Neon Metropolis: How Las Vegas Started the Twenty-First Century by Hal Rothman

Author:Hal Rothman [Rothman, Hal]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781317958529
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2015-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Aztlán in Neon

Latinos in the New City

AS THE SUN CRACKS TBI EASTERN HORIZON ON ANY LAS VEGAS MORNING, a line of cars backs up at the freeway exit on Eastern Avenue, the turn-off to the hottest development in 2000, Del Webb's Anthem, Before 7 A.M., i line reaches back from exit ramp onto the freeway. Nearly every car is filled with Latinos headed for construction work. Young men mostly, they ride four or five in a truck or car., Hevada license plates predominate, but as always California plates run a close second and Mexico is not far behind. The vehicles are old, often beat-up, with the evidence of previous owners remaining in tattered bumper stickers. I saw one filled with five young Latinos sipping coffee, steam rising on a cold morning; the bumper sticker on the back advocated a vote for one of the California anti-immigration propositions of recent years. Sometimes the new owners will personalize their car: "I ♥ Jalisco" is a favorite, with stickers advertising the Jalisco Restaurant or Lindo Michoacan, for many the best Mexican restaurant in town, hailing their Mexican regional points of origin. Once in a while, a new pickup, brightly colored and sometimes cut to a low rider, will display the driver's sense of accomplishment, but most workers travel in groups, in cars left over from the 1970s and 1980s, big Impalas, beat-up K cars, and the ever-present imported pickup trucks.

They come by the hundreds, the thousands it seems, a version of the white separatist's nightmare depicted in Jean Raspaill's 1970s racist futuristic novel The Camp of the Saints, the invasion of the third world into an unprepared, head-in-the-sand first. They rattle by, windows down on the hottest and the coldest mornings, half-awake guys getting ready for another day of hard physical labor. Some walk up the hill; from the top you can see a parade of people on foot. They've come by bus, stopping by the convenience store for water and coffee. The coffee's for now as the sun rises; the water for later, when it is hot and dry no matter what time of year. A few ride bicycles, distinct from the groups of cyclists decked out in bright Lycra jerseys who meet on the same road. There's nothing that Says recreation or sport about what they do; this is how they get around. A few gather on the corners in a mini—labor market, looking for work for the day, but they're the minority. Most stream onward, upward toward Anthem, toward work, toward a future they hope is better than the lives they left behind.

This is a common picture in the Southwest, where Latinos, Mexicans predominantly, sometimes with the taint of undocumented status wafting around them, have filled the manual and low-skill labor market. Spanish is everywhere, spoken by the people who do the work. They form armies of housekeepers, maids, janitors, and laborers. Most are poorly paid and have little upward mobility. The work they do is supposed to free

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