The Cristero War and Mexican Migration to the U.S.

 

In the 1920s, the Cristero War in Mexico led to waves of immigration to the United States. Although the majority of families fleeing the violence settled in California and Chicago, many with connections in the Northwest settled in the rich agricultural lands of Eastern Washington and Oregon. In this episode of Past as Prologue, WSU Historian Julian Dodson explains how the history of immigration and settlement is often directly connected to regional and global conflict.

 

Sueann Ramella: What is the connection of the Mexican Revolution and the Hispanic population in the United States? WSU Professor in the Roots of Contemporary Issues global history program, Julian Dodson, says the larger story of immigration and settlement is directly connected to regional and global conflicts.

Julian Dodson: In the 1920s, the Cristero War in Mexico led to waves of immigration to the United States. It was a religious conflict between a secularizing revolutionary state and a stubborn Episcopal hierarchy in Mexico, unwilling to accept constitutional restrictions on its role in Mexican society. The war quickly became a popular conflict, and engulfed large swaths of the center and central western regions of the country. Many families fled the violence and settled in the United States – a majority in California and Chicago, but many others with family connections in the Northwest settled in the rich agricultural lands of Eastern Washington and Oregon.

Then came WWII with another influx of migrant labor. The Bracero program from 1942-1964, offered temporary work status for millions of Mexican guest workers because the draft had resulted in labor shortages in the United States. Many of those workers stayed and can trace their residence to the early- and mid-twentieth century. The Bracero program also drew Latino/a populations from groups that had previously settled in the Southwest, Colorado, Utah, Texas, and Wyoming.

There is this image of migratory patterns that, in many ways are connected to the watershed events of the early twentieth century, such as the Mexican Revolution, and the social turmoil in the 1920s. The larger story is one of a tightly knit history of immigration and settlement that is directly connected to regional conflicts in Mexico as well as global conflicts, such as WWII, that have resulted in well-established Latino/a communities that have made the Pacific Northwest the wonderfully rich and diverse region that it is today. With such a large number of immigrant families, particularly in agricultural production in the region, this history is important to preserve and to share.

Braceros were subject to vitriolic racism and unfair labor practices while the very labor they provided was essential to maintain a healthy and functioning agricultural sector in the years during WWII and beyond. In our current global historical moment, we see a redoubling of the reinforcement of exclusionary mechanisms, like borders. The conflicts that have been caused by policies and politics emanating from the “Global North” have produced massive refugee populations, and the fires of racism, nativism, and islamophobia have been stoked at home and in Europe. We need look no further than the current Administration’s dehumanizing rhetoric regarding Central American migrants and Syrian refugees to get a sense of the callous nativism that underpins current immigration policy. These nativist sentiments are, as the history indicates, not entirely new. Of course we know that society, on the whole, is enriched by greater diversity—racial, ethnic, and gender—and that this contributes to a greater diversity of thought. As life-long learners, we benefit from a wider variety of ideas.

Sueann Ramella: That’s Julian Dodson, of Washington State University. For more on this and other Northwest history essays, go to NWPB.org.

About the Author:

Julian Dodson is an instructor the Roots of Contemporary Issues (RCI) Global History Program at Washington State University. He is the author of Fanáticos, Exiles, and Spies: Revolutionary Failures on the US-Mexico Border, 1923-1930, (Texas A&M University Press, 2019). Dodson’s current research, tentatively titled The Revolutionary City: Urban Space and Environment in Postrevolutionary Mexico City, examines bureaucratic attitudes toward public urban spaces in Mexico City in the 1920s and how those attitudes changed in the 1940s and 1950s as succeeding governments sought to institutionalize the gains of the Mexican Revolution.

 

 

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You can find more information about Dr. Dodson’s book here.