t**x
发帖数: 20965 | 1 With a scarcity of jobs during the Depression, more than a million people of
Mexican descent were sent to Mexico. Author Francisco Balderrama estimates
that 60 percent were American citizens.
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/10/439114563/americas-forgotten-history-of-mexican-american-repatriation
Now, there was the development of a deportation desk from LA County relief
agencies going out and recruiting Mexicans to go to Mexico. And they called
it the deportation desk. Now, LA legal counsel says you can't do that. That'
s the responsibility, that's the duty of the federal government. So they
backed up and said, well, we're not going to call it deportation. We're
going to call it repatriation. And repatriation carries connotations that it
's voluntary, that people are making their own decision without pressure to
return to the country of their nationality. But most obviously, how
voluntary is it if you have deportation raids by the federal government
during the Hoover administration and people are disappearing on the streets?
How voluntary is it if you have county agents knocking on people's doors
telling people oh, you would be better off in Mexico and here are your train
tickets? You should be ready to go in two weeks. So... | t**x
发帖数: 20965 | 2 I'm thinking of the case of Ignacio Pena (ph). And Ignacio lived in the
area of Idaho. And his family was about to sit down to have breakfast. And
the sheriffs came to the house. They took everybody in custody, and they
were told that they could only leave with the clothes that were on their
back. They could not bring any of their personal belongings, and they were
placed in a jail. His father was working out in the fields, and he was also
placed in a jail. They stayed in that jail - he with his mother and his
brothers and sisters in one cell and his father in a separate part of the
jail. They were placed on trains after a week, and then they were shipped to
Mexico. They never were able to recover their personal belongings, even
though they were told that those belongings were - would be shipped to them.
And among those belongings was a documentation of his father having worked
in the United States for over 25 years. Among those belongings was his and
his sisters' and his brothers' birth certificates, having been born in the
United States. | t**x
发帖数: 20965 | 3 BALDERRAMA: It took various forms, but the most common way was by trains. So
we had the organizing of trains from across the country to ship Mexicans.
There were also uses of buses. And many people just put their belongings in
their cars, if they had an automobile, or maybe got a truck. And groups of
families got together. And whether it be from Detroit or whether from
Chicago or from Los Angeles, they began the ride to the border. Some
counties were so thorough in their attempts that they not just recruited
individuals that were on relief, but rather any of them that were receiving
any type of assistance in terms of medical care. In Los Angeles County,
there is rich documentation talking about individuals that are taken from
the county hospital, taken from tuberculosis sanitariums, loaded on trucks
and driven to the border. So they were very thorough in these attempts.
the Mexican nationals were returning to places they hadn't seen for 20, 25
years or so. It was a different Mexico. The Mexican government also made
promises about support and aid and colonization projects etc., etc. They
were grand promises. They were great promises, but there wasn't the support.
There wasn't the resources of a Mexico that had just experienced the
revolution to help these people adjust. One other factor which I would like
to mention is the majority of the population - over 60 percent - being U.S.
citizens of Mexican descent. For them, they were coming to a foreign country. | t**x
发帖数: 20965 | 4 BALDERRAMA: Well, I'd like to focus on LA County here. Here the Board of
Supervisors were very, very supportive of repatriation, and as we entered
the 1940s, there was a big proposal because they found that it was harder
and harder to fill the trains and that some people are coming back. And so
they have a proposal, they - at this moment, they are providing
transportation not just to the border but into the interior. They now want
to provide settlement checks for a couple of months for Mexicans in Mexico.
They want to help them establish themselves so they don't come back. And one
of the LA County Board of Supervisors, John Anson Ford, who is a liberal on
this conservative board, a Democrat new dealer, has the task - he supported
this - to go Mexico and to inform the Mexican government about what LA
County is doing. Once again, LA County acting like a sovereign state - LA
County negotiating directly and telling the embassy and then telling the
State Department about what it's doing. And so he's on the train, and Pearl
Harbor is bombed. He immediately returns, doesn't go to Mexico City, comes
back to LA. And the proposal dies because now the need is for Mexican
workers. |
|
