Jonathan Tomás Balderas
Paisas on the plains
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My piece, "Paisas on the plains," is a personal reflection of my experience researching the lives of the first families of Mexicans to migrate to Kansas in the early 20th century. This population in the Midwest, despite living away from the physical U.S.-M.X. borderlands, existed within an "between space" as their stories often do not fit with typical histories of Mexican migration to the U.S., which have focused on the Southwest. Because of this, I situate it within American Studies' scholars attempts to "queering the Midwest." Through its style of a stream of consciousness, it challenges possibilities of formal divisions between seeking to conduct objective research and scholars' personal stakes when encountering documents in the archive that is personal to them. In this piece, I navigate and negotiate this as I follow the story of the Rodriguez family in Garden City, Kansas through their photo collection at the Kansas Historical Society.
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Jonathan Tomás Balderas is a Mexican-American from Kansas studying history and ethnic studies. They are a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow interested in using creative methodologies to write histories of labor organizing among Mexicans in the Midwest. Jonathan peruses archives, writes poetry, and calls their loved ones in their free time.