The Business of Borders
Feinberg Series Panel with Aviva Chomsky, Julio Flores and Cecilia Guerrero
Moderated by Kevin Young, Associate Professor, UMass Amherst History Department
Corporations have played major roles in shaping US immigration laws. Some capitalists, such as weapons makers, surveillance, and private prison companies, profit directly from anti-immigrant policies. Others have a more complex position, needing workers but wanting to limit their rights. Policies toward immigrants go hand in hand with imperial intervention abroad, with roots in centuries of colonization and displacement. Even as capitalists and governments have insisted on a “strong border,” they have selectively ignored national borders when laying claim to foreign resources, labor, and markets. Panelists will illuminate the relationship between national borders, capitalist profits, and workers’ well-being while suggesting pathways for worker resistance.
View full details and register on the Feinberg Series website
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Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University. Her research focuses on labor history, immigration and undocumentedness, Central America, Cuba, and Colombia. Her forthcoming book, “Extractivism on the Periphery: Colombia’s Wild Northeast” examines the history of Indigenous peoples and globalization from one region’s perspective. Other publications include Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration (2021); Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (2014), A History of the Cuban Revolution (2011, 2nd ed. 2015), Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class (2008), They Take Our Jobs! And 20 Other Myths About Immigration (2007), and West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870—1940 (1995). She has been active in immigrant, Latin America, and Palestine solidarity since the 1980s.
Julio Flores is a former leader of the Salvadoran teachers’ union, ANDES 21 de Junio, and of several organizations in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Bloque Popular Revolucionario (Popular Revolutionary Bloc), the Coordinadora Revolucionaria de Masas (Revolutionary Mass Coordinating Council), and the Frente Democrático Revolucionario (Democratic Revolutionary Front). He lived and organized in the US from 1991 to 2015. More recently, he co-founded the Escuela Política para un Nuevo Proyecto (School for a New Political Project) and is currently a political and social organizer in El Salvador.
Cecilia Guerrero is the chair and founder of A Luta Sigue, an organization that identifies working-class leaders and supports them in building organizations, with the overarching mission of instilling a working-class identity through education and class struggle. Through A Luta Sigue, she has supported groups including the Tennessee Drivers Union, Poder Popular (Nashville People Power Committee), Southern Youth Solidarity Network, and the Workers’ Unity League. Guerrero is a third-generation organizer from Northern Mexico, raised in a family of steelworkers. Organizing in the US for over a decade, she supports thousands of working-class people in labor, neighborhood, and immigration struggles.
The 2026-27 Feinberg Series
Escape from Oligarchy: The History and Future of Rule by the Rich
The 2026–27 Feinberg Series explores the global history of oligarchy and the popular movements that have resisted it. It is presented by the UMass Amherst Department of History in partnership with numerous co-sponsors. The Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible thanks to the generosity of UMass Amherst history department alumnus Kenneth R. Feinberg ’67 and associates. Read more.
Departmental (co)sponsorship of various types of events does not constitute an endorsement of the views expressed by the presenters, either at the events in question or in other venues. Rather, sponsorship is an endorsement of the exploration of complex and sometimes difficult topics. The UMass History Department is committed to promoting the free and peaceful exchange of ideas, one of the most important functions of the university.