Juan Garcia, history professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, was raised in South Texas in a long-established Mexican-American ranching family. When he was about six, his father suddenly gave up his trade and moved Garcia and his nine siblings to Chicago.
The reasons behind the family’s departure from Texas were complex, and the retired professor has since devoted his career to examining the political pressures that shaped the lives of his farmer father and his mother, who lived in the United States as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, as they made their way east.
Portions of Garcia’s research, along with excerpts from his family’s story, will soon be presented in a new exhibition at Sacramento’s California Museum, titled Help Wanted / Leave Now:
