The Great Depression and Repatriation, 1929-1941

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The Great Depression and Repatriation,1929-1941
Migrant Cotton Worker, California, 1936
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Major Themes

• Mexicans suffered from harsh economic conditions
  during the Great Depression, but they also
  endured a public narrative that defined them as
  undeserving of scarce jobs and public aid.
• Access to New Deal relief programs was difficult
  for many Mexican workers, though some did
  benefit.
• During the 1930s federal, state and local
  governments sent many Mexicans (both citizen and
  immigrant) to Mexico in order to reduce the
  number of people on relief.
• Some returned to Mexico voluntarily, but others
  were pressured to do so and some were deported.
• Labor organizing increased dramatically during
  this time period and Mexicans were active in
  forming their own unions and joining in
  interracial organizing efforts.
• Overall events of the 1930s fostered a greater
  emphasis in Mexican communities on a
  Mexican-American identity.

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Key Questions

• What New Deal programs excluded farm workers as a
  class?
• What is repatriation? How is it different from
  deportation?
• On the whole was The Repatriation voluntary or
  coerced?
• Were people born in the United States sent to
  Mexico as a result of repatriation efforts?
• What factors motivated the establishment of
  repatriation programs on the local level?
• Why did some Mexicans in Detroit want to
  repatriate while others did not?
• How did the Great Depression affect working
  conditions, wages and unionization?
• What impact did the Great Depression have on
  Mexican communities economic well-being and
  cultural identity?

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The Great Depression
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Access to Relief New Deal Programs
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The Repatriation
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Repatriation or Deportation?
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Repatriation in Michigan
From upper left in a clockwise direction Housing
for Mexican Sugar Beet Workers near Saginaw,
Michigan, preparing dinner in same housing (both
at the end of the Depression in 1941) and Diego
Rivera painting the Detroit Murals.
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Labor Organizing
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Effects of the Repatriation on Mexican
Communities
Mexican man working on irrigation in Eloy,
Arizona in 1940 who immigrated to the U.S. just
prior to the Great Depression and Mexican woman
protesting immigration law in California in 1941.

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Further Readings

• You can see video of the Memorial Day Massacre,
  and Guadalupe Marshall, at the following website
  http//vimeo.com/10637926 Actual video footage
  from the day begins around 4 minutes in.
• Arredondo, Gabriela F. Mexican Chicago Race,
  Identity, and Nation, 1916-39. Chicago
  University of Illinois Press, 2008.
• Balderrama, Francisco E. Decade of Betrayal
  Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque
  University of New Mexico Press, 2006.
• Blackwelder, Julia Kirk. Women of the Depression
  Caste and Culture in San Antonio, 1929-1939.
  College Station Texas A M University Press,
  1984.
• Guerin-Gonzales, Camille. Mexican Workers and
  American Dreams Immigration, Repatriation, and
  California Farm Labor, 1900-1939. New Brunswick,
  N.J Rutgers University Press, 1994.
• Latinas in the United States A Historical
  Encyclopedia. Bloomington Indiana University
  Press, 2006.
• Monroy, Douglas. Rebirth Mexican Los Angeles
  from the Great Migration to the Great Depression.
  Berkeley University of California Press, 1999.
• Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects Illegal Aliens
  and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, N.J
  Princeton University Press, 2004.
• Vargas, Zaragosa. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights
  Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century
  America. Princeton, N.J Princeton University
  Press, 2005.
• . Proletarians of the North A History of
  Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the
  Midwest, 1917-1933. Berkeley University of
  California Press, 1993.