During the Great Depression of the 1930s, state, local, and federal agencies carried out campaigns to encourage or force Mexican immigrants to return to Mexico. Scholars estimate several hundred thousand people left the U.S. for Mexico, including many U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. Immigrant communities and progressive labor unions organized to resist what they considered unjust deportations designed in part to undermine the growing power of workers in agriculture and industries across the Southwest.
In this 1940 address given to the Fourth Annual Conference of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born in Washington, D.C., Guatemalan-born activist Louisa Moreno assailed mass deportation and defended the right of immigrants to a place in the U.S. Immigrants and non-immigrant Americans of Latin American descent, she argued, were being targeted by the same racist policies. Moreno had been an organizer for the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA-CIO) and at the time of her speech, Moreno was organizing on behalf of El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Español (Congress of Spanish-Speaking Peoples).
How to cite this article: Louisa Moreno, "Non-Citizen Americans in the South West" (American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, 1940). Non-Citizen Americans in the South West
Caravans of Sorrow
One hears much today about Hemisphere unity. The press sends special correspondents to Latin America, South of the Border songs are wailed by the radio, educational institutions and literary circles speak the language of cultural cooperation, and, what is more important, labor unions are seeking the road of closer ties with the Latin American working people.
The stage is set. A curtain rises. May we ask you to see behind the scenery and visualize a forgotten character in this great theatre of the Americas?
Long before the “Grapes of Wrath” had ripened in California’s vineyards a people lived on highways, under trees or tents, in shacks or railroad sections, picking crops—cotton, fruits, vegetables, cultivating sugar beets, building railroads and dams, making a barren land fertile for new crops and greater riches.
The ancestors of some of these migrant and resident workers, whose home is the Southwest, were America’s first settlers in New Mexico, Texas and California, and the greater percentage was brought from Mexico by the fruit-exchanges, railroad companies and cotton interests in great need of underpaid labor during the early post-war period. They are the Spanish speaking workers of the Southwest, citizens and non-citizens working and living under identical conditions, facing hardships and miseries while producing and building for agriculture and industry.
Their story lies unpublicized in university libraries, files of government, welfare and social agencies—a story grimly titled the “Caravans of Sorrow.”
And when in 1930 unemployment brought a still greater flood of human distress, trainloads of Mexican families with children born and raised in this country departed voluntarily or were brutally deported. As a result of the repatriation drive of 1933, thousands of American born youths returned to their homeland, the United States, to live on streets and highways, drifting unattached fragments of humanity. Let the annals of juvenile delinquency in Los Angeles show you the consequences.
Today the Latin Americans of the United States are seriously alarmed by the “anti-alien” drive fostered by certain un-American elements; for them, the Palmer days have never ended. In recent years while deportations in general have decreased, the number of persons deported to Mexico has constantly increased. During the period of 1933 to 1937, of a total of 55,087 deported, 25,135 were deportations of Mexicans. This is 45 1/2% of the total and does not include an almost equal number of so-called voluntary departures.
Commenting on these figures, the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born wrote to the Spanish Speaking Peoples Congress in 1939: “…one conclusion can be drawn, and that is, where there is such a highly organized set-up as to effect deportations of so many thousands, this set-up must be surrounded with a complete system of intimidation and discrimination of that section of the population victimized by the deportation drive.”
Confirming the fact of a system of extensive discrimination are university studies by Paul S. Taylor, Emory Bogardus and many other professors and social workers of the Southwest. Let me state the simple truth. The majority of the Spanish speaking peoples of the United States are the victims of a set-up for discrimination, be they descendants of the first white settlers in America or non-citizens.
Let me state the simple truth. The majority of the Spanish speaking peoples of the United States are the victims of a set-up for discrimination, be they descendants of the first white settlers in America or non-citizens.
Louisa Moreno
I will not go into the reasons for this un-democratic practice, but may we state categorically that it is the main reason for the reluctance of Mexicans and Latin Americans in general to become naturalized. For you must know, discrimination takes very definite forms in unequal wages, unequal opportunities, unequal schooling and even through a denial of the use of public places in certain towns in Texas, California, Colorado and other Southwestern states.
Only some five or six percent of the Latin American immigrants have become naturalized. A number of years ago it was stated that in a California community with 50,000 Mexicans only 200 had become citizens. An average of 100 Mexicans out of close to a million become citizens every year. These percentages have increased lately.
Another important factor concerning naturalization is the lack of documentary proof of entry, because entry was not recorded or because the immigrants were brought over en masse by large interests handling transportation from Mexico in their own peculiar way.
Arriving at logical conclusions, the Latin American non-citizens, rooted in this country, are increasingly seeing the importance and need for naturalization. But, how will the thousands of migrants establish residence? What possibility have these people had, segregated in “Little Mexicos,” to learn English and meet educational requirements? How can they, receiving hunger wages while enriching the stockholders of the Great Western Sugar Company, the Bank of America and other large interests, pay high naturalization fees? A Mexican family living on relief in Colorado would have to stop eating for two months and a half to pay for the citizenship papers of one member of the family. Is this humanly possible?
But why have “aliens” on relief while the taxpayers “bleed”? Let me ask those who would raise such a question: what would the Imperial Valley, the Rio Grande Valley and other rich irrigated valleys in the Southwest be without the arduous, self-sacrificing labor of these non-citizen Americans? Read ‘‘Factories in the Fields,” by Carey McWilliams, to obtain a picture of how important Mexican labor has been for the development of California’s crops after the World War. Has anyone counted the miles of railroads built by these same non-citizens? One can hardly imagine how many bales of cotton have passed through the nimble fingers of Mexican men, women and children. And what conditions have they had to endure to pick that cotton? Once while holding a conference for a trade union paper in San Antonio a cotton picker told me how necessary a Spanish paper was to inform the Spanish speaking workers that FSA camps were to be established, for she remembered so many nights, under the trees in the rain, when she and her husband held gunny sacks over the shivering bodies of their sleeping children—young Americans! I’ve heard workers say that they left their shacks under heavy rains to find shelter under trees. You can well imagine in what condition those shacks were.
These people are not aliens. They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth and labor to the Southwest. Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s industrialized agriculture, the sugar beet companies and the large cotton interests that operate or have operated with the labor of Mexican workers.
Surely the sugar beet growers have not been asked if they want to dispense with the skilled labor cultivating and harvesting their crops season after season. It is only the large interests, their stooges, and some sadly misinformed people who claim that the Mexicans are no longer wanted.
And let us assume that 1,400,000 men, women and children were no longer wanted, what could be done that would be different from the anti-Semitic persecutions in Europe? A people who have lived twenty and thirty years in this country, tied up by family relations with the early settlers, with American-born children, cannot be uprooted without the complete destruction of the. faintest semblance of democracy and human liberties for the whole population.
Some speak of repatriation. Naturally there is interest for repatriation among thousands of Mexican families in Texas and to a lesser degree in other states. Organized repatriation has been going on and the net results in one year has been the establishment of the Colonia “18 de Marzo” in Tamaulipas, Mexico, for 2,000 families. There are 1,400,000 Mexicans in the United States according to general estimates, probably including a portion of the first generation. Is it possible to move those many people at the present
rate, when many of them do not want to be repatriated?
What then may the answer to this specific non-citizen problem be? The Spanish Speaking Peoples Congress of the United States proposes legislation that would encourage naturalization of Latin American, West Indian and Canadian residents of the United States and that would nurture greater friendships among the peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
The question of Hemisphere unity will remain an empty phrase while this problem at home remains ignored and is aggravated by the fierce “anti-alien” drive.
Legislation to facilitate citizenship to all natural-born citizens from the countries of the Western Hemisphere, waiving excessive fees, educational and other requirements of a technical nature is urgently needed.
A piece of legislation embodying this provision is timely and important. Undoubtedly it would rally the support of the many friends of true Hemisphere unity.
You have seen the forgotten character in the present American scene—a scene of the Americas. Let me say that, in the face of greater hardships, the “Caravans of Sorrow” are becoming the “Caravans of Hope.” They are organizing in trade unions with other workers in agriculture and industry. The unity of Spanish-speaking citizens and non-citizens is being furthered through the Spanish Speaking Peoples Congress of the United States, an organization embracing trade unions, fraternal, civic and cultural organizations, mainly in California. The purpose of this movement is to seek an improvement of social, economic, and cultural conditions, and for the integration of Spanish speaking citizens and non- citizens into the American nation. The United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of America, with thousands of Spanish-speaking workers in its membership, and Liga Obrera of New Mexico, were the initiators of the Congress. (For information: Spanish Speaking Peoples Congress, 233 South Broadway, Los Angeles, California.)
This Congress stands with all progressive forces against the badly-labelled “anti-alien” legislation, and asks the support of this Conference for democratic legislation to facilitate and encourage naturalization. We hope that this Conference will serve to express the sentiment of the people of this country in condemnation of undemocratic discrimination practiced against any person of foreign birth and that it will rally the American people, native and foreign born, for the defeat of un-American proposals. The Spanish-speaking people in the United States extend their fullest support and cooperation to your efforts.