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Repatriation Beyond the Borderlands: The Impact of the Depression of 1921 on Kansas City's Mexican Immigrants During the Great Depression
Madrigal, Anna
Madrigal, Anna
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Abstract
During the Great Depression, federal, state, and local authorities throughout the United States utilized large-scale deportation raids and repatriation to eject an estimated 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans from the country. While previous studies of Mexican repatriation during the Great Depression focus on larger communities near the U.S.-Mexico border, there are very few academic discussions of what repatriation looked like in the Midwest and beyond. The Kansas City metropolitan area contains one of the largest communities of Mexican immigrants in the United States outside of the borderlands. Unlike in Los Angeles, San Antonio, or even Chicago, authorities in Kansas City used large-scale Mexican repatriation in Kansas City prior to the Great Depression, and ultimately learned that repatriation is a temporary solution to a perennial issue. This senior thesis analyzes how Kansas City authorities used repatriation during the Depression of 1921, the ineffectiveness of repatriation in slowing the growth of the Kansas City barrio, and the community-building that took place between 1921 and 1929 that proved crucial to the staying power of Mexicans in Kansas City through the Great Depression.
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Submitted to the Department of History of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for departmental honors.
Date
2023-04-19
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Department of History, University of Kansas