They Should Stay There - (Latin America in Translation/En Traducción/Em Tradução) by Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso (Paperback)

About the Book

"Originally published in Spanish with the title Que se queden allãaa: el gobierno de Mâexico y la repatriaciâon de mexicanos en Estados Unidos (1934-1940)"--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

Here, for the first time in English--and from the Mexican perspective--is the story of Mexican migration to the United States and the astonishing forced repatriation of hundreds of thousands of people to Mexico during the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression. While Mexicans were hopeful for economic reform following the Mexican revolution, by the 1930s, large numbers of Mexican nationals had already moved north and were living in the United States in one of the twentieth century's most massive movements of migratory workers. Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso provides an illuminating backstory that demonstrates how fluid and controversial the immigration and labor situation between Mexico and the United States was in the twentieth century and continues to be in the twenty-first.

When the Great Depression took hold, the United States stepped up its enforcement of immigration laws and forced more than 350,000 Mexicans, including their U.S.-born children, to return to their home country. While the Mexican government was fearful of the resulting economic implications, President Lázaro Cárdenas fostered the repatriation effort for mostly symbolic reasons relating to domestic politics. In clarifying the repatriation episode through the larger history of Mexican domestic and foreign policy, Alanís connects the dots between the aftermath of the Mexican revolution and the relentless political tumult surrounding today's borderlands immigration issues.

Review Quotes

"This fine-grained history of the state in action provides critical context for social historians of Mexican migration during the 1930s. . . . The quantity of research and depth of analysis mark They Should Stay There as a significant historiographical contribution, and just as important, a bridge between a towering Mexican historian and the English-speaking world."--Journal of Arizona History

About the Author

Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso is professor of history at El Colegio de San Luis in Mexico. Russ Davidson is curator emeritus of Latin American and Iberian Collections and translator of many books. Mark Overmyer-Velázquez is professor of history at University of Connecticut.