Defining Genealogies of Migrant Strangers and Kin: Four Iterations of Vermont Mexicanidad, 1952-2015

My paternal grandfather met my grandmother when he was stationed at an Air Force base in northwestern Vermont; how else would a Mexican get to such an unlikely geography in 1952? I did not grow up with my father, nor did he... [ view full abstract ]

My paternal grandfather met my grandmother when he was stationed at an Air Force base in northwestern Vermont; how else would a Mexican get to such an unlikely geography in 1952? I did not grow up with my father, nor did he grow up with his; we were both raised and saw ourselves as white. My father did not tell me about his father until I was 16; it would be nearly a decade before I really heard what he said that day.

As a graduate student in Chicana/o Studies, I began grappling with the implications of this ancestry for my own identity. Beyond that singular telling, however, my father remained silent on the subject; he even left the house when I asked other family members about it. Until one day, when we were talking on the phone, he mentions a news story: “There was a segment the other night on WCAX about Mexican dairy farmhands up here. I guess there’s a good number of them. They only leave the farms if the owners goes too, you know, not really being able to communicate and scared of getting picked up by Border Patrol. Anyway, I thought you’d be interested.” In this completely unprompted telling about Mexicans in Vermont, my father gives recognition to my emerging mixed identity.

I was surprised to learn about Mexican dairy workers on a northern border so far from their own northern border. Between 1000 and 2000 laborers shoulder much of Vermont’s dairy industry, which alone accounts for 80% of the state’s farm production (http://sites.middlebury.edu/migrantresources/). Vermont further needs these idyllic farms in its landscape to maintain another primary economic base, tourism (Albers 2000; Harrison 2006). And thus, like in so many other regions’ local economies, Mexican migrant laborers become essential to Vermont’s.

As dairy is not seasonal, the year-round farmhands get no guest worker visa like Jamaican apple pickers do. Further, 93.5% of Vermonters reported non-Hispanic white race in 2014 (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/50000.html), which makes Mexicans especially conspicuous. Such exposure is dangerous so close to an international border, patrolled less than the militarized one to the south, but patrolled nonetheless; in the first half of 2008, Vermont’s deportations of Mexicans were three times Rhode Island’s, though the latter state had twice as many Mexican laborers (http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=9389178). Concomitantly, there have been efforts to formally recognize these new residents; the nonprofit organization Migrant Justice/Justicia Migrante organizes Mexican dairy laborers and allies around immigrant rights and food justice and has been instrumental in many recent state policy changes (http://www.migrantjustice.net/).

I often think of my grandfather as a lone Mexican ancestor blown off course in 1952 (and for only a year at that) from a more likely “Mexican” geography. Sixty years later, a growing community of Mexican dairy farmhands, largely isolated, is increasingly visible at grocery stores and the state capitol. This paper considers not only what it means to be Mexican in Vermont in different historical periods, but also the implications of changing demographics on this new U.S.-Mexico border.