Banished Citizens
A History of the Mexican American Women Who Endured Repatriation
In the interbellum, US officials sent about one million people of Mexican descent—citizens or otherwise—across the southern border in a coordinated program. In Banished Citizens, Marla A. Ramírez tells this painful story through historical research and interviews with members of the families affected by this forced migration.
With detailed explanations of how Mexican Americans were abused during the interwar period, the book shows how nineteenth-century naturalization laws created loopholes that local, state, and sometimes federal officials exploited to remove Mexican men from the country, driving away their US-born wives and children based on claims of their reliance on support. The book also explains the irony of states using immigrant labor during war-driven labor shortages, only to turn on those same workers once the situation changed.
After setting up this bigger picture, Ramírez tells the stories of a handful of impacted Mexican American families. Trinidad Rodríguez was still trying to regain her US citizenship in 1969, decades after she and her US citizen mother left the country because her Mexican father was repatriated. Ramona Espinoza explains how she was forced to leave the land of her birth, only to be recruited back to California nine years later to fill a labor shortage. The book uses the specifics of these and other families’ stories to explore the different challenges ethnic Mexicans faced during this fraught period. Its discussions of attempts to limit birthright citizenship and deny the rights of first-and second-generation Americans parallel recent actions taken by the federal government, making the book timely as well as an important history.
Banished Citizens is a moving chronicle of a historical tragedy that echoes in the present day.
Reviewed by
Jeff Fleischer
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
