On Nov. 28, CSUSB hosted Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernandez, associate history professor at UCLA and author of the new book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles.
Dr. Hernandez’s presentation in the Pfau library concluded a series of four lectures on Borderlands Studies organized by Dr. Yvette Saavedra and Dr. Liliana Conlisk Gallegos, of the History and Communications Studies departments respectively, that sought to highlight scholarship on the US-Mexico borderlands–in particular, scholarship conducted by Latinas/Chicanas working in the field.
When Dr. Hernandez embarked on her research into the history of incarceration in Los Angeles, she discovered that the bulk of the historical prison records had been destroyed, prompting her to seek the information elsewhere.
“I went and I found the documents from all the dissidents and the rebels who fought the rise of mass incarceration in Los Angeles, pulled their records together, and called them ‘The Rebel Archives,’” said Dr. Hernandez.
She explored the history of the incarceration system in Los Angeles, beginning with the targeted incarceration of the native populations of California that began during Spanish colonial rule and continued throughout American acquisition and administration of the territory.
She laid the blame for the rise of the mass incarceration on settler colonialism.
“The principal objective of a settler colonial project is land,” said Dr. Hernandez. “On that land the settlers imagine building a new, permanent, reproductive, and racially homogeneous society… Whoever constitutes a threat to the settler community is a target for elimination.”
From there, she examined the various demographic shifts in the incarceration system that occurred throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, from indigenous peoples, to Chinese immigrants targeted for deportation following the Chinese Exclusion Act, to white vagrants displaced in the aftermath of the Civil War, and finally to exiled Mexican dissidents seeking political refuge in America.
Among these dissidents was Pedro Gonzalez, a Mexican revolutionary who fought with Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution and who is credited with starting the first Spanish language broadcast in Los Angeles, which at the time was an extremely inhospitable place for Mexican immigrants.
Dr. Hernandez cited a quote from Bob Schuler, a popular preacher and radio host in Los Angeles in the 1920s, who said of the city, “Los Angeles is the last purely Anglo-Saxon city… in America. It is the only such city not dominated by foreigners. It remains in a class to itself as the one city in America in which the white, American, Christian idealism still dominates.”
Gonzalez performed the broadcast with his band, “Los Madrugadores,” up until he was arrested on trumped-up rape charge and sentenced to 50 years in San Quentin Prison, where he documented the conditions of the California prison system.
One of the photos taken by Gonzalez would go on to adorn the cover of Dr. Hernandez’s book decades later.
Although it may seem that the incarceration system has progressed since the late 19th century, many of the structures that contributed to its rise are still around.
As Dr. Hernandez pointed out, the Immigration Act of 1929, which criminalized unlawful entry for the purpose of regulating Mexican immigration, is still enforced.
The law, which sought to balance the need for cheap Mexican labor and the desire to keep the southwest ethnically homogeneous, was passed by Coleman Livingston Blease, a senator with a penchant for reciting racist poetry on the Senate floor.
During the Q&A portion of the event, a student cited a recent report by NPR stating that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is seeking to open five new private detention facilities for holding undocumented immigrants.
Given the recent rise of illegal immigration crackdowns by ICE and the cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, it’s possible that some of CSUSB’s undocumented alumni may find themselves in this very system.