Steven OrySeminarioMigracionesProfesora Maria Lujan LeivaAugust 8th, 2015

Toward a Plural Subject in an Assemblage of Parasitism: the Current Case of Mexican Migrants in the Hudson Valley of New York

All those forays into space, all those facial spasms, all those wild stares were only meant to express a vague discomfort. We experience a kind of frustration in the field of explanation. The comedy, or the drama, begins all over again: approximate diagnosis and therapy.

There is no reason for the wheel to stop going round. Some day an X-ray will be taken of him which will show an ulcer or a gastritis. Or which in most cases will show nothing at all. His ailment will be described as “functional.”

-- Franz Fanon, The “North African Syndrome”

2. The massive exclusion of homeless citizens from anyparticipation in the democratic life of States, the expulsionor deportation of so many exiles, stateless persons, and immigrantsfrom a so-called national territory already herald a newexperience of frontiers and identity-whether national or civil……4. The inability to master the contradictions in the concept,norms, and reality of the free market (the barriers of a protectionismand the interventionist bidding wars of capitalistStates seeking to protect their nationals, or even Westernersor Europeans in general, from cheap labor, which often has no comparable social protection). How is one to save one's owninterests in the global market while claiming to protect one's "social advantages" and so forth?5. The aggravation of the foreign debt and other connected mechanisms are starving or driving to despair a large portion ofhumanity. They tend thus to exclude it simultaneously fromthe very market that this logic nevertheless seeks to extend. Thistype of contradiction works through many geopolitical fluctuationseven when they appear to be dictated by the discourse ofdemocratization or human rights.

-- Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx

Introduction and abstract.Though their writing now goes back some 25 years, the

“plagues” of “the new world order,” outlined by Derrida in his Specters of Marx and included

in part above, still call for what his Marxist inheritancetermed “A New International” critique

– that is, a radical, globally-mindedcriticism of a neoliberal status quo that continues to

mockany argument which does not come from its own banal cycle of reproduction. The logic

and metaphors of “the market,” “human rights,” and “democratization” maintain an ideology

so ubiquitous that it appears impossible to escape the “euphoria of liberal-democrat

capitalism,”as emblematized by Fukuyama.1Mainstream neoliberal arguments are so popular,

1Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and theLastMan (New York: Free Press, 1992); deconstructedby Derrida in his Specters of Marx: The State of theDebt, theWork of Mourning,

their vocabulary so readily recalled, that even fringe criticismsof them – those contained to

the academic world, notably – still insist on approaching neoliberalism’s illnesses on the

ideology’s ownsystematicterms. In doing so, these potentiallyradical works actually make it

difficult to sustain a radical politics. That is: when the radical critique does not have its own

vocabulary, or its own type of creative project, it in fact reinforces the metaphors of the

seemingly inescapable status quo: Neoliberalism gains its capital “N,” its status as monolith,

especially when it is criticized for having that status.2 From this need for a novel language to

combat the “new world order” of neoliberal globalization and its accompanying ideology, the

idea of the “New International” critique comes about.

The international “plague” that concerns this critique is, to pull from Derrida, the state

of the “exile,” “stateless person,” or “immigrant” within the context of neoliberal

globalization. Like Derrida, I use this medieval-sounding termnot lightly, and, moreover, to

describe a violent reality, which I think should be at the base of a radical critique of migration

studies(this would ideally be such a critique). And that is that the “stateless” person, the

migrant, is by neoliberalism’s metaphors, and subsequently in the metaphors of

“systematic”critiques of neoliberalism, excluded, or denied a certain amount of what Fanon

called “human reality.” Fanon asks in sharp irony in the beginning of his “ ‘North African

Syndrome,’” in a way that would seem to apply more broadly to the agent said to be an

immigrant or outsider:“Who are they? I ask you, I ask myself. Who are they, those creatures

starving for humanity who stand buttressed against the impalpable frontiers (though I know

them from experience to be terribly distinct) of complete recognition?”3Migration studies

and the New International, trans. PeggyKamuf (New York: RoutledgeClassics, 2006), 116.2 See: AihwaOng, "Neoliberalism as a Mobile Technology," (Transactions of the

Institute of British Geographers 32, no. 3 (2007): 3-8). 3 Franz Fanon, "The 'North African Syndrome,'" in Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967), 1.

tendsnot to recognize that the migrant is not only a migrant, not simply a limited object for

study;but she is in fact a plural being embedded into a transnational world, all the more plural

for her being a migrant – a person who has been exposed to more intersections of identities.4

On the empirical level of this article, I offer the situation of Mexican farmworkers in

the United States and especially in the Hudson Valley of New York as an example of

contemporary chain-labor migration.This serves as a practical environment for my counter to

neoliberal and other normalizing arguments – like popular academic ones. My “New

International” critique of migration studies can be best encapsulated as an explanation and

description of “plural social agents within assemblages of parasitism.” The paper proceeds in

the following way. First, through the concept of forced migration inLeiva’s work; those

ofassemblage,“neoliberalism as a metaphor” and “mobile technology” in the work of Ong,

and a subsequent problematization using LaCroix’s “new S/A approach”; I arrive at a non-

monolithic definition of neoliberal globalization’s interaction with the migrant.5That is the

assemblage of parasitismupon the plural social agent. I attempt to show how this approach is

a change from the norm. I do this in order to demonstrate that, even while academic migration

scholars’ work and works like it sharply hone the idea of what migration studies should do

and providelasting empirical data, their reliance uponsystematic concepts like “development,”

for example, reinforce discourse that relies on neoliberalism’s own metaphors. And in doing

so, these works deny the plurality of the migrant as a subject, political or otherwise, just as

neoliberalism itself does. I then provide some empirical backgroundto contextualize the

4 Thomas Lacroix, "Conceptualizing Transnational Engagements: A Structure and Agency Perspective on (Hometown) Transnationalism," [International Migration Review 48, no. 3 (Fall 2014)]: 658. 5 It should be noted that a strict definition of neoliberalism is not stated outside the explanation of assemblage, in order to deconstruct neoliberalism as a metaphor, and that therefore the word neoliberalism is not really explained until the discussion of Ong’s work.

“assemblage of parasitism” dependent on Mexican farmworkers in New York’s Hudson

Valley. To conclude, I offer a microhistory-in-global-context fromHeriberto Gonzalez, a

former Hudson Valley farmworker who has gone on to do more explicitly political work with

an organization there.6The idea of the microhistoryin conjunction with the theoretical

criticism is to base the critique in a mode of practice, with the hope that doing so will

demonstrate a method of not limiting or “idealizing” the migrantas a tool for systematic

frameworks, neoliberal or “anti-neoliberal,” instead describing something closer to Fanon’s

“human reality,” plural and changeable as it may be for the migrant.

Keywords: Assemblage, neoliberalism, globalization, embedding, Mexico, United States,

subject, plurality, parasitism, New York, migration studies, radicalism, Derrida, Fanon,

Deleuze.

Defining assemblages of parasitismand the plural subject.

We can acknowledge the reality of forced migration withoutlimiting the migrant

herself to being simply a part of asystem dependent on that idea. Indeed, we can describethe

changeable experiences of what migration may be like if we do not have to pay dues to

an“ideal” example of migration upon which to make a systematic critique. In this section,

then, I define and recognize forced migration within neoliberal globalization, not treating it as

a system, but instead as something that can be “assembled” from the plurality of forces that

might affect the migrant as a plural subject, and with whicha migrant can interact.

In her “Migracionesinternacionales: trabajo y capital,” Leivasynthesizes two

conclusions about which the most radical end ofacademic anti-neoliberal thought in migration

studies seems to agree. First, her argument is based on the “premisa fundamental” that:

6An idea whichowesmuchto: AyseKudat, “Consecuencias personales, familiares y sociales de la migración de las mujeres turcas en Europa,” (AAVV, Vivir entre dos culturas, Barcelona, UNESCO, 1983).

… la desarticulación profunda y progresiva de las economías periféricas es operada, entre otros propósitos igualmente relevantes, a fin de asegurar un suministro permanente de inmigrantes y de utilizar un ejército de reserva flotante al servicio de los capitales del Norte. En ese sentido, entre los países del norte (capitalismo central) y el sur (capitalismo periférico) se tensan múltiples relaciones asimétricas, que además de ampliar la brecha entre desarrollo y subdesarrollo, contribuyen a que las economías del sur se especialicen, como proveedores de fuerza de trabajo barata, desotisficando su economía. El Sur entra en la categoría de países pobres, relegándose en el discurso y en las políticas al concepto de desarrollo, subdesarrollo y más aún de desarrollo del subdesarrollo.7

In the above, Leiva sets up the important idea that global neoliberalism relies upon the

migrant as a permanent mobile or “floating” [flotante] labor resource – a member of a

“reserve army” upon which global capitalism is dependent. Even more importantly for our

purposes, she proposes the idea that the migrant is always subject to this status as part of the

global “reserve army” – that he is forced to migrate due to the “asymmetric” globalchains set

up by neoliberalism’s constant need for labor as a resource. That is, she explains a certain

parasitic relationship, wherein the migrant is embedded or coerced into the neoliberal model,

operating as a resource for it.

The asymmetries of globalization create, according to a systematic critique like

Leiva’s, various macro-dialectics that coercethe migrant into her mobile, “cheap-labor”

station. “Development and underdevelopment,” “central and peripheral capitalism,” “global

north and south” – all these are “systematic” processes that define the migrant and give her a

role within the system of migration. That is to say, the definition of the “migrant” is only

possible when s/he is written into the system of neoliberal globalization as understood by the

anti-neoliberal critique. This is true even when the critique is critical of these types of

dialectics. The migrant still has a role to play within that system, and s/he is defined by the

system’s dependence on her/him.

7MaríaLujánLeiva, “Migraciones Internacionales: Trabajo y Capital,” en ContextosCríticos: Migraciones Contemporáneas (Buenos Aires. Ediciones Desde la Gente. 2014), 1-2.

It is important to recognize that in Leiva’ssystematiccritique, the role of the migrant is

essentialized and in practice made a role, as also happens when mainstream neoliberal works

write about the migrant. Our task will not to be deny the reality of this role – migration under

neoliberal globalization isforced, as Leiva makes clear, and this “forcing” is a way of defining

what the word migrant means – but rather to allow this role to be assembled with all the other

forcesthat might make the migrant. To be too dependent on the migrant’s “migrantness” is to

deny Fanon’s “human reality” – of which “migrantness” is only a partial reality.

But systematic as Leiva’s “ejército de reserva” critique of neoliberal globalization

may be, heranalysisdoes acknowledge that the migrant is not merely a passive subject within

an omnipotent system:

Esta migración impulsada por el desarrollo desigual y el neoliberalismo puede considerarse una migración forzada (Delgado, Márquez y Puentes, 2010, Leiva, 2010; Petras,2007), cuya característica más notable no sólo es la consideración de los mecanismos de su causación estructural, sino también la forma en que apoyan el proceso de crecimiento y “competitividad” del capitalismo europeo y de América del Norte. Los inmigrantes no permanecen sin embargo como sujetos pasivos o meros instrumentos económicos, sino que generan espacios propios de resistencia y movilización con miras a enfrentar el orden hegemónico en la economía, lo social y la política y su subalternidad social.8

The author makes it clear that what she offers is not a “top-down” approach to migration

studies, and she in fact submits a “bottom-up” approach in defiance of less radical theories,

especially “push-pull theory,” which relies merely on “algunosfactores macro-estructurales

(subdesarrollo, subempleo…).”9The “bottom-upedness” of Leiva’s approach is something we

should take into account when considering the migrant as a plural subject, because it is thus

far the only approach that allows the subject any agency. It is in this allowance of agency that

Leiva’s critique of migration studies is most radical, and the idea of “agency” within a

coercive situation of “embedding” will serve as our jumping off point for explaining

8Leiva, “Trabajo y Capital,” 2. Italics added.9Ibid., 2. For push-pull theory, see: Everett S. Lee, “A Theory of Migration,” (Demography 3, no. 1. January 1, 1966): 47–57.

“parasitic assemblage.” This is because in writing about the migrant as being able to interact

with something larger, in this case the system of flowing capital to countries in the global

north, Leivacreates a place of radical resistance for the migrant. The migrant-role that allows

for agency allows for resistance through that agency, so that the migrant now has a new realm

for identity (a new plurality) – the overtly political one. This is a realm I emphasize in the

microhistory below.

Leiva’s argument epitomizesboth the advantages and limits of the systematic critique

of neoliberal globalization. On the one hand, it offers us a way of writing about the migrant in

the first place; the idea of a “reserve army” of labor does explain one single reality of the

migrant human reality, namely, that migration is something the migrant is embedded into. On

the other hand, the systematic critique has a very limiting disadvantage, which is that the

migrant is written into certain roles in a way that can be oversimplifying, and, moreover,

reliant on neoliberalism’s own vocabulary.

When the migrant’s roleplays itself out as only part of a system, as takes place in even

the most radical systematic critiques, it become just that: systematic, as opposed to analytic

about or descriptive of a reality. In other words, the systematic critique permits migration

studies a vocabulary for talking about a migrant’s reality, but if relied upon to heavily, the

systematization of that critique only mirrors what neoliberalism says about the migrant: that

s/he has a single, simplified role to play as a labor resource. Relying on neoliberalism’s own

metaphors reinforces neoliberalism, and rids the radical critique of its teeth, as it is subsumed

into neoliberalism’s superficially “ubiquitous” repetition of itself as an idea.

Leiva writes the migrant into his status as a migrant, which is an idealization of the

migrant’s role (the migrant is not just a migrant); that said, Leiva’stwo assertions,a) that the

migrant is coerced or embedded into her situation, and b) that s/he interacts with agency as a

part of that system, are bothnotions that we can take forward asvital parts of a plural migrant

identity. The trick will be to move forward from the too-systematic parts of Leiva’s critique,

which, we should mention, was chosen for how lucid and emblematic its approach to radical

migration studies was. For this, we turn to the concept of assemblage, which itself will need to

be complicated somewhat, using what can be taken from Leiva’s work.

In her “Neoliberalism as Mobile Technology,” Ong identifies the problem, as we have,

with writing about neoliberal globalization as a monolithic system, as “Neoliberalism with a

big ‘N’:

Yet, Neoliberalism writ large seldom engages with the dynamism it encounters in particular environments. The use of macro categories like structure, civilization, Empire and nation-state betrays an industrial sensibility that tracks the unfolding of an inevitable process across units. But if we view neoliberalism not as a system but a migratory set of practices, we would have to take into account how its flows articulate diverse situations and participate in mutating configurations of possibility.10

Ong reiterates what we discovered above – the systematic critique, dependent as it is on

overarching concepts like “structure” and “civilization,” or in the case of radical migration

studies, “development and underdevelopment,” discloses a loyalty to old, often orthodox or

structuralist vocabularies. That is true even and especially when systematic critiques criticize

those vocabularies, because such criticisms in fact strengthenthose vocabularies via

recognition and reuse.

Relying on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage,Ong comes up with

“neoliberalism with a small ‘n,’ a decision we will repeat and problematize in reference to

neoliberalism’s interaction with the migrant-subject:

I propose a transversal mode of analysis thatskirts an industrial or military model of neoliberaltakeover. Neoliberalism is conceptualized not asa fixed set of attributes with predetermined outcomes,but as a logic of governing that migratesand is selectively taken up in diverse

10 I quote freely in this section from: “AihwaOng, "Neoliberalism as a Mobile Technology," [Transactions of theInstitute of British Geographers 32, no. 3 (2007): 3-8].

politicalcontexts.Neoliberalism with a small ‘n’ is a technology of governing ‘free subjects’ that co-exists with other political rationalities. The problem of neoliberalism – i.e. how to administer people for self-mastery – is to respond strategically to population and space for optimal gains in profit…Thus, neoliberal logic is best conceptualized not as a standardized universal apparatus, but a migratory technology of governing that interacts with situated sets of elements and circumstances(emphasis added).

The idea that neoliberalism globalizes and interacts with different environments and does not

function as aplaceless, persistent“tsunami” helps us get away from the problem of over-

systematization. And, consequently, to a chance at describing some type ofhuman reality and

migrant plurality.

For our purposes, using Ong’s “transversal,” moving from big ‘N’ to small ‘n’

neoliberalism, means taking Leiva’s “bottom-up” approach a step further in order to

complicate the migrant-subject. Not only do we not assume neoliberalism’s own vocabularies

to talk broadly about “macro-structures” (notions of “development” and so on). But we also

do not solidify the migrant’s role as a “micro-structure” – we do not assume that s/he is

embedded/coerced into neoliberalism the same way everywhere, nor that other factors beside

his/her agency do not affect this embedding/coercion.In other words, anything and everything

within a limited environment has a chance at being thrown into the migrant narrative. It will

not be a matter of understanding the migrant’s agency through his “role” – but assembling

together the account of the migrant’s forced situation to include the practices and

environments of a given imaginative geography, and then making generalizations to create an

assemblage about a migratory geography, e.g. Mexican migration to New York State. The

notion of assemblage is literal. It is a “putting together” instead of a taking apart – a new

empiricism rather than a systematic analysis based on mainstream vocabularies, which, in the

end, do not provide for radical analysis anyway.

In his “new S/A (structure and agency) approach,” Lacroix acknowledges a key

problem with the “assemblage” method, and that is that it does not allow for much more than

description of, in this case, different practices of neoliberal globalization and migration. One

can see how the notion of, as I stated above, “putting any and everything into the migrant

narrative,” i.e. the notion of assemblage, seemingly eliminates the chance at critical

generalization. In other words, assemblagemakes it hard to talk about why neoliberalism

might force the migrant-subject into certain situations, and sticks simply to thehow. Lacroix

says critically:

Such an approach [assemblage], Law asserts, is “descriptive rather than foundational” (2009:141). It focuses on how material/immaterial relations assemble rather than on why. It focuses on the logics of durability that stabilize a given configuration, rather than on the mechanics of rationality that spur emergent practices. In this regard, I fear that the followers of Gaia so eager to build up an egalitarian vision of the worldbetween the human and the non-human, jettison the ontological specificities of human beings.11

As stated at the outset of this “New International Critique,” the idea here is to arrive at some

kind of Fanonian “human reality,” so the charge that assemblage doesn’t allow for that type of

“specificity” is a serious one. Lacroix is correct in saying that many uses of assemblageas a

concept in migration studies do not allow for much analysis per se. Even Ong, in the paper

mentioned above, only shows how neoliberalism seems to be spreading as a “technique of

administration” and as a “metaphor” of a “knowledge society” in contemporary assemblages

in East and Southeast Asia; her work does not offer much reason for why it might spread that

way there, specifically.

However, Leiva’s concept of forced migration provides us with a “why” for our

assemblage concept, and that “why” is that word hinted at earlier, parasitism.The way

neoliberal “logic” organizes humans and non-humansdoes have one consistent rational

operation, and that is the general forcing it does on the migrant – by always using the migrant

as a labor resource, much like a parasite dependent on another being forces that being into a 11Lacroix, “Structure/Agency Approach,” 653-654.

certain way of operating. The being has its own agency and can still be, but the way it

operates is now affected by the parasite, much as Fanon’s patient with “North African

Syndrome”is still “functional” despite his “ailment.”

Migration under neoliberal globalization, despite the unsystematic ways it may operate

in different geographies and temporalities, always does have an underlying motive of using

the migrant for his labor.Neoliberalism’scoercion/embedding process upon the migrant uses

different assemblages around the world, but itsembedding itself into the migrant’s subjectivity

is what makes it parasitic. Thus I find the term “assemblage of parasitism” useful, as it

incorporates the human subject and what s/he interacts with, but concentrates on how the

human, the migrant-subject, is affected by such a specific process.

I mentioned earlier that we were not attempting to relegate the migrant to his role as a

labor resource, soit may seem like there is a contradiction at present when I say that this is a

condition s/he is constantly under.But the conclusion here would be that the being a “plural

being” with agency that is embedded into an “assemblage of parasitism” is a contradictory

notion. And yet it partially describes a reality. To explain I would like to unify to phrases I

have used but not necessarily put together: plural being and “the migrant is not just a

migrant.” The latter is the definition of the former, meaning that there are other parts of being

a migrant-subject (being politically resistant, for example) that have nothing to do with “being

a migrant,” if we do choose to define the migrant by the process of forced migration. The

migrant-subject operates in plural realms outside of simply his “assemblage of parasitism,” or

his being a labor resource, and yet that parasitic relationship does in a way label or define

migrant-subjectivity.

The contradiction of the migrant’s situation is perhaps a more useful way of talking

about how s/he is embedded into neoliberalism’s changeable logic, at least moreso than

his/her “role” as a labor resource within a larger system. That is, this contradiction – that the

migrant is plural and not only a migrant, while at the same time being always embedded into a

situation of parasitism, of being “used as a resource” – this contradiction partially gets at the

Fanonian human reality of the migrant. In which, despite being a plural subject with agency

who interacts with the world, the migrant is always made to pay dues to her own private

microcosm of suffering, the parasitic assemblage which depends on her.

Writing an assemblage of parasitism: Delgado-Wise on US-Mexico labor migration,the

assemblage of parasitism in the Hudson Valley, and Heriberto’s plural agency within it.

In order to base the above “New International” critique in a practice and therefore

explain something like Fanon’s “human reality,” I conclude with this shortmicrohistory about

a plural subject, HeribertoGonazalez, who interacts with an assemblage of parasitism, the

situation of Mexican farmworkers in New York’s Hudson Valley.But first I include some

context based on empirical research about Mexican migration to the US, in order to show

some of the “non-human” aspects that Heriberto might have to interact with in a parasitic

assemblage.

The migration and development scholar Delgado-Wise describes the current period of

Mexican migration to the US as “crecimientodesbordante de la migracion y

aperturaeconomicaindiscriminada.”12In 1986, as the global welfare state fell and neoliberal

policies became increasingly popular, tempting the notion of what migrations scholars have

called a “global south,” Mexico’s government introduced the “Acuerdo general

12 Raúl Delgado-Wise, "La migraciónmexicanahaciaEstadosUnidos a la luz de la integracióneconómica regional: nuevodinamismo y paradojas," [Revista THEOMAI: EstudiossobreSociedad, Naturaleza yDesarrollo, no. 14 (2006)], 78.

sobreArancales y Comercio” (GATT).13 The GATT was a “free-trade” agreement, which, in

conjunction with NAFTA in 1993, legally legitimized US dependence upon Mexican labor.

Since then, Mexican labor migration to the US has increased exponentially, in a turn of irony

where the neoliberal buzzword of “free” trade creates a coercive situation for those migrants

who play the partial role of labor resource.14 This all came on the heels of already 22 years of

undocumented migration since the fall of the “bracero” program, which, from 1942-1964had

introduced a policy of parasitism in Mexico-US labor relations. We see a parasitic assemblage

of non-human elements begin to form: policy, labor needs, and geographic proximity, and that

is only if we leave out the “bottom-up” or subjective experience of such an assemblage.

Our microhistory’snon-humancontext, then, is a parasitic assemblage built wherein the

US depends on Mexican labor. This is a relationship that, at least since the second world war,

started as political policy with the bracero program, became entrenched by US markets’ need

for labor, and then was re-solidified and made law because of that need. The assemblage

compounds upon itself and entrenches itself over time, as neoliberal “market logic” becomes

policy. Elsewhere, Delgado-Wise has claimed that “in the context of the regional integration

molded by NAFTA, the dynamics of migration to the United States havemushroomed and

socioeconomic dependence on remittances in Mexico has deepened.”15 Though Delgado-Wise

makes this statement based on macro-considerations like “sub-development” of Mexico and

subsequent “sub-employment” of Mexicans in the US, his statement does hold true in that the

US does survive on Mexican migrant labor in those sectors, like farm work, in which policy

allows for undocumented workers due to “market needs.”

In the 2000s, New York’s Hudson Valley has seen a surge in migration from Mexico,

13Leiva, “Trabajo y Capital,” 1.14 See Gráfica 1 in Delgado-Wise, “Migración Mexicana,” 79.15Raúl Delgado-Wise and

especially from the Oaxaca region.16Being undocumented and thus being labeled “unskilled,”

many Oaxacansareforced into the situation of unskilled farm labor – for which there is a great

need in the Hudson Valley, an area which supplies much of the locally-grown food and

resources for New York City.

To make a generalization, then: we see a “Oaxaca-Hudson Valley” assemblage inside

the larger Mexico-US one, a microcosm of the larger parasitism that has its own particulars.

Some of those particulars include the cultural specificity of the state of Oaxaca and how that

cultural specificity travels, creating animagined community among undocumented Oaxacan

farmworkers in the Hudson valley.

Heriberto Gonzales arrived in New York’s Hudson Valley in the beginning of May

2009, after a month long journey from the border town ofTecate, Mexico. In Mexico he was a

college student who worked on his grandfather’s farm on his breaks from school, as he had

while growing up. He left home in order to earn more money in the United States and send

part of that money back, which is emblematic of the remittance economy that plays a role in

the Oaxaca-Hudson Valley assemblage.Heriberto describes his road from Mexico with

simple, negative adjectives: “difícil y peligroso.” He recounts eating only one meal a day, and

for three days not eating at all, on the walk from Tecate to San Diego, during which he and

other migrants slept together to manage the cold nights, one of those nights having to scare off

rattlesnakes from their camp.He then took a five-day trip from San Diego to New York in a

truck. Hehad to spend a large portion of his savings on this trip, and he arrived in New York

needing to start work immediately.

16Maria Rose, "Oaxacan Immigration to Poughkeepsie," Welcome to the Hudson Valley: A Guidebook of Local Topics in Environmental History, last modified June 3, 2013, accessed August 24, 2015, http://pages.vassar.edu/hudsonvalleyguidebook/2013/06/03/oaxacan-immigration-to-poughkeepsie/.

Originally from Morelos, Mexico, Heriberto is not Oaxacan. And yet, he was

embedded into the situation of farm labor in much the same way many Oaxacans are upon

arrival in the Hudson Valley.In other words, he was forced, by being undocumented, into a

situation of working as an unskilled laborer. And since he had some experience with farm

work and that is such a needed resource in the Hudson Valley, farm work was the sector he

ended up in. Through this job on a farm near Poughkeepsie, New York, he met other

undocumented workers, many from Oaxaca, and was introduced into the inclusive aspect of

that imagined community, which inclusion functioned as a form of resistance against the labor

burdens that the Oaxaca-Hudson Valley assemblage puts upon those who are embedded in it.

The Oaxacanand larger Latino community in the Hudson Valley, it turns out, ended up

being a key part of Heriberto’s plural subjectivity and eventual political resistance, because

associations with other Oaxacan and Latino migrant workers helped him make connections

that enabled him to later leave farm work for more political work.

Heriberto worked on farms for four and a half years, then, through connections he had

made within the farmworker community, moved on to a job with the Rural and Migrant

Ministries of New York (RMM), a grassroots organization committed to “honor and support

efforts of those who are disenfranchised, especially migrant farmworkers and the rural poor,

as they seek greater self-determination.”17Specifically, he works on their Justice for

Farmworkers Campaign, which pushes the “Farmworker Fair Labor Practices Act,” a bill in

the New York State Senate attempting to provide farmworkers with standard labor reform

practices like overtime pay, an 8-hour work day, and a day of rest.18

Heriberto’s decision to work in a grass-roots movement instead of continuing on as a 17 "Mission and Vision Statements." Last modified 2010. Accessed August 6, 2015.

http://www.ruralmigrantministry.org/. 18 See: Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act, S. S1743-2013, 2013 Leg. (N.Y. 2013).

farmworker demonstrates at the very least one side of his subjectivity that has nothing to do

with his being a labor resource, and that is his political side. His decision to be a political

subject shows that he is in fact a plural subject and more than his migrant role. And yet, his

transfer to overtly political work was facilitated by the fact that he was embedded into the

Oaxaca-Hudson valley assemblage; he would not have joined RMM had it not been for his

situation of forced migration.

And it remains true that, while he is no longer a farmworker,Heriberto and his role as

a labor source still supply the Oaxaca-Hudson valley assemblage of parasitism, if we still

assert that the migrant’s status is one of “forced migration.” That is, Heriberto is now part of

an organization working to improve the situation of migrant farmworkers, not eliminate the

role of migrant farm work. His political work maintains a neoliberal, globalized assemblage

between Oaxaca and the Hudson Valley, as we now see that near anything and everything can

contribute to a parasitic assemblage. His narrative then illustrates the contradiction of the

“plural subject” within an “assemblage of parasitism”: that one can exercise agency and be

more than a role-player or a singular subject, but as long as the parasitic assemblage exists, it

will use the migrant, and partially deny him human reality. InFanonian terms, the “ailment”

remains “functional.”

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