There is a curious thing that our history books conveniently left out when talking about the decimation caused by the Boll Weevil to the Southern Cotton Crops. Namely, it is that while the Weevils infested the South and did a lot of damage, the South actually got richer from this. To be clear, sharecroppers, workers and wage slaves were the ones ‘decimated’ by the slim pickings but Cotton Kings got richer. This happened in Texas in the 1890s and when the Boll Weevils spread to much of the South in the 1920s, Plantation owners simply raised their prices.
The odd consequences were that, in the South, Blacks were blamed for the downturn of local economies, being forced to move away and spendong much less in rural areas that depend on workers wages to fuel the economy. In the North, Cotton prices controlled the garment industry and rampant inflation was also blamed on Blacks who were migrating North to find work. The myth that they were taking White jobs created a secondary consequence and that is that this migration was bringing rapists, thieves and job stealers across the Mason Dixon Line.
THE RISE OF THE SECOND KLAN
That picture from 1925 is not a Southern Klan parade but 15,000 Klan members gathered in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The once defunct Klan sprang up on both sides of the line marching against Blacks and Catholics (Polish and Lithuanians in my town) and, ironically dressed pointy head to toe in cotton.
When the eradication of the cotton pest began in earnest (initially with arsenic) the crops recovered until Weevils became resistant and eventually DDT was being used by mid-century.
But I digress…
My main points here is that while the South actually benefitted from the decimation, it was only the Southern Oligarchs and a chain reaction of the loss of jobs, economic micro collapses, rampant inflation and Black migration that fueled the Second Rise of the Ku Klux Klan. And the rich got richer whether it was Cotton Moguls or Northern Manufacturers.
THE NEW WEEVILS
My premise that I momentarily strayed from is this: Weevils (Boll and otherwise) control US Elections. Stick with me… As you can see, the spread of the Boll Weevil exemplified the area of the country known as ‘The South’. also called ‘The Land of Cotton’. In 1922 it was the source of cheap labor that sent Black Workers to the manufacturing hubs of the North in wave after wave of migration prompted by successive economic collapses of Cotton in the South. Weevils…
The New Weevil was the birth of ‘Right to Work’ laws that brought modern manufacturing jobs outside the Weevil zone into the agricultural South. This equated to the South becoming inundated with cheap labor from the North and a sea change in the once rural (and red) Weevil Zone. If you look at a map, you see that those states aligned to what would be expected in a Presidential Election.
Economic Prosperity was being brought back by foreign investment and the decimation of manufacturing Giants Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states we now call ‘the Battleground States’ or ‘Swing States, because the loss of jobs and economic prosperity made many turn to the GOP for salvation. One that never came…
In 2008, the predicted ‘electoral map’ followed the Weevil South Map paired with the ‘Heartland’ Plains States also becoming Manufacturng and Food Processing Hubs. Meaning that cattle no longer went to ports like Chicago. Mitt Romney’s and John McCain’s successive path to victory was assured as the ‘Right to Work’ migrated economic improvements as they decimated states like Pennsylvania and Michigan who would be forced to follow suit.
You would think that this would spell the end for Obama but look at this map… This is what actually happened:
THE REAL ‘THIN BLUE LINE’…
Instead of giving up the South, Obama took his idea that a state can be divided into Urban/Suburban clusters and Black Belts that could be mined for popular votes and ran with it on a national scale. Or bussed with it… The South (if it were a state) would have an East to West Crescent for a Belt and Obama hopped on a bus and toured the blue counties that he eventually won in the South.
Black Population density was so dense in 2008 because of retro migration that, while the states in the crescent were in no danger of turning blue, the GOP was forced to fight a war in their home territories and not just the swing States. While Trump successfully overcame this, it was largely because Hillary was not into bus tours, the South or the Heartland. But Obama followed the Black Belt and turned many states pink in the process.
This bus tour path is the traditional Cotton Belt Crescent that is a wash of thick black dirt brought down by glaciers. The modern glaciers pushing the rich Black earth of economic power brought by populations returning to the crescent to build cars and electronics instead of bales of cotton brought Obama and his bus to get out the vote and while this was not enough to make the South Blue, it forced the GOP to fight a two front war and it is the same path that Jim Clyburn carved for Joe Biden to win the primaries and, eventually, the record popular vote. A record vote that beat Obama’s historic race.
THE BROWN BELT
In my last post, ( Understanding the Obama/Alabama Strategy) I showed how young Black Women 18-29 registered to vote at a whopping 175.8% over four years ago. That using this strategy, this is the most desirable demographic, especially if you are running on a Reproductive Rights flag ship. But even more astounding was this same demographic amongst Hispano/Latinx Women 18-29 clocked in at 148.7% over 2020. If you imagine a strategy that traditionally mined Black and Brown votes by going to major cities. Obama recognized that a ‘Brown Belt’ ran a long the Rio Grande and took his own ‘border crisis’ head on while garnering significant popular votes along the densely populated Rio Grande into the Pacific.
Obama was so confident of his Black Belt Strategy that he took his GroundForce One campaign bus confidently along the Rio Grande ignoring the politicians and pundits that insisted his path to victory was in the Midwest ‘Swing’ states. In hindsight, we see that Obama, especially in 2012 had a valid ‘path to victory’ if he flipped BorderLand States along the BorderLands.
SEE NO WEEVIL
If you were to follow my “Axis of Weevil’ theory like Obama did, we see that the Weevil entered the country through Brownsville Texas in 1892 and spread throughout the ‘Cotton Belt’ until eradicated by pesticides and early cultivar hybrids in the 1920s. But if racial tensions between Blacks and Whites are a marker (read ‘wedge issue) of the Deep South, we have to also admit that a similar ‘wedge’ exists along the Rio Grande.
Because the Boll Weevil is named after its predilection for Cotton ‘Bolls’, we assumed that it was eradicated. But in the 1970’s as we began to assess population growth amongst what they called ‘minoroties’ then, Republican strategists like the infamous Lee Atwater, began to realize that Black and Brown Populations would not be minority populations for long.
Our Boll Weevil, not seen in the Cotton for many decades had, instead developed a new taste for citrus fruits, cactus and other crops along the Rio Grande into California. Our new (post 1970) Boll Weevil Map now follows the Brown Belt Map above. Republicans realize this and that is why they stoke White hatred to depress Brown and Black votes while using Racism and Fear to polarize White votes to their party.
To compound the problem, the Palm and Palmetto Weevils are now crossing into the BorderLands along the Rio from South America much like their human asylum seeking counterparts who are streaming in at an alarming thousands per day rate, overtaking Mexican Boll Weevil.
If we follow my ‘Axes of Weevils’ Theory then, we must now follow the Brown Belt like Obama did to win the election in 2024, while also paying attention to the Northern ‘Swing States’.
WHY IS THIS TRUE? MATAMOROS & BROWNSVILLE
By now you may have assessed that this is all a series of metaphors. But they are true metaphors and endemic of the two polarizing issues that the GOP has consistently raised under different guises. Namely, Black People and Brown People. Whether you call it Retromigration or Illegal Immigration, it is, at it’s roots, Good Ole American Racism, fueled by the fear of losing the Majority and the Privilege it has provided since Columbus first set foot on this continent and began raping and pillaging without any political parties to make a big deal out of it.
I have one more metaphor. The 1892 epicenter of the Cotton Boll Weevil infestation began at a place called ‘Brownsville’ named after a Major famously executed by a Mexican Firing Squad and forming a sort of ‘Remember…’ Brownsville Battle cry that endures in the hatred and fear of ‘Brown’ Hispano/Latinx people to this day. Brownsville was in fact called ‘The Backdoor to the Conferacy’ and famously held out until May 13, with the very last battle of the Civil War just before ‘Juneteenth’ in 1865.
But if the Animus to Brown People began in the Mexican/American ‘War of Seccession’ than hatred towards blacks began even earlier. In fact, the town was originally called Matamoros, literally ‘Killer of Moors’ named after St. James who apparently killed 60,000 Saracens or Blackamoors. This is how the story goes…
“…In 844, a generation after the discovery of the tomb of Saint James at Compostela, the caliph of Cordoba, Abd al-Rahman ordered a punitive raid on the Christians of the north. The Christian king Ramiro 1st met the large Saracen army on the plain below the castle at Clavijo.
In a dream before the battle, Saint James appeared to Ramiro, predicting his victory. During the course of the ensuing battle a figure on a white horse was seen leading the Christian charge. It was the Apostle himself.
Henceforth, Saint James made visionary appearances during the great battle of the Reconquista leading the Christian forces to victory…”
It is no accident that Brownsville was the last holdout. While the whole of the South suffered, Brownsville became rich and was a principal port of entry and export smuggling goods to bypass the Union Embargo and profiteer from the Civil War shortage of Cotton. And as Brownville exported to the outside world in defiance of the Union, it also imported from the World…
THE THIRD ‘AXES’
Matamoros and then Brownsville became the pivotal axis of both the Brown Belt and the Black Belt. And, therefore Texas is the overvlap of this Venn Diagram of my Axes of Weevils Strategy. If you add the invasion of foreigners from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, you get a third set of Axes bringing Asians, Muslims, Africans and other undesirables that enter across the Rio and ports of entry like Los Angeles and Brownsville the two axes points of the Red Palm Weevil infestation.
This, then, becomes the third and final foremost ‘wedge issue’ the GOP uses to stoke fear. You remember ‘the Caravan’ that was a stream of asylum seekers coming from the Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. This new ‘weevil’ like the others is based on a slim line of fact and a shitload of fear mongering false narratives.
Black People, Brown People, and Foregn People are the Three Evils that the GOP use to scare and attract White Voters. They are also the key to Democratic Victory. They are not so much Predatory Villains as they are Potential Voters. There is precious little proof that any of the anecdotal hate tropes that Trump spews is even remotely true. But targeting Foreigners, Blacks and Hispano/Latinx is calculated because of their voting strength if motivated often voting double their white counterparts, and dragging White Women Allies everywhere they appear but especially along these Axes in addition to Urban/Suburban Port Cities, the Traditional Hunting Ground of Democrats.
T
NECESSARY WEEVIL
Okay, I lied, one (maybe two) more metaphor(s)… As it turns out, many Weevils have a niche and necessary place and part in the ecosystems of the ‘New South’ delineated by the overlap of the Brown and Black Belt. They can be controlled, not with poisonous poisons but with pheromones. Attractants rather than Repellants . They can be bred to be beneficial and do things like increase fruit and grain size.
They are reliable controllers of invasive weeds like thistles and are prolific pollinators. The introduction of the Elaedobius kamerunicus weevil from Africa increases fruit set, kernel size, and bunch size of palms that produce oil. Weevils have been introduced to unclog waterways and increase fishing habitats.
Aotearoa New Zealand has around 1500 native species of weevil and these play an important role in the NZ ecosystem including the largest so-called Speargrass Beetle over an inch long.
The point of this metaphor is to say that a) they are coming and b) they are not what you have been told. In fact, they are a natural and necessary part of the ecosystem and no more (or less) invasive than the Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, German, and British were. Black, Brown and Foreign Peoples made the Cotton Belt possible and all the abundance of the Borderlands, especially California. As we see in California, the vitality and necessity of these Diverse and fastest growing elements of our society are necessary as is the very Diversity they bring into these systems. GOP signal to us our strength by what they seek to demonize be they Black, Brown, Foreign or paradigms that would include them like DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) initiatives, voter registration and, most powerfully, the Reproductive and Privacy Rights that are most important to the people that the GOP wish to Dimnish, Eliminate & Exclude.
If we focus on what the fears of the GOP are, we see that these three axes and what they represent. If we use that as a roadmap for the points of entry and belts that equate to a third of the electorate voting at a much higher percentage than their White counterparts, the value of the Obama Strategy becomes clear. When we further level the notion that this election is about women, we see that our own fears of losing our Rights and living in a Dystopian Project 2025/Agenda 47 Nightmare will prompt Women of the Axes to vote at record and unprecedented levels.
And we have to fight. And we have to win… The little digression I had about the rise of the Klan in 1925, is about to happen again. Only worse. Women who got the Vote in 1920, were not numerous and registered enough to stop the onslaught of Nationalism, Xenophopia and Misogyny that was about to occur then. The Hate Groups that followed Trump into the capitol have all but scattered but are reforming under different names and ‘clubs’. January 6th Insurrection was an inflection point and many believe that the November 5th Election is an Existential Crises and Emergency.
The national Academy of Natural Sciences has been collecting Weevils for well over a century and they collected the Weevil below. It has concentrations of Blue at each end and Black Belts in the more green fields. They don’t know why it has evolved this coloring. According to the Academy’s collections manager Jason Weintraub, “I am not sure what the adaptive significance of the coloration is in the case of this weevil. We simply don’t know enough about the biology of these insects to venture a guess!
I am going to venture a guess. It’s a Weevil metaphor. In times of Existential Crises, many species of Weevils become all female. They don’t even need males to Reproduce. Their usually protective and camouflaging dark colors are no longer necessary and it is more necessary to call to other females to swarm and warn predators that they are poisonous and will defend themselves and their unique Reproductive Rights.
Maybe, I’m projecting a little. But you get the point. By the way, this beetle doesn’t have a name yet…
How about a Bluenami…?
I haven't read the entire article yet, but WOW! I am from the GR area as well. The photo of the KKK march there . . . I must say that in my grandparents' day, I do believe that things like that were going on, just based on what my grandmother told me. They listened to Father Coughlin on the radio! I can't even imagine, but I had to get away from the remnants of that and I'm just thankful that today, well, we know too much! Not going backwards! Thank you!