Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Francisco E. Balderrama (Author), Raymond Rodríguez (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Balderrama and Rodriguez couldn't have penned a more timely book on Mexican Americans. As this century speeds to a close, history, as they say, seems to repeat itself. Today's Proposition 186 legislation in California is a carbon copy of xenophobic laws that were howled for and passed earlier this century in this country. Covering the 1930s, Decade of Betrayal details the shameful treatment that people of Mexican heritage were handed when the going got tough in the U.S. The Bill of Rights was out the window when it came to people of brown skin, who had to endure unlawful search and seizure and systematic roundups, such as the infamous La Placita raid, in which the INS, in conjunction with state and local police, surrounded a public park on a weekend day demanding proof of citizenship from those who didn't look "American" and arresting those who couldn't immediately show proof. U.S. citizenship did not provide protection from harassment by the government; legislators in Washington strongly debated and seriously considered the wholesale deportation of all "non-Americans," that is, nonwhites, from U.S. shores. This is an important historical accounting, "social history rather than historical sociology" as the authors state. Every active history and political science collection should add this title. Raul Nino --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"Decade of Betrayal is an important book on a topic little understood by most Americans." (Journal of the West ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 303 pages
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press; illustrated edition edition (August 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826315755
• ISBN-13: 978-0826315755
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #532,620 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read before you review, please, June 17, 2005

By	Kristin Sz (Minneapolis, MN --USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Hardcover)

I am wondering whether a few of the other reviewers have actually read Balderrama's book. I haven't finished it yet, but even I have figured out that Balderrama and Rodriguez are writing about how not only Mexican nationals were 'repatriated,' but also US-born, US citizens who happened to be of Mexican ancestry (and most likely not pale-skinned enough).

One of the principal questions the authors pose is: what is the relationship between legal citizenship and cultural citizenship? In other words, if even citizens get deported, many to a country they have never even seen, because of their imputed race, what does citizenship even mean? This question is very relevant today given the current scrutiny by ICE of immigrants, legal or not, and by all of DHS of citizens, especially those who fit certain suspect profiles.

The most interesting part of the book for me so far is the authors' in-depth look at Mexican families in the US in this period. In particular, their portrait of how families of Mexican descent were stereotyped and misunderstood by both the US and Mexican governments, and how as a result immigration and welfare policies were poorly formulated. It's worth thinking about how government policy can work (directly or indirectly) to either strengthen or break up families--and how many Mexican/American families (by this I mean families comprising people with Mexican and US citizenship) managed to stay together despite the economic and political struggles they faced.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Start, October 2, 2005

By	Susan (California) - See all my reviews

Balderrama explores an over looked chapter in American history--the deportation of hundreds of thousands of American citizens of Mexican descent during the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, he tries to argue that repatriation was not economically feasible for employers. I say what difference does it make? It's the same old argument we hear now: They do jobs nobody else will do. But what if they didn't? The fact is, the government has no right to deport its citizens, regardless of what they do for a living, regardless of their race/ethnicity/skin color.

Thios book is a great start, but more scholarship needs to be done in this area.

One of my great uncles, an American citizen of Mexican descent, was deported by the US government during the Depression because they wanted to free up jobs for the dustbowl refugees. To the reviewer who calls this sad chapter in our nation's history a "minor incident," I wonder how he would feel if he were uprooted and taken by the US government to a foreign country.

The reason this reviewer thinks something this huge is a "minor incident" is that he doesn't view people of Mexican descent as truly American. He sees anybody of Mexican descent as foreign even if they are American citizens just like him and therefore thinks it's no big deal for them to have been deported. Many of the American citizens who were deported had never been to Mexico and could not Speak Spanish. But even if they could, they were still AMERICANS and had every right to live and work in the United States, the nation of their birth, as much as any other American citizen.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Problems, June 8, 2002

By	"yamadocherry" (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

The book Decade of Betrayal by Francisco Balderrama was an interesting and compelling book. I strongly disagree with the two reviews i read, especially Michael Sturdevant's review, its true that Balderrama was a bit arrogant but he was not preaching but merely putting in his two cents. Mexicans as well as all other immigrants came to this "great" country seeking a better life, true that opportunities were and are still here but they are only achieved through great difficulty. Mexicans have always faced harsh treatment in this competitive country, Balderrama was writing the fact that this country is not perfect and that the rights of the people especially immigrants have been broken in time of chaos. To this day we are facing morality problems in which immigrants are punished and deported because there are just too many people in this country and not enough opportunity. How are you going to say to someone you can come into this country and achieve a better life and tell someone else let your family starve because their are just too many immigrants and the law says to stay out. Balderrrama was sharing with the world the problems society has, he was not stating that the US is terrible but that the "land of opportunity" is not all that everyone dreams it to be.