Executive Summary.

Carrying on in style from the last research reading, I’m going to give raw notes and comments, especially since the last five chapters deal with the repatriates inside Mexico and the aftermath or epilogue of the whole sorry saga. It is very interesting, but since it’s not directly relevant to my research I skimmed over it. In a full analysis of the book and the saga, these chapters would deserve my full attention, but given their lack of relevance to my purpose, I shan’t be mentioning them again.

There are countless similarities here with the internment of Japanese American citizens and the Warsaw ghetto. None of these processes could be carried out without dehumanizing the target population or without the complicity of the population at large. What happened with the Japanese Americans and the Jews under the Nazis was a matter of government policy; what happened with the ‘repatriation’ appears to be largely grass roots. The theme is consistent across the board, however, the population was to be gotten rid of somehow, and few people actually cared how.

Out of sight, out of mind. Or, perhaps more graphically, in the trash can, whether that trash can was a concentration camp, an extermination camp, or, in this instance, a neighboring country. The goal was to dispose of an unwanted, dehumanized population, in order to procure the supposed benefits that would automatically flow once the ‘infestation’ was cleared.

I don’t often quote the bible, but…

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Raw Notes.

I’ll just use only the salient raw notes as I think they might prove more interesting than breaking down the whole book. Doing the latter covers material that isn’t relevant to Lock Out Tag Out, whereas doing the former might highlight themes in the story and might lead a reader to go read the book. It’s not as disturbing as Ordinary Men, in much the same way that the story of the Birmingham Six isn’t as disturbing as the Birmingham pub bombings they were unjustly convicted of conducting. The story is disturbing, but there’s no cold blooded murder.

Quotes are underlined.

My comments are in italics.

Introduction.

1 – …wholesale punitive measures were proposed and undertaken by government officials at the federal, state and local levels. Laws were passed depriving Mexicans of jobs in the public and private sectors.
Violence and “scare-head” tactics were utilized to get rid of the burdensome and unwanted horde.

2 – …a cadre of grassroots organizations developed. However, the lack of resources seriously impeded their efforts to combat the ever-worsening crisis. This reflects not dissimilar developments in Warsaw, both the style of tactics, albeit not of the same order of murderous scale, and the under-resourcing of relief agencies.

Immigration.

11 – …deportation raids at the work sites, usually before payday, became common occurrences. This is worth bearing in mind – getting rid of the undesirables just before they’re paid for a week’s work.

21 – …groups labeled Mexicans as “the most undesirable people to come under the flag.”

22 – …mentally, physically and culturally deficient and classified them as substandard human beings. Dehumanization isn’t just a common theme in stories such as the ‘repatriations’ it’s a necessary element.

The Family.

41 – In Mexican society, who and what a person is is determined by family status and affiliation. Any Mexicans in the LOTO story?
…parents were accused of not caring about providing basic support services for their youngsters.
Newspapers and journals had a field day in trumpeting the charges and accusations that were seldom verified but were accepted at face value. Not unlike today…
…accused of harboring ignoble, unAmerican sentiments and characteristics.
Restaurants and theaters frequently barred Mexicans. Kansas resident Lorenza Lujano recalled being told she “had no right to drink it [a soda] in the store or sit at the fountain.”

42 – …no matter how inane the charges were, it was “open season”…
…pathological nature of the Mexican character.
…incapable of deferring instant self-gratification … spendthrifts and child-like in their desires.
…school teachers blamed the family “for the perpetuation of ignorance and immorality”…
…discriminatory practices prevalent in education. All different means of dehumanizing. It’s not easy to mistreat a fellow human being, but once dehumanized, the sky can become the limit. Some of the practices become self-reinforcing, for instance, discrimination in education followed by a disregard for their intellectual capacity. In other words, teach them nothing and then deride them as an intellectual underclass, or worse.

44 – …portrayal of the Mexican family as a dysfunctional unit…
…a lack of personal effort and academic orientation were the only obstacles to success. Therefore, if an individual did not succeed, it was due to innate character deficiencies. It’s a Victorian approach that’s prevalent today – only the deserved find themselves poor.

47 – Working conditions. The final paragraph on the page is illustrative, but the last sentence effectively captures the conditions: …a young woman with two little babies forced to live out in the open, exposed to the elements, with only the corner of an old toolshed available for cooking purposes.

53 – …women still found time to help others. Informal groups commonly referred to as comadres, consisting of family or close personal friends, pooled and shared what little they possessed to help truly destitute families survive the crisis.
…devout women organized the Catholic Relief Association. They fed the hungry, clothed the needy, sheltered the homeless, and ministered to the ill. Again, this mirrors the experience within the Warsaw ghetto, where resources had to be acquired from within the oppressed community.

55 – There is an interesting anecdote in the opening paragraph that I shan’t quote in full. It deals with the story of a Mexican who, after being arrested, disarmed a detective and turned the gun on the police, killing one and injuring another. The trial is described as sensational and his death as mysterious but the truly interesting thing is the support this apparently obviously guilty man got from his community as a result of the racial oppression he and they had experienced from the police.
The final paragraph deals with self-help in the guise of the Cruz Azul Mexicana but my comment at this point deals with the possibility of international relief agencies. At the time in the Repatriation story, the world was experiencing a depression, so perhaps that explains their absence, but there were international agencies operating that tried to aid the Warsaw Jews, so unless LOTO took place during a severe depression, which is not currently the plan, there is an opening for agencies such as ICRC and MSF to engage.

57 – …as in every other industry, sexual harassment by male supervisors was a commonplace occurrence. I understand this to mean not only that sexual harassment was widespread generally, but that it was also exacerbated by the dehumanization of the victims.

Deportation.

64 – …immigration authorities commonly served as accusers, judges, and juries, they had a vested interest in not volunteering any information. It is worth bearing this in mind, since, as we are soon to find out, deportation was not a criminal process.

66 – In many instances, the arrest warrant was issued after rather than prior to the interrogation proceedings. This is, prima facie at least, a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

67 – As the deportation system was then structured, wherein the immigration agents exercised almost total control of the process, deportation procedures were made to order for wholesale violations of basic human rights. Mass raids and arrests were often conducted without benefit of warrants. Individuals were often held incommunicado and not allowed to see anyone. …deportees languished in jail until the next deportation train was formed.
“The apprehension and examination of supposed aliens are often characterized by methods [which are] unconstitutional, tyrannic, and oppressive.” Citing the Wickersham Commission’s 1932 report. I have found this report cited in various places, mostly in connection with Decade of Betrayal, but have yet to track down an online source for it.

68 – A number of organizations are shown to have supported the effort to ‘get rid,’ including the AFL (American Federation of Labor), the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion who provided guards to ride the trains to provide for law and order, not dissimilar to the Order Police role in the ‘resettlement’ of Jews in the Holocaust.
…the Chicago Tribune repeatedly called for the elimination of the alien horde. It might be worth tracking down an archival copy of such a call from the Chicago Tribune.

69 – …H.R. 4768 by Congressman Sam Hobbs of Alabama. The bill called for the establishment of concentration camps for all aliens ordered deported and who were not out of the country within sixty days.
…Congressman Martin Dies of Texas … proposed deporting the six million aliens reportedly residing in the United States. …authored an article entitled “The Immigration Crisis,” which was published in the Saturday Evening Post, April 20, 1935. Online access to this particular article is through the Saturday Evening Post site but is located behind a pay-wall of a $15 annual subscription.

70 – …the Los Angeles County Bar Association issued a critical report entitled the “Lawless Enforcement of the Law.” Available for free at jstor.org.

71 – In its zealous quest to increase its body count, the Immigration Service focused its efforts where the largest concentrations of Mexicans were found. For Lock Out Tag Out, where exactly might this be?
…Colorado Governor Edwing C. Johnson threatened “to call the National Guard to round up foreigners and expel them from the state.”
Federal officials, county deputy sheriffs, and city police cooperated in local roundups in order to assure maximum success. Scare tactics, rumors, and propaganda were adroitly used in creating a climate of fear.
Beginning on page 71 and continuing on page 72 is an excerpt describing the San Fernando raid. Except for the lack of mass murder, it could easily have been an operation by RPB101.

72 – No secret was made of the forthcoming immigration raids scheduled to take place there. In fact, the prospective raids were widely publicized as a “scare-head” tactic that, hopefully, would encourage illegal as well as legitimate residents to leave. The difference between these deportations and those in Europe seems mostly that Mexicans had a mother country to go to. Bearing in mind that it was some time after 1940 when legal Jewish emigration was ended from the Reich. At any rate, for Lock Out Tag Out purposes, such a scare-head tactic would be necessarily short-lived as there would be no obvious place to go. The tactic would, however, appear beneficial to local authorities who would simply want the problem moved on into someone else’s backyard.
Others chose to assume a low-profile and avoided going out unless absolutely necessary. Women waited until nightfall to do their shopping and children were kept out of school. Another similarity in that older Jews in Warsaw stayed in their homes as much as possible in the opening days of the occupation. The difference with the school is telling in that with the Mexican ‘Repatriations,’ as with Lock Out Tag Out, children are essentially State Property during school hours as the schools need them in attendance in order to receive funding.
It was even suggested that illegals should voluntarily surrender to the immigration authorities, thus making sweeps unnecessary. In the Repatriations, it seems that immigration authorities didn’t care about legal status wherever they could comfortably ignore it, but for our purposes the distinction is very real: there would be no desire to sweep up innocent citizens.

73 – Relating to the ‘La Placita’ raid: …February 26, 1931. … It took ten days for the agents to assemble and develop a coordinated plan. … The Placita site was chosen for its maximum psychological impact … large contingent of uniformed and plain-clothes officers … led by a half dozen immigration agents dressed in olive-drab uniforms … posted two officers at each entrance … A wholesale raid in a public park … Individuals were lined up and asked to show their passports or other evidence of legal entry and residency. …

74 – … Bystanders who tried to interfere … ran the risk of being subjected to questioning and close scrutiny. … the raid and the interrogation process lasted only an hour and fifteen minutes. The raid reads as eerily similar to roundups of Jews by the Police in Ordinary Men, without the wanton slaughter.

75 – At least in part, some of the motivation was to create a diversion to counteract and distract from President Hoover’s problems.
…San Angelo … was warned that “raids on all Mexicans” were going to be made by vigilante “unemployed groups” calling for immediate movement “south with Mexicans.” Sounds like an embryonic grass-roots American version of the S.A. We’ll see more people like this later, and not only in the guise of threats.

76 – …folk singer and radio idol Pedro J. González … González’s pleas for justice and humane treatment eventually spelled his doom. …denounced as a rabble rouser … framed on a rape charge, convicted … the young woman later recanted her story and admitted she lied under coercion by the Los Angeles Police Department. A noteworthy anecdote that could possibly be made into an event alluded to in Lock Out Tag Out.

77 – …in El Paso alone over six hundred new welfare cases would be added to the relief rolls during the year as a result of families losing their breadwinners. Due to the deportations. In the Lock Out Tag Out world, the popular solution would be to simply find or manufacture a way to disqualify them. In fact, the remainder of this second paragraph details expenses and burdens that could be dealt with simply by disqualifying the needy recipients of welfare and government assistance.

79 – Reports and complaints of harassment, beatings, heavy-handed tactics, and verbal abuse surfaced repeatedly. … accused of using their official capacity to conduct personal vendettas against Mexicans. …could see a lawyer only at the discretion of the immigration official. Since deportation hearings were not considered formal judicial or criminal proceedings, it was not deemed necessary to permit deportees to be represented by legal counsel. This is important, and another violation of the Fourth Amendment. The use of the word ‘people’ in the amendment text is important since in the constitution where the rights and privileges are restricted to the citizens, the word ‘citizens’ is explicitly used.

80 – As a rule, a lawyer could be present only if a decision of the review panel in Washington, D.C., was appealed and a court appearance was granted. …made to order for disregarding the legal rights of deportees and railroading them…
Walter E. Carr, director of immigration for Southern California. Mr Carr assured … only those who had violated the law and were here illegally would be deported. …under the immigration laws then in effect, mass deportation raids and arrests were not permissible. So, technically, they were illegal, but so, then, were a lot of popular things.

83 – The National Club of America for Americans, Inc. cites the 91st Psalm and on the following pages (84-86) specifies a ‘pledge’ that would not be distasteful to those who, shall we say, lean away from multiculturalism. In face, on the face of it, NCAA looks like a prewar American precursor of Britain First.

Welfare.

89 – Some were reduced to rummaging in garbage cans for edible scraps.
Colorado Governor Edwing C. Johnson … limiting “the possibilities of employment … for only native sons.” This reminds me of a phenomenon I thought purely present-day, that where the position is described as less ‘anti-alien’ and more ‘pro-nativist.’ The issue with that ‘distinction’ is that it simply rephrases prejudice from negative terms into terms more socially acceptable, more politically correct.

90 – …the combined tide of prejudice and unemployment engulfed them.

91 – There is here described a curious perversion, which simply made tensions worse. American citizens were required to work on federally funded projects to qualify for relief, whereas aliens were prohibited from federal employment and therefore qualified without it. Additionally, welfare was increased 30% for those who could not, for one reason or another, work on these projects, resulting in aliens receiving larger welfare assistance than citizens who were required to work.

98 – …labor unions, veterans’ organizations, taxpayers’ associations, and patriotic groups joined the chorus of protest against spending public funds to assist aliens.
California State … Welfare and Institutions Code 2500 … relief was “to relieve and support all incompetent, poor, indigent persons and those incapacitated by age, disease, or accident.” There was no authority to deny aid on the basis of citizenship. That didn’t stop them trying. The NCAA worked to publicize the cost. For our purposes, we already have a way around this, although it might be worth finding other strings for that particular bow.

100 – …handwritten letter from L. Clark to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. …”Our towns are over run with the Mexican population. They breed like rats, live in huts, mostly are dependent on day labor. Thus they run heavily on charity both medical and food supplies.” A letter from the ground floor, reflecting how a typical American viewed the situation in stark terms of dehumanization and disenfranchisement.

101 – The private sector succumbed to demands that it only hire “real Americans.”

103 – Starting here and onto 104 is a brief description of Colonias uniting to try to protect their rights. The Trade Unity League and Unemployed Councils worked to increase awareness of individuals’ rights and means to achieve them. February 25.,1931.

105 – Of a project to house citrus workers in the San Gabriel Valley, which would have them employed and off welfare, the 500 square foot abodes were decried as “too good for Mexicans” and the project was abandoned.

107 – …targeted the property of repatriates as a source of revenue. The County placed liens on properties of repatriates … “a guarantee for reimbursement for transportation costs of family to Mexico.” I’m not aware of this argument having been made by the SS, appropriating the property of Jews, but it seems like it could have been.

108 – These notes might seem a little disjointed, but you get the gist. There was an illegal call to disenfranchise aliens in California, following Congressional legislation. The California AG opinion that there was no legal basis to undertake disenfranchisement of aliens from California welfare rolls was obviously less than popular, regardless of its legal foundation. The law was, and still is, an obstacle that populism must either overcome or circumvent.
…the Seventy-sixth Congress succumbed to public pressure and declared aliens were ineligible for employment on WPA projects. According to Section 3, Title I, of the revised Emergency Relief Act of 1937, the Works Progress Administration “shall not knowingly employ on such projects aliens illegally within the limits of the United States or aliens who have not filed declaration of intention to become citizens.”
In San Antonio, Mexicans protested the layoffs by storming and stoning the WPA office.
In California, state senator Ralph Swing of San Bernardino introduced a bill to exclude aliens from the state relief rolls. … Governor Culbert Olson subsequently vetoes the measure. … Governor Olson’s action … was damned by many vocifierous residents.
…state attorney general Earl Warren pointed out that neither the state constitution nor the codes or statutes of California contained any inhibition or restriction against granting relief to aliens. …cited Section 17 of Article I of the California Constitution, which stated: “Foreigners of the white race, or of African decent [sic], eligible to become citizens of the United States under the naturalization laws thereof, while bona fide residents of this State, shall have the same rights in respect to the acquisition, possession, enjoyment, transmission, and inheritance of all property, other than real estate, as native-born citizens.”

109 – …in Los Angeles, the Board of Supervisors asked the county counsel for some way around the opinion of the State’s AG, seeking a means to charge Mexico for the medical care of its citizens.
…Siegfried Goetze… In January of 1940, he submitted a detailed plan for getting rid of indigents to the governor, the state legislature and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. …families, he asserted, received approximately two million dollars per year from the state Relief Administration.

110 – …he proposed setting up a statewide commission … to launch a concerted, statewide effort to rid relief rolls of Mexican recipients. While I don’t have a direct corollary, this, to my mind at least, has echoes of the efforts in Germany earlier in the century to disenfranchise Jews.

Repatriation.

This is the last of the chapters with direct relevance to our theme.

120 – The intent of repatriation was threefold: to return indigent nationals to their own country, in this case Mexico; to save welfare agencies money; and to create jobs for real Americans. In other words, take out the trash and life suddenly becomes all milk and honey.

121 – Threats of physical violence induced many Mexicans to abandon jobs and long-established domiciles. …Mexican railroad workers were forced to “give up their jobs” when a mob of one hundred men and women marched on their work camp … ruffians bombed the headquarters occupied by the Society of Mexican Laborers. … The governor instructed the Texas Rangers to conduct an investigation … having the fox guard the chicken coop. This is perhaps better understood as the governor having law enforcement investigate its own transgressions, not unlike the Army investigating Japanese Americans having been shot trying to escape, only to find itself and its soldiers innocent.

122 – Those too poor to afford any kind of transportation joined the mass exodus on foot, carrying their belongings on their backs. … “A Caravan of Sorrow.” Echoes of ‘only what they could carry,’ which seems to be the case in all instances of oppression.

124 – Trains of every type … usually limited to second-class passenger cars, but sometimes even boxcars and cattle cars.
Trains with hundreds, sometimes over a thousand repatriates aboard… There are distinct echoes of the holocaust here. People being shipped en-mass, under guard, only the end fate is really any different.

128 – …an added inducement for them to leave, some communities donated small sums of money to be used to purchase gas, oil, and food along the way. Such donations seldom covered the journey’s actual expenses… Not sure if communities might do this in the Lock Out Tag Out world. It might increase how well that world reflects this one, if done right.

129 – …sometimes found themselves stranded along the road. …forced to beg for food and handouts in order to survive.

130 – …journalist Carey McWilliams … “repatriados arrived [at the train station] by the truckload – men, women and children – with dogs, cats, and goats … half-open suitcases, rolls of bedding, and lunch baskets.” … “the majority of the men were very quiet and pensive” while “most of the women and children were crying.” Worth bearing this in mind for the journalist thread in Lock Out Tag Out.

131 – In Gary, Indiana, officials sent women and children to the border by train, and men went by truck in order to stretch a limited budget. …callous separation… Echoed again just three pages later. It seems separating families is a common tactic.

132 – Bedridden and terminally ill patients did not escape … cripples, lepers, elderly individuals afflicted by the ravages of old age, and those suffering from tuberculosis. Again, similar to Warsaw. It’s not possible, I think, to directly compare the two, since it’s unclear whether here the patients were simply turfed out, or whether there was a facade, like in Warsaw, with some pretense of human decency. Just a pretense, though.

134 – …raids of the Immigration and Naturalization Service frequently resulted in families being torn apart. It’s worth considering whether such separation serves any plot purpose in Lock Out Tag Out.

136 – For U.S. born children of Mexican parents, as far as their birthright citizenship was concerned …the paper guarantees turned out to be meaningless. There’s always a populist argument for circumventing the law and the Constitution. The trick is getting the population to willingly look the other way.

137 – Barrio grocery stores were targets of a rumor … that only U.S. citizens would be allowed to cut or butcher meat. The notion that an entire segment of a population would be ostracized like this is safely grounded in the cultural exclusion of Jews in Germany even before Nazism. Such a rumor would be easy to believe and spread like wildfire ahead of a truth with which most people would have no truck – after all, getting rid of ‘them’ is something we can all ‘benefit’ from.

139 – In most colonias, discarded furnishings were so plentiful that it was impossible to give away household goods. … Rather than discard their hard-earned furnishings, some families stacked their furniture and set it afire. Similar events were to occur with the Japanese Americans, forced to either sell at bargain basement, giveaway prices or destroy their property. The key element for us is how the oversupply drove prices down to ridiculous levels. In other words, the perceived value stored in possessions today may not necessarily reflect the effective value tomorrow. A similar effect was felt in the Warsaw ghetto, trading valuables for food when trying to stave off the inevitable.

141 – The condition of the repatriates on their arrival shows a similar level of concern for their welfare as the deported Jews. …on board one repatriation train, twenty-five children and adults had died of illness and malnutrition during the trip to the border. …some repatriates had arrived in such an ill and pitiful condition that they had to be hospitalized before being permitted to continue… It would be illuminating to acquire commentary from any of those who drove the repatriation that became aware of this.
…according to Mary Grace Wells, the Gary, Indiana, repatriation program was a splendid success, for “all [repatriates] were happy en route and were delighted to set foot again on their native soil.” How Wells was able to surmise or arrive at that conclusion is a mystery, for she never made a trip to the border. She probably felt she didn’t need to, since she most likely exercised the racist equivalent of the mansplaining prerogative; using her privileged status, she would feel entitled to describe the experience on behalf of these manifestly lesser beings.

143 – Newspapers underscored the fact that extended years spent contributing to the prosperity and economic development of the United States was not enough to gain Mexicans either permanent residence of acceptance in their adopted country. …ousted without any concern for citizenship status, length of residency, health conditions or age factors. This right here resonates so well with a central theme of Lock Out Tag Out that the whole story can almost be extrapolated from just these few words.

144 – …trains from Indiana Harbor, Indiana, included American Legionnaires volunteers who were “on the train to see that nobody jumped off…” …it became common practice for trains not to stop at the railroad station on the American side, but proceed directly to the Mexican side of the border. I don’t recall whether the transports in Ordinary Men became express trains, but the problem of escapees highlights the fact that these were not voluntary relocations on either side of the Atlantic. It would be interesting to know whether these American Legionnaires were armed, I’d expect that they were, and whether they ever fired in anger.

146 – Belatedly, the establishment began to realize that Mexicans were not only producers whose work benefited the entire society; they were consumers of goods and services who contributed to the economic well-being… It’s always been easy to dismiss the importance of the working classes, it’s their spending that drives the wider economy, but in Lock Out Tag Out, the targeted demographic spans a wider array of classes than the downtrodden Mexicans.
…large amounts of money were being withdrawn by Mexican clients in anticipation of being repatriated. This is of less concern to Lock Out Tag Out than it was in the ‘repatriations.’ It’s not clear to me why the more draconian measures taken in Warsaw weren’t considered here: limiting the cash on hand and maximum bank withdrawals for the target population.

147 – Certain actors stood against what was happening. Besig, head of the Goodwill to Mexico Committee of the Mount Hollywood Church unsuccessfully argued on behalf of the repatriates civil rights, while groups in Mexico denounced the program as a racist plot – which it undeniably was – and the Mexican press criticized the movement. Lock Out Tag Out needs these voices, although it’s difficult to immediately identify candidates.