(KQED) - A bill making its way through the California state legislature would commemorate a little-known chapter of U.S. history: a large-scale deportation of Mexicans — and Mexican Americans — nearly a century ago. And the bill’s backers say it’s all the more relevant in this election year when mass deportation is again a political topic.
The yearslong episode, referred to as the Mexican Repatriation by those who enacted it, began in 1930, as the Great Depression took hold. As employment dwindled, hostility toward immigrants grew. President Herbert Hoover had announced a plan to ensure “American jobs for real Americans,” implying that anyone of Mexican descent was not a “real” American.
The bill, SB 537, would authorize a nonprofit organization representing Mexican Americans or immigrants to build a memorial in Los Angeles recognizing the people who were forcibly deported from the U.S. during the Great Depression.
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