Mexico, America, and the Continental Divide
Charles Rappleye
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I’m sitting at the bar in a Depression-era saloon on a slightly seedy commercial strip in Pomona, California. The town is bathed in the harsh glare of an autumn sun, but in here it’s dim and cool, the light muted by heavy curtains and brick walls and polished mahogany. You can hear the muffled click of billiard balls from the pool tables that line the rear of the room. It’s the sort of atmosphere that lends itself to reminiscence, and my old friend Mark Cromer is doing just that.
Mark is unusual in this day and age, and in Southern California especially, because he’s spent all of his life, save a few years of college, in the town of his birth. His grandmother worked behind this very bar, Mark is telling me. His dad used to drink here. “When I was a little kid we would drive by here and he would point it out.” The place is practically a Cromer tradition.
But we’re not dwelling on family history. I’ve asked Mark to spend the afternoon showing me around Pomona and explaining how its evolution has shaped his own. It’s not a distant leap to make: Mark is convinced that illegal immigration has ruined the town he loves. And earlier this year, Mark set aside his business as a private investigator and occasional journalist—the latter being the career he pursued for most of his working life—to take a gig as a writer for an outfit called Californians for Population Stabilization. CAPS was founded in 1986 to promote population control as an answer to environmental degradation, and counts among its early supporters David Brower, the late, charismatic leader of the Sierra Club. In recent years, CAPS has made immigration the primary target in its drive “to preserve a good quality of life for all Californians.”
