Call in California for State Commemoration of the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s

 

For years, the California Legislature has considered various ways to address the legacy of the Mexican repatriation of the Great Depression, which saw about a million persons of Mexican ancestry -- including many U.S. citizens -- forcibly removed from the United States without due process.  The latest comes from California Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (Vice Chair of the Latino California Legislative Caucus) and Senator Josh Becker. They lead an "to secure justice and recognition for a dark chapter in American history. They [held] a press conference [yesterday] to discuss SB 537, which calls for a state commemoration in the form of a statue or other appropriate memorialization of the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s—a period of forced deportations and injustices that devastated hundreds of thousands of Mexican and Mexican-American families and left a lasting scar on the community that continues to this day."

I testified in support of SB 537 yesterday and learned from conversations with Senators Gonzalez and Becker, as well as  one of my former students, Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria.

KJ