The weekly newsletter of the Mexico Solidarity Project

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September 25, 2024 

Revisiting the Truth from Los Repatriados

Meizhu Lui, for the editorial team

Waving goodbye to people being expelled by train from LA to Mexico, 1931. (N.Y. Daily News archive/Getty Images

This week, as we near the end of a US election campaign where one candidate promises to deport “15 to 20 million” immigrants, we are republishing an interview with Elena Herrera. Herrera described vividly the pain and trauma accompanying the mass deportation of Mexican-Americans in the 1930s.

Extracting the truth can be like extracting a tooth. We have a gnawing pain that won’t go away, but we don’t want to complain — and don’t think anything will help anyway. We finally let the tooth get pulled and suddenly feel a huge relief. People around us now know why we weren’t smiling and just wanted to be left alone.

We see the same dynamic with traumatic events we don’t want to remember — or burden others with — but simply can’t forget. Adults who’ve experienced horror tend to protect their children from the terrifying truth. Think Holocaust survivors and Japanese-Americans in World War II or Iraq veterans in more recent times.

In our Voices this week, Elena Herrada recounts how difficult she found extracting the truth from her grandfather and the many other Repatriados in her Mexican-American Detroit community. During the Great Depression, whole families left the United States “voluntarily” because government workers told them to go. Government agents took other Mexican-American workers by force and deported them on the spot. This entire exodus left Detroit’s once-vibrant Mexican-American community broken and decimated.

We still don’t know how many of the Repatriados died along the way to Mexico — or soon after they arrived at a Mexico also deep in the Great Depression. We also don’t know how many never returned to the United States or how many did in fact return. Or how many Mexican-Americans in Detroit never knew what happened to fathers who disappeared.

We do know that another wave of migration from Mexico to the US took place after World War II. Only then did some migrants find out that they already held US citizenship. They had been deported as young children.

No matter how difficult, we need to hear the facts. Victims need to tell their stories. Only by extracting the truth can we get the comfort that comes when loved ones understand our pain. Only by extracting the truth can we unburden ourselves from the shame that belongs elsewhere. The truth can set us free.

For a deeper dive into current news and analysis in English, check out our media website. And definitely see the new English podcast ¡Soberanía! (Sovereignty) with José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth.  They entertain, while dismantling the lies and distortions about Mexico fed to us by the mainstream media.

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Fear and Shame Silenced Mexican Deportees

To “repatriate” — to return to one’s homeland — sounds like a good thing. The United States had a repatriation program for Mexicanos from 1929 into 1939. What prompted this program?

Elena Herrada: In the 1910s and 1920s, the US needed workers and actively recruited Mexicans not just for agricultural work but also for the auto industry in Detroit. But as the US economy collapsed with the Great Depression, President Hoover needed to look like he was taking action. His solution? Promote “American jobs for Americans,” that is, for white Americans. Blame Mexican-Americans, round them up, and send them “home.” About a million were “repatriated,” some 60 percent citizens, mostly children born in the United States. All of this, unconstitutional.

Your own grandfather was a Repatriado. His story?

He had been recruited by Ford and planned to settle for good in the US. He lived in Detroit’s thriving Mexican community. The famed Communist muralist Diego Rivera also spent time there and helped start a worker co-op. 

In my grandfather’s case, a social worker came to the door and asked, “Where are you from?” Nobody put a gun to his head. They just told him that the families of laid-off workers like him, ineligible for assistance, would starve if they stayed in the United States. So better pack up for Mexico.

Did you grow up knowing why your father lived in Mexico as a boy?

I had no clue. In other Repatriado cases, just the father was deported and the family remained in the US. When the fathers returned, they told their children not to speak Spanish, so they wouldn’t be targeted. My father’s generation doesn’t speak Spanish. Is it any wonder that Mexicans still don’t fill out the census, vote, or accept benefits?

Not until the 1970s, when my generation came of age and began to ask questions, did we start to uncover the truth.

Did you find collecting the stories of Repatriados easy?

Hardly! My own father didn’t approve of what I was doing. I put an ad in a little Latino paper that asked, “Was your family deported during the Depression?” No response, for years. Who would want to make public a degrading experience, my dad said. Who would want people to know they have been exported on trains like a herd of cattle? My dad did me a favor! My question changed. I asked, “Were you one of the pioneering Mexicans in Detroit?” Then I got calls.

But some people started yelling at me when they found out what I was doing and saw me coming. And even after interviews, I would almost invariably get another call: “Don’t publish my story.” My dad’s last words to me before he died: “I never liked your Repatriado project.” But no matter how hard, I still feel that victims must speak up to prevent future atrocities.

What effect did the U.S. repatriation program have on Mexican-American families?

The repatriation divided families. The deportees, in trauma and ashamed, suffered in silence. Many elders who had been small children at the time of the deportations felt abandoned by their fathers, who in many cases had been rounded up and deported without a chance to inform their families.

Repatriation left huge emotional scars on families and communities. Detroit’s Mexicano community dwindled from 15,000 to 5,000.

You and other descendants of Repatriados made a video documentary.  What reception did you receive?

In 2001, we had a showing at the Detroit Institute of Art. In spite of the resistance to the project, 300 people showed up. A cathartic experience. Tears flowed. Families talked. After so many years, the wall of silence tumbled down. Across generations, people finally knew the truth about their family separations.

Then in 2004, to my surprise, a professor in Mexico contacted me. He wanted to show our video to Repatriados who never made it home to the US. Their stories still need to be told. More families need to be reunited, at least in memory.

National Liberation and Mexico’s Fourth Transformation

My migrant journey began as a toddler. At two years old, my family left Mexico for the United States — the beginning of a life voyage that took me all over the US, later to Canada, and culminated with my return to Mexico in 2018.

With every move, I reckoned with my own identity. In the US, like every migrant, I was subjected to a fierce ideological campaign to assimilate and integrate me into the dominant white supremacist culture. I’m grateful that I had the sufficient education at home to resist this effort. In Canada, the process was similar, except there I was pressed to integrate into the “cultural mosaic.” That idea, at the end of the day, responds to the same white supremacist logic that promotes a place for “good immigrants” and leaves the existing white-power structures in place.

Despite having spent little time in Mexico before we left, I always felt Mexican. It was an identity that served as a vaccine, protecting me from infection by the surrounding white-supremacist cultural instruments. With time and political education, I eventually realized that these chauvinist and jingoistic narratives, so heavily promoted in the US and Canada, were crafted to serve the interests of imperialism. As a result, I developed a discomfort with the concept of national pride or nationalism. It is a bourgeois ideology after all, which serves the ruling class at the cost of the masses.

So, how do I reconcile this with my pride in being Mexican? Mexico is likewise a country with a long history of oppressing Indigenous peoples, a nation-state born out of colonization, though not a settler colony like the US or Canada. Save for a handful of notable exceptions, Mexico’s 20^th-century history featured superexploitation and submission to the prevailing imperialist global order. This was doubly true of Mexico in the 21st century... until the arrival of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, of course. Therein lies the difference.

While I used to wear my Mexican identity mostly as a shield, a tool to protect me from attempts at assimilation, today I live in Mexico and contribute what I can to its political transformation. I’m prouder than ever to call myself Mexican.

At my child’s school, as I watched them produce the history of the independence struggle in commemoration of Mexican Independence Day, I reflected on the significance of participating in a political movement that originated in the fight to break the chains of colonialism. I couldn’t help but conclude that, in the face of neocolonialism and imperialism, we are still defending our independence.

I don’t advocate for a hollow patriotism that is emptied of its political content. I defend my identification with mexicanadad not from a place of chauvinistic nationalism but rather from my convictions, my support of national liberation. Mexico’s Fourth Transformation — inspired by three previous transformations — our own fight for independence, Benito Juárez and his 19th century reforms and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 — is a struggle for national liberation.

In Mexico, we are attempting a peaceful transformation in the shadow of the US; we are defending our sovereignty, our right to self-determination. We are fighting to end foreign domination, and we should be honest about the stakes. When workers of oppressed nations advance their fight for national liberation, imperialism shows its true face.

The Al-Aqsa Flood, carried out by the Palestinian national liberation movement, has totally upended the world and revealed the farce of the “rules-based international order” for all to see. As such, in this age of a declining US empire, national liberation grows more important. As political theorist Max Ajl said, “National liberation is what is moving the world; you can either work with it or get out of the way.”

Every year on September 15, Mexican political leaders throughout the country recite the Grito de Dolores when Miguel Hidalgo rang a church bell and gave the call to arms that triggered the Mexican War of Independence. This year, during his final “Cry of Independence” from the balcony of the National Palace, President López Obrador celebrated Mexican workers, Indigenous peoples and migrants while condemning corruption, greed and racism.

Much to the chagrin of his enemies, AMLO closed his address by saying, “Long Live the Fourth Transformation!”

He was met with boisterous cheers.

Viva Mexico!

Viva México!

Viva México!

Recent news reports and commentaries, from progressive and mainstream media,
on life and struggles on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Compiled by Jay Watts.

Mexican Legislators Approve Reform in Favor of Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Peoples Telesur English. The reform elevates to constitutional status the right of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities to free, prior, informed, and culturally appropriate consultation on legislative and administrative measures that may affect or impact their lives or natural environment.

Étienne von Bertrab, Fin de sexenio: una mirada desde el sur Gatopardo. La presidencia de Andrés Manuel López Obrador está a punto de terminarse, pero el impacto de su legado en el sur de México recién empieza.

Eduardo Verdugo, Mexican president blames the US for bloodshed in Sinaloa Associated Press. During his morning news briefing, AMLO claimed American authorities “carried out that operation” to capture Zambada and that “it was totally illegal, and agents from the Department of Justice were waiting for Mr. Mayo.” “If we are now facing instability and clashes in Sinaloa, it is because they made that decision.”

Jim Mustain y Joshua Goodman, Un agente de la CIA asignado a México drogó, fotografió y violó a decenas de mujeres Sin Embargo. Espía y depredador sexual: otra violación demasiado frecuente y grotesca de los mexicanos y de la soberanía mexicana por parte del imperialismo estadounidense.

Alek Buttermann, Mexico’s President-elect Sheinbaum turns down Zelensky’s invitation to Ukraine BNE Intellinews. The global north’s favorite dictator is less loved outside the Atlantic-sphere.

Rocío Flores y Lisbeth Mejía Reyes, FILO: El negocio editorial detrás de la promoción de la lectura Oaxaca Media. Fondo Ventura, la asociación civil detrás de la Feria Internacional del Libro de Oaxaca, obtuvo millones de pesos en donativos del gobierno estatal entre 2010 y 2023, en detrimento de programas gubernamentales.

Mexican President AMLO Performs His Last ‘Independence Cry’ Telesur English. “Mexican women and men, death to corruption, greed, racism, and discrimination!” he exclaimed, followed by a “¡viva!” for love, Mexican workers, migrant brothers and sisters, Indigenous peoples, Mexico’s cultural greatness, and the Fourth Transformation, his political and ideological program.

Diego Aguilar, México y China deben estrechar más sus lazos: Fernández Noroña Forbes. “No me queda más que desearles, que sea muy intensa su celebración, y desearle larga vida al pueblo de China, larga vida a la República Popular China, larga vida a la amistad entre nuestros pueblos, y larga vida a esta relación de amistad, de comprensión, de respeto a la diferencia, que debe haber entre los pueblos del mundo”, declaró Noroña.

Isabella Escalona, Labor’s Reckoning: What We Can Learn from the Cold War History of the AFL-CIO Workday Magazine. “I say it is time for the labor movement to not have to rely on any funds from the State Department or from the NED and to be able to carry out a totally independent foreign policy.  This is what the United Electrical (UE) workers do. For the last thirty years or so, they’ve had partnerships, in Mexico in particular, where it’s union-to-union, worker-to-worker types of solidarity organizing. I think more of that would be good, without the federal dollars.”

Raúl Romero, Xochimilco: grupos de choque y represión La Jornada. Aunque han comenzado a deslindarse responsabilidades, hay que dimensionar la gravedad de los hechos: los grupos de choque en la policía de la CDMX hacen revivir los peores momentos del México autoritario. Lo sucedido el 5 de septiembre en Xochimilco y Tlalpan no debe pasar desapercibido.

The Mexico Solidarity Project brings together activists from various socialist and left organizations and individuals committed to worker and global justice. We see the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president of Mexico as a watershed moment. AMLO and his progressive Morena party aim to end generations of corruption, impoverishment, and subservience to US interests. Our Project supports not just Morena, but all Mexicans struggling for basic rights, and opposes US efforts to undermine organizing and Mexico’s national sovereignty.

Editorial committee: Meizhu Lui, Bruce Hobson, Agatha Hinman, Victoria Hamlin, Courtney Childs.  To give feedback or get involved yourself, please email us!

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