“‘A Toda Madre (ATM)’: Migrant Dreams and Nightmares in El Norte”

A talk by Miroslava Chávez-García, Professor, Department of History, UCSB

Relying on dozens of personal letters exchanged among Mexican male migrants across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the 1960s, this talk by Miroslava Chávez-García (UCSB Department of History) probes migrants’ longing for economic opportunity, masculine affirmation, and emotional fulfillment. As the migrants’ correspondence illustrates, they relied on each other and the broader social networks to achieve lawful migration, employment, housing and transportation, and familiar forms of entertainment and companionship, easing their transition to the new environment and allowing them to bridge the best of both worlds. Offered as part of UCSB Reads 2017.