Mexican "Repatriation" and The Swallow

 Most Americans are familiar (or maybe have heard about) with the atrocities of slavery/ Jim Crow, the Indian Removal Act/ Trail of Tears, the Chinese Exclusion Act, The Palmer Raids, and FDR's forced relocation of 112,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps during WWII...but, ask someone about the Mexican Repatriation Program and you will probably get a blank stare!

 

Repatriate- to restore, reunite, or return (usually in a positive sense) to the country of origin, allegiance, or citizenship…in regard to war refugees, injured soldiers, or human remains.

 

It is shocking that this history is virtually unknown (or ignored) by most historians/ history textbooks, etc.  But, the more alarming question may be...why has it been forgotten?!? The Mexican Repatriation Program (1929-1939) enacted by POTUS Hoover and FDR systematically targeted and forcefully deported an estimated 2 million American citizens of Mexican descent...labeling them as subversives, labor radicals, and Communists.

 

 

The government felt the deportations were "necessary" to help reserve jobs and New Deal relief for Whites...after all the Mexicans were "stealing their jobs" (sound familiar to the modern day hate mongers...wall builders...) and didn't deserve their Constitutional Rights as American Citizens. To deepen the "mockery of justice", their property was confiscated and sold to help pay for their own illegal deportations!

 

 

One of the abominable ironies of repatriation was that prior to the Great Depression, Mexicans had been recruited by American businessmen to work in railroad construction, steel mining, ranching, agriculture, etc. and after repatriation they were recruited again to help the United States win WWII.

 

Listen to "The Swallow"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcFQOZtq1aQ

 

In Los Angeles, a Mexican-American college student mournfully sang a painful farewell...La Golondrinas (The Swallow) to departing friends...symbolic of a bird that lives its life as a long journey between two countries...and far away from a home they may never return to.

 La Golondrinas - English Translation

 

Where can it go rushed and fatigued

the swallow passing by

tossed by the wind looking so lost with nowhere to hide.

 

By my bed I'll put your nest
until the season passes.
I too, O heaven! am lost in this place unable to fly.

 

Leave, too my beloved homeland,
that home that saw my birth.
My life today is wandering, anguished.
I cannot return home.

 

Dearest bird beloved pilgrim,
my heart nigh to yours;
remember tender swallow,
remember my homeland and cry.