This month Silas Palmer fellow Michael D. Aguirre visited Hoover to undertake the herculean task of opening more than eighty-eight boxes from the Victor V. Vesey papers. Vesey, a California legislator from 1971-74, is central to Aguirre's book project, which focuses on the relationship between industrial agriculture and maquiladoras in the eastern California borderlands during the 1960s and 1970s. By reading Vesey's correspondence with constituents and labor leaders, Aguirre was able to better understand the agriculture, labor, and energy policies that shaped California in the late twentieth century.
