uring the years of the Great Depression, an unprecedented number of Mexican immigrants, for a variety of reasons, returned or were returned to Mexico from the United States. This movement, an acceleration of repatriation that dated back to the 1920s, was also spurred by a federal deportation campaign against aliens who had illegally entered the United States. Mexican aliens were especially vulnerable to this campaign because many had entered informally before laws were passed, and they had not regularized their entry.l For many years repatriation, as well as other episodes in Mexican American history, was completely ignored. Not until recently have serious studies begun to come from disciplines other than sociology, anthropology, or education. Because of the dearth of material on Mexican Americans, scholars have been compelled to rely on a select group of published writings for much of the background knowledge and many of the assumptions made about the experiences of Mexicans in the United States. For the phenomenon of repatriation, one of the most quoted sources has been Carey McWilliams, for the past twenty years editor of the Nation and a widely respected journalist. McWilliams, a prolific writer, discussed Mexican repatriation in several of his books dealing with minorities in America. His first observations on the return of Mexicans to Mexico were recorded in an article Abraham Hoffman is an assistant professor of history and curator, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma. His book on Mexican repatriation, Unwanted Mexican Americans: Repatriation Pressures during the Great Depression is scheduled for publication in 1973 by the University of Arizona Press. 1 Abraham Hoffman, "The Repatriation of Mexican Nationals from the United States during the Great Depression" (Ph.D. dissertation,
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