The Making of the Unassimilable Mexican and Race as a Common US-Mexico History, c. 1920s

This paper examines the racialization of Mexicans in the United States during the 1920s, a decade of restriction in U.S. and Mexican immigration law. In the U.S., the potential restriction of Mexican immigrants led to debates in both the U.S. and Mexico over the racial desirability of Mexicans. While scholars have focused on the U.S. side, I argue that a common history of racial narratives produced in both Mexico and the U.S. was critical to the racialization of Mexicans as unassimilable. Therefore, to fully understand Mexicans’ ambiguous racial position in the U.S., accounting for the role of U.S.-Mexico relations and collaborations between multiple groups across both countries is necessary. 

Large-scale Mexican immigration began during the 1910 Mexican Revolution, coinciding with the turn towards restriction in U.S. and Mexican immigration law. In the U.S. side, Mexicans’ contested legal status as white and the economic needs of southwest agriculture helped Mexicans avoid a quota. Ultimately, Mexican immigrants were not restricted, but began to be racialized as incompatible with U.S. society and as essentially different from other immigrants. This racialization of Mexicans began in Mexico too, where intellectuals, immigration reformers, and politicians argued that Mexicans in the U.S. were fundamentally different from other immigrants due to their racial makeup. In their argument, Mexican immigrants were especially suited for cheap labor because they were culturally predisposed to work that ethnic whites and Asian immigrants could not carry out, a claim that would become widespread in the U.S. During the debates over an immigration quota, the shared racial narratives about Mexicans produced collaborations between U.S. and Mexican intellectuals, academics, labor, and diplomats. All in all, this paper argues that a common history of race was critical to the racialization of Mexicans in both Mexico and the U.S.