Waiting for José : the Minutemen's pursuit of America /

Univ. of Texas sociologist Shapira, a young ethnographer from Israel, discovered the US-Mexico border in Arizona and was clearly taken by the Minutemen, self-appointed vigilantes who patrol the border to look for illegal Mexicans. He tries so hard to capture who they are at the core that he ends up accepting too much at their word, including perpetuating the fundamentally racist construction of the Mexican immigrant as "Jose." Though urging readers not to readily accept the common stereotype that these so-called patriots are nativists and racists, Shapira still found himself characterizing them as "mostly old, working-class, white men who used to be in the military," mainly from the Midwest and South. But by asserting that they are drawn to the border less by negative beliefs about Mexicans than by "a sense of nostalgia for days long past when their lives had purpose and meaning ... ," he records their stubborn adherence to a white supremacist US that allegedly won wars throughout the world while keeping the US "safe." In the end, Shapira cannot entirely disabuse readers of the fundamentally racist and nativist world view of these aging vigilantes, thereby confirming much of the stereotype of right-wing fanatics after all. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. Hu-DeHart Brown University

Immigration reform is perhaps one of the most polarizing political issues today, and the role of the Minuteman Project, the citizen group patrolling the U.S. border in Arizona, anchors one of the poles. The key to understanding the Minutemen, according to Shapira (sociology, Univ. of Texas, Austin), is not found in any ideology but in discovering individual motivations. Shapira spent three years camping and patrolling with these men and women in an attempt to discover what would lead someone to give up weeks of their life to camp in the desert to monitor the border. What he discovers is not a group of vigilantes and racists as popularly depicted in news media (though such views certainly exist with some), but a group of mostly ex-military men looking to reclaim a vision of America and a meaning for their lives such as they had when they were soldiering. VERDICT This fascinating study is an honest, nuanced, and intimate look at not so much a movement but the people who make it happen. Shapira offers enough sociological theory to appeal to sociologists, but his stories of the Minutemen make this work appealing to all who want to understand the movement and immigration issues in general.-Michael C. Miller, Austin P.L. & Austin History Ctr., TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A blend of sociology and journalism informs this account of time spent among the self-professed guardians of the U.S.-Mexico border. As Shapira (Sociology/Univ. of Texas) recounts, the Minuteman movement has its origins in several events and forces, notably 9/11 and the widespread sense that the border was porous, unsecured and swarming with enemies of America. Into this stepped the central character of Shapira's piece, Chris Simcox, who retreated into the Arizona desert following 9/11 and, by his chronicle, was accosted by swarms of narcotraficantes and coyotes who left him with the conviction that he needed to found "a citizen's group whose aim would be to protect the borders of the United States from illegal invasion." Thus born of crisis, the Minuteman movement grew, though its numbers were always much smaller than the noise it made. Shapira argues that it is a mistake to view the movement as an ideological outgrowth of the right wing, even though most of its members would probably self-identify with the tea party or other rightist outliers; instead, he suggests, it is an expression of populism, if a vigilantist one. If its members have a commonality, it is that most of them are old: "It is not their ideology that leads them to establish their camp," he writes, "it is their age." Shapira, who spent considerable time in those desert camps along the Arizona border, where Minutemen sat in lawn chairs with rifles to hold back the tide, notes that the movement has disintegrated as Simcox moved to the tony town of Scottsdale, married well and ran for political office, tacking to the right of John McCain on the immigration issue--and bewildering his followers by the bald fact that "he is no longer a Minuteman." A valuable look at the birth of a populist paramilitary formation, one whose opponents may not dismiss so easily after reading this evenhanded book.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.