Imperial (249 page)

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Authors: William T. Vollmann

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346

I have been told that this knowledge is guarded with certain migrant worker families.

347

United States Immigration and Naturalization Service.

348

Between 2000 and 2020, Mexicali’s population is expected to double again.

349

Speaking of breathing, I read that lettuce salinity experiments “cannot be conclusively done in close proximity to Riverside because the smog negates the scientific validity of the finds.”

350

In 2002 there were almost twelve thousand vehicles on Highway 111. The Department of Transportation expected that number to double in the next twenty years.

351

“ ‘Things are moving very rapidly,’ said Oscar Rodriguez, the city’s director of economic development. ‘There is a significant amount of economic development underway,’ he said.”

352

Dashiell Hammett, 1924: “You hear now and then of detectives who have not become callous, who have not lost what you might call the human touch. I always feel sorry for them . . .”

353

When the connections are good. It sometimes takes eighteen or longer.

354

For example, George Wharton James in his opus of 1911 reins it in by San Gorgonio Pass to the northwest, Mounts San Gorgonio and San Jacinto to the northeast, the line between San Bernardino and Riverside counties as the northern boundary generally, the Colorado River to the east, the Mexican border to the south, and the San Jacinto range to the west. “That it extends beyond the Colorado River into Arizona, and also below the boundary line into Mexico, all are well aware, but I shall practically ignore these extensions in the following pages.” A botanist proposes that the Colorado Desert is really a representative subset of the Sonoran Desert.

355

Scientists gave it this awkward name to distinguish it from the Valley Lower Sonoran Life Zone northwestward of it.

356

There are place-scraps of pseudo-Imperial to be found as far north as Sacramento: worn, flat sandy patches at the railroad yards, freckled by low grey grass; and over here’s a freeway; the sky’s hot and pale; by all means, I say to myself, this could be Imperial; but then when I’m back in Imperial itself, where everything is so much hotter and brighter, I realize how weakly my memory can hold an image, so that even a watered-down (literally, for Sacramento has two rivers), cooler, generally diminished approximation convinces me.

357

As it happens, every part of the U.S. sector of Imperial lies within the former San Diego County, which included all of the present Imperial County, almost all of the counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, and some of Inyo County.

358

The word “American” excites considerable exasperation on the part of Mexicans, Canadians and other inhabitants of the American continent. Unfortunately, we have no other term for ourselves which is not either pedantic or rude.

359

Nor does anybody else. José López from Jalisco believed that the Mexicali Valley extended “all the way to San Luis Colorado,” but he didn’t know how far south it went. José the crackhead from Mexicali claimed the entire Baja Pensinsula. Nor were their delineations the only ones.

360

Here is a mid-nineteenth-century observer’s description of that water: “Near the mouth of the Rio Colorado . . . a wild and somewhat interesting scene opens . . . The general aspect, however, is far from pleasing. There is such a vastness of monotonous desolation; so dry, so blistered with volcanic fires; so forbidding to the wants of thirsting and hungering men; that one gladly turns his eye upon the water, the
mar de Cortez . . .
”

361

Since writing this, I picked up a book called
Salt Dreams
and found it devoted to exactly the same territory, excluding only the border strip to the Pacific. The entity I call Imperial coheres within more gazes than mine.

362

Whether or not this is the actual publisher is unclear. It appears on both the front cover and the spine, but in each case as a caption to the coat of arms of Mexicali.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Epigraph

Dedication

PART ONE - INTRODUCTIONS

Chapter 1 - THE GARDENS OF PARADISE (1999)

Chapter 2 - DELINEATIONS (2000)

Chapter 3 - THE WATER OF LIFE (2001)

Chapter 4 - SUBDELINEATIONS: LOVESCAPES (2001)

Chapter 5 - THE WIDEMOUTHED PIPE (2002)

Chapter 6 - THEN AND NOW (1844-2002)

Chapter 7 - THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DITCH (1519-2005)