This lecture examined the lives and histories of Latinx seafood worker communities along the coast of the U.S. Northeast throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Focusing on industries related to desired commodities such as sea cucumbers and lobster, it argues that Latinx laborers -both citizen and migrant- have historically shaped patterns of aquaculture as well as agriculture in this country. In the process, these workers have experienced various forms of neglect and invisibility ranging from occupational safety hazards to broken promises in guestworker contracts to xenophobic protests of their presence by residents of seaside towns.

Lori A. Flores is an Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University, where she teaches courses on the histories of Latinx people in the United States, American labor and immigration, the U.S. West, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. She is the author of Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement (Yale, 2016), which was named Best History Book by The International Latino Book Awards and Best First Book by The Immigration and Ethnic History Society. She is also the new co-editor of the completely-revised 4th edition of The Academic’s Handbook, which offers valuable advice essays from a diverse array of scholars and will be published by Duke University Press in 2020.

Event Recap

On November 19th, 2019, NYU’s Latinx History working group hosted its second public lecture event. Stony Brook professor Lori A. Flores presented her research into Latinx seafood workers in the Northeast U.S. A forthcoming book will explore everything from Puerto Rican and Mexican guest-workers in the mid-20th century to the key role of Latinx migrant workers from Central America in the boom of the sea cucumber industry in Maine. The latter was the subject of Flores’ presentation. As far as the 1990s, Latinx migrant workers have taken on the hazardous job of sea cucumber processing.