History of the United States II / Unit 10 USH2 1380 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Deportation and Departure
The idea
The anchor's chapter does not carry the story of Mexican repatriation; both witnesses do. Digital History says more than four hundred thousand Mexicans and Mexican Americans were sent to Mexico, many of them citizens born in the United States, and that Texas's Mexican-born population fell by a third and Los Angeles's by a third. The Yawp counts fifty-four thousand people deported between nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty-two, and forty-four thousand more who left, in its word, voluntarily.
In practice
A deportation order and a train ticket, two routes to the same border.
Where people slip
The figures measure different things: formal deportations, pressured departures, and a total that includes citizens who could not lawfully be deported. The Yawp's quotation marks around voluntarily signal how much pressure lay behind many departures. Hold the measures apart, and hold the fact they share: citizens were sent out of their own country.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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