“Trains of Misery”: Repatriate Voices and Responses in Northern Mexico during the Great Depression

Abstract

Abstract During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans left the United States for Mexico. Some hoped they could escape the economic crisis in the United States, while others were forced to leave their homes. For many who traveled via train as part of repatriation campaigns, they had no home or community in Mexico to return to or found themselves stranded in towns and cities along railway routes. In these regions in northern Mexico, resentment against returning migrants intensified as repatriates were increasingly viewed as economic and social disturbances. This article uses letters sent to Mexican presidents from repatriates and from local residents in northern Mexico, newspapers, and oral histories to argue for a deeper analysis of the various stages of forced removal. To better understand the devastating consequences of repatriation as forced removal, we must also look at the methods of transportation used to move migrants and how they shape the emotional, economic, and political ramifications of expulsion.