Gendering Mexican Repatriation through Oral History Methodology

Oral traditions have been used by diverse ethnic and racial groups to pass on stories from generation-to-generation preserving histories often excluded from the official record. Oral history as a research tool emerged in academia as an interventional methodology that allows researchers to document evidence of historical events that have often only left small traces in institutional archives, usually that of historically marginalized communities. This paper examines the process the author undertook to collaborate with banished survivors, their children, and grandchildren to construct a transgenerational gendered Mexican American banishment archive. The collected primary sources brought to light the untold history of U.S. citizen women and children who were unconstitutionally removed from their native country during the mass repatriation raids of the Great Depression era. Repatriation historiography has largely focused on the removal experiences of male-Mexican workers. The oral histories and personal records of participating families in this study allowed the author to rethink the history of Mexican repatriation from a gendered, legal, and transgenerational lens and rewrite it through the voices of banished Mexican American women and their direct descendants. This paper also pays close attention to social reformers’ gender biases and gendered exclusions in immigration law that resulted in the targeting of Mexican American women and children for removal. This study draws from data collected for my book manuscript and forthcoming article, “Banishment: Gendering Mexican Repatriation through Oral History Methodology” that will appear in the journal of Latino Studies in spring 2022.