"Decade of Betrayal": How the U.S. Expelled Over a Half Million U.S. Citizens to Mexico in 1930s
Mexican migrants on the road with flat tire, 1936. Looking for work in the peas. California.
President Donald Trump is slated to give his first presidential address to Congress today. Democratic lawmakers have begun giving their tickets away to immigrants as a protest against Trump’s push to increase deportations and to block residents from some Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Well, this is not the first time people of Mexican descent have been demonized, accused of stealing jobs, and forced to leave the country. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, more than a million people residing in the United States were deported to Mexico—about 60 percent of them were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. We speak to the preeminent scholar on this often overlooked chapter of American history: Francisco Balderrama, professor of American history and Chicano studies at California State University, Los Angeles. He is co-author of "Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s."
AMY GOODMAN: "Deportee," this version sung by Joan Baez. The song was written by Woody Guthrie about a crash that killed 32 people, most of them migrant farmworkers who were being deported from California to Mexico. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Donald Trump is slated to give his first presidential address to Congress today. Democratic lawmakers have begun giving their tickets away to immigrants as a protest against Trump’s push to increase deportations and to block residents from some Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Last week, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump wants to, quote, "take the shackles off" of the nation’s immigration agents.
PRESS SECRETARY SEAN SPICER: The president wanted to take the shackles off individuals in these agencies and say, "You have a mission. There are laws that need to be followed. You should do your mission and follow the law."
AMY GOODMAN: Last Thursday, President Trump called his deportation plans a military operation during a meeting with manufacturing CEOs.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You see what’s happening at the border. All of a sudden, for the first time, we’re getting gang members out. We’re getting drug lords out. We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country and at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before. And they’re the bad ones. And it’s a military operation, because what has been allowed to come into our country, when you see gang violence that you’ve read about like never before and all of the things, much of that is people that are here illegally. And they’re rough, and they’re tough, but they’re not tough like our people. So we’re getting them out.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, this is not the first time people of Mexican descent have been demonized, accused of stealing jobs, and forced to leave the country. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, more than a million people residing in the United States were deported to Mexico. Some estimate as much as 60 percent of them were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2003, then-California state Senator Joe Dunn held hearings in Sacramento, where survivors gave testimony about what happened to them during the forced expulsions, which the government called repatriations. This is Senator Dunn stressing the importance of the hearing.
SEN. JOE DUNN: The idea from which this nation was born was the promise to all of liberty and justice. Today we examine a tragic part of American history where we betrayed the justice part of that promise, and a betrayal that affected a staggering number of individuals. By some estimates, almost 2 million individuals were deported from the United States in the 1930s. Some estimate that almost 60 percent of those that were deported were United States citizens. And they were deported for but one reason: They just happened to be of Mexican descent.
AMY GOODMAN: The state of California went on to issue a formal apology for its role in the expulsions and built a memorial in downtown Los Angeles to "Decade of Betrayal": How the U.S. Expelled Over a Half Million U.S. Citizens to Mexico in 1930s | Portside:
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