The Deported

During the 1930s, a little known event known as Mexican Repatriation expelled between 500,000 and two million Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals to ease unemployment for white Americans. Brian talks to scholars Christine Valenciana and Francisco Balderrama.

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Brian Balogh: I don’t need to tell you that the debate about foreign labor, putting pressure on American jobs and American workers is very much in the news. But did you know that in the 1930s between 500,000 and 2 million Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals were expelled from the US? It was known as the Mexican repatriation, and it was intended to ease unemployment for white Americans.

Brian Balogh: There was never a coordinated program or top down mandate from President Hoover or Roosevelt to expel people of Mexican descent, but the White House did set the tone by staging raids across the country to deport Mexican American families. In 2016, Ed spoke to Francisco Balderrama to find out more about how these repatriation programs worked.

Francisco B.: This expulsion of Mexican nationals and American citizens of Mexican descent is done frequently because of the argument there’s not enough jobs, that jobs were for real Americans.

Ed Ayers: Balderrama says that Mexican nationals were targeted because they were one of the more recent immigrant groups to arrive at the start of the 20th century.

Francisco B.: And the key thing to keep in mind that in more prosperous times, particularly the Roaring 1920s, Mexican workers were regarded as essential. But now with the Great Depression, they are regarded as foreign, they’re regarded as unwanted, they are regarded as they’re not supposed to be here.

Ed Ayers: The private sector also tried to get Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans to leave the country. In some cases, businesses would simply refuse to hire Mexican workers.

Francisco B.: At the same time, we have private businesses, we have US Steel, Southern Pacific Railroad, that are telling their Mexican workers, You would be better off in Mexico, and providing them with transportation to the border and to Mexico.

Ed Ayers: Anti-Mexican sentiment was so pervasive that it even trickled down to local governments. Balderrama says Los Angeles County is a perfect example.

Francisco B.: And it’s important to focus on LA County, because it had the largest concentration of Mexican nationals and American citizens of Mexican descent at that historical moment. And it became kind of the model about how to do this elsewhere in the country.

Christine V.: This is an interview with Mrs. Amelia Valenciana.

Francisco B.: Christine Valenciana has spent the past four decades collecting stories of those affected by this depression era repatriation, including her mother’s.

Christine V.: Okay, Mama, why don’t you start by telling me where you’re from, first.

Amelia V.: Los Angeles, California.

Christine V.: When were you born?

Amelia V.: April 10, 1926.

Ed Ayers: Valenciana recorded this interview back in 1971. It was part of a college oral history project. She collected the voices of people who’d been affected by LA County’s repatriation program.

Christine V.: My grandfather, [inaudible 00:12:55] Castanera, who had been here in Los Angeles since 1909, he was employed as a stone mason, brick layer, skilled craftsmen. And then there’s no work for him.

Amelia V.: You know that he was here. He was left in with a family, you know, couple of children to raise and no work, living off of welfare. We went to Mexico because my dad asked the county, he asked to be sent.

Christine V.: My mother was nine years old when this happened. She had never been to Mexico.

Amelia V.: Because my dad asked us who wanted to go with him. We told him yes, you know, that our place was with him. He was our father. We weren’t gonna be left here and be made wards of the state. That’s what we would have been, wards of the state. So we left with my father.

Christine V.: Mama, do you know if you’re sure if he has the county?

Amelia V.: He told me that he asked the county, that he wanted to be sent back to Mexico. So I guess, I guess they paid for our fare, Christine.

Ed Ayers: Many of Valenciana’s interviewees said the same thing. No one had forced them to go to Mexico. Rather, their families wanted to go back ,and they went of their own accord.

Christine V.: Perhaps listeners are going to say it’s voluntary. Well, that’s the easy way out. And that’s not really looking at the complexity of the problem. We’re really looking at human beings. I mean, I can’t believe that my grandfather, who had been here since 1909, had any intentions of ever returning to Mexico.

Ed Ayers: But she says Los Angeles County actively encouraged people to leave. One of the county officials who ran this program was Rex Thompson. He was the head of charities for Los Angeles County during the early 1930s. Valenciana interviewed him in the early 1970s. Thompson acknowledged that he weighed the costs of providing aid to a Mexican family versus sending them to Mexico.

Rex Thompson: Well, you had thousands of Mexican nationals who were out of work. A Mexican family were costing us $110 a month. I can remember those figures. We could ship them back and feed them well and decently by train for $74 a family.

Francisco B.: You know, there was a campaign to, you know, get Mexicans to be removed. And so the county agencies, they would send out people. They were recruiters, basically.

Rex Thompson: Social workers that were Americans of Mexican decent but naturally fluent in the language or that were Mexican national fluent in the language to go out, and I want to emphasize, offer repatriation to these people. Well, I’m glad to say that they were a proud people, and most of them didn’t want to be on relief.

Francisco B.: That interview is very important because it really is the voice and the thinking of the time of the policymakers, and the predominant voice that people think they’re doing something good. I mean, he really believed that what he did was the greatest humanitarian act that could have been done.

Ed Ayers: The reality was harsher. Balderrama says these social workers didn’t explain the full consequences of repatriation.

Francisco B.: According to American law, that if a county pays for your transportation to return to Mexico or to go to Mexico, then your stamped that you can’t reenter the country.

Christine V.: Well, in the case of my grandfather, his passport, and again, he had been here since 1909… stamp it deported. Well, he had no way to get back here.

Ed Ayers: Balderrama says that more than half of those who went to Mexico during the Great Depression were American citizens.

Francisco B.: Well, simply it’s unconstitutional because you cannot deport an American citizen from his or her country.

Ed Ayers: Many of them were children who’d never even been to Mexico.

Amelia V.: Because the kids, you know, used to pick on me because I was an American citizen. There are a lot of people who did discriminate against us because we were Americans. We didn’t belong there. I was in a strange… Now here, the Anglos discriminate against us because we’re Mexicans. So really where do we belong?

Ed Ayers: Valenciana his mother eventually made it back to the United States, but many others never returned to the land of their birth.

Francisco B.: It’s a lost generation. I mean, there are people that were lost in Mexico, people without the documentation. People that were denied, you know, their right to a life as an American.

Ed Ayers: It’s hard to know if these programs actually provided more jobs or relief for so-called real Americans. But Valenciana thinks that’s beside the point. If the government wants to ease unemployment, it should try to help all Americans.

Christine V.: In terms of unemployment, well, who has the right to be employed? Who has the right to make that determination?

Amelia V.: I feel that this country should have done something for their citizens instead of getting rid of them like the way they did.

Ed Ayers: Valencia is a Professor Emerita in Education at California State University, Fullerton. And Balderrama is Emeritas Professor at California State University, Los Angeles, and coauthor of Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Christine Valenciana and Francisco Balderrama helped us tell that story.