Repatriation Movement
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Between 1931 and 1934, over 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans, more than one third of the United States Mexican population, were deported or "voluntarily repatriated" to Mexico. The majority of them were American citizens.
During the Great Depression, Mexicans were viewed as a burden on social services such as relief aid and usurpers of American jobs. This sentiment coupled with a eugenicist concept of "undesirable" races to bring about the deportations. The Immigration and Naturalization Service targeted Mexicans because of "the proximity of the Mexican border, the physical distinctiveness of mestizos, and easily identifiable barrios."
Many who weren't forcibly deported opted to leave of their own volition in light of the anti-Mexican climate. Still others were coerced by social workers who exaggerated the economic opportunities in Mexico. Accumulating in border towns such as Ciudad Juárez, deportees and those who had voluntarily repatriated found few resources. The New York Times published an article on the death of 20 recently-repatriated Mexicans who had been living in an open corral from illness and exposure.
Further reading
- Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s
- Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929-1939 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974).
References
External links
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