Volume 88, Number 4 - California Historical Society

in the tenuous position of balancing the needs of
business and labor, which often resulted in workers’
dissatisfaction. Workers responded to unfavorable
decisions by petitioning the president to
replace the governor. Though the territorial government
in the Mexicali Valley differed distinctly
from the Imperial Valley’s political structure,
pro-landowner bias often was similar. Harsh
conditions in the Mexicali Valley thus factored
into migrants’ decisions of whether to leave the
Imperial Valley, strike, or voluntarily repatriate to
Mexico.
Migrants were caught in a borderland’s vice. In
the Imperial Valley they faced declining wages
and a repressive police state; in the Mexicali Valley
they encountered unsympathetic governors,
a scarcity of available land, and a lack of jobs
due to the Depression’s devastation of the cotton
industry. Within months of the 1930 strike, Mexican
officials expressed alarm over the explosion
of expatriates deported and forcibly repatriated
from the United States. The Mexican government
sent Secretary of Communications and
Public Works General Juan Andreu Almazán to
investigate conditions on Mexico’s northwestern
borderlands. Almazán’s report to President
Pascual Ortíz Rubio strongly recommended
immediately purchasing “at any cost” the CRLC’s
fiefdom and resettling there industrious but
unemployed Mexican nationals living in the
United States. Almazán argued it was a matter
of national security because Americans, including
the CRLC, had been and were scheming to
acquire part of Sonora, as well as Baja California.
The nationalistic report criticized Asians and
recommended their deportation. Almazán also
urged colonization of the region to increase Colorado
River water use as a strategy to strengthen
Mexico’s negotiating position in allocating the
river before Boulder (later Hoover) Dam became
operational. 29 Two months later, Ortíz Rubio
directed the agricultural ministry to cancel or
revise the CRLC’s land concession. In the meantime,
the government reduced customs duties
for items that the repatriates brought with them
into Mexico. Additionally, Mexicali officials began
deporting Chinese and Japanese to free up tenant
and farm jobs. 30
The Public Charge, Self-Help, and
Strikes
In the United States, Mexican emigrants, many
of whom were undocumented aliens, feared poverty
and long-term unemployment because of the
increased risk of deportation. According to the
immigration code’s “likely to be a public charge”
provision, they could be deported or forced to
repatriate for vagrancy, inability to pay medical
bills, or application for public assistance. 31 To
minimize violations of the public charge provision,
Mexico instructed its consuls in the United
States to organize mutualistas to provide charity
to the sick, unemployed, and destitute. 32
In 1925, when U.S. officials refused public assistance
to Mexican nationals, the Mexican consul
created local chapters of the mutualista la Cruz
Azul Mexicana in several Imperial Valley towns.
The consul instructed the charity’s officers in
Brawley to inform the local judge that Mexicans
would no longer burden him with pleas for
public assistance. 33 In Calexico, where Mexicans
comprised 60 percent of the community’s 6,500
residents, a mutualista operated several clinics
and maintained half a dozen beds reserved for
ethnic Mexicans in the hospital. 34 Despite these
self-help efforts, whites continued to stereotype
Mexicans as addicted to public aid. Countering
this perception, the state labor statistician told
farmers that contrary to popular opinion, “It is
not his nature that makes the Mexican take charity,
but the fact that he is underpaid. He has little
share in the wealth which he helps create.” 35
Campesinos’ ability to engage in circular migration
and avoid transgressing the public charge
11