Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:02:58.142Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Immigrant's Tale: The Mexican American Southwest 1850 to 1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2015

Brian Gratton  and
Emily Klancher Merchant
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent scholarship on Mexican Americans in the United States, relying largely on qualitative evidence, sees racism and exploitation as the major explanatory factors in their history. Using representative samples of persons of Mexican origin, we argue that immigration is fundamental to their historical experience. A small, beleaguered community in 1850, the Mexican-origin population grew during the late nineteenth century due to greater security under US jurisdiction. However, immigration between 1900 and 1930 created a Southwest broadly identified with persons of Mexican origin. Economic development in Mexico, restriction of European immigration to the United States, and extreme cross-border wage differentials prompted extensive emigration. Despite low human capital, circular migration, and discrimination, immigrant Mexicans earned substantially higher wages than workers in Mexico or native-born Hispanics in the United States. They followed typical immigrant paths toward urban areas with high wages. Prior to 1930, their marked tendency to repatriate was not “constructed” or compelled by the state or employers, but fit a conventional immigrant strategy. During the Depression, many persons of Mexican origin migrated to Mexico; some were deported or coerced, but others followed this well-established repatriation strategy. The remaining Mexican-origin population, increasingly native born, enjoyed extraordinary socioeconomic gains in the 1940s; upward mobility, their family forms, and rising political activity resembled those of previous immigrant-origin communities. In the same decade, however, the Bracero Program prompted mass illegal immigration and mass deportation, a pattern replicated throughout the late twentieth century. These conditions repeatedly replenished ethnicity and reignited nativism, presenting a challenge not faced by any other immigrant group in US history.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , Winter 2015 , pp. 521 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association, 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acuña, Rodolfo (1972) Occupied America: The Chicano Struggle toward Liberation. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Acuña, Rodolfo (2007) “Mexican/United States immigration policy prior to the Great Depression.” Diplomatic History 31 (2): 207–25.Google Scholar
Alanis, Enciso, Saúl, Fernando (2007) “¿Cuántos fueron? La repatriación de mexicanos en los Estados Unidos durante la Gran Depresión: Una interpretación cuantitativa, 1930–1934” [“How many were there? The repatriation of Mexicans in the United States during the Great Depression: A quantitative interpretation, 1930–1934”]. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32 (2): 65–91.Google Scholar
Alba, Richard, and Nee, Victor (2003) Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Alfaro-Velcamp, Theresa (2007) So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Alvarez, José Hernández (1966) “A demographic profile of the Mexican immigration to the United States, 1910–1950.” Journal of Inter-American Studies 8 (3): 471–96.Google Scholar
Arizona Republican (1917) “Council of Defense appeal for suspension of federal immigration law succeeds.” May 26.Google Scholar
Arizona Republican (1918) “Cotton labor hearing brings important facs [sic] to committee.” March 16.Google Scholar
Arizona Republican (1920) “Mexican labor problem solved for the time being.” February 26.Google Scholar
Arizona Republican (1921) “No outside labor to be needed for the cotton season.” July 7.Google Scholar
Balderrama, F. E., and Rodríguez, R. (2006) Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne, and Wallerstein, Immanuel (1991) Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Barde, Robert, Carter, Susan B., and Sutch, Richard (2006) “Table Ad 162,” in Carter, Susan B. et al. (eds.) Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition Online. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Barrera, Mario (1989) Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Benton-Cohen, Katherine (2011) Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bergad, Laird W., and Klein, Herbert S. (2010) Hispanics in the United States: A Demographic, Social, and Economic History, 1980–2005. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackhawk, Ned (2008) Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanton, Carlos K. (2009) “The citizenship sacrifice: Mexican Americans, the Saunders-Leonard report, and the politics of immigration, 1951–1952.” Western Historical Quarterly 40 (3): 299–320.Google Scholar
Bloch, Louis (1929) “Facts about Mexican immigration before and since quota restriction acts.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 24 (165): 50–60.Google Scholar
Brooks, James F. (2002) Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Cardoso, Lawrence A. (1980) Mexican Emigration to the United States, 1897–1931. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Carreras de Velasco, Mercedes (1974) Los mexicanos que devolvió la crisis 1929–1932 [The Mexicans the crisis [the Depression] sent back 1929–1932]. Tlatelolco: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores.Google Scholar
Carter, S. B., Gartner, S. S., Haines, M. R., Olmstead, A. L., Sutch, R., and Wright, G., eds. (2006) Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition Online. New York: Cambridge University Press. hsus.cambridge.org.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/HSUSWeb/HSUSEntryServlet (accessed November 30, 2013).Google Scholar
Chao Romero, Robert (2011) Chinese in Mexico, 1882–1940. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Victor S. (1908) “Mexican labor in the United States.” Bulletin of the U.S. Bureau of Labor 78: 466–522.Google Scholar
DeLay, Brian (2008) War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
de León, Arnoldo (1982) The Tejano Community, 1836–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
El Heraldo de México—Los Angeles (1927) “En Altar tambien están clausarando sus negoicios los chinos.” December 15.Google Scholar
El Heraldo de México—Los Angeles (1928) “La aprobación de la quota.” December 18.Google Scholar
Fairchild, Amy L. (2003) Science at the Borders: Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labor Force. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Feliciano, Zadia M. (2001) “The skill and economic performance of Mexican immigrants from 1910 to 1990.” Explorations in Economic History 38 (3): 386–409.Google Scholar
Foley, Neil (1998) The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Fox, Cybelle (2012) Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gamio, Manuel (1969) Mexican Immigration to the United States. New York: Arno Press.Google Scholar
García, Mario T. (1989) Mexican Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930–1960. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
García, Richard A. (1991) Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class: San Antonio, 1929–1941. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
García y Griego, L. M. (1988) “The Bracero policy experiment: U.S.-Mexican responses to Mexican labor migration, 1942–1955.” PhD diss., University of California—Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Gerstle, Gary (2001) American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gomez, Laura E. (2007) Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
González, Gilbert G., and Fernandez, Raúl (2002) “Empire and the origins of twentieth century migration from Mexico to the United States.” Pacific Historical Review 7 (1): 19–57.Google Scholar
González Navarro, Moisés (2003) México: el capitalismo nacionalista. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian, and Gutmann, Myron (2000) “Hispanics in the United States, 1850–1990: Estimates of population size and national origin.” Historical Methods 33 (3): 137–53.Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian, and Merchant, Emily (2013) “Immigration, repatriation, deportation: The Mexican-origin population in the United States, 1920 to 1950.” International Migration Review 47 (4): 944–75.Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian, and Merchant, Emily (forthcoming) “La Raza: Classifying Mexicans in the United States Census.” Journal of Policy History.Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian, Gutmann, Myron, and Skop, Emily (2007) “Immigrants, their children, and theories of assimilation: Family structure in the United States, 1880 to 1970.” The History of the Family 12 (3): 203–22.Google Scholar
Gratton, Brian, Reid, Josh, Jacoby, Karl, Tutino, John, John, Rachel St., and Hämäläinen, Pekka (2013) “Book forum: Pekka Hämäläinen's The Comanche Empire .” History and Theory 52 (1): 49–90.Google Scholar
Grebler, Leo, Moore, Joan W., Guzmán, Ralph C., and Lionel Berlant, Jeffrey (1970) The Mexican-American people: The Nation's second largest minority. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Green, Alan G., and Green, David (2004) “The goals of Canada's immigration policy: A historical perspective.” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 13 (1): 102–39.Google Scholar
Guerin-Gonzales, Camille (1995) Mexican Workers and American Dreams: Immigration, Repatriation, and California Farm Labor, 1900–1939. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Guglielmo, Thomas A. (2004) White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, David G. (1995) Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez, Ramón A. (2004) “Internal colonialism: An American theory of race.” Du Bois Review 1 (2): 281–95.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron, McCaa, Robert, Gutierrez-Montez, Rodolfo, and Gratton, Brian (2000) “Los efectos demográficos de la revolución mexicana en Estados Unidos.” Historia Mexicana 50 (1): 145–65.Google Scholar
Hämäläinen, Pekka (2009) The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hampshire, James (2013) The Politics of Immigration: Contradictions of the Liberal State. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Haney-López, Ian (2006) White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Hatton, Timothy J., and Williamson, Jeffrey G. (2005) Global Migration and the World Economy: Two Centuries of Policy and Performance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haverluk, Terrence (1997) “The changing geography of U.S. Hispanics, 1850–1990.” Journal of Geography 96 (3): 134–45.Google Scholar
Herrera-Sobek, María (1993) Northward Bound: The Mexican Immigrant Experience in Ballad and Song. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Charles, and Percy Kraly, Ellen (1990) “Racial and ethnic inequality in the United States, 1940 and 1950: The impact of geographic location and human capital.” International Migration Review 24 (1): 4–33.Google Scholar
Hispano América—San Francisco (1931) “Reintegración nacional.” October 17.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Abraham (1974) Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929–1939. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Abraham (1976) “An unusual monument: Paul S. Taylor's Mexican Labor in the United States Monograph Series .” Pacific Historical Review 45 (2): 255–70.Google Scholar
Hu-DeHart, Evelyn (1982) “Racism and anti-Chinese persecution in Sonora, Mexico, 1876–1932.” Amerasia Journal 9 (2): 1–28.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Matthew (1998) Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jiménez, Tomás R. (2010) Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Jungmeyer, Roger L. (1988) “The Bracero Program, 1942–1951: Mexican contract labor in the United States.” PhD diss., University of Missouri.Google Scholar
Kim, Joon K. (2012) “California's agribusiness and the farm labor question: The transition from Asian to Mexican labor, 1919–1939.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 37 (2): 43–72.Google Scholar
Kiser, George Claude (1974) “The Bracero Program: A case study of its development, termination, and political aftermath.” PhD diss., University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Krissman, Fred (2005) “Sin coyote ni patron: Why the ‘migrant network’ fails to explain international migration.” International Migration Review 39 (1): 4–44.Google Scholar
La Cronista del Valle—Brownsville (1929) “El licenciado Alonso S. Perales aboga por los mexicanos.” May 17.Google Scholar
La Prensa—San Antonio (1930) “La restricción de la inmigración mexicana.” January 23.Google Scholar
La Prensa—San Antonio (1931) “La caravana de repatriados llegó a Laredo, Texas.” October 19.Google Scholar
La Prensa—San Antonio (1932) “Comienza el éxodo de los betabeleros.” May 16.Google Scholar
La Prensa—San Antonio (1934) “Cientos de mexicanos necesitados de salir de Austin, Texas.” March 31.Google Scholar
La Prensa—San Antonio (1935) “No deportaran de Colorado a los elementos mexicanos.” October 29.Google Scholar
Liwerant, Judith Bokser (1995) “Cárdenas y los judíos: entre el exilio y la inmigración.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes 20 (39–40): 13–37.Google Scholar
Lukens, Patrick (2012) A Quiet Victory for Latino Rights: FDR and the Controversy over “Whiteness.” Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Maloney, Thomas N. (1994) “Wage compression and wage inequality between black and white males in the United States, 1940–1960.” Journal of Economic History 54 (2): 358–81.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A. (1995) “Explaining black-white wage convergence, 1940–1950.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 48 (3): 470–81.Google Scholar
Martinelli, Phylis (2009) Undermining Race: Ethnic Identities in Arizona Copper Camps 1880–1920. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. (1999) “Why does immigration occur? A theoretical synthesis,” in Hirschman, Charles et al. (eds.) The Handbook of International Migration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 34–52.Google Scholar
McCaa, Robert (2000) “The peopling of Mexico from origins to revolution,” in Haines, Michael R. and Steckel, Richard H. (eds.) A Population History of North America. New York: Cambridge University Press: 241–304.Google Scholar
Mellinger, Phillip (1995) Race and Labor in Western Copper: The Fight for Equality 1896–1918. Tucson: University of Arizona Press Google Scholar
Meyers, William K. (1994) Forge of Progress, Crucible of Revolt: The Origins of the Mexican Revolution in La Comarca Lagunera, 1880–1911. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Minnesota Population Center (2011) National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 2.0. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, www.nhgis.org (accessed August 27, 2015).Google Scholar
Molina, Natalia (2006) Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Montejano, David (1987) Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1936. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Mora-Torres, Juan (2001) The Making of the Mexican Border: The State, Capitalism, and Society in Nuevo León, 1848–1910. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
New York Times (1917) “Waives the labor law.” May 24.Google Scholar
New York Times (1918) “Mexican aliens to enter.” June 20.Google Scholar
New York Times (1932) “Chinese again flee agitation in Mexico.” August 6.Google Scholar
Ngai, Mae M. (2003) Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nostrand, Richard L. (1992) The Hispano Homeland. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Panunzio, Constantine (1933) How Mexicans Earn and Live. Heller Committee for Research in Social Economics of the University of California. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Park, Julie, Myers, Dowell, and Jiménez, Tomás R. (2014) “Intergenerational mobility of the Mexican-origin population in California and Texas relative to a changing regional mainstream.” International Migration Review 48 (2): 442–81.Google Scholar
Peck, Gunther (2000) Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880–1930. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Alejandro, Portes, and Rumbaut, Ruben G. (2001) Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Reisler, Mark (1976) By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900–1940. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Reports of the Immigration Commission (1911) “Immigrants in industries, Part 25: Japanese and other immigrant races. . . .” Vol. 3. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Roediger, David (2005) Working toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Romo, Ricardo (1983) East Los Angeles: History of a Barrio. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Rosales, F. Arturo (1999) ¡Pobre Raza! Violence Justice, and Mobilization among México Lindo Immigrants, 1900–1935. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, Trent Alexander, J., Genadek, Katie, Goeken, Ronald, Schroeder, Matthew B., and Sobek, Matthew (2010a) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0. [machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, Trent Alexander, J., Genadek, Katie, Goeken, Ronald, Schroeder, Matthew B., and Sobek, Matthew (2010b) “Chapter 4: Integrated Occupation and Industry Codes and Occupational Standing Variables in the IPUMS.” Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0. [machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Ruiz, Vicki L. (1987) Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Sanchez, George J. (1993) Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schor, Paul (2009) Compter et classer: histoire des recensements américains, collection “En temps et lieux.” Paris: Presses de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.Google Scholar
Scruggs, Otey M. (1960) “The first Mexican farm labor program.” Arizona and the West 2 (4): 319–26.Google Scholar
Skop, Emily B., Gratton, Brian, and Gutmann, Myron (2006) “La frontera and beyond: Geography and demography in Mexican-American History.” Professional Geographer 58 (1): 78–98.Google Scholar
Stern, Alexandra Minna (1999) “Buildings, boundaries, and blood: Medicalization and nation-building on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1910–1930.” Hispanic American Historical Review 79 (1): 41–81.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul S. (1929) “Mexican labor in the United States: Valley of the South Platte, Colorado.” University of California Publications in Economics 6 (2).Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul S. (1930) “Some aspects of Mexican immigration.” Journal of Political Economy 38 (5): 609–15.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul S. (1931) Mexican Labor in the United States: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul S. (1933–34) Mexican Labor in the United States, Migration Statistics IV. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul S. (2008) Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Ubelaker, Douglas (1992) “North American Indian population size: Changing perspectives,” in Verano, John W. and Ubelaker, Douglas H. (eds.) Disease and Demography in the Americas. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press: 1685–790.Google Scholar
US Census of Population and Housing, 1940 (1943) Volume III, The Labor Force, Part 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Census of Population and Housing, 1950 (1953) Volume II, Characteristics of the Population, Part 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Congress. Cong. Rec. (1924) 68th Cong., 1st Sess. Vol. 65, pt. 7.Google Scholar
US Department of Labor (1919) “The annual report of the commissioner general of immigration to the secretary of labor.” Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Department of Labor (1920) “The annual report of the commissioner general of immigration to the secretary of labor.” Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US Department of Labor (1923) “The annual report of the commissioner general of immigration to the secretary of labor.” Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
US, Senate (1921) “Report of special committee appointed by the secretary of labor to investigate complaints against the temporary admission of aliens for agricultural purposes.” 66th Cong., 3rd Sess.Google Scholar
Vargas, Zaragoza (2011) Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Era. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, David J., ed. (1973) Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Weber, John III (2008) “The shadow of the revolution: South Texas, the revolution, and the evolution of modern American labor relations.” PhD diss., College of William and Mary.Google Scholar
Weber, John III (2013) “Homing pigeons, cheap labor, and frustrated nativists: Immigration reform and the deportation of Mexicans from South Texas in the 1920s.” The Western Historical Quarterly 44 (2): 167–86.Google Scholar
Zamora, Emilio (2009) Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II. College Station: Texas A&M Press.Google Scholar