A story about Iowa

[lolaraincoat]

We didn't know about the big government raid last May on Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants in Postville, Iowa, when we drove through there last month. (A useful followup story is here, highlighting the critical, honorable role played by the local Catholic Church. See also this story on an intervention by a heroic legal translator.) It didn't make the news in Canada. All we knew was that we stopped on our way from Minneapolis to Dubuque in this tiny town that had a Productos Latinos store on the theory that it would be selling tacos - which was true, and they were excellent - and nobody wanted to answer my eager, ignorant questions about why all those immigrants were there, along with a large number of black-hat Orthodox Jews out enjoying the warm Sabbath evening. The people eating in the taqueria had jobs in a meat-packing plant, someone eventually explained, and they were from Texas. But not originally from Texas, surely, I asked. Texas, the nice guy behind the counter said firmly. Texas.

You could see that families had rooted themselves there - the store windows were full of christening gowns, quincenera outfits, and toys with Spanish-language packaging - and that without them this would just be one more dying corn belt community. You could tell by the stink, even a block away, that those jobs in the meat-packing plant had to be pretty unpleasant, nothing you'd want to do yourself. You couldn't see, unless you already knew, that 400 people had just been taken away by la migra.

There's nothing more to say about this that you don't already know.

...

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

A lot of the Midwest and South today is filling up with communities of people from, ahem, Tejas.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I knew that. I had figured on finding just such a taqueria if we got off the highway in corn-and-pork country in Iowa, in fact. I just didn't know what had happened in Postville.

Anecdotal evidence: About ten years ago I flew from Mexico City to New York, with a stopover in Atlanta. The guy sitting next to me turned out to be a meatpacking factory worker from Tlaxacala en route to ... one of the Carolinas, I can't remember. Anyway, we chatted for a while, and then he said, "You seem like a good person - sincere, you know? And you're a gringa. Would you like to get married?"

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

En una palabra: ¡Corcho!

The NY Times had an article, about seven-eight years back about the growing numbers of both Mexicans and orthodox Jews in Iowa.

When I lived in Kentucky in the mid-1990s, I noted the growing number of Mexicans in eastern KY (enough that supermarkets were stocking Goya products). A few years back I was minding my own business on a MARTA train here in Atlanta while behind me two Mexicans were busily chatting in a mixture of English and Mexican Spanish. I can remember phrases like 'Ese fucking chingón.'

[slit.livejournal.com]

You have to read the book Postville.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hah! Just went and read the first few pages on Amazon, and yes, I do, don't I?

The books begins, as you surely know, with the author recounting an academic job interview in Iowa City. Then his family debates the merits of moving from shiny San Francisco to Iowa. I've also been interviewed for a professorial job in Iowa City, but since if I'd gotten the job I would have moved from small-town northern Pennsylvania, Iowa City in the late 1990s seemed amazingly cosmopolitan and exciting to me. I mean, there was that fabulous bookstore, and at least two movie theaters ...

[slit.livejournal.com]

The amazon comments on that book make for interesting reading on their own.

I really disliked the way he portrayed Iowa City. I lived there for 8 years, and while I had a lot of problems with it, I never saw it as the podunk backwater he seems to think it was. (My husband, who went to college in nearby Grinnell, had the same reaction when he read it.)

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I'll have to go look at the Amazon page again ...

Yeah, it's funny, I can be terribly snotty on the topic of the awful backwater town in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania where I spent four years, but my back goes right up when people make blanket claims about "flyover country," and I love the big Midwestern university towns like Iowa City with a passion.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Dude, I Twittered you about this as soon as you mentioned being in a black hat slash Mexican meatpacking town in Iowa, but it fell under the @lola curse! Also was going to post the link to the front page story in the Times, but figured you'd seen it.

The Forward ran the headline "Fears of Kosher Meat Shortage"; however, to their credit (and it's by far my favorite publication in the Jewish press) they were the first media outlet to run a story on appalling working conditions & inhumane treatment of animals at the plant, a couple years ago. It was lovely to see how sanely and helpfully the US government acted on this news.