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The Mexican Repatriation

2019-07-30 · explainer · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: US politics & society) · mode: Explainer · tags: heavy topic

John recounts the Mexican Repatriation of the Great Depression, when the US deported at least 400,000 Mexican-Americans, most of them citizens, notes that deportations did not reduce unemployment, and argues through Jose Lopez's story that telling it is never unpatriotic.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John learns of the Mexican Repatriation while researching Migrant Mother; scale and the term 'depatriation'

  • ★ Researching Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother photograph, John learned something never covered in any of his US history classes. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ During the Great Depression the US deported at least 400,000 and possibly as many as 2 million Mexican-Americans, most of them US citizens. (hedged) — 00:00:00 · United States

  • ★★ The deportations became known as the Mexican Repatriation, but scholars note that many deportees had never lived in or been to Mexico, so it was more of a depatriation. — 00:00:15

    “it was more of a depatriation”

00:00:29 — Background: land taken from Mexico, the Mexican Revolution, the unregulated border

  • ★★ In the mid-19th century the US took land from Mexico, including all of California and Arizona, through the Mexican-American War and the Gadsden Purchase; its Mexican citizens became US citizens. — 00:00:29 · United States
  • ★★ In the early 20th century the violence and economic disruption of the Mexican Revolution led many people to seek refuge in the US. — 00:00:43 · United States
  • ★★ The border between the US and Mexico was not formally regulated until 1917. — 00:00:50 · United States

00:00:58 — Hoover's 'real jobs' push and the false idea that deportations cut unemployment

  • ★★ As the Depression deepened, unemployment and anti-immigrant sentiment were rising and President Herbert Hoover's administration promised real jobs for real Americans. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hoover's labor secretary believed deportations would decrease unemployment. — 00:01:05
  • ★★★ John says the idea that deportations cut unemployment has proven extraordinarily durable but isn't true: national economies are not zero-sum games where removing workers creates jobs. — 00:01:10
  • ★★★ A 2017 study of the Mexican Repatriation found the deportations either had no effect on unemployment or made it slightly worse. — 00:01:20

00:01:27 — Bipartisan push; roundups, firings, hospital removals and chaotic legal proceedings

  • ★★ Though today's US immigration debate is polarized, in that decade the push for deportations came from both left and right: many labor unions and the conservative Hoover administration. — 00:01:30
  • ★★★ Local municipalities rounded up Mexicans, Americans of Mexican descent or anyone judged brown-skinned, surrounding parks and neighborhoods and trucking people to Mexico or to chartered trains. — 00:01:44
  • ★★ Many cities passed laws barring Mexican-Americans from working for city governments. — 00:02:05
  • ★★ The federal government encouraged large private companies to fire their Mexican-American workers, and many did. — 00:02:12 · United States
  • ★★ Some hospital patients were literally wheeled out of hospitals, put onto trucks and driven to Mexico. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Legal proceedings sometimes happened, but proving citizenship was often impossible without uncommon documents, outcomes varied chaotically by city, and those threatened had almost no legal recourse. — 00:02:33
  • ★★★ As a result, at a minimum hundreds of thousands of US citizens were deported to Mexico. — 00:02:50 · United States

00:02:55 — No apology, absent from textbooks; five-year-old Jose Lopez deported

  • ★★ The US government has never apologized for the repatriation. — 00:02:58
  • ★★ The repatriation is not even mentioned in most US history textbooks. — 00:03:00
  • ★★ This isn't ancient history: lots of people alive today lived through it. — 00:03:05
  • ★★★ Jose Lopez, a five-year-old born in Detroit, was deported, and in Mexico he was teased for not speaking Spanish. — 00:03:10
  • ★★ Lopez's parents and one sibling died in exile; he returned to the US in 1944 after trying to prove his citizenship for 14 years. — 00:03:20 · United States

00:03:24 — Lopez's return and life; his story is an American story; sign-off

  • ★★ Lopez worked his whole career at Ford Motor Company, became a homeowner and dedicated community volunteer; all three of his kids went to college, one is now an attorney. — 00:03:30
  • ★★ John says nothing can give back everything Lopez lost through his unjust and illegal deportation. — 00:03:40
  • ★★★ John concludes that Lopez is American, his story is an American story, and telling that story will never be unpatriotic. — 00:03:48 · United States

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description names Decade of Betrayal by Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez as the most comprehensive history of the period, where John first learned Jose Lopez's story. — video description
  • ★ The description calls Wikipedia's article on the Depression-era repatriation quite good. — video description · Wikipedia
  • ★★ The description gives a 2017 paper as the source for the finding that the deportations had no impact on US unemployment or made it slightly worse. — video description
  • ★★ An analysis found that most of the commonly used US history textbooks do not mention the Depression-era deportations. — video description
  • ★ John points to an NPR story connecting some current concerns about immigration to the Repatriation. — video description

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Jose Lopez · Mexican Repatriation

Also: People: Dorothea Lange · Herbert Hoover

Works: Migrant Mother

Organizations: Federal government of the United States · Ford Motor Company

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: citizenship · patriotism · textbook · trade union · Unemployment · xenophobia · zero-sum game

Places: Arizona · California · Detroit · Mexico · United States

Events: Gadsden Purchase · Great Depression · Mexican Revolution · Mexican-American War

Only in the description or credits: Decade of Betrayal · Francisco E. Balderrama · NPR · Raymond Rodriguez · Wikipedia

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