Postville Project Documents
This is a collection of documents from the Postville Project collection.
The Postville Project is an initiative to preserve and exhibit the media and stories surrounding the 2008 immigration raid and the memories of the Postville, Iowa community before, during, and after that event. The collections in this project include news articles, photographs, personal papers, federal court documents, and much more. This is a collaborative effort between the University of Northern Iowa Rod Library and the Luther College Archives.
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Carne viva in Postville: Stories of Madres and Monarchs
Jennifer Cooley and Karen Mitchell
Carne viva are two words in Spanish that together can be translated various ways. Taken literally, they refer to live flesh, like an open wound. In this way they can allude to the slow process of recovery after a traumatic event. The words draw up images of enduring pain. In addition, they can be read to refer to fresh meat and in the context of human relations, to the image of a new conquest. They can also draw our thoughts to the context of a slaughterhouse, where working conditions involve constant contact with carcasses and blood, and the value of human life is not superior to the lives of the animals processed on the line; both cattle and humans are vehicles for profit. Finally, the words refer to human beings with vibrant lives whose stories will be told as this performance unfolds.
On May 12, 2008, approximately 900 police agents (federal, state and local authorities, helicopter pilots, and others) were on the ground in Postville, Iowa to stage what was at the time the largest workplace immigration raid in U.S. history. Given that the total population of Postville was just over 2,000, there was nearly one agent for every two Postville residents. By the end of the day, 389 workers had been detained at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant. Most detainees were herded into buses and transported to the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, where they were caged in the very stalls that were typically reserved for cattle and hogs, and then “fast-tracked” in legal proceedings that, like the raid itself, were unique to U.S. history. Such legal proceedings have since been declared unconstitutional. Some of the detained workers, primarily women, were released by the evening of May 12. They were tagged with GPS tracking devices, given a 5-mile radius as a limit to their mobility, and told that they could not work and could not leave the delimited area, but were “free” to care for their children.
The events represented in Carne viva occur over the course of 5 months, from May 12, 2008 to Oct. 12, 2008. These months correspond to the sentences laid out for the majority of detained workers at Agriprocessors. These were traumatic days both in Postville and in Guatemala, in villages dotted across the Western Highlands that sent workers to the plant. The detained spouses and significant others of many Guatemalan women in Postville were the process of being deported, but the women often had no idea in what jail or even in what state prisoners were housed. During those five months family members in Guatemala would have no source of income from remittances and little or no word about the status of their loved ones and their possible return.
![First Anniversary of the Postville Raid [flyer]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1307/thumbnail.jpg "First Anniversary of the Postville Raid [flyer]")
![La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [flyer]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1304/thumbnail.jpg "La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [flyer]")
![La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [news release]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1306/thumbnail.jpg "La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [news release]")
![La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [program]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1305/thumbnail.jpg "La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [program]")
![La Redada Migratoria de Postville 5 Años Después [poster]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1309/thumbnail.jpg "La Redada Migratoria de Postville 5 Años Después [poster]")
![Postville Immigration Raid 5 Years Later [poster - version 2]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1308/thumbnail.jpg "Postville Immigration Raid 5 Years Later [poster - version 2]")
![Letters to the Editor [Carole S. Gauger)]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1185/thumbnail.jpg "Letters to the Editor [Carole S. Gauger)]")
![Letters to the Editor [Dorothy Paulsen]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1184/thumbnail.jpg "Letters to the Editor [Dorothy Paulsen]")
![Letter to the Editor [Amy Tamar Dickel]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1139/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Amy Tamar Dickel]")
![Letter to the Editor [Becky Monroe]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1140/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Becky Monroe]")
![Letter to the Editor [Cami Hanson]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1141/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Cami Hanson]")
![Letter to the Editor [Dale Siems]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1142/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Dale Siems]")
![Letter to the Editor [David Cavagnaro]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1143/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [David Cavagnaro]")
![Letter to the Editor [Herman Lenz] 1](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1144/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Herman Lenz] 1")
![Letter to the Editor [Herman Lenz] 2](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1145/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Herman Lenz] 2")
![Letter to the Editor [Jayn Brotman]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1189/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Jayn Brotman]")
![Letter to the Editor [Jody Mitchell]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1146/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Jody Mitchell]")
![Letter to the Editor [Karen Heins]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1148/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Karen Heins]")
![Letter to the Editor [Ken Weston] 1](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1149/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Ken Weston] 1")
![Letter to the Editor [Ken Weston] 2](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1150/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Ken Weston] 2")
![Letter to the Editor [Ken Weston] 3](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1151/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Ken Weston] 3")
![Letter to the Editor [K. Weston]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1188/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [K. Weston]")
![Letter to the Editor [K. Weston]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1147/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [K. Weston]")
![Letter to the Editor [Lewis Regenstein]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1187/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Lewis Regenstein]")
![Letter to the Editor [Lori Egan]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1152/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Lori Egan]")
![Letter to the Editor [Rachel Vega and Zulema Medina]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1153/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Rachel Vega and Zulema Medina]")
![Letter to the Editor [Rev. Michael S. Mulberry ]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1186/thumbnail.jpg "Letter to the Editor [Rev. Michael S. Mulberry ]")
![Postville Immigration Raid 5 Years Later [poster - version 1]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1205/thumbnail.jpg "Postville Immigration Raid 5 Years Later [poster - version 1]")
![La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [poster]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1314/thumbnail.jpg "La Historia de Nuestras Vidas (The Story of Our Lives) [poster]")
![Postville: Past, Present and Future Conference [flyer]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1310/thumbnail.jpg "Postville: Past, Present and Future Conference [flyer]")
![Postville: Past, Present and Future [poster]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1313/thumbnail.jpg "Postville: Past, Present and Future [poster]")
![UNI to Host Postville Conference / Teach-In [news release]](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1311/thumbnail.jpg "UNI to Host Postville Conference / Teach-In [news release]")
![Events Analyze 2008 Raid in Postville [Northern Iowan article] by Rachel Zidon](https://scholarworks.uni.edu/postville_documents/1312/thumbnail.jpg "Events Analyze 2008 Raid in Postville [Northern Iowan article] by Rachel Zidon")
