Mexican Emigration to the United States 1897-1931: Socio-Economic Patterns Item Type book; text Authors Cardoso, Lawrence A. Publisher University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ) Rights Copyright © 1980 by The Arizona Board of Regents. The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY- NC-ND 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Download date 10/10/2021 09:14:52 Item License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/632295 TO THE ~~..........' UNITED STATES LAWRENCE A. CARDOSO SONOR CHIH AH A •Hermosillo Chihuahua• Mexico, 1931 - State Boundaries * ational Capita l • Capital Citie Scale in Mile 0 100 200 State Names Not Shown on Map I . AGUASCALIENTES 2. GUANAJUATO 3. QUERETARO 4. HIDALGO 5. FEDERAL DISTRICT 6. MEXICO 7. MORELOS 8. TLAXCALA 9. PUEBLA Gulf of Mexico Mexican Emigration to the United States 1897-1931 Mexican Emigration to the United States 1897-1931 Socio-Economic Patterns Lawrence A. Cardoso THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS Tucson, Arizona About the Author . LAWRENCE A. CARDOSO, a specialist in twentieth-century Mexican history, became a member of the history department of the University of Wyoming after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 1974. His articles on Mexican immigration have appeared in various journals on southwestern and Mexican history. This Open Arizona edition is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu Copyright © 1980 by The Arizona Board of Regents Open-access edition published 2019 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4029-7 (open-access e-book) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Typographical errors may have been introduced in the digitization process. The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows: Cardoso, Lawrence A. Mexican emigration to the United States, 1897–1931. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. United States—Emigration and immigration—History. 2. Mexico—Emigration and immigration—History. 3. Mexicans in the United States—History. I. Title. JV6798.M6C37 325’ ‘0973 79-20029 ISBN 0-8165-0678-7 ISBN 0-8165-0659-0 pbk. To the memory of my mother and father Contents Preface Xlll Acknowledgments xvii 1. Porfirian Mexico: The Background of Massive Emigration 1 2. Emigration, 1897 to 1910: The Establishment of Patterns 18 3. Revolution and War, 1910 to 1921 38 4. Labor Emigration to the Southwest, 1910 to 1920: Mexican Attitudes 55 5. Floodtide of the 1920s 71 6. Mexican Policies and Attitudes in the 1920s: New Urgency 96 7. American Policy and Attitudes, 1918 to 1930 119 8. The Great Depression: Emigration Halts and Repatriation Begins 144 Abbreviations 153 Notes 154 Bibliographic Essay 179 Index 191 xii Contents Maps Mexico, 1931 ii Mexican Railroads in 1880 xx Mexican Railroads by 1910 with Connections to United States Lines 15 United States Railroad Pattern by 1900 16 Tables 1.1 Landholding in 1910 7 1.2 Mexican Population, 1793-1910 10 1.3 Daily Agricultural Wages and Wholesale Food Prices in the Central Plateau of Mexico 11 1.4 Emigrants From Native States, 1900-10 12 2.1 Daily Wages Available to Braceros in the United States, 1910-20 23 3. 1 Legal Mexican Entrants Into the United States, 1910-20 53 5.1 Daily Wages Paid to Mexican Workers by Enterprises More Than 100 Miles From the Border, 1920-29 88 5.2 Mexican Immigrants in Selected States as of April 1, 1930 92 5.3 Legal Mexican Entrants Into the United States, 1920-29 94 Preface "Once I thought to write a history of immigrants in America," commented Oscar Handlin in The Uprooted. "Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history."* An important segment of that history is the large numbers of Mexicans who began moving into the United States in the very late 1800s. They were one of the successive waves of newcomers who helped transform an almost empty area into a powerful nation. Their coming coincided with the immigra­ tion of millions of "new" immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who came to the United States for similar reasons. From 1897 to 1930 low-paid, unskilled workers were in strong demand in the United States, especially for agricultural work and railroad building. Simultaneously, events in Mexico created a large class of migrant workers. In view of the migrant's strong ties to their ancestral area, migratory patterns would not have emerged by the turn of the twentieth century without the existence of compelling factors in the Mexican society and economy. Cir­ cumstances in Mexico provided the initial impetus for the movement north­ ward of campesinos and peones. My major concern throughout this study is the people whom the Mexican novelist Mariano Azuela called "the underdogs" (los de abajo). This group of people comprised upward of 90 percent of Mexican immigrants to the United States from 1897 to 1930. The history of middle- and upper­ class immigrants forms another story, related to this one but not part of it. People in this second catagory were few in number, and their decision to *Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951), p.3. [ xiii ] xiv Preface remain in the United States hinged largely on the political attitudes of leaders in Mexico City. Mexican immigration into what is now the United States started with the expedition of 1539 led by Fray Marcos de Niza and sponsored by Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. Others had previously attempted to extend the effective territorial claims of the Spanish monarch to the north of Mexico City, but it was not until 1539 that the search for gold and souls was carried on in an organized manner with long-term effects. Niza was only the first of many thousands who came to the Borderlands from Mexico from the early sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century. Although these early population move­ ments succeeded in establishing Spanish and Mexican settlements in the area from Louisiana to California and north to what is now the state of Colorado,* they were negligible in comparison with the myriads of Mexicans who came to the United States beginning in 1897. External factors that affected emigration from Mexico at this time in­ cluded governments, employers, church-affiliated individuals, revolutions, and civil wars. However, the internal psychological impetus to emigration was as important, if not more so, than the external stimuli. An integral part of my aim in this volume is to examine the human desire for self-improvement both as a factor with its own intrinsic merit and as a necessary complement to understanding the successes and failures of the established institutions. In­ stitutional attainments were largely dependent on this human factor. All these phenomena help us to understand the continuing existence of Mexican emi­ gration to the United States. This study ends with 193 l, but the Great Depression caused only a temporary suspension of immigration from Mexico. By 1940 the American economy had recovered partially from the severe dislocations of the early 1930s, and large numbers of Mexican workers began to come again in search of employment. The creation of the bracero program in 1942 served as a further inducement to emigration, just as the temporary program of World War I had done. During the twenty-two years of its existence more than 4,500,000 Mexicans crossed the border in order to work under the provisions of this bi-national treaty. Many times that number entered the United States illegally in search of work. When the program ended in 1964, conditions in both nations coupled with the revolution of rising expectations continued to contribute to large-scale emigration. There were an estimated three to six million wetbacks in the United States in the mid-seventies. t *See John F. Bannon. The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513-1821 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971) for a sampling of the rich literature of the northward movement from Mexico in the colonial period. tU.S. Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary, lllegal Aliens, 92nd Congress, Isl and 2nd sessions, 1971-72, 5 vols. (Washington: GPO, 1972), passim; Raul A. Fernandez, The United States-Mexico Border: A Politico-Economic Profile (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), p. 116. Preface xv At the end of the seventies, Mexicans were still crossing the border to take advantage of the United States' higher standard of living. Unemployment and underemployment in Mexico remained high. As many as 5 million heads of families were without jobs; fully 50 percent of all Mexican families had an income of less than $50.00 a month. In the United States, on the other hand, many American citizens spurned the low-paid jobs offered them. Yet the existence of a federally mandated minimum wage continued to exercise a strong attraction for restless braceros eager to seek their fortunes outside their homeland. Mexicans were expected to continue to come to the United States as long as this international imbalance existed.* The size of the Mexican American community has increased steadily as a result. The 1930 census figure of 1,600,000 climbed to 6,293,000 in 1973. If the latter figure is combined with the low estimate of 3 million illegal aliens, the total number of Mexican-descent people in the United States was well in excess of 9 million in 1973.