Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of anti-gay bias and eating disorders.

Rigoberto González comes from a family of Mexican American or Chicano migrant laborers who travel back and forth across the US–Mexico border frequently. González’s family, like so many others, is an essential part of the agricultural economy in the United States, particularly in California and Texas, and has been since the early 1900s (“A Growing Community.” Library of Congress). These workers, as described in the book, spend the growing and harvesting season living in camps in the United States near the fields before returning to Mexico with their earnings. They live precariously, as many of them are undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation from the United States. Chicano migrant agricultural workers are essential to food production, but they do not often see its benefits since high-quality crops are sent to wealthy markets and the workers are poorly paid.

In Butterfly Boy, González recounts how his mother participated in the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The UFW, led by César Chávez, organized marches and boycotts to improve the pay and working conditions of migrant Chicano agricultural workers in the United States.

Despite the UFW movement, labor conditions for Chicano workers in the United States and Mexico remain precarious, up to and including the time period González writes about—the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. González documents how his family experienced periods of extreme poverty. At times during his childhood, they lived in cramped housing with as many as 18 people in a four-room house, went to bed hungry, and worked long hours in fields or factories. The physically taxing work picking crops leads González’s mother, who was born with a heart condition, to die at a young age. Many members of González’s family are barely literate because they left school at a very young age to support their family by working in agriculture. González is able to leave this environment behind by attending the University of California at Riverside.