1.
How Scientific Racialization
Shapes Mexican Immigration
Policies, 1848-present
Professor Natalia Molina
History & Urban Studies
Race and Membership in American History: an
Interdisciplinary Exploration
August 11, 2016

2.
• "Disease is a particularly effective mechanism because it
does not just mark deviance. Used as accusation toward
the already deviant, disease intensifies the rhetoric of
hatred, fear, and blame utilized against undesirable
populations. It shifts the quality of this rhetoric from the
socially constructed to the medically legitimated, from a
vaguely if forcefully defined rationale of difference to a
rational basis for surveillance, control, and exclusion."
- Susan Craddock

3.
The Legacy of the Mexican-American War (1846-48)
American Progress,
John Gast (1872)

4.
Manifest Destiny
• (National level) [Manifest Destiny] (ideology)
• Who is not seen as capable of self-government?
• Inherently a racial ideology
• Economic motivations (material conditions)
• - Westward expansion
• -phrase used to justify continental expansion

5.
• “…we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union
any but the Caucasian race--the free white race. To
incorporate Mexico would be the very first instance of the
kind of incorporating an Indian race… I protest against
such a union as that!
• –-Former Vice President and then South Carolina
Senator John Calhoun

6.
• The Mexican provinces are filled with a population, not only
degraded, but of every possible shade and variety of color
and complexion, from the deep black of the negro, to the
sallow white of the Mexican Indian…If we annex these
provinces to our Union, will we admit those who are now the
free citizens of Mexico to the privileges of American
citizenship? ..If this policy should be pursued… One of two
consequences must follow annexation: either the American
slave must become free, or the Mexican negro and mulatto
must become slaves (U.S. Congress 1847, 133).
• --Congressman James Pollock (also originator of the phrase,
“In God we trust,” used on US currency)

7.
Medical Borders

8.
Medical Borders

9.
Eugenics and race betterment

10.
Eugenics, race
betterment, sterilization

11.
Families in a railroad camp, 1916, CA
health report
Public health nurses, 1925

12.
Immigration Reform-
1920s

13.
• My Dear Chairman Johnson:
• The danger of an unrestricted Mexican Amerind influx lies in the differential
birth rates. I have not here the exact statistics. However we may say
approximately that the Old American stock averages perhaps 3 children per
family. We found in the poor neighborhood * in one unit an average of +9
children. These averages show 2 families yielding the 3rd generation
respectively. 27 Americans, 729 Mexican peons (PAGE 4) while the
American 3-child average will be found approximately correct, there are
probably no available statistics as to American families that are worth much.
My own population-pressure studies, which are world wide and over many
years, indicate it is difficult to find a more fecund group than the Amerind.
•
• A Mexican peon mass, free from revolution and under American
sanitation, means a terrific problem in the future. Our negro slave
immigration was, say 750,000. Their descendants must number over
10,000,000. Our peon population nucleus today may be 3 or 4 times the
slave beginning. It is tragic that there is any delay over establishing the
Quota against Latin America.
•
• Very Earnestly C.M. Goethe, President Immigration Study Commission

14.
• “For the most part Mexicans are Indians, and very
seldom become naturalized. They know little of
sanitation, are very low mentally, and are generally
unhealthy.”
• -Texas Democratic Representative John C. Box,
Quoting from a 1926 report by the California
Commission of Immigration and Housing

15.
The Depression

16.
Medical Authority
• “large, socially under-privileged Mexican
population…would unquestionably become a public
health problem” --County social worker Zdenka Buben
• Return to biological determinism
• Ex-Tuberculosis in Racial Types with Special Reference
to Mexicans,” by Dr. Benjamin Goldberg,
• Claimed: “all men are not created equal” and that “health
heredity is a part of biological heredity.” Thus, he called
for stricter immigration laws, warning the public that the
“Mexican is coming in thousands.”

17.
“Juan Crow”

18.
Zoot Suit Riots, 1943

19.
Los Angeles Sheriff
Edward Ayres
• “the inborn characteristics" of "the Mexican element,"
which had a "desire to use a knife or some [other] lethal
weapon.”
• Although a wild cat and a domestic cat are of the same
family they have certain biological characteristics so
different that while one may be domesticated the other
would have to be caged to be kept in captivity; and there
is practically as much difference between the races of
man.”

20.
Mendez v. Westminster (1947)

21.
Forced Sterilizations, 1970s: 1972-
Madrigal vs. Quiligan

22.
Proposition 187

23.
Sun Mad, 1982, Ester Hernández

24.
Mothers of East Los Angeles

25.
UFW protest