The Great
Depression
and
Repatriation,
1929-1941
Migrant Cotton Worker, California, 1936
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.
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?
The Great Depression
Access to Relief & New Deal
Programs
The Repatriation
Repatriation or Deportation?
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.
Labor Organizing
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.
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.