Locals Recall 1930s Mexican Repatriation

It's been more than a year since California's "Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program" took effect. The act apologizes for the program that forced Mexican nationals – and some American citizens – to leave the U.S. It also mandates that a plaque be placed in Los Angeles to remember those who left against their will. KPCC's Susan Valot takes a look at the history of the Mexican Repatriation.

Susan Valot: At least a million and a half people were forced to migrate from the U.S. to Mexico in the 1930s – what became known as the "Mexican Repatriation." It's so engrained in the culture, folk songs have been written about it.

[Song: Benny Cruz's "Corrido de Los Repatriados"]

Valot: With bags in one hand and child in the other, forced to leave – that's what happened to Emilia Castaneda's family. The L.A. native was about nine years old when her father announced they were going to Mexico. Her dad could no longer find work in their Boyle Heights neighborhood. Castaneda and her brother crammed what belongings they could into a trunk, and left their mother's grave behind, for a land where they didn't even know the language.

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Emilia Castaneda: There was nothing there for me. (laughs) No potable water. (laughs) And no bathroom. No warm water. (laughs) It was a third world country.

Valot: The Castaneda family wasn't alone. A majority of those forced to leave during the "Repatriation" were either American citizens or in the country legally. Castaneda's daughter, Christine Valenciana, has interviewed dozens of people forced out of the U.S. to Mexico. She says it was a different time.

Christine Valenciana: The 1930s, of course, was the Great Depression and there were, you know, millions of people who were out of work. And there were laws that were passed that aliens – quote "aliens" – were not to be hired.

Valot: Rex Thomson headed what was called the Department of Charities for the County of Los Angeles. Before his death, he talked about the Mexican Repatriation in a recorded interview.

Those comments are at Cal State Fullerton's Center for Oral and Public History – part of its Mexican-American collection. In his interview, Thomson said too many Mexican families were on the relief rolls.

Rex Thomson: I went to Mexico City and I told 'em that we would like to ship these people back, not to the border, but from where they came from.

Valot: Thomson says his department offered repatriation. But records show that many Mexicans – and Mexican Americans – were rounded up in raids. Some were taken at gunpoint. Others left out of fear. It happened all over the U.S. Cal State L.A. Chicano studies professor Francisco Balderrama wrote a book about it: "Decade of Betrayal." He says the deportation campaign really hit hard in Southern California.

Francisco Balderrama: Conservatively, we're talking about 1/3 of the population in Los Angeles and Orange County – the Mexican population of the 1930s – are forced or expelled to Mexico.

Valot: Emilia Castaneda was finally returned home to the U.S. nine years after her family had left for Mexico, thanks to an aunt who sent her a copy of her birth certificate. Now, Castaneda wants an apology from the federal government. She also wants the repatriation to be in school textbooks. Castaneda's daughter, Christine Valenciana:

Christine Valenciana: Until it's part of our curriculum, most people won't know about the courage that people had and the trials that they faced. I don't see this so much as about "Well, let's look at this bad thing that happened," as much as, "Okay, let's look at this bad thing that happened in the land of the free. Let's use this as an example of, let's not let this happen again to anyone."

[Sounds of Olvera Street]

Valot: Souvenir stalls on downtown L.A.'s Olvera Street stand where one of the major raids 70 years ago rounded up people to send to Mexico. A commemorative plaque likely will be placed here by the California Department of Parks and Recreation, under the state's Apology Act for the Mexican Repatriation. But so far, there's no plaque – and it's not clear who's supposed to get it, or when it'll be placed.