Not Citizen Enough: The Tragic Cases of Manolo Alberto and Mario Canedo

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Chicana/o activists, local San Diego community members, customs officials, and politicians gathered together in San Ysidro, California in August 1979 to discuss two recent deaths near the U.S.-Mexico border. Two U.S. citizen children of Latina/o descent passed away after an encounter with immigration and customs officials while their caretakers were attempting to seek medical attention for them in the U.S. By examining the events surrounding the devastating deaths of these two children, this presentation explores the interplay between immigration policy and practices, ideas of childhood and citizenship, and political self-determination. Guerrero Gallegos argues that public and civil servants’ racialized ideas of childhood and innocence prevented children of Latina/o descent from experiencing their full citizenship. Public and civil servants’ ideas of childhood were rooted in racialized ideas that trivialized the fact that individuals of Latina/o descent experienced severe physical suffering or hardship. Moreover, immigration officials often criminalized children of Latina/o descent in the U.S.-Mexico border, excluding them from the ideas of innocence that usually were associated with childhood. The manifestation of these ideas had tragic and fatal consequences and allowed public and civil servants to avoid responsibility for protection of children of Latina/o descent. Concurrently, the deaths prompted Chicana/o activists to push for a congressional hearing to investigate violence at the U.S.-Mexico border. This presentation also delineates how, similar to other social movements during the twentieth-century, Chicana/o activists used children as symbols of innocence to bring attention to the increase of violence at the border and reclaim ideas of suffering and citizenship for these children of Latina/o descent.

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