A Story on the Mexican “Repatriation” During the 1930s

For an interesting take on the efforts at the “repatriation” of persons of Mexican ancestry during the Great Depression in downtown Los Angeles, click here.  The article os entitled “The Forgotten ‘Repatriation’ An Immigration Raid at Olvera Street 75 Years Ago Remains One of  Downtown’s Ugliest Moments” by Jay Berman.

Here is an excerpt, reprinted with permission:

In the 1930s, the U.S. government orchestrated the systematic deportation of at least 1 million Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals living in this country. They weren’t placed in camps. They were denied employment or, if they were working, fired from their jobs. They were ordered to leave the country. They were subjected to open acts of racial discrimination, denied anything resembling due process and shipped off in trains, buses and trucks to the Mexican border. Most had been born in the United States and thus were legal U.S. citizens. Many spoke no Spanish and had never been to Mexico. The feeling — this was the height of the Great Depression — was that they were taking jobs that “real” Americans should be holding at a time of national crisis. While the deportations occurred across the country, one of the most infamous raids took place in Downtown Los Angeles, in a park called La Placita, near Olvera Street. Francisco E. Balderrama, in his book Decade of Betrayal — Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s, co-written with Raymond Rodriguez, wrote of the Feb. 26, 1931, raid: “Immigration agents under the direction of Walter E. Carr, director of the Immigration Service, began to gather in Los Angeles… They came from San Diego and San Francisco… Los Angeles Chief of Police R.E. Stackel and County Sheriff William Traeger pledged their support… It took 10 days for the agents to assemble and develop a coordinated plan with local authorities to carry out the raid.”

KJ