Chapter 12 Mexicans & Puerto Ricans

Chapter 12 Mexicans & Puerto Ricans

Just from reading the title you already know what chapter 12 was mostly about. Chapter 12 held a lot of important facts about both Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. One of the most important things that we learned in this chapter was that there was a lot of migration taking place. One of the first things I read in this chapter was “The bulk of Mexican immigration, 720, 000 persons, had come in the years after the Mexican Revolution that began in the 1909…” (307) These people had to migrate because there was danger back in their country and the pull factor was the booming economy in California and Southwest. There was a lot of little but impacting events that took place. For example, there was an employment situation because of the Great Depression Mexico now had a stable government and people weren’t migrating as much. The pull factor for migrants was gone during the Great Depression. This led the United States to the “a repatriation program, supposedly voluntary, under which as many as 500 thousand Mexican Americans-some of them citizens- were sent south across the border, many of the on special trains chartered by the federal and local governments.” (307) I thought this whole section was important, because its the first time that I remember reading about the migrants being repelled from migrating into another country.

20^th Century Migration from Mexico

                During this part of the chapter, I thought the Bracero Program was something that was one of the main points in this section. The Bracero Program was supposed to guarantee the Mexican American workers would receive specified minimum wages and certain living and working conditions. According to the book, most of the complaints were filed against the employers who didn’t provide minimum standards for working conditions. The Bracero Program only took place because during WW2 there were labor shortages. “The World War II program had as many as 200 thousand braceros in the United States, about half in California, the rest in twenty other states.” (310) Another important fact was that during “1960 census reported that braceros accounted for just over a quarter of the nation’s seasonal agricultural workers.” (311) The Bracero Program had a huge impact in Mexican American migration history.

Puerto Rico & The Federal Government

                Originally Puerto Rico was annexed by the United States after the Spanish-American War in 1898, so I wasn’t that surprised when I read about there not being as many Puerto Ricans migrating to the United States. To be able to migrate to the U.S. for Puerto Ricans was hard. Transportation was not cheap for the migration. For Puerto Ricans, they were the opposites of the Mexican Americans. The Mexicans Americans had it a little easier if they wanted to migrate. Last important fact I wanted to point out was “The Census Bureau estimated in 1987 that 12% of the Hispanic population was Puerto Rican.” This points out that migration was incredibly hard for them.