Imperial (224 page)

Divergent incomes with Brawley’s zip code 92227—Imperial Valley Directory (2000), yellow maps 4 and 5, pink pages (street guide to carrier route), p. 1.

One prominent information designer: “. . . a sense of
average
and of
variation
about that average . . .”—Tufte,
Envisioning Information
, p. 32.

Tufte’s remarks on the Broad Street Well—
Visual Explanations
, p. 35.

G. Harold Powell: “Nearly everyone you meet here is from the east . . .”—Op. cit., p. 21 (letter of 25 January 1904, to Gertrude Powell).

José López from Jalisco—Interviewed in Mexicali, July 2004. Shannon Mullen was present during the first interview, and Terrie Petree was there for the second. I have conflated these into one section.

183. Subdelineations: Moneyscapes (1989 -2005)

Epigraph: “Attempts at description are stupid . . .”—Eliot, pp. 145-46.

Map of California median household income in 1989—California Employment Development Department (1995), Module F, p. F-1 (Social and Economic Data Tables).

Map: “County Unemployment Rates, 1999 Anual Averages”—Ibid., p. B-vii (dated August 2000).

Number ranking unemployment of Imperial 1997-99—EDD unemployment fact sheet (1997-99).

Median household incomes of Mecca, Indio and Indian Wells; and remark that Palm Springs, Cathedral City and Palm Desert “have some of the greatest income disparities in California . . .”—
Sacramento Bee
, Monday, November 24, 2003, “Capitol & California” section, pp. A3-A4 (Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press, “In posh resort towns of the Palm Springs area, workers can barely afford to live and the income gap is huge”).

“Sterling Cove: Exclusive Estate/Pool!”—
Desert Sun
, Saturday, December 20, 2003, “Desert Real Estate” section, p. 75 (“Knowledge Is Power! Luxury Leases, Vacation Rentals”). Another headline in the same issue (Section E [Business], p. E1, Jonathan D. Colburn) informs us: “Valley home prices holding: Median price for a desert home remains $245,000.”

Various ratings of El Centro urban complex—Heubusch, pp. 29-31, 69, 107, 113, 112, 146, 131, 434, 438.

California county agricultural commodity rankings and items—
California Agricultural Directory 2004-2005
, p. 109. 1 out of 4 Mexicans “in extreme poverty”—Meyer et al., p. 687.

Californians
vs.
Imperial County Residents in poverty, 2000—Census Bureau, Historical Income Table for Counties: Table C3, Per Capita Income by County, rev. August 22, 2002.

Percentage of Imperial County residents in poverty, 1990—Printout given to me by a clerk in the Employment Development Department in El Centro,
ca.
2000; no main title; relevant page is headed “1990 CCPH-L-81. table 3. Income and Poverty Status in 1989: 1990. Imperial County, California.” This document may come from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Figures on the number of applicants for the Food 4 Less jobs—
Imperial Valley Press
, vol. 103, no. 27, Tuesday, June 10, 2003, p. A1 (Aaron Claverie, “Thousands bid for jobs at Calexico Food4Less”).

“The closer you get to the U.S., the poorer the city becomes.”—Crosthwaite, Byrd and Byrd, p. 201 (Juan Villoro, “Nothing to Declare: Welcome to Tijuana”).

Footnote: José López—Interviewed in Mexicali, 2003.

A Stanford historian: “The income gap between the United States and Mexico . . .”—
Newsweek
, April 10, 2006, p. 39 (Fareed Zakaria, “To Become an American,” quoting David Kennedy).

“Until a large pool of skilled workers willing to work for less . . .”—Wagner, p. 11.

Footnote: The old man who knew what was cheap in Northside—Unnamed, but he appears in 8” x 10” negative MX-TC-LOC-03-01. Interviewed and photographed in Tecate, October 2003. Terrie Petree interpreted.

The juice vendor in Mexicali—Interviewed in 2003.

Señor Héctor—Interviewed in 2003 and 2004. He is portrayed in the 8” x 10” photograph MX-EJ-FCB-03-01.

184. Subdelineations: Moneyscapes (2003 -2006)

Decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs 2000-2003 (the 1-in-6 figure is also expressed as 2.8 million lost jobs)—
Sacramento Bee
, Monday, December 1, 2003, p. D2 (Dave Carpenter, Associated Press, “For factories, it’s change or fold . . .”).

“U.S. opens avocado pipeline . . .”—
Sacramento Bee
, Saturday, October 22, 2005, pp. D1-D2 (story by Chris Kraul,
Los Angeles Times
).

185. Present and Future Successes (2003)

Epigraph: “Hopefully you’ll find the data and charts mostly correspond to your impressions of Imperial . . .”—Paul Foster reports (2007) (“Imperial Color Commentary”).

All text—
Imperial Valley Press
, Tuesday, October 14, 2003, p. A1 (Marc Schanz, “County unemployment rate dips a bit to 22 percent”).

186. Market Prices (2000)

Epigraph: “Now a haze lies upon the land ...”—DeBuys and Myers, p. 5.

Mexican and American corn prices; Mexican rural poverty statistics—Bigelow, pp. 72, 79.

Imperial County agricultural statistics, 1999 and 2000—Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner’s papers, 2000, pp. 3, 11.

The taxi driver Angel—Interviewed between El Centro and Imperial, 2002.

Prices for Thirteen Negro dances, sex, etc.—Investigated with Lupe Vásquez, Mexicali, 2003.

187. Imperial Beach (2005)

Epigraph: “Taking the road to the right of the Tia Juana road . . .”—Douglas Gunn, 1887, p. 38.

188. San Diego (2003 -2006)

Epigraph: “Subdivisions in various localities have already proven highly successful . . .”—Salvator, p. 47.

189. Tijuana (2003 -2005)

Epigraph: “Bring me the sunflower . . .”—Eugenio Montale, “Portami Il Girasole,” translated by Chris Glomski, in
A Public Space
, issue 2 (summer 2006), p. 79.

The Aztec sculpture of a young woman—Carrasco and Moctezuma, p. 60.

“The worst and best things in the whole country are happening here.”—Augustín Pérez Aguilar, reporter for
La Frontera
(Tijuana). Interviewed in English in a restaurant in Tijuana Centro, July 2004. Terrie Petree was present.

190. Tecate (2003 -2006)

To Terrie Petree, Tecate feels less like a border town than other places. “For some reason in Mexicali it seems like the border tension is palpable.”

Definition of
altepetl—
Carrasco and Moctezuma, p. 161.

191. Campo (2005)

Epigraph: “They slacked away again when the price of silver went down . . .”—Austin, p. 165 (“The Little Town of the Grape Vines”).

Information on Kumeyaay Indians and their language—Golden Acorn placemat.

Carl Calvert on machines etc.—Interviewed in Campo, October 2003. Terrie Petree was present.

192. Mexicali (2003)

Epigraph: “That’s all it is . . .”—Lupe Vásquez, interviewed by WTV, 2003. By “our neighbor” he of course meant the United States.

Size ranking of Mexicali among Mexican cities, number of residents working in the
maquiladoras
and Imperial County—
San Diego Union-Tribune
, Sunday, October 12, 2003, p. E3 (“Mexicali’s moment,” cont’d from p. E1). For the latter two statistics, Roberto Valero of the Center for Economic Studies is cited.

Footnote: Between 2000 and 2020, the population of Mexicali is expected to double—Munguía, p. 16 (Francisco Raul Venegas Cardoso).

Description of Tlazoltéotl—León-Portilla and Shorris, pp. 222-29 (“prayer to Tlazolteotl,”
Florentine Codex
).

Mexicali as third-largest of the border cities—Ruiz, p. 26.

The street prostitute Liliana—I met her in 2004.

193. Ejido Netzahualcóyotl (2004)

Epigraph: “This is seepage water that Mexicali growers . . .” and other excerpts from the same editorial—
Imperial Valley Press
, Sunday, July 24, 2005, “Opinion” section, p. A4 (“Learning to Live with Less Water”).

José Castro and his wife—Interviewed February 2004. Richard Brogan, by telephone, September 2003; Stella Mendoza, October 2003; George Michael Newman, by telephone, 2003; man in Colonia Santo Niño, interviewed February 2004.

Projected wetlands and bird-species losses caused by lining the All-American Canal—Munguía, pp. 23, 29, 30, 35 (Francisco Zamora Arroyo, Peter Culp and Osvel Hinojosa Huerta).

70,000 acre-feet per year taken from Mexicali by the lining—Same editorial as epigraph.

The old man from Durango—He did not want to be named. Interviewed in San Luis, December 2006. Terrie Petree interpreted.

Gilberto Sanders—Interviewed on his ranch in Ejido Morelos, 2003. Terrie Petree interpreted.

Man in Colonia Santo Niño—Interviewed February 2004.

Netzahualcóyotl’s poem—Carrasco and Moctezuma, p. 136.

194. San Luis Río Colorado (2006)

The waitress—Anna Silva Reina. She was 25 when I interviewed her at work in December 2006. Terrie Petree interpreted.

195. Blythe (2005)

Epigraph: “Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good . . .”—Bradbury, pp. 179-80.

George F. Will’s column—
Sacramento Bee
, Sunday, February 27, 2005, “Forum” section, p. E5.

196. The Inland Empire (2003-2004)

Epigraph: “Southern California’s housing demand . . .”—Wagner, p. 9.

Projected population increase—Ibid.

Archaeological discoveries in Riverside’s Chinatown—The Great Basin Foundation Center for Anthropological Research, vol. 2 (Archaeology), pp. 387, 383.

Orange-box labels from Strong & Old Baldy—McClelland and Last, pp. 4, 10.

The funeral parlor in 1906—Riverside Fire Department, p. 13 (Chapel of Squire and Flagg’s Undertaking Parlors, Main Street).

Footnote on Riverside smog—Imperial Valley Research Center pamphlet, verso, righthand panel of text.

“What the Inland Empire has that the coastal counties don’t . . .”—Inland Empire Economic Partnership website, 2003, p. 1 of 2.

197. Coachella (2003 -2004)

Epigraph: “In the Coachella Valley . . .”—
Southwest Airlines Spirit
magazine, April 2004, p. 94 (Jordan Rane, “A Skeptic’s Guide to Palm Springs”).

Carolyn Cooke’s recollections—Telephone interview, Coachella, April 2004. In another interview the following day, she was blunter: “This valley has been a combination of agricultural and tourism and glamour from the movie industry, and now it is rapidly losing the agriculture aspect and becoming purely a destination and a golf capital and big box stores. It’s a beautiful valley, and I just wish somebody had had the foresight to take hold of it and say this will be city and this will be agriculture and this will be desert.”

“Cathedral City . . . What a Great Choice! . . .”—
Property Guide 2003
, vol. 17, issue 1, p. 16.

Footnote: Number of vehicles on Highway 111, and 20-year traffic estimate for same—State of California. Department of Transportation. Transportation Library, Sacramento. Imperial folder. Sheet labeled “Maria Contreras-Swet, September 11, 2002, Page 6.”

Table grape statistics—
Desert Sun
, Saturday, December 20, 2003, Section E (Business), p. E2 (Lou Hirsch, “Growers watch CAFTA: Proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement still has opposition”). In 2002, table grapes generated one-fourth of the region’s $425.6 million.

“North Shore Ranch . . .”—
Property Guide 2003
, op. cit., p. 11.

“The genuinely casual vibe, the dry desert heat . . .”—
Southwest Airlines Spirit
, op. cit., p. 96.

198. Indio (2003 -2004)

Epigraph: “A narrative, in addition to descendancy charts . . .”—Croom, pp. 227-28.

“HUD Repo in Indio . . .”—
Property Guide 2003
, vol. 17, issue 1, p. 11.

199. Duroville (2003 -2006)

Epigraph: “. . . it’s hard to imagine a situation any worse for migrant workers . . .” and other excerpts from the same editorial—
San Diego Union-Tribune
, Saturday, May 31, 2003, “Editorials” section, p. B6 (“Sovereign slum: Migrants at risk in Salton Sea encampment”).

Statistics on the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians—Bureau of Indian Affairs (1999), p. 104.

Private investigator’s report on Harvey Duro—Private detective reports, 2003-07. Invoice no. 030728 (July 28, 2003).

Harvey Duro’s court cases cited here—(1) U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Civil Minutes—General (2 pp.) Case No. ED CV 03-754 RT (SGLx) July 17, 2003. Title: U.S. v. Harvey Duro, Sr. P. 2. (2) Same case, civil minutes for July 7, 6 pp., pp. 4-6.

Number of migrant workers in Duroville, 2003—
Los Angeles Times
, 25 July 2003, p. B6 (Hannah Cho, “Landfill in Thermal Told to Stop Open Burning of Waste . . .”).

Interviews with Noe Ponce and Carmen Lopez—On street, 2004.

Other interviews took place in 2005 and 2006.

200. Salton City (2006)

Epigraph: “Into this long undeveloped land . . .”—Holmes et al., p. 6.

The man in Vista del Mar—DeBuys and Myers, p. 218.

The realtor—Araceli Cabadas. I chatted with her in December 2006. Terrie Petree was present. She assumed that Terrie and I were starting a family together and looking for a home. We did nothing to dispel her illusion.

201. Holtville (2003)

Epigraph: “But that is the essence of the Valley . . .”—Karpen obituary, Alice Woodside’s letter to WTV.

First two advertisements—
Imperial Valley Press
, Sunday, July 23, 2005, pp. E3 and E2. The third advertisement obviously never existed.

202. Calexico (2003)

Epigraph: “Among the outstanding attractions of Calexico . . .”—Imperial Valley Directory (1930), p. Y (facing inside back cover).