Trump and the End of the Road
Donald Trump came to California last week. For months, my native state has been called “the end of the road” for the candidates, the place where the nomination would be decided. Lately, that phrase has started to sound different.
In an Orange County amphitheatre last week, the all but certain Republican nominee went old school, mocking immigrants, calling for the building of “the wall,” talking about how Mexico sends us drugs, terrorists, rapists, and murderers. Outside, hundreds of people protested, holding both Mexican and American flags, a common sight in my neighborhood, too, in adjacent Riverside County, where people also fly black P.O.W.-M.I.A. flags and banners for Los Dodgers, Los Lakers, and the Raiders. During violent scuffles with police, seventeen people were arrested, while car speakers blared hip-hop and ranchera music in defiance.
Here in Riverside County, as in Orange County, and in many other counties in California, someone with brown skin and a “Hispanic” last name, who speaks Spanish (or even Mixtec or Zapotec) and English, might be second- or third- or even seventh-generation Californian. If Trump becomes President, is someone going to line us all up and check our papers? I drove through Agua Mansa today, which was settled in 1838 by Lorenzo Trujillo, a genizaro, one of the Native Americans who was kidnapped, baptized, and enslaved by Spanish residents of New Mexico. He and his four sons were recruited by Spaniards in the Santa Ana River Valley to protect livestock and horses from the indigenous Californians, who had been stealing them during full moons. I went to high school with Trujillos, and I work at a university with Trujillos, and a Trujillo works in the mayor’s office. If Trump’s phalanx of immigration officers arrives here, I hope they have a lot of time for stories.
Riverside County has about 2.3 million residents, nearly half of whom identify as Mexican or Mexican-American. More than a hundred and forty thousand of the people here are reportedly undocumented. We raise tilapia and grow oranges, dates, watermelons, grapes, lettuce, and most other winter-harvested produce, plus cotton and sod. The county has the highest concentration of what is now called “logistics”—warehouses, trucks, and rail traffic—in the nation. If the plan is to interrogate and deport, a lot of Americans won’t get red-flame grapes or frozen fish.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-and-the-end-of-the-road?mbid=rss
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