The links below will help you with translating tools between English and Spanish.
1. Audio of a words in both English and Spanish. Will also translate phrases.
2. Google Search - Espana: The word can be typed in English, and the search finds results in Spanish, including images
3. Also Google Arabic is available.
2. Google Search - Espana: The word can be typed in English, and the search finds results in Spanish, including images
3. Also Google Arabic is available.
Look at these people. They are in a Bread Line. remember, you have already learned about them.
Are these Latino/a Americans more the same
or more different than other people you have seen in this unit?
Latino - Latina History of The Great Depression New Deal Time
The name of the man in front of the stamp is John Basilone.
The medal he is wearing is the Medal of Honor.
That is the most important award a U.S. Military person can earn. Look up his story. A simple search such as this “John Basilone medal of honor”
There is a lot more to the history of The Great Depression and New Deal than we usually learn. Some is encouraging, and some depressing. HOWEVER, we must learn all of it, because knowing the truth sets you free from ignorance.
Clear??? You have the choice to take either road in learning AND life
These people are "sticking their heads in the sand," which is a saying that means they are remaining ignorant on purpose.
We cannot assume that all people who identify as Latino/Latina have the same experience. That is stereotyping, which can lead to an inadequate understanding of the truth. However, much of the history of the Great Depression time we have focused on the experiences of Americans in general. We will here examine the experiences of Latino/a Americans, paying attention to as many Latino/a perspectives as we can, but the focus will be on the experiences of Mexican Americans.
Labor Organizer
A labor organizer is someone who gets their co-workers together to ask their employer (bosses) for better rights. Remember...Higher pay; Shorter hours; Safer working conditions.
During the time period around the Great Depression many Latinas did this in agriculture (food growing), canning (food processing), textile (making clothes), and service (restaurants, cleaning, etc.) companies.
One such woman was Carmen Bernal Escobar. She is the third one from the left with her hands around her son.
She became active in the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA). She participated in a strike (refuse to work) for better conditions, that resulted in a 5 cent per hour increase. That was BIG for that time. After the strike she became "head shop steward (leader) of the women," meaning she was one of the major union leaders in the factory.
Here is a picture of some members of an organization connected to her organization, the UCAPAWA
Here is a picture of her organization. Maybe one of them is Carmen Bernal Escobar
Civil Rights Organizer - In Addition to Labor Organization
Civil Rights are defined as "the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality." There was, and still is, a need for actively working to promote (support) this for Latina/Latinos. In effect it has been going on, it is just that there has been little effort to have students learn about it. HOWEVER, YOU are about to meet one woman who did this kind of work.
She name was Luisa Moreno who came to the United States from Guatemala. She was one of the leaders of El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Espanola. She helped to work for an end to segregation in public facilities (restaurants, bathrooms, buses, etc.), housing, education, and employment. Some people say she was the first Latina national labor organizer. Eventually she was deported back to Guatemala, and would pass away there.
Luisa Moreno
(1907-1992)
Video about Luisa Moreno
Deportation As A New Deal Strategy
People waiting to be deported to Mexico during the Great Depression
This is what deportation has looked like in more modern times:
Deportation from New York City in modern times
This is what it looked like during The Great Depression
People being deported to Mexico in 1933 - part of the New Deal
As early as 1930 the U.S. government began deporting Mexican Americans. In February they sent 5,000 back, and later in August another 2,000 were sent to central Mexico.
During the Great Depression, the Federal Bureau of Immigration (after 1933, the Immigration and Naturalization Service) and local governments rounded up Mexican immigrants and Mexican American citizens and shipped them to Mexico to save the government money.
Mexican and Mexican-American families wait to board Mexico-bound trains in Los Angeles on March 8, 1932
Remember, all the help being given as part of the New Deal cost LOTS of money, and the government was already going into debt (borrowing money) to pay for it. They thought that by sending immigrants and U.S. citizens who were Mexican Americans to Mexico they could save money, and give jobs to others.
It was a shame that during this time more than 400,000 people, many of them citizens of the United States by birth, were sent across the U.S.-Mexico border from Arizona, California, and Texas.
- Texas' Mexican-born population was reduced by a third (33%).
- Los Angeles also lost a third of its Mexican population.
Even before October 29th (Black Tuesday - the stock market crash), there had been a lot of pressure from the American Federation of Labor (a labor union), and local governments to reduce the number of Mexican immigrants.
Opposition to the deportation from local and state farm business groups was able to slow efforts to impose an immigration limit (They did not want limits to happen because they needed skilled workers.) But strong enforcement of existing laws eventually slowed legal entry.
One of these strategies involved the U.S. embassy in Mexico. In 1928 they began to pay MUCH more attention to the literacy test (This was a test that found out whether you could read and write in English). It was used to determine whether someone had the right to immigrate to the U.S. It had been a law for 11 years, but not really used.
These men were captured by the Border Patrol in the
Great Depression time
Hear the Story
The government people in charge believed:
- that removal of undocumented immigrants would reduce the amount the government was spending to help people during The Great Depression.
- They also thought this would make jobs available for citizens born in the U.S.
Altogether, 82,400 were involuntarily (did not want to be) deported by the federal government. The other 320,000 were sent back by local and state governments.
As we just said, the Federal (National government - As in the one in D.C. run by F.D.R., a democrat progressive of that time) efforts were accompanied by city and county pressure to deport poor Mexican American families.
Pay attention!!! These were families who were American. They were just also Mexican and poor.
In one raid in Los Angeles in February 1931, police surrounded a downtown park and detained (held) some 400 adults and children. The threat of unemployment, deportation, and loss of relief payments led tens of thousands of people to leave the United States.
The video you will see blow paints a bigger picture, taking the story into the 1940's, when the number of Mexican Americans targeted for deportation would rise as high as 1,200,000.
New Deal Help - Sort Of - FSA Migrant Camps
Here are Five Mexican American children at the gate of the camp
The New Deal offered Mexican Americans a little help. The Farm Security Administration set up camps for migrant farm workers in California, and the CCC and WPA (Two New Deal help programs) hired unemployed Mexican Americans temporarily. Many, however, did not qualify for relief assistance because as migrant workers they did not have a real permanent address.
Furthermore, agricultural workers were not eligible for support under many of the new New Deal programs, such as:
- Social Security, and
- the National Labor Relations Act.
The farm workers who remained struggled to survive in harsh conditions. Bank foreclosures drove small farmers from their land, and large landholders cut back on their permanent workforce (number of people working for them). As with many Southwestern farm families, a great number of Mexican American farmers discovered they had to take on a migratory existence and traveled the highways in search of work.
Many found a temporary place to live in the migrant work camps started by the U.S. Farm Security Administration, or FSA (The FSA was part of The New Deal). The FSA camps provided housing, food, and medicine for migrant farm families. They also had more protection from criminals that often took advantage of migrants. The FSA set up several camps specifically for Mexican Americans in an attempt to create safe havens from violent attacks.
The camps also provided an unexpected benefit (good thing). In bringing together so many individual farm families, they increased connections within the Mexican American community. This made them stronger.
Many residents began organizing their fellow workers around labor concerns (pay, having a job, being safe on the job), and helped pave the way for the farm labor union movements that emerged later in the century (Can you say Cesar Chavez???).
This interview (word is a link to a website with a recording of an interview) with a leader of the FSA camp in El Rio, California describes some of the day-to-day issues that the camp residents dealt with.
Images Helping to Tell The Story
Some of the leaders in the camp
The camp had entertainment
One of the reasons people went to the camp
Although farming was an important source of employment for Mexican immigrants, by the end of the 1930s Mexican Americans were established (set up) throughout the American workforce, getting jobs in many different types of busineses.
Mexican immigrants and their descendants (family born after them) could be found in most of the industries of the Southwest, including ranching and mining (These links show you pictures of these things happening.)
America's growing rail network was particularly important for Mexican immigrants. The railroad industry had long turned to immigrants from Mexico as a source of low-cost labor. In return, Mexican workers found that the railways offered not only employment, but also mobility. They often used this relatively inexpensive form of travel to move their families further into the North and East of the U.S., and into a more urban way of life.
![Santiago Orange Growers Association, Orange Packers, Orange [graphic]](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/DOihOoZneKAlpz8fu-Xwf3WwaO37O10GXB0f3JXlKW41BMtNsVs6TUGu7NvNaxTuNv7e1ipUs3vPcWna7aFBtZwvXVPbyLDX3H5isno5BeGy0lXH8mNlvvpS9ny7ZhNMpVfuALf6)
Mexican American factory workers.
