The Serpent in the Garden of Eden

Stephen J. Pitti. The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican Americans. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 297 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95.

Northern California is often described as Eden: an area of great natural beauty with ancient forests and a breathtaking coast. And this setting is complemented by man-made accomplishments including one of America's great cities, San Francisco, and a high-tech "fantasy zone" known the world over as Silicon Valley (even those of us who live in the area are tempted on occasion by such appealing imagery). But Eden has its own dark underside examined admirably well by Stephen Pitti in this cogent and well-researched work. This is a book about race relations in the Santa Clara County, especially following the avatars of the Mexican and Mexican-American community. The Devil in Silicon Valley thus introduces a viewpoint that is often left out in our current understanding of this area. The book starts out with the simple observation that California's residents of Mexican origins (as well as other racialized minorities) have laid claims to the Santa Clara Valley for generations. It goes on to argue that these past struggles and changing race-relations in many ways have conditioned present-day social interactions, racial thought, and ultimately have shaped in important ways the history and character of this region of California. The Devil in the book's title—that unwelcome fixture of Eden—refers precisely to the enduring understanding of racial difference that for more than two centuries has brought about patterns of conquest and violence, accommodation and resistance.

This work has a number of virtues and succeeds on many fronts. In the first place, The Devil in Silicon Valley is particularly good at showing how race relations have changed in significant ways over the centuries, focusing on San José but also drawing examples and comparisons with other communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. The discovery and development of mercury mines in the 1850s, the rise of commercial agriculture in the late nineteenth century, the onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the post-War War II boom all profoundly changed the lives of Mexican peoples in the region forcing them into newfound labor relations, residential patterns, and demographic trends. And all of these forces necessarily influenced race relations in the Santa Clara Valley. Thus this is not a static story of domination and subordination but one refashioned over and over, even when racism in one guise or another has always lurked in the background. The author skillfully depicts how every generation both validated and to some extent reinforced long-standing racial hierarchies but also altered the specific ways in which different groups came to terms with one another.

The book is also successful at presenting the voice of ordinary Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Traditionally, we historians have told our stories in strikingly selective ways. When we refer to elite members we write down names and put faces on them, we often add extensive quotations and descriptions of drinking and eating habits and other activities. But when we refer to ordinary individuals we tend to present our subjects in a more or less anonymous fashion or resort to sociological generalities. In this case, the author is able to include vignettes of individual Mexicans and Mexican Americans whose names do not grace any streets of the Bay Area today, but whose experiences nonetheless serve to tell the story of the Santa Clara Valley in all its glories and all its miseries. Along with the famous figures like César Chávez, Ernesto Galarza, and Manuel Gamio, we get illuminating glimpses into the lives of immigrant women, agricultural workers, and barrio residents.

One final virtue of The Devil in Silicon Valley worth noting is that it very much keeps in focus the residents' original homelands and transnational connections. California has always been an immigrant...