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The Emergence of the “Temporary Mexican”: American Agriculture, the US Congress, and the 1920 Hearings on the Temporary Admission of Illiterate Mexican Laborers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Alexandra Filindra
Alexandra Filindra*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicago
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Abstract

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Drawing on the literature on the social construction of public policy, this article pinpoints the emergence of the trope of the “temporary Mexican,” that is, the migrant farm laborer, to the 1920 congressional hearings on the “admission of illiterate Mexican laborers.” I argue that this construction was the brainchild of southwestern agriculture and its congressional supporters who sought to conceive of the Mexican laborer in terms consistent with the eugenic, liberal, and socially conservative sensibilities of the time. What resulted from this strategic creative process was the temporary Mexican, a new breed of peon who had free will and was biologically destined to return to Mexico. This temporariness, which was what made this social construction most palatable in the 1920s, has stayed with Mexicans (and Latinos generally) to the modern day, turning them into an in-between group whose membership is always suspect.

Resumen

Resumen

En base a la literatura sobre el tema de la construcción social de la política pública, este artículo señala la aparición de la imagen del “mexicano temporal” —es decir, el trabajador agrícola migrante— en las audiencias del Congreso referentes a la “Admisión de trabajadores mexicanos analfabetos” de 1920. Mi argumento es que esta construcción fue la gran invención de la agricultura del suroeste y de sus partidarios en el Congreso, que buscaban concebir al trabajador mexicano en términos compatibles con las sensibilidades eugenésicas, liberales y socialmente conservadoras de la época. Lo que resultó de este proceso creativo y estratégico fue “el mexicano temporal”, una nueva clase de peón que tenía libre albedrío y que estaba biológicamente destinado a regresar a México. Esta temporalidad, que fue lo que hizo esta construcción social más aceptable en la década de 1920, ha permanecido con los mexicanos (y latinos en general) en los Estados Unidos hasta la actualidad, convirtiéndolos en un grupo “entre medio”, cuya pertenencia estadounidense está siempre bajo sospecha.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , 2014 , pp. 85 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

I would like to thank Steven Corey, Carolyn Craig, Melinda Kovacs, Dionyssios Mintzopoulos, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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