The Serpent in the Garden of Eden

The Serpent in the Garden of Eden Andres Resendez Reviews in American History, Volume 31, Number 3, September 2003, pp. 422-424 (Review) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/rah.2003.0055 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/46699 [ Access provided at 25 Oct 2020 16:22 GMT from Auckland University of Technology ] 422 REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY / SEPTEMBER 2003 THE SERPENT IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN Andrés Reséndez Stephen J. Pitti. The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 297 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95. Northern California is often described as Eden: an area of great natural beauty with ancient forests and a breathtaking coast. And this setting is complemented by man-made accomplishments including one of America’s great cities, San Francisco, and a high-tech “fantasy zone” known the world over as Silicon Valley (even those of us who live in the area are tempted on occasion by such appealing imagery). But Eden has its own dark underside examined admirably well by Stephen Pitti in this cogent and well-researched work. This is a book about race relations in the Santa Clara County, especially following the avatars of the Mexican and Mexican-American community. The Devil in Silicon Valley thus introduces a viewpoint that is often left out in our current understanding of this area. The book starts out with the simple observation that California’s residents of Mexican origins (as well as other racialized minorities) have laid claims to the Santa Clara Valley for generations. It goes on to argue that these past struggles and changing race-relations in many ways have conditioned present-day social interactions, racial thought, and ultimately have shaped in important ways the history and character of this region of California. The Devil in the book’s title—that unwelcome fixture of Eden—refers precisely to the enduring understanding of racial difference that for more than two centuries has brought about patterns of conquest and violence, accommodation and resistance. This work has a number of virtues and succeeds on many fronts. In the first place, The Devil in Silicon Valley is particularly good at showing how race relations have changed in significant ways over the centuries, focusing on San José but also drawing examples and comparisons with other communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. The discovery and development of mercury mines in the 1850s, the rise of commercial agriculture in the late nineteenth century, the onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the post–War War II boom all profoundly changed the lives of Mexican peoples in the region forcing them into newfound labor relations, residential patterns, Reviews in American History 31 (2003) 422–424 © 2003 by The Johns Hopkins University Press RESÉNDEZ / The Serpent in the Garden of Eden 423 and demographic trends. And all of these forces necessarily influenced race relations in the Santa Clara Valley. Thus this is not a static story of domination and subordination but one refashioned over and over, even when racism in one guise or another has always lurked in the background. The author skillfully depicts how every generation both validated and to some extent reinforced long-standing racial hierarchies but also altered the specific ways in which different groups came to terms with one another. The book is also successful at presenting the voice of ordinary Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Traditionally, we historians have told our stories in strikingly selective ways. When we refer to elite members we write down names and put faces on them, we often add extensive quotations and descriptions of drinking and eating habits and other activities. But when we refer to ordinary individuals we tend to present our subjects in a more or less anonymous fashion or resort to sociological generalities. In this case, the author is able to include vignettes of individual Mexicans and Mexican Americans whose names do not grace any streets of the Bay Area today, but whose experiences nonetheless serve to tell the story of the Santa Clara Valley in all its glories and all its miseries. Along with the famous figures like César Chávez, Ernesto Galarza, and Manuel Gamio, we get illuminating glimpses into the lives of immigrant women, agricultural workers, and barrio residents. One final virtue of The Devil in Silicon Valley worth noting is that it very much keeps in focus the residents’ original homelands and transnational connections. California has always been an immigrant state whether under Spain, Mexico, or the United States. Californians have kept strong attachments to their places of origin, and such connections have shaped California society in significant ways. Easterners, Texans, Mexicans from different states, Chileans, and Chinese have all converged in California, transplanting their own worldviews, dreams, longings, and—most importantly for this study— their notions of racial hierarchies and race relations. In this sense, the Devil may have been a local character but one very much informed by imported ideas and prejudices. In addition, the author is able to show how such intraethnic groupings were very significant in how California residents sorted themselves out socially by organizing clubs on the basis of their patrias chicas (Michoacán, Sonora, Chihuahua but also Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico) and arranging their lives to take into account the specific states and regions from which they came. Such a focus on the trans-regional and transnational attachments of the inhabitants of San José and its environs adds enormously to our understanding of the texture of life in the area. This is not to say that there are no flaws in The Devil in Silicon Valley. For instance, the early part of the book—the first two chapters devoted to the colonial and Mexican-era northern California—feel somewhat perfunctory 424 REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY / SEPTEMBER 2003 offering mostly standard interpretations, succinct summations, and received wisdom rather than original analysis. The book really comes to life in chapter 3. Another problem is the author’s occasional use of conceptual shorthand when extended explanations are in order, beginning with “the Devil” itself. Undoubtedly, the image of the Devil in the Santa Clara County is poetic and arresting—the Devil is defined at the beginning of the book simply as ideologies of race. But at times this seductive image ends up obscuring the underlying discussion. We learn, for example, of “the Devil’s language,” or that “the Devil drove ethnic Mexicans underground,” or about “the Devil doing his work” (pp. 26, 51, 104). These images convey a general sense of racial prejudice, bigotry, and social hierarchy but lack precision and leave us thinking about who and where exactly the Devil is. The same thing goes for “Manifest Destiny,” a piece of propaganda from the 1840s to justify the conquest of Mexican territory used here as an agent of history, as in “Manifest Destiny began to transform the region” or “the often deleterious effects of Manifest Destiny” (p. 30, 57). Such conceptual shorthand and misplaced concreteness belies the author’s own nuanced approach to these matters in the text. These are minor blemishes of an otherwise excellent book that greatly enriches our understanding of the Santa Clara Valley and sheds light on the tortuous trajectory of Mexicans and Mexicans Americans in California. It is written with grace and clarity thus making it suitable for course adoption at the graduate and advanced undergraduate levels. Andrés Reséndez, Department of History, University of California, Davis, is the author of a book on the shaping of national identities in early-nineteenthcentury Texas and New Mexico (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press).