Introduction

Abstract

The Shandon school board meeting in March 1990 was unusual. Lorenzo Obregón,¹ a Mexican immigrant farm worker, attended through the first half hour of the meeting. Though he understood little of what went on in English around him and did not speak, his presence and the reaction to it by others signaled the changes taking place in the small farming town. Less than a decade earlier, authorities had cordoned off the town for two hours while they investigated charges hat two Mexican migrant farm workers had been chased by local men with shotguns who accused them of driving recklessly and running ver one man’s foot (Seager 1982). The investigation revealed that some Mexican immigrants did, in fact, feel that a few of their fellow farm workers caused trouble. But it showed even more starkly that a strong anti-immigrant sentiment existed among most established residents, blinding them to important differences among the immigrants.