Downplaying Deportations: How Textbooks Hide the Mass Expulsion of Mexican Americans During the Great Depression  

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

The Trump Administration's horrifying record on immigration, exemplified by the heartbreaking scenes of family separation during the summer of 2018, sparked a new round of discussion and debate about U.S. deportation policy. 

Of course, deportations are nothing new; Obama was rightly criticized as the Deporter-in-Chief. But with enthusiastic cruelty and vigor, the Trump administration has embraced deportation, including the targeting of long-term residents with no criminal record. 

The massive reach of this effort, the uncertainty and terror it elicits, and the opacity of the controlling laws, recalls an earlier time in U.S. history, nearly 90 years ago, when Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants were ousted from the country in enormous numbers. 

But the mass deportation of as many as 1.8 million people rarely makes it into the standard curriculum or textbooks.

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"Downplaying Deportations: How Textbooks Hide the Mass Expulsion of Mexican Americans During the Great Depression" is the newest article in the Zinn Education Project's If We Knew Our History series, posted at
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TEACHING RESOURCES

Deportations on Trial: Mexican Americans During the Great Depression By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca In this role play students analyze who is to blame for the illegal, mass deportations of Mexican Americans and immigrants during the Great Depression.

The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration By Bill Bigelow Lessons for teaching about the history of U.S.-Mexico relations and current border and immigration issues.