They Came to Toil : : Newspaper Representations of Mexicans and Immigrants in the Great Depression / / Melita M. Garza.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2018
• VerfasserIn: Garza, Melita M.,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.)

As the Great Depression gripped the United States in the early 1930s, the Hoover administration sought to preserve jobs for Anglo-Americans by targeting Mexicans, including long-time residents and even US citizens, for deportation. Mexicans comprised more than 46 percent of all people deported between 1930 and 1939, despite being only 1 percent of the US population. In all, about half a million people of Mexican descent were deported to Mexico, a “homeland” many of them had never seen, or returned voluntarily in fear of deportation. They Came to Toil investigates how the news reporting of this episode in immigration history created frames for representing Mexicans and immigrants that persist to the present. Melita M. Garza sets the story in San Antonio, a city central to the formation of Mexican American identity, and contrasts how the city’s three daily newspapers covered the forced deportations of Mexicans. She shows that the Spanish-language La Prensa not surprisingly provided the fullest and most sympathetic coverage of immigration issues, while the locally owned San Antonio Express and the Hearst chain-owned San Antonio Light varied between supporting Mexican labor and demonizing it. Garza analyzes how these media narratives, particularly in the English-language press, contributed to the racial “othering” of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Adding an important new chapter to the history of the Long Civil Rights Movement, They Came to Toil brings needed historical context to immigration issues that dominate today’s headlines.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures, Illustrations, and Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. The Crisis: They Came to Toil . . . but They Could Not Stay -- Chapter 1 1929 To Pave a Way through Hostile and Barren Lands -- Chapter 2 1930 A Thousand Times Better Off with Mexican Labor -- Chapter 3 1931 The Tragedy of the Repatriated -- Chapter 4 1932–1933 A New Deal for American Pioneers -- Chapter 5 Conclusion and Epilogue -- Appendix By the Numbers La Prensa, the Express, and the Light Circulation, 1929–1934 -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index