. Rocío, interview by the author, 8 November 2000.
49. Timothy Smith, “Religion and Ethnicity in America,” American Historical
Review, no. 83 (1978): 1155 – 85.
50. Jerry Domínguez, interview with the author, January 2003.
51. Former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda used this term to
describe the only kind of immigration reform that would be acceptable to Mexico:
an amnesty for the current undocumented Mexican population in the United
States and a clear path to naturalization, not the partial reform based on a guestworker accord as proposed by Bush and some Republican lawmakers.
52. The term cacique, an Arawak word meaning “chief” that came into use
throughout the Americas after the Conquest, is often used disparagingly to refer to
local leaders in Mexican municipalities who exploit their community for personal
gain and power.
53. Jerry Domínguez, interview with the author, New York City, January
2003.
54. Here I have radically oversimplified the contrasts between the two groups
because Asociación Tepeyac is not idly waiting for an amnesty; rather, its programs are holistic, involving education, health care, family counseling, economic
development, and so on, in addition to its work lobbying for amnesty.
55. Domínguez, interview.
56. The notion of cultural citizenship goes one step further in arguing that
it is even possible for fully enfranchised and native-born legal citizens to never
fully enjoy citizenship in racialized societies like the United States, where socio
economic and racialized categories still constitute degrees of legitimacy in the polity. See Aihwa Ong, “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making,” Current Anthropology 37 (1996): 737 – 62; and William Flores and Rina Benmayor, Latino Cultural
Citizenship (Boston: Beacon, 1997).
57. Linda Bosniak, “Citizenship of Aliens,” Social Text, no. 56 (1998): 15 – 30.
On myths of inclusion, see Peter H. Schuck and Rogers M. Smith, Citizenship
without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Polity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); on the revitalizing of the myths, see Bonnie Honig, Democracy
and the Foreigner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
58. Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, “Challenging the Liberal NationState? Postnationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Collective Claims Making of
Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Britain and Germany,” American Journal of
Sociology 105 (1999): 652 – 96.
59. Adcock, “Bureau Chief Targets Sweatshops for Abuses.”
60. Flores and Benmayor, Latino Cultural Citizenship, 15.
61. Steve Fishman, “Inside Eliot’s Army,” New York Magazine, 10 January
2005, 19.
62. Ibid., 18.
63. While in recognition of changing demographies and the growing “Latino
constituency” political candidates have begun to court the “Latino vote” — and
in fact I was present when New York State Governor George Pataki appeared at
a festival at a Bronx church, in which only the priest and myself were eligible voters, to kiss babies and hug Mexican immigrant women — issues directly related to
undocumented immigrants like consumption of state services, day laborer sites,
and housing have become firestorms around the country. Even Latino voters demonstrate great division in terms of their stance on immigrant issues, with many
129
more established groups actually favoring much stricter immigration control and
suspension of services to “illegal” immigrants. Polls include the Quinnipiac University poll of 3 March 2006 (www.quinnipiac.edu/x11367.xml?ReleaseID=882
[accessed 31 May 2006]) and the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll of April 2006
(online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/poll20060426.pdf [accessed 31 May
2006]); see also Tony Blankly, “Mexican Illegals vs. American Voters,” Washington Times, 29 March 2006, www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060328-102545-2371r
.htm.
64. One example given to me on numerous occasions was the fact that in
spite of the Bill of Patients’ Rights posted in every health facility in the state of
New York outlining the right to an interpreter, many immigrants report having had their requests for translation refused on the grounds that “no one here
speaks Spanish” or “the translator went to lunch.” Similarly, even though state law
gives parents the choice to withdraw their child from bilingual education classes,
their requests to transfer their children to monolingual English classes were not
heeded.
65. Gerson, “Spitzer Wage Violation Actions Win Him Illegal Immigrant
Fans.”
66. Sarukhan, quoted in Gerson, “Spitzer Wage Violation Actions Win Him
Illegal Immigrant Fans.”
67. This was evident with the sponsorship by Republican Congressmen Jim
Kolbe and Jeff Flake, both of Arizona, with the backing of Senator John McCain
(R-AZ) of HR 2899, the Land Border Security and Immigration Improvement
Act of 2003. This bill — which its backers insist is not an amnesty — establishes
two visa programs allowing foreign workers to apply for jobs posted in an electronic job registry and work under three-year work visas, and allowing undocumented workers already in the United States to obtain a work visa. For some
progressive and left-leaning activists, Republican leadership of the issue of legalizing undocumented migrants is surprising and counterintuitive. This is probably
because progressive arguments for such legalization are based on humanitarian
arguments about the dignity of all people, and the need for compassion for those
driven from their home countries by poverty and inequality, spurred in part by
U.S. neocolonial practices in developing countries. This overlooks the fact that
legalization of the undocumented makes sense in a purely economic realm, and
is thus heartily supported by big business, and within arguments about national
security, as a means of better tracking and surveilling the millions of undocumented migrants already within our borders.
130
Alyshia Gálvez

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