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The meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, is heavily dependent on production workers from one Mexican community. Not only has this plant developed a dependence on these immigrants, but the migrants, their families, and their home town have become economically and socially dependent on the plant. The result of this symbiotic relationship is the establishment of an unofficial "sister city" relationship between Marshalltown and Villachuato, Mexico. This article explores the emergence of this relationship and its consequences for both communities. It also explores some of the implications for the future of rural midwestern communities that depend on transnational migrant labor.
Key words: labor migration, immigration, transnational communities, Mexico, Iowa
?Que seria de Villachuato si no fuese por Marshalltown? (What would Villachuato be without Marshalltown?) Nada. (Nothing.)
Immigrant meatpacking worker in Marshalltown, Iowa
This paper examines the economic and human relationship between Marshalltown, Iowa, and Villachuato, Michoacan, Mexico. Marshalltown hosts a Swift pork packing plant that employs about 900 Mexican workers, and Villachuato supplies more than half of these employees. The plant would shut down without a continued supply of workers from this community-documented and undocumented-and the workers, their families, and their home town would suffer without the plant. How this symbiotic relationship works is the subject of this paper. We will address the consequences of this relationship not only for the workers and the plant, but also for Marshalltown as it comes to terms with its new role in the global labor market.
Marshalltown, Iowa, is a "new destination" community for Latino migrants in the United States (Grey and Woodrick, n.d.). It has joined a growing list of American towns that have attracted large influxes of immigrants and refugees with jobs in meatpacking plants. Anthropologists, geographers, and others have provided a rich literature on these communities. The list of these communities includes Garden City, Kansas (Broadway 1990; Stull et al. 1990; Stull 1990; Stull and Broadway 2001; Benson 1990; Grey 1990), Lexington, Nebraska (Gouveia and Stull 1995), and Storm Lake, Iowa (Grey 1995, 1996, 1997). Similar research has emerged about poultry plants and the carpet industry in the southern United States (Griffith 1995; Hernandez-Leon and Zuniga 2000).
In many respects, research in Marshalltown reinforces the literature on other meatpacking towns. Principally, the Marshalltown experience...