Rio Grande wetbacks
Subtitle: Mexican migrant workers.
Edition: [1st ed.]
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 1972
Place of publication: Albuquerque
Language: eng
Number of pages: 159
Subjects: Migrant agricultural laborers -- Texas; Agricultural laborers -- Mexico
Description: "These stories are about the Mexican wetbacks I've known and worked with over the years. The stories are true, as far as I was given the ability to write the truth," says Carrol Norquest in the preface to this book. Norquest was a farmer in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas for fifty years and saw the rise of wetback labor in the 1930s and 40s. Most of these stories come from that period, when he employed wetbacks regularly and knew their families, their hopes, and their heartbreaks. "In some cases, wetbacks were treated as trash. The people in these sketches are my friends, and it hurt me when I saw them taken advantage of. If I was ever guilty of mistreating them, I'm note aware of it." Norquest has no axe to grind. He writes with the immediacy of personal knowledge rather than from an academic or political point of view. He is not analyzing statistics, but telling us about his neighbors: "I present the people here without furbishing.^

They are human beings, with all the faults and good things of all peoples. They have the feelings, souls, ambitions, envies, kindnesses, and plain meannesses of all of us." Steinbeck and Saroyan would love the people Norquest introduces us to in this book. There is irony in the situation of a wetback who can be proud of his children's American citizenship and still be in constant danger of being picked up by la chota, the border patrol. There is poignant humor in the clash of customs : some of the Mexicans are unfamiliar with machines like can openers, radios, and cigarette lighters. One of the saddest tales is that of Simón, killed in a drunken accident the week he buys his own pick-up truck, the symbol of power and mobility that means he is an American at last. Norquest believes in the little man and respects anyone who works hard. "As has been true everywhere else, it is not the wealthy who will finally settle the valley.^

It is the poor, who furnish the sweat and muscle and kids, whose descendants will be its inhabitants. The big shots will disappear into anonymity - leave or peter out. The poor will inherit its space" -- Book jacket.