Vijay Prashad, Washington Bullets

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Essays on acts of US imperialism, from the 1953 Iran coup to the 2019 ouster of Evo Morales Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent and readable stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. […]

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Justin Akers Chacón, Radicals in the Barrio: Magonistas, Socialists, Wobblies, and Communists in the Mexican-American Working Class

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Their description: “Radicals in the Barrio uncovers a long and rich history of political radicalism within the Mexican and Chicano working class in the United States. Chacón clearly and sympathetically documents the ways that migratory workers carried with them radical political ideologies, new organizational models, and shared class experience, as they crossed the border into […]

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Francisco E. Balderrama & Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Revised Edition)

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Their description: “During the Great Depression, a sense of total despair plagued the United States. Americans sought a convenient scapegoat and found it in the Mexican community. Laws forbidding employment of Mexicans were accompanied by the hue and cry to “get rid of the Mexicans!” The hysteria led pandemic repatriation drives and one million Mexicans […]

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AVIVA CHOMSKY, Undocumented: HOW IMMIGRATION BECAME ILLEGAL

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Their description: “In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends. Blending history with human drama, Chomsky explores […]

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David Bacon, The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration

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Their description: “People across Mexico are being forced into migration, and while 11 percent of that country’s population lives north of the US border, the decision to migrate is rarely voluntary. Free trade agreements and economic policies that exacerbate and reinforce extreme wealth disparities make it impossible for Mexicans to make a living at home. […]

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DAVID BACON, Illegal People: HOW GLOBALIZATION CREATES MIGRATION AND CRIMINALIZES IMMIGRANTS

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Their description: “For two decades David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In Illegal People he explains why our national policy produces even more displacement, migration, immigration raids, and an increasingly divided and polarized society. Arguing for a sea change in how we think, debate, and legislate about and […]

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