Mexican Immigration Analysis

• Mexico has been no stranger to economic hardship; despite the efforts to modernize it in the image of the United states since the late nineteenth century under Porfirio Diaz and up to the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it has failed and consequently forced the exodus of many of its people in search for economic opportunity. That some of these efforts towards modernity and development have helped a small fraction of the population is undeniable, but they have often come at the expense of those most vulnerable living in the Mexican countryside. In a struggle for economic survival, many Mexicans have immigrated to the United States and become part of the American working class in order to assume the role of their family’s

(and sometimes of their villages’ or towns’) philanthropic benefactors. Despite their subordinate status within American society and even within the working class, many are able to send money back to their place of origin. These remittances comprise a large portion of Mexico’s revenue, but they are not all equally incorporated into the country’s development as there are often differentiated by type. The social framework that catalyzes migration of many poor Mexicans to the United States, however, is not an entirely new phenomenon.
• It is tempting to describe the Mexican Revolution as the first major peasant movement of the twentieth century – this was, after all, the official narrative of the Mexican government; however, the reality of the Mexican countryside still visible today, supported by the analysis provided by recent historical reinterpretations of this historical period, indicates otherwise.

If it was truly an agrarian peasant revolution the lasting legacy of it would imply a strong rural class and not one that feels forced to leave their land because of a lack of economic opportunity. In fact, the aforementioned historical analyses show that there was a collection of grievances that saw the those of the caudillos of the northern states rise to the top. Although peasants would form the bulk of many revolutionary factions, they would often be mobilized in a top-down manner by regional caudillos; the Sonoran dynasty spearheaded by Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles would play a major role in consolidating new forms of social reorganization. Efforts to appeal to the needs of the peasants were minimal, save perhaps for the brief period during Lazaro Cardenas’ presidency. Historian Hans Werner Tobler suggests that perhaps the revolution was the “expression of a basic continuity in the country’s development since the Porfiriato” and can be best summarized as “change in continuity, continuity in

change.”