Texas Mexican repatriation during the Great Depression.

Abstract

Between 1929 and 1939 at least 500,000 Mexicans and their U.S.-born children repatriated to Mexico. Fully half of them left Texas, primarily from five rural areas of Texas, but also from its cities. Both push factors and pull factors were responsible for this sizable and often tragic movement which reached its numerical peak in the fall of 1931. The Texas repatriates were channeled through three major portals, Laredo, Brownsville, and El Paso, and about four-fifths of them were destined for Mexico's northern states.