Contemporary Authors

• From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2015

1. From South Texas to the nation : the exploitation of Mexican labor in the twentieth century https://lccn.loc.gov/2015006184 Weber, John, 1978- From South Texas to the nation : the exploitation of Mexican labor in the twentieth century / John Weber. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2015] xii, 320 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm. HD8081.M6 W43 2015 ISBN: 9781469625232 (cloth : alk. paper)

• Old Dominion University - https://www.odu.edu/directory/people/j/jwweber

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  8000 BATTEN ARTS & LETTERS
  NORFOLK, VA 23529

  Email: jwweber@odu.edu

  Phone: 757-683-3949
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  John Weber

  Biography

  Dr. Weber is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History. He received a Ph.D. in 2008 from William and Mary, an M.A. in 2002, also from William and Mary, and a B.A. in 2000 from Vanderbilt University. In 2009-2010, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. Prior to that, he was the Summerlee Foundation Fellow in Texas History for the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. He has held adjunct teaching positions at the College of William and Mary, University of Richmond, and Thomas Nelson Community College.
  Education/Credentials

  Ph. D. in History, College of William & Mary, (2008)

  M.A. in History, College of William & Mary, (2002)

  B.A. in History, Vanderbilt University, (2000)

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  Weber, J. (2015). From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Weber, John. From South Texas to the
nation: the exploitation of Mexican
labor in the twentieth century
From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century
Kathleen Mapes
Journal of Southern History. 83.3 (Aug. 2017): p733+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Listen
Full Text:
From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century. By John Weber. David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. xiv, 320. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-2523-2.)

Policy makers and academics concerned with labor subcontracting, contingent workforces, guest-worker programs, human rights, labor rights, and national boundaries would be well served by consulting John Weber's book From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century. For scholars of Mexican American history, there will be much that is familiar, as Weber addresses the making of an agricultural workforce, debates over immigration restriction, the deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and the evolution of the bracero program. However, by using a wealth of archival sources and focusing closely on South Texas, Weber forces the reader to view well-known topics in a new light.

Weber argues that the racist labor regime that emerged in South Texas in the early twentieth century--a regime that depended on a mobile, vulnerable, and politically disenfranchised contingent of Mexican and Mexican American laborers--should not be viewed as a backward response to the growth of labor-intensive agriculture. Instead, Weber argues that "South Texas growers devised a thoroughly modern set of practices that relied on forced mobility, enforced immobility, and an activist state not present in early times" (p. 8).

Weber dates the creation of these very modern labor practices to the early twentieth century, with the emergence of two migrant streams. The first included landless and dispossessed Mexicans who sought to escape the ravages of the Porfirio Diaz regime and revolution; the other was made up of midwestern and southern farmers and developers who eyed new opportunities in Texas. Rather than recreate the labor regimes that they had left behind, these farmers looked to create a new, racially segregated, politically disenfranchised, and mobile labor force that could make few appeals to either the Mexican or the U.S. state. After describing the origins of the South Texas labor regime, Weber discusses the 1920s, a period when national immigration restriction debates and deportation, as well as agricultural and industrial recruiters from other states, threatened this regime. He also highlights the Great Depression and New Deal, a time when Mexicans and Mexican Americans engaged in labor organizing in an effort to upend the racist labor regime at the same time as facing the prospect of increased deportations and repatriation. Finally, Weber traces the history of the bracero program, noting Texas's influence on the program.

While Weber is attentive to the historical specifics of each period, he stresses the theme of continuity. In each period, Texas growers used racist ideals, political control, and economic might to maintain access to the largest pool of workers possible. In the early twentieth century this strategy involved upending the paternalistic politics of the traditional ranching elite. In the 1920s, it required battling calls for immigration restriction and limiting the reach of agriculturalists and industrialists of other states who also sought to use Mexican labor. During the Great Depression and New Deal, growers faced new challenges including labor organizing, deportation, and repatriation. However, they were able to turn these challenges into advantages by propagating an image of the Mexicans as illegal, criminal, and un-American, thereby justifying political disenfranchisement and economic deprivation. Finally, over the various iterations of the bracero program, Texas growers exerted significant pressure, helping nationalize South Texas labor relations and placing the region at the center, rather than the periphery, of labor relations nationally.

Although Weber argues convincingly that South Texas labor relations set a model that would be followed nationally, his very abbreviated discussion of the post-bracero era leaves the reader wishing for an expanded discussion of the late twentieth century. How did the ending of the bracero program affect agricultural labor relations in Texas and elsewhere? Weber's suggestion to reframe our discussion of vulnerable and exploited agricultural, service sector, and industrial workers from one of poverty to one of labor rights, human rights, and the rights of citizenship should be heeded by both scholars trying to make sense of the past and activists who envision a different, and more just, future.

Kathleen Mapes

State University of New York at Geneseo

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Mapes, Kathleen. "From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 733+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078176/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=114ecddc. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Weber, John. From South Texas to the nation: the exploitation of Mexican labor in the twentieth century
L.H. Moreno
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.9 (May 2016): p1385.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Full Text:
Weber, John. From South Texas to the nation: the exploitation of Mexican labor in the twentieth century. North Carolina, 2015. 320p bibl index afp ISBN 9781469625232 cloth, $34.95; ISBN 9781469625249 ebook, contact publisher for price

(cc) 53-4104

HD8081

CIP

Historian Weber (Old Dominion Univ.) "seeks to look beyond [the] tendentious historical heritage of mythology and Lone State bluster and examine the real confluence of civilizations that created South Texas." He challenges the traditional version of the history of the Texas-Mexico border region by analyzing the development of the system of labor and racial relations between Anglos and Mexicans. By addressing those relationships, Weber points out that "a fantasy heritage had to be created" in Texas, especially South Texas, to justify the "political dominance of conservative elites." Due to the geographic and economic isolation of South Texas, it "became [the] laboratory for economic development and modern labor relations." His book contributes to understanding the histories of labor and racial relations in Texas, the Mexican American world, and the US. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.--L. H. Moreno, Bowling Green State University
L.H. Moreno
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.9 (May 2016): p1385. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Moreno, L.H. "Weber, John. From South Texas to the nation: the exploitation of Mexican labor in
the twentieth century." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, May 2016, p. 1385. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A453288587/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=971ba872. Accessed 20 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A453288587
1 of 1 12/19/17, 11:21 PM

Moreno, L.H. "Weber, John. From South Texas to the nation: the exploitation of Mexican labor in the twentieth century." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, May 2016, p. 1385. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A453288587/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=971ba872. Accessed 20 Dec. 2017.

• Texas State- Texas Books in Review
  http://www.tbr.txstate.edu/archives/spring-2016/texas-to-nation.html
  Word count: 1107

  From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century
  by John Weber
  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015
  336 pp. $34.95 cloth
  Reviewed by
  Joseph Orbock Medina

  Several generations of scholars have written on the Mexican labor regime in South Texas, especially in the Rio Grande Valley. Those studying Texas and low-wage labor are familiar with the interpretive lenses of world systems structuralists, whiteness scholars, Chicano experts, and a cavalcade of others recognizing the transformative socioeconomic patterns of this region in the twentieth century. Aside from the seminal works by Zamora, Foley, and Montejano, however, few histories of Mexican labor in Texas reach beyond the purview of specialists. On first glance, it is clear that John Weber treads on some familiar ground in From South Texas to the Nation. Rather than a simple corollary, he has produced a magnificent and timely revision of mostly known events by persistently centering the state apparatus as his mode of interpretation. Weber also provides much needed updates to the aged classic literature by contextualizing the prevailing South Texas scholarship with recent innovations in borderlands studies.

  This focus on the state facilitates a clear narrative of South Texas labor and the expansion of low-wage, malleable, ethnic labor doctrine throughout the United States. Though Skocpolian theory and Ngai’s path-breaking conclusions on imported labor are old news to the academy, Weber’s account is perhaps the most lucid and convincing in applying these ideas to the South Texas construction and export of Mexican labor systems. His purpose is to demonstrate the role of the state in perpetuating agricultural producer’s framing of economic reality. From South Texas to the Nation convincingly argues that although employment is a two-way interaction, it is Mexican workers who must bear the social and political costs in a system legally and politically streamlined to benefit employers. With state-backed mitigation of risk to American employers, the exploitative salience of the model persists to the present.

  While early twentieth century Mexican history is a complicated amalgamation of contingency and ancient colonial reckoning, From South Texas to the Nation is so well-written that even those ignorant of Mexican history will follow along with ease. Readers will appreciate the Texas-Mexico border as a tool for pragmatic thinkers on both sides, instead of a site of marked separation between distinct polities. Weber rightly presents Mexican labor in the United States as a function of economic and political developments on both sides of the border. His erudite account of the Porfiriato and Mexican Revolution conditions the reader to appreciate the convergence of transnational factors feeding the South Texas labor machine.

  Some aspects of Weber’s work do beg critique. As with most American scholars, the presentation of Mexicans as a cohesive group in the United States sometimes slides into a reflection of Anglo lumping and “othering” of unfathomably diverse peoples. Weber is, of course, cognizant of Mexican (and Mexican American) stratification along ethnic, ideological, and cultural axes—his prevailing focus occasionally betrays this subtlety. Though not undermining his claims regarding institutions, the deep intellectualism and transformation of Latino public spheres in the twentieth century are not fully expressed. The book only contains a vague sensibility regarding the internal Mexican American politics divided between economic and social conservatives and their rivals who were chiefly union-friendly progressives.

  Weber is careful to utilize and recognize the stalwarts of Texas-Mexican history in his text. This allows him to synthesize some of the most relevant, prevailing ideas in this field, but historiographical debates are conspicuously limited in the main text. Weber’s endnotes reveal much more complexity, especially in terms of formative events, such as the fallout around the notorious Plan de San Diego. Readers will need to carefully flip back and forth to the notes in order to situate the patently Texan historiography. Other major Mexican American entities with implication for Mexican Labor are nearly absent (e.g. The American G.I. Forum.) Some relevant scholars, such as Richard Ribb, and crucially significant historical figures, such as J.T.Canales, are mentioned in passing without the expected notational or bibliographic information. Weber is quick to positively portray the contributions of other scholars, but often readers will be left to infer historiographical contentions and revisions themselves. Mexican American experts may also question the glossing over of many twentieth century Texas-Mexican developments.

  Editorial mandates likely contributed to some of the aforementioned concerns, but there is also a particular genius to a narrative driven forward by employers and the state. Experts on Texas may lament the coverage of famous Texas-Mexican episodes, but the dogged focus on the state apparatus is what permits Weber to achieve his goals for a broad academic audience. Though this book does not have the scope and explanatory power for Texas that are encapsulated in works such as David Montejano’s Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, Weber’s work fully deserves a space on the shelf next to the great books on Texas and Mexican Americans. The criticisms mentioned here are not meant to dissuade attention from this scholarship. In fact, it is probably just for Texaphiles to sacrifice our pedantic focus for the purpose bolstering Texas scholarship to the appropriate position in broader academia. From South Texas to the Nation unquestionably deserves a wide readership. Specialists in several sub-fields will find Weber’s analysis useful and perhaps indispensable. For novices, the cogent explanations and pleasant writing should be a welcome relief from most academic writing. Expect to see this monograph cited often and its form emulated.

  Joseph Orbock Medina is a lecturer at California State University, Fresno. He is a graduate of Texas State University-San Marcos, the University of Texas at Austin, and The University of California, Berkeley.
  Table of Contents

  Editor's Note: Mis hermanos y mis hermanas
  Between the Living and the Dead
  Contested Empire: Rethinking the Texas Revolution
  From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century
  Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City
  The Jack of Diamonds is a Hard Card to Play
  Leaders of the Mexican American Generation: Biographical Essays
  The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America’s First Serial Killer
  One Blackbird at a Time
  Return to Arroyo Grande
  Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850
  Sex as a Political Condition: A Border Novel
  Strong Light of Day

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