Mexico for the Mexicans: Immigration, National Sovereignty and the Promotion of Mestizaje

After peace was restored in Mexico following the Revolution of 1910, the country’s rulers, like their Porfirian forebears, continued to believe in the need to attract foreign immigrants. However, this view began to shift in the mid-1930s in the face of fears about the arrival of foreigners that were considered undesirable. On matters of immigration, the country did not stray far from the restrictive practices that extended across the Americas from Canada to Argentina, yet in Mexico, unlike anywhere else on the continent, the authorities were forced to confront a dual problem posed by migration in the nation they sought to govern.

At the same time that it was attracting European, Asian, and Middle Eastern immigrants who had no interest in settling in Mexico but were simply passing through on their way to illegal entry into the United States, Mexico in effect forced thousands of its own citizens across its northern border.¹ Thus, the country faced a dilemma. On one hand, the national economy was incapable of guaranteeing even the most minimal level of subsistence to thousands of its own citizens. On the other, the restrictive immigration policies implemented in the United States had encouraged a wave of international migration that turned Mexican territory into an unwanted but necessary stop on the road to the American dream. The problem had another more complex side, however: the shared border with the United States stimulated a long-standing trend that grew to great proportions in the early years of the twentieth century—the temporary migration of Mexicans.²

While the border facilitated the flow of migrants toward the United States during times of economic prosperity, the same geographic proximity brought thousands of emigrants back during periods of economic crisis.³ Whether in times of economic expansion or economic retrenchment in the United States, emigration continued to be regarded as a problem. In the former case, it reinforced the image of Mexico as a depopulated country suffering from a constant drain of inhabitants headed for the United States; in the latter, U.S. financial weaknesses sent Mexicans back into an economy that could not provide jobs for them. These situations generated a vicious cycle characterized by both the impossibility of stemming the tides of migration and the immanent fear of massive repatriations.

Mexico’s dual nature as both receiver and sender of migrant waves has set its immigration experience apart from that of any other nation on the continent. It is in this dual role that explanations for the government’s variety of responses to immigration can be found. However, the country’s dual status provides only partial explanations; it is also necessary to take into account that the rhetoric and practices around immigration were concerned with improving the Mexican people biologically. Until the mid-1930s, the revolutionary government supposedly fostered immigration, in an atmosphere steeped in “mestizophilia” and keenness to “civilize” an indigenous population that had recently become a target of government action.⁴ Just as in the nineteenth century, the colonization-immigration formula was employed as a way to promote economic activity and land settlement, but it was also intended to foster the ethnic fusion deemed indispensable for raising the threshold of civilization for indigenous peoples. This “grand dream of an independent Mexico,”⁵ as Moisés González Navarro called it, was echoed repeatedly in the speeches of immigration authorities, but, as in the nineteenth century, the project failed. First, the anticipated numbers of desirable foreigners never arrived. Second, for a nation that had just emerged from a revolution sparked by, among other factors, unsatisfied demands for land, promoting policies of foreign colonization represented a contradiction.

The years immediately following the revolution represent a unique moment when immigration and emigration trends coincided. This moment occurred in a context of broad social mobility and widespread demand for fulfilling the revolution’s political and social agenda. From this perspective, then, this essay explores two questions. What were the political and institutional norms for regulating immigration policy? Second, what were the origins and reasons for defining certain immigrant groups...