An old card and a bit of Mexican history

I could fill several hundred blog posts with little snippets of things I am finding in my box of old letters, but I will spare my readers that. However, I can't resist one or two anyway (well, maybe three or four - we'll see).

In April of 1954, my last semester at Drury College, I had an unexpected opportunity to go to Monterrey, Mexico for a week. It is the only time I have visited Mexico in my life (so far!). It came about because my French professor, Dr. Margaret Kidder, was also the Spanish professor, and although I was not a Spanish student, she invited me to join a Spanish class trip to Monterrey because she needed a driver of one of the vans. She said that the total cost to me for the whole trip would be only $75! I could not resist that. So I went and had a great time.

In the letter archive is a postcard sent home from Monterrey and a letter I wrote my folks after I got back describing the whole trip down through Texas, across the border at Laredo, on to Monterrey, our time there, sidetrips to Saltillo to a serape factory and to Horsetail Falls (on a burro!), and then back through Galveston, TX and Texarkana, Ark., (where I had lived 12 years earlier). Since Mexico and the southern border of the U.S. are so much in the news of late, I thought I would post a bit of this experience. I will post here part of the letter, the postcard,  a bit of explanation of the photo on the postcard and a bit about the history of illegal immigration.

My description of the trip to Monterrey, including a meal at a fancy nightclub and Easter services

Picture postcard sent to my parents from Monterrey on April 18, 1954

Message on the other side of the card

The card identifies the hotel in the picture as the one we stayed in, but doesn't name it. Research identifies it as the Hotel Gran Ancira, one of the classic old hotels in downtown Monterrey, built in 1912. It is still in operation, and fairly reasonable - you can get a room there today for $70.

A recent photo of Hotel Gran Ancira

The other feature in the photo on the postcard is a statue. I was able to identify it - it is a statue of the "Father of Mexico" - Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Hidalgo was a Roman Catholic priest who started a revolution in the early 1800s which led eventually to Mexico's independence from Spain. Here is a bit about Hidalgo:

Father of Mexico’s Independence
by Angie Galicia

Late one September evening the name of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla became forever engraved in Mexico’s history.  Since that night, his life as well as that of Mexico, changed radically.

Before that historic moment when his voice cried out to demand Mexico’s independence from the Spanish crown El Cura Hidalgo, Father Hidalgo, as he was called, was exactly that — an old priest from a parish in the small town ofDolores, Guanajuato.  It was there that he organized meetings with the townspeople and taught the farmers to work the land.

He was an enthusiastic and hard-working man, always worrying about the well-being of his community.  To help the indigenous, he built an estate where he established a pottery shop, a tanning shop, a blacksmith stable, a carpentry store, and a looming shop.  In addition, he sent for bees from La Habana and introduced apiculture to the inhabitants of Dolores.

Up until that famous night, Hidalgo was a Creole priest, born in a hacienda in Pénjamo, Guanajuato in 1753, and Mexico continued as a Spanish colony, one of the most prosperous ones though full of social injustice.

Hidalgo’s liberal ideas led him to join forces with a group of people who opposed the Spanish dominance. Together with this group of liberals, among them IgnacioAllende, Aldama and Abasolo, they reached an agreement in Queretaro to begin a revolution in October of 1810.  However, they were discovered and forced to move up the date to September 16, 1810. 

Hidalgo took the banner with the image of  Our Lady of Guadalupe and, ringing the church bell, he gathered many faithful Catholics from his parish to listen attentively to Hidalgo‘s speech.  He talked to them about Spanish oppression and about the impending need to free themselves from Spain.
The angry people shouted: “Long live independence!  Long live America!  Away with bad government!”  With that, the armed battle began which would give birth to a new nation, free and sovereign.

In 1811 Father Hidalgo fell in an ambush staged by Félix María Calleja and, after being relieved of his duties as a priest, he was sentenced and shot to death.

His fight was not in vain, as Mexico gained its independence September 21, 1821. Mexico would never have gained independence had it not been for Hidalgo’s calling on the people of Dolores. His grito brought about the birth of Mexico.

Contemporary portrait of Hidalgo

Unbeknownst to us, while we were in Monterrey in April, 1954,  the U.S. Immigration Service was preparing to put into effect "Operation Wetback" which went into effect May, 1954 and led to the arrest and deportation of over 1 million illegal Mexican agricultural workers that summer. Here's a bit about that:

Operation Wetback (1954)

Implementation and tactics

Operation Wetback was a system of tactical control and cooperation within the U.S. Border Patrol and alongside the Mexican government. Planning between the INS, led by Gen. Joseph Swing, as appointed by President Eisenhower, and the Mexican government began in early 1954 while the program was formally announced in May 1954.  Harlon Carter, then head of the Border Patrol, was a leader of Operation Wetback. On May 17, command teams of 12 Border Patrol agents, buses, planes, and temporary processing stations began locating, processing, and deporting Mexicans who had illegally entered the United States. A total of 750 immigration and border patrol officers and investigators; 300 jeeps, cars and buses; and seven airplanes were allocated for the operation. Teams were focused on quick processing, as planes were able to coordinate with ground efforts and quickly deport people into Mexico. Those deported were handed off to Mexican officials, who in turn moved them into central Mexico where there were many labor opportunities. While the operation included the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago,  its main targets were border areas in Texas  and California^. 
 
Overall, there were 1,074,277 "returns", defined as "confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal"  in the first year of Operation Wetback. This included many illegal immigrants who fled to Mexico fearing arrest; over half a million from Texas alone. The total number of immigration enforcement actions would fall to just 242,608 in 1955, and would continuously decline by year until 1962, when there was a slight rise in apprehended workers. Despite the decline in immigration enforcement actions, the total number of Border Patrol agents more than doubled to 1,692 by 1962, and an additional plane was also added to the force. 
 
During the entirety of the Operation, border recruitment of illegal workers by American growers continued, due largely to the low cost of illegal labor, and the desire of growers to avoid the bureaucratic obstacles of the Bracero program. The continuation of illegal immigration despite the efforts of Operation Wetback was largely responsible for the failure of the program. 



Illegal immigration in that era was the direct result of the demand for cheap labor by US growers. In many ways, I feel, today's immigration crisis is the result of U.S. policies and practices for over a century, a fact that does not seem to be acknowledged very often in current discussions.