Praise for the Spanish Edition:

“Angelically written, Los otros is a dazzling study of rich and patient archival
work. It is incredibly original and arrestingly examines the regulations
surrounding migration as a window into understanding the evolution of the
Mexican nation-state. Yankelevich elevates an often obscured element to the
national story. Combing through reams of archival evidence in a passionate and
systematic way, Los otros gives deeper meaning to the reality of contemporary
Mexico, and how we arrived there. Perhaps even more importantly, it insists that
a fuller understanding of the evolution of Mexico necessitates understanding the
consequences of populations born elsewhere, and how their regulation helped
forge the polity and cultural landscape of modern Mexico. Exposing paradoxes,
deep patterns of history, and hidden truths, Los otros is a masterpiece by an expert
practitioner.”

Ben Vinson III, Case Western Reserve University,

author of Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico,
and President of the Conference of Latin American Historians (CLAH)
THE OTHERS

The Others reconstructs the history of migration and naturalization of foreigners in

Mexico during the first half of the twentieth century.
Despite never receiving large influxes of foreigners, paradoxically Mexico has
applied particularly tight controls on migration and naturalization. Why did it
choose to limit the arrival of foreigners when their numbers were so low as a
proportion of the total population? In a nation riven by ethnic prejudices and
with post-revolutionary governments swift to criticize racial discrimination, what
can explain the strong racialization of naturalization and migration policies? First
published in Spanish, this award-winning book sheds light on the origins of many
migration-related problems still plaguing the Mexican government: irregular
migration to the United States, the lack of any genuine control over the arrival
and residence of foreigners in Mexico, immigration and naturalization red tape,
the authorities’ corruption and arbitrary decisions, racism, and discrimination in
its migration policy. These are all issues overlooked by historical research in
Mexico and explored in depth for the first time here.
This book will be invaluable to students and scholars of Mexican history,
borderland studies, and those interested in the relationship between the United
States and Latin America.
Pablo Yankelevich is Professor at El Colegio de México’s Center of Historical
Studies. A full member of the Mexican Academy of History and a regular member
of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, Yankelevich specializes in the political his­
tory of contemporary Latin America, the history of the Mexican Revolution, the
history of exiles and political refugees in Latin America, and the history of migration
in Mexico.
Q. Pope is a freelance translator and editor based in Mexico.
Latin American History in Translation

The Others
Race, Regulations, and Corruption in Mexico’s Migration and Naturalization
Policies, 1900–1950
Pablo Yankelevich
Translated by Q. Pope
For more information on this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Latin-American-History-in-Translation/book-series/LAHIT
THE OTHERS
Race, Regulations, and
Corruption in Mexico’s
Migration and Naturalization
Policies, 1900–1950

Pablo Yankelevich
Translated by Q. Pope
Designed cover image: Composition IV, 1916 (oil on canvas), Bruce Patrick
Henry. Bridgeman Images.
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
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trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Originally published in Mexico as: Los otros. Raza, normas y corrupción en la gestión
de la extranjería en México, 1900–1950 by Pablo Yankelevich © El Colegio de
México, A.C., 2019
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Yankelevich, Pablo, author.
Title: The others : race, regulations, and corruption in Mexico’s immigration
and naturalization policies / Pablo Yankelevich ; translated by Q. Pope.
Other titles: Otros. English
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | “Originally published in Mexico
as: Los otros. Raza, normas y corrupció n en la gestió n de la extranjería en Mé xico,
1900-1950 By Pablo Yankelevich © El Colegio de Mé xico, A.C., 2019”--Title
page verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022013557 (print) | LCCN 2022013558 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032187754 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032180588 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003256182 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Immigrants--Government policy–Mexico--History--20th
century. | Noncitizens--Government policy--Mexico--History--20th century.
| Naturalization--Mexico--History--20th century. | Citizenship--Mexico--
History--20th century. | Mexico--Emigration and immigration--Government
policy--History--20th century.
Classification: LCC JV7402 .Y3613 2023 (print) | LCC JV7402 (ebook) |
DDC 304.80972--dc23/eng/20220622
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013557
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022013558
ISBN: 978-1-032-18775-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-18058-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-25618-2 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003256182

Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
For Gabi, Javier, and Daniel
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments x

Introduction 1

1 Forging the Nation 7

2 The Migration Service: Regulatory Framework and

Institutional Flaws 37

3 The Migration Business 86

4 Foreigners’ Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 139

5 Naturalized Mexicans: Numbers and Management 163

Documentary and Bibliographic References 199

Published Documentary Sources 200
Bibliography 202
Glossary 214
Index 216
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was possible thanks to the generous support from El Colegio de
México, with additional funding from the National Council on Science and
Technology (Conacyt, Proyecto CB 2010-151011-H), the Public Education
Ministry (SEP, Proyecto Colmex-Promep PTC 39), and Columbia University
through the Edmundo O’Gorman Scholars Program. I am indebted to several
colleagues who provided valuable support at various stages in my research. I
exchanged views and received guidance from Kif Augustine Adams, Manuel
Ángel Castillo, Alicia Castellanos, José Ramón Cossío, Gabriela Díaz Prieto,
Paola Chenillo, David Fitzgerald, Patricia Funes, Olivia Gall, Javier Garciadiego,
Daniela Gleizer, Pilar González Bernaldo, Clara E. Lida, Andrés Lira, Graciela
Márquez, José Moya, Consuelo Naranjo, Manuel Ordorica, Erika Pani, Andrés
Reggiani, Ernesto Rodríguez, Delia Salazar, Tomás Pérez Vejo, Juan Pedro
Viqueira, Peter Wade, and Elliott Young. I am also grateful to the students at
seminars given at El Colegio de México, the Autonomous University of Mexico,
the University of Paris 7, and the University of Cologne. In particular, I give my
thanks to Efraín Navarro, Carlos Inclán, Abraham Trejo, and César Valdés for
their generosity and stimulating conversations about their own research that
broadened the horizons of my work. I would also like to thank the team of scholars
which included, at different points, Carlos Carranza, Isis Ledezma, Myriam
Olivares, Santiago Barrios de la Mora, Carla Benítez Villalón, and Luis Sandoval.
Their help was essential in locating and organizing the documentary sources. The
archive and library personnel, especially Micaela Chávez and Víctor Cid, were
unstintingly helpful in locating bibliographical records in the El Colegio de México
library; the head of the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Archives, Jorge Fuentes, was
equally supportive. I also thank Harootum Kopbian Aprahamian for providing
access to Andrés Landa y Piña’s personal documents and papers. I am grateful to
 Acknowledgments xi

Emelina Nava García from El Colegio de México’s Geographical Information and

IT Department, and to Rosy Quiroz for her efficiency and attentiveness in helping
me resolve all manner of administrative matters. Finally, my conversations with
Enrique Maorenzic have provided the most conclusive proof that the only way to
make progress is by continuing to ask questions. This book owes its existence to his
voice and experience.
INTRODUCTION

The drawing of political and cultural boundaries forms part of a new nation state’s
responsibilities. This process requires defining who will belong to the new
community, hence nationality becomes subject to specific regulations. A new
nation state also needs to control its official history, carefully choosing what to
include and what to leave out for a narrative that allows people to imagine a
shared history, one whose origins will have to be projected onto a future always
expressed as being full of promise.
There are two sides to every nation-building process: one of inclusion and
proud recognition, the other of exclusion and the creation of otherness.1 Any
national discourse incorporates many others, some close and others so remote as
to challenge the political imagination of elites focused on constructing a
homogenous community. This is not a trivial matter but a political imperative;
legitimizing the use of state power requires invoking the will of a nation which,
as a unique entity and supposedly consisting of fellow citizens with a shared
history and set of characteristics, needs to exclude those considered different, and
no one is more different than a foreigner.
Studying the methods of exclusion sheds light on nation-building processes.
Following up Mae N. Ngai’s research, we can argue that migration and
naturalization policies reveal nations’ self-image and how they consider
themselves in relation to other countries.2 The migration and naturalization of
foreigners—encompassed by the term extranjería in Mexico—can be considered
as a country’s alter ego, a mirror reflecting its likes and dislikes, its efforts to
attract and repel that show how national communities create their own stories
and where foreigners fit in to such narratives.
In modern nations, extranjería appears inextricably linked to immigration.
Migration flows have always been sources of tension and conflict; for some, the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256182-1
2 Introduction

indiscriminate arrival of outsiders threatens nations’ sovereignty, jeopardizing the

integrity of their national communities. Now more than ever, migration is a
priority issue for states and national and international organizations. Migrants are
a source of concern for public opinion; they shape electoral platforms and
crystallize into national and international political and social groupings. The
presence of immigrants destabilizes the political order by stoking discourses of
hatred that are not always successfully countered by policies of solidarity rooted in
the respect for a rigorous application of the principle of human rights.
Migration has numerous causes. Expanding or contracting labor markets in
countries of origin and destination are some of its main drivers, while wars and
other social disasters also produce large migratory movements. It is a complex
problem that requires political solutions. In a world of nation states, anxieties arise
when people of diverse backgrounds cross political borders seeking to settle
temporarily or permanently in political communities that are not their own. In
response to these alien presences, states attempt to regulate the entry of foreigners
in a bid to keep control over the composition of their national communities. In
this sense, as Ana María López Salas argues, state governments use migration and
naturalization policies to erect barriers as a means of safeguarding the integration
of their respective national communities.3 Such mechanisms are interpreted as
prerogatives of a sovereignty exercised by states from their very beginnings and
which, paradoxically, have now become the ultimate and irrecusable power
trumpeted by nations when faced with the large-scale human movements re-
sulting from the imbalances created by a globalized economy. As such, at the
same time as many restrictions are being lifted on the free circulation of goods,
ever-higher walls are being built to curb the free circulation of people.
Unsurprisingly, politicians use immigrants for their own purposes, blaming
them for most of the conflicts and tensions that afflict their host countries. A
common perception is that immigrants upset the balance of national commu-
nities, which are then portrayed as victims of these threatening new arrivals. This
spawns xenophobic behaviors which, tinged with racism, erect barriers between
us and others. Financial and labor issues undoubtedly play their part in creating
these boundaries. However, the process also relates to identities, ways of con-
ceiving and experiencing a shared existence where we inhabit a particular cultural
landscape threatened by an encroachment of outsiders: others who carry diseases
that threaten the nation’s health, others whose culture risks undermining hard-
fought tolerances, others so remote from the genuine national ethos that they are
impossible to assimilate.
Researching a state’s approach to extranjería gives insights into a nation’s
constitution and integration. In other words, authorizing or denying entry into a
country, as well as granting or refusing naturalization certificates for foreigners,
define policies to broaden or reduce the size of the political community. As Erika
Pani writes, the state’s regulations on such matters establish the conditions under
which a government allows the entry of foreigners, setting the prerogatives
 Introduction 3

within its political structure. As such, these regulations draw political and ad-
ministrative boundaries between us and them.4
Regulations say little about population movements and they reveal little about
their volumes, compositions, and driving forces. However, norms can shed light
on the processing of such movements, and on how they are perceived, regardless
of their actual size. Perceptions of the entry of foreigners and the departure of
nationals affect decisions on the issue of migration. Perceptions define migratory
policies essentially oriented toward defining the cost or benefit of foreigners’
presence for a country’s politics, society, culture, and economy. Migratory reg-
ulations admit historicity; they have changed over time, although at their core
their object is to encourage, halt, or regulate migratory flows.5
In this regard, Mexico is a paradoxical case. The country has failed in all its
attempts to promote immigration, and has never received a significant influx of
foreigners; however, as in countries with high rates of immigration, it has es-
tablished one of the continent’s most restrictive set of regulations on migration
and naturalization. What was the sense in restricting the number of foreigners,
considering their miniscule addition to the total population? The state im-
plemented these restrictive policies at a time when Mexican emigrants far out-
numbered foreign immigrants. Mexico implemented these strict limitations even
though more Mexicans were emigrating than there were foreigners arriving.
Furthermore, in a country so riven by ethnic prejudices and with a post-
revolutionary regime so swift to condemn racial discrimination, why did Mexico
racialize migration and naturalization policies to such an extreme?
Up until very recently, it is notable how historical research has glossed over
these questions. Perhaps the relatively marginal presence of foreigners in Mexico
has consigned this subject to the history books, placing regulations on extranjería
as mere footnotes. Or maybe it can be explained by the low profile of racial
markers in historical research into contemporary Mexico. Another reason could
be the lack of archive sources to explain a regulatory system based on criteria of
exclusion. The oversight may be a combination of all these factors in a histor-
iographical context that portrays Mexico justifiably as a country of refuge, a land
always ready to welcome political asylum seekers from across the world. As a
result, this image of a country willing to take in exiles was possibly extrapolated to
include all foreigners wishing to settle in Mexico.
Recent studies have cast some doubt on this idea of a country open to all,
revealing that the embrace of exiles was the exception rather than the rule of
Mexico’s policies on extranjería.6 In practice, Mexico took a similar approach to
the rest of the world on immigration issues, and so if anything was exceptional it
was the notion that it was somehow different. These are the points of departure
for this book.
By identifying the overlaps between information, policies, and techniques of
controlling and regulating immigration on a global scale, this text analyzes par-
ticular aspects of the Mexican case during the first half of the twentieth century.
4 Introduction

This was a strange moment in the country’s history. The Mexican Revolution
promised a hard reset of the nation’s economic, political, and social order. Within
this context, Mexico saw increasing numbers of immigrants from non-traditional
origins, at a time of strong social unrest sparked by the massive and involuntary
return of the country’s own emigrants. During the decades in question, discus-
sions centered on a new demographic paradigm and a new government body
began to manage foreign immigration, along with a regulatory framework for an
immigration and naturalization policy that remained virtually unchanged for the
rest of the century.
This book explores the details of Mexico’s migration and naturalization reg-
ulations in the first half of the twentieth century, going underneath the surface of
the laws and norms to reveal political positions, methods of processing historical
records, and beliefs that were based on the science of the time. Experts, tech-
nocrats, government officials, and bureaucrats all helped erect a regulatory fra-
mework that also contrasted with public discussions.
This framework can be understood as the duty of a state mandate keen to
control and regulate a situation posing a potential threat to the political order,
while the state’s implementation of these regulations reveals its capacity to carry
out its prescribed mandate. The implementation of this regulation requires a
budget large enough for the infrastructure and bureaucracy to enforce the law.
Gauging the gap between theory and practice in respect to migration and nat-
uralization issues is another focus of this book. Were the regulations properly
enforced? What were the stumbling blocks? To measure this distance requires
defining the parameters that show the limitations of the state’s ability to make a
forceful impact on the reality it seeks to control. Which factors widened the gap
between the regulations and their actual implementation? Were the difficulties
financial, or related to the lack of professionally trained personnel? Did the
problem lie in technical, administrative, or political shortcomings resulting from
unscrupulous government officials? To what extent did corruption influence the
regulation and control of foreigners’ immigration and naturalization?
Drafting a new policy, passing it into law, and then implementing it through
the deployment of material and human resources is not always a straightforward
task. This book demonstrates this difficulty in its different chapters: it begins with
a conceptual analysis of the perception of foreigners in Mexico, before showing
how these perceptions were translated into laws that, in turn, required the es-
tablishment of means of applying them. Finally, the book looks at how these
regulations were implemented inconsistently and exploited for personal financial
gain through extortion, embezzlement, and private business ventures.
Extranjería offers a privileged vantage point to analyze state-building and
national integration, and its implementation reveals the uses and abuses of power
by government employees who were responsible for enforcing the law. What
happens when officials break the same rules they are supposed to enforce? What is
the result of that disconnect between the regulations in place and the officials who
 Introduction 5

contravene them? This was just one area of government administration riddled
with political corruption, where the illegitimate or arbitrary use of public power
for private gain was the norm.7
What was the purpose of strict controls and regulations on the presence of
foreigners in Mexico if people could circumvent the rules so easily in practice?
We could even turn the question around and ask to what extent the increasingly
restrictive regulations exacerbated networks of bribery and extortion. To shed
light on these issues, we need to consider corruption as a systemic practice, in
which individual scruples reveal little about the extent and power of bribery and
extortion. Corruption provided the foundations for a political regime, created
loyalties, ensured personal and institutional stability, and provided substantial
extra income to employees and government officials, enabling some to become
rich. Foreign immigrants were prime targets for extortion and provided a steady
flow of bribes. In short, this book examines how corruption was used to enforce
or subvert the law.
The conceptual links between the subjects in question are between state and
extranjería on the one hand, and race and nation on the other. Contrasting na-
tional narratives converted into migration and naturalization regulations, re-
viewing the origins and performance of Mexico’s Migration Service until the
mid-twentieth century, reconstructing the historical series of naturalized for-
eigners over the course of more than one hundred years (with particular emphasis
on the first half of the 1900s), and focusing on strategies to circumvent laws and
provisions or to use them as a means of extortion, are all components of this book
that, like all accounts, has its own story.
More than a decade ago, research into the expulsion of undesirable foreigners
in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican Revolution8 laid the foundations for a
more extensive investigation as we mined information from previously un-
explored archives. One source of documentation were the files held in the
National Migration Institute’s Historical Archive (AHINM) and, subsequently,
the personal files of Andrés Landa y Piña, the Migration Service’s factotum.
These records opened the door into the immigration building, providing insights
from the basement to the uppermost levels. For several years, with the help
of undergraduate students and research grants—first from the University of
California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) program,
and later from Mexico’s National Council on Science and Technology
(Conacyt)—we identified and systematized a vast array of information about
procedures, instructions, regulations, personnel, and information about the
workings of the Migration Department. The initial findings were published in
2011,9 and we continued our research, making new discoveries in these archives
and exploring other sources, particularly the records of naturalized foreigners kept
in the Foreign Ministry (SRE). This helped make connections between the
policies and the actual implementation of migration and naturalization polices. By
exploring these two areas, following new or partially explored documentary
6 Introduction

paths, this book seeks to broaden knowledge about the perception and treatment
of immigrants in the not-too-distant past.
In recent years I have given courses, seminars, and conferences on these
subjects, and published my progress. Through exchanges with colleagues and
students, in addition to unearthing new documentary evidence, it has been
possible to add nuance and to fine-tune some hypotheses and conclusions. This
book expands on and updates some of that progress, in particular addressing new
issues in order to present the final results of research to add to studies on dis-
crimination, racism, and social and political exclusion in Mexico’s contemporary
history.
We are living in times of immense global uncertainty, in a world increasingly
intolerant of immigrants that is inciting politics of hate. In Mexico, voices an-
nounce tectonic political shifts, supposedly to tackle the country’s most deep-
seated problems. Migration is one such priority. Finding solutions requires
grasping the details and magnitude of the problem without losing sight of history.
We must take stock of the density and historical depth of the enormous chal-
lenges posed by migration before seeking viable alternatives to surmount them.
No problem is completely new, and understanding its history can help us realize
why addressing the issue of extranjería in Mexico is a Sisyphean task. This book
reconstructs parts of that history.

Notes
1 Segato, 2007, 29ff.
2 Ngai, 2004, 9ff.
3 López Salas, 2005, 17.
4 Pani, 2016, 50.
5 See Mármora, 2002.
6 See Castillo et al., 2012; Gleizer, 2011, 2015a, and 2015b; Salazar Anaya, 2007;
Yankelevich, 2015, 2011, 2009a, and 2002.
7 See Nas, Price and Weber, 1986. Many studies refer to political corruption;
Heidenheimer, Johnston, and LeVine offer a summary.
8 See Yankelevich, 2004.
9 Ibid., 2011.
1
FORGING THE NATION

The conviction that the mestizo is the quintessential Mexican can be interpreted
as consecrating a national discourse rooted in the blending of the remotest in-
digenous past with centuries of colonialism. Imagining mestizaje as the essence of
Mexican-ness was an enormously effective means of tackling the social and
cultural heterogeneity that threatened to derail efforts to construct a genuine
nation. Promoting a mixture to erase differences was a reaction to political im-
peratives to legitimize power in the name of a nation that had to recognize itself
and lay claim to uniqueness. To this end, racial categorization was of prime
importance; regardless of whether it defined ethnic qualities (shared language,
traditions, religion, and culture) or biological traits (inheritance of phenotypical
or behavioral characteristics), race was central in considerations of mestizaje to the
extent of becoming the pillar of national identity.
The idea of mestizaje is not new. Its origins go back to the late eighteenth
century when a group of creoles believed they had discovered a genuine public
spirit that nourished the body of a budding nation.1 The nineteenth century in
Mexico, in the context of Independence, was marked by controversies swirling
around the definition and evaluation of the respective contributions of pre-
Hispanic and Spanish civilizations,2 while the process that sparked the 1910
Revolution helped crystallize specific policies that enshrined mestizaje as a badge
of Mexican identity.3
In fact, the Revolution took a nineteenth-century finding and developed it
into a veritable obsession. From this perspective, Mexico was suffering a con-
genital defect caused by deep social and ethnic fractures. Manuel Gamio reflected
on these issues and in 1916 he laid down the conceptual framework for an issue
that runs through much of twentieth-century Mexican politics, history, and
anthropology. For Gamio, the challenge was to create an authentic nationality,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256182-2
8 Forging the Nation

“as we are a nation composed of ethnically heterogenous social groups.” To cope

with this adversity, he encouraged revolutionaries to “take up the hammer and tie
on the apron of the forger to make a new patria of intermixed iron and bronze.”4
The idea of the Revolution as the forge of an “authentic patria” proved attrac-
tive, especially given the perspective on its mixed origins.
Taking a Boasian approach, Gamio rejected the biological determinism that
relegated native populations to a social order based on permanent hierarchies.
Instead, he supported the idea that all societies had similar potential, and that the
development of these capabilities depended on specific historical and social
conditions instead of immutable laws of nature.5 This perspective combined well
with the programs of a Revolutionary regime eager to improve the living con-
ditions of Mexico’s poorest sectors. In this way, Gamio’s proposal justified the
implementation of policies designed to improve the population’s physical and
cultural well-being.
Increasing the racial mixture was the antidote to Mexico’s fragile social and
cultural bonds required as the basis for genuine national sentiments. This was the
problem facing the Revolution, as expressed by a member of the Constitutional
Assembly, Paulino Machorro Narváez, at the plenary session of the 1917
Congress, when he put the rhetorical question: “Does the Mexican nation
currently constitute a genuine nationality?” The answer contains echoes of
Gamio’s proposal:

Many factors confound the forming of our nationality: various races have
emerged since the Conquest and the mixture is not yet complete. We are a
combination of different races, each one with its own mentality, creating a
diversity that has characterized us around the civilized world as a weak
nation that lacks national unity.6

This weakness became a leitmotif that empowered revolutionary nationalism. In

the late 1920s, the journalist Manuel Trens wrote that “the day when our country
achieves racial and linguistic unity will be the day that Mexico has conquered its
nationality.”7 At the start of the following decade, Wilfrido C. Cruz, a pioneering
Oaxacan scholar of the Zapotec language, pronounced that “for as long as several
racial consciences continue to exist in Mexico, the country will lack a genuine
national identity.”8 In 1935, the poet Jorge Cuesta wondered: “Is Mexico a true
nation?” In response, he argued that the supposed national identity was merely a
fiction resulting from the acritical imitation of foreign criteria.9
The construction of the mestizo figure was a political and intellectual un-
dertaking that filled up newspapers and animated intellectual debates. Midway
through the twentieth century, those discussions found expression in
Heideggerian terms as something that became known as “Filosofía de lo mex-
icano,”10 when a group of university professors and intellectuals began ques-
tioning what it meant to be Mexican by analyzing the traumas of the country’s
 Forging the Nation 9

conformation. In their conclusions, they referred to how Mexicans were

somehow incomplete, divided by the trauma of the Conquest, torn between their
real and desired selves. For these thinkers, national identity was an unfinished
project resulting from the unresolved tension created by the clash between in-
digenous and Spanish cultures.
These ideas have endured and become projected onto the politics that regulate
everyday links between state and society. Roger Bartra focused on these ques-
tions, explaining that revolutionary nationalism and its trumpeting of the virtues
of mestizaje developed into a complex identity-based artifact that interwove
“imaginary” networks for the exercise and legitimization of political power.11
Hence the idea took root of Mexicans being inhabited by primitive or savage
forces, living a life as an eternal infant within a modern, Western body, branded
by the hot irons of the Spanish Conquest and colonization, existing in a limbo
between the attraction and resentment of the other.12
This paradigm that relegated Mexicans to a position of congenital weakness
was used to explain the inter-ethnic relations between nationals themselves,
especially the conflictive links with those who continued to identify themselves as
indigenous. Albeit to a lesser extent, some have referred to this same paradigm to
explain the relation with foreigners—the quintessential others—who were never
mestizos, and never would be.

“Improving the Race”

Race was a core criterion when defining the desirability of immigrants, even
though in the case of foreigners the notion of race became particularly ambig-
uous; race could refer either to biological or cultural categories, or both si-
multaneously. The attention paid to cultural aspects of the “indigenous race” was
not always apparent in matters pertaining to extranjería.
In 1918, José Siurob Ramírez—a military general of the Revolution, a doctor,
and a federal deputy—stated his interest in introducing migration regulations to
“attract more civilized and stronger races without the defects of our own.” This
high-ranking revolutionary figure advocated immigration that could “improve
the race.” In an interview he said, “in the same way we select animals I see no
reason why we should not select people.” Evidently “everyone looks for the best-
possible partner, but by using science to help our instincts we could certainly
make the right selection.” The desired races would be “without our characteristic
lack of initiative and solidarity, or our apathy, unseriousness and unreliability.”13
This revolutionary fighter from Queretaro—who expressed positivist attitudes
commonly found in the Porfirio Díaz period—went on to become health
minister two decades later.
However, counteracting the much-desired Whiteness of immigrants was
Mexico’s mistrust of foreigners; the perception of foreigners as a threat was a
vector of revolutionary nationalism. “In the past being White was synonymous
10 Forging the Nation

with privilege; being indigenous meant being exploited by the ruling class. The
conquistadors came to plunder, a tradition continued by their descendants, who
extract fewer mineral resources and instead exploit the rich seam of indigenous
and mestizo labor,”14 wrote Gilberto Bosques in 1937, and one year later, an
editorial in El Nacional newspaper read: “A foreign name in our country has
always given its owner carte blanche. Everything foreign has been taboo.
Unquestionable, sacred, a source of indiscriminate privileges and extremely ob-
sequious treatment.”15
A correlation existed between the distrust of foreigners and the 1917
Constitution’s regulations that included numerous safeguards to protect national
citizens.16 These constitutional restrictions were projected in migration regula-
tions that introduced intractable problems. Two of these difficulties proved
particularly hard to resolve: the first related to the legitimacy of the political
order, because it was inadmissible for revolutionary governments to offer facilities
and privileges for foreign settlers without doing the same for nationals. In other
words, it was unacceptable to promote immigration and settlement policies for
foreigners without first attending to the needs and demands of Mexicans them-
selves. The second source of tension was the need to homogenize the national
community by exalting mestizaje. Ambiguously, foreign immigrants represented
both a benefit and a threat: a benefit because they promised a Whiter form of
mestizaje, and a threat because they destabilized the homogenizing imperative. If
Mexico’s problem was diversity and the solution was mestizaje, any deviation that
jeopardized the health of “our race” raised suspicions and led to prohibitions.
The search for racial homogeneity erected a defensive border around the
nation, a boundary based on two principles. First, a set of restrictions on the
type of acceptable occupations for foreigners. In other words, an entry re-
quirement specifying that foreigners would not compete with, or take jobs
away from, Mexican nationals. Second, the migration policy had a strong racial
undercurrent. Manuel Gamio justified this in anthropological terms.
Concerned about the living conditions of indigenous communities, this an-
thropologist and government official did not overlook the problems resulting
from Mexicans’ emigration to the United States,17 or immigration-related is-
sues. He was convinced that, unlike the United States, social exclusion in
Mexico was not about race: “White and indigenous populations are not di-
vided by racial discrimination but by economic and social imbalances.”18 The
absence of laws establishing racial exclusions was taken as clear evidence that
racism did not exist in Mexico. Exclusion was a social problem: “Indigenous
people are rejected on account of their poverty and ignorance, not because of
their blood,” and two strategies could correct this situation. First, “economic
steps” toward a generous distribution of land and a solid education to help the
indigenous population make greater use of natural resources, a guarantee for a
less precarious existence. Gamio referred to the second strategy as the “path of
eugenics,” which had the aim of guaranteeing a “swift and complete mestizaje
 Forging the Nation 11

of the population,” the sole possible means of creating a “racially homogenous”

society. To this end, he put the question: “Would it be worthwhile to create a
mestizo population by inter-breeding the indigenous majority with the White
minority?” The answer was blunt:

We sincerely believe not: If this mixture or crossbreeding were to happen

immediately, the White population would be racially subsumed into the
indigenous one, given their respective numerical proportions, and although
this is not deplorable in itself, because indigenous anatomical and
physiological characteristics are not inferior to those of the White
population, this racial absorption would inevitably entail a cultural
absorption. In other words, mixing with the indigenous population, whose
development lags behind by various centuries, would jeopardize the
evolution of the White minority’s modern civilization, making it an
extremely pernicious and therefore unacceptable idea.19

“The eugenic route” was essentially about encouraging an influx of White im-
migrants in equal or greater numerical proportion to the indigenous population.
In fact, Gamio agreed with Siurob: the challenge was to “improve the race.” In
this sense, “relentless selection” was essential for immigration. In other words, the
migration program needed to define physical regions and “the European ana-
tomical, emotional, and physiological conditions to ensure a productive and
harmonious mixing with the indigenous population.”20
Gamio launched these proposals in the early 1920s, at a time when alarm bells
began to ring in Mexico with a steadily rising tide of foreigners after the United
States began tightening restrictions. Selection became the watchword relating to
the need to increase the White input for mestizaje—with mixing seen as the
salvation for a population mired in poverty and illiteracy, problems that indigenist
measures sought to address; at the same time, the descendants of the former creole
stock, represented in the much-coveted White immigration, would introduce the
benefits of European culture. The difficulty was both about quality and quantity.
The aim was to increase the numbers of Europeans willing to work and to invest
their capital in reclaiming “lands from the desert, from the virgin rainforests and
the mountains that are currently unproductive”; and to establish “blood lines
with campesinos, to increase our homogenizing mestizaje of the population.”
The idea was to bring over White Europeans to settle in rural areas “without
forming communities set apart from our own population,” and “to exploit the
natural resources, but not our people” and thus “become assimilated to our race
and our spirit.”21
The goal of increasing Whiteness through immigration was one of Gamio’s
strategies to modernize Mexico. However, as an anthropologist interested in
Mexicans’ emigration to the United States, he was convinced that repatriated
Mexicans could make a positive impact upon returning to their home country.
12 Forging the Nation

For Gamio, the large-scale deportations of Mexicans triggered by the economic

crises of the early 1920s created a significant opportunity to forge the nation.
While it was preferable to Whiten the population through the arrival of
Europeans, it was far more expensive to select and attract such immigrants than to
modernize Mexico through the return of its own migrants. “Bringing immigrants
to Mexico is no mean feat […] From a racial perspective, we must ensure that
settlers do not harbor racist prejudices against the indigenous population as this is
an essential prerequisite for a swift and harmonious mestizaje.”22 The aim was to
avoid the expense of promoting and selecting White immigration by adopting a
policy of resettling Mexicans deported by the U.S. government.
Between 1921 and 1922, a period during which the United States forced tens
of thousands of emigrants to return to Mexico, Gamio focused on strategies to
help repatriated Mexicans resettle in agricultural areas. These Mexicans combined
a “strongly nationalist sentiment” with the “dynamic energy, modernity, and
effectiveness of U.S. culture.” They represented a valuable opportunity because
their repatriation would have a strong impact on their poor indigenous and
mestizo fellow countrymen who were still unredeemed. For Gamio, these were:

people who had already learned to eat bread and meat, to use suits, wear
shoes, handle machinery, go to film theaters, and in short, to live. The
presence of one such Mexican in each town or farm across the country
would be a leap forward in our campaign for national progress.23

Not everyone shared this optimism about the opportunities promised by the
migrants’ return. For some, these advantages were only possible for migrants “of
the mestizo type with a regular and visible percentage of Spanish blood; the other
more downbeat mestizos or indigenous mestizos soon lapsed into their old ways.”
In fact, most of the repatriated Mexicans “put on their old sandals and loose-
fitting cloth pants, to live in shacks, reverting to their previous indolence and
backwardness.”24 Gamio’s ideas expanded the frontiers of racial categorization by
contrasting culture to biological heritage, but those borders were not im-
permeable; on the contrary, the connections and exchanges were fluid, turning
racial classifications into a quagmire that was only useful to justify exclusions.
The influx of returning Mexicans could not be retained. As Fernando Alanís
shows, less than 1 percent of returnees benefitted from resettlement programs in
new farming areas equipped with irrigation systems.25 Most settlement projects
failed, and most repatriated Mexicans ended up eking out a living in their home
communities, awaiting a fresh opportunity to re-emigrate. The large numbers of
expulsions bolstered a rhetoric of nationalist solidarity at various junctures, pro-
moting a warm welcome for the returnees. This nationalist fervor spawned
ethnophobia, mainly affecting Chinese communities who were deported to
northwestern states in the early 1930s; this rejection fed into a xenophobia
projected onto communities of foreigners considered to be “undesirable.”
 Forging the Nation 13

Mexico was not the exception in this regard. Ultranationalist attitudes spread
around the globe after the First World War.26 The rise of North American na-
tivism, crystallized into the “quota law” on immigrants, ushered in a new era in
U.S. migration policy.27 The great novelty was a system of restrictions based on
racial categories and the deployment of a vast bureaucracy designed to regulate
migratory flows. The doors of the United States were closed, and the entry of
foreigners conditioned on desirability criteria established on the basis of
Whiteness.
Mexico’s northern neighbor, apart from reinforcing racial segregation that
victimized African Americans, also continued to stigmatize Asians and Mexicans;
the latter even received a specific racial moniker—Mexican Brown—directly
associated to the phenomenon of illegal migration.28 In Mexico, North American
nativism reduced the number of ways of self-identifying and of perceiving for-
eigners. The laws and practices that discriminated against Mexicans in the United
States, expressed in posters found in restaurants in southern states that read “No
Blacks, no Mexicans, no Dogs,”29 turned the Mexican Brown category on its
head. The revolutionaries reacted to the discrimination by inverting the pe-
jorative meaning and turning mestizaje into the epitome of Mexican-ness. This
inversion was part of a broader phenomenon: if North American nativism, like
any other form of chauvinism, emanated from a sense of the superiority of racial
purity, then Mexico’s revolutionary nationalism countered it and praised the
mixture of blood, albeit arguing that mestizos were still weak because their
formative process remained incomplete.
Enemies are important when forging national sentiments, not only, as
Umberto Eco remarks, “to define our identity, but also to provide us with an
obstacle against which to measure our system of values and, in seeking to
overcome it, to demonstrate our own worth.”30 As such, U.S. racism became the
mirror into which revolutionary nationalism gazed in order to imagine the op-
posite, a society free from atavisms and racial prejudices.
Mestizaje—as a mold for “constructing nationality and crystallizing nation-
hood,” in the words of Manuel Gamio31—needed to avoid the pitfall of un-
desirable immigration. In the reflection of North American nativism, Mexico
reacted by racializing its migration practices and discourses, only swapping the
argument in favor of racial purity for the call to defend mestizaje. Whereas for
the United States immigration posed a threat to White superiority, in Mexico the
unchecked arrival of immigrants jeopardized progress toward homogenizing
the nation through interethnic mixing.

Race in Migration Regulations

In the history of Mexican population surveys, the 1921 Census was the only one
that incorporated racial affiliation. It recorded four categories of race: Indigenous,
Mixed, White, and Other/Unknown. Curiously, foreigners were not registered
14 Forging the Nation

by racial category. A decade later, this criterion underwent a radical change. The
1930 Census abandoned racial categorization. The government officials who
designed the questionnaire indicated, on the one hand, that “racial information
was an unscientific concept,” and that, on the other hand, interethnic mixing was
so widespread in Mexico that “our social stratification, particularly since the
Revolution that began in 1910, has switched from ethnic to economic cate-
gorizations.”32 Excluding race from the population survey was an intellectual
exercise that aligned the official discourse with techniques to represent the po-
pulation statistically. After all, what could be more reliable than census figures to
construct the image of a nation on its way to a chimerical racial unity.33
In the same decade in which racial distinctions disappeared from population
surveys, migratory flows increased and had new origins. The coveted White,
Western European immigrants “whose ethnic and historical characteristics in-
crease their ability to mix and assimilate with native peoples” failed to materi-
alize.34 In contrast, increasing numbers of Asians, Eastern Europeans, and the
Middle Easterners were coming to Mexico. Revolutionary nationalism thus
sought to protect Mexicans from the dangers of mixing with certain foreigners,
and also from the risk represented by other non-Mexicans due to their resistance
to mixing with our race. Then came the category of unassimilable foreigners.
Therefore, although racial categorization no longer appeared on the population
census on the grounds of being “unscientific,” in the context of migration, race
became a determining factor in desirability.
Mexico’s first immigration law was passed in 1908. Despite its generous,
liberal spirit, and enshrining equality “between all nations and races,”35 this
legislation primarily sought to curb the increase in Chinese immigration. It was
precisely this undesirable presence that institutionalized the early mechanisms of
racial selection in Mexico.36
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the volume of foreigners in Mexico
doubled at a time of rapidly growing migratory flows across the Atlantic due to
the country’s open-door immigration policy.37 Partly in reaction to this increase,
although conscious of the advantages of encouraging a migration that could
Whiten the local population, the revolutionaries doubled down on their policies
of racial selection that toward the end of the Porfirio Díaz era was designed
exclusively to reduce the Chinese presence.
The 1926 Migration Law—the first piece of legislation on extranjería after the
Revolution—introduced the earliest signs of measures to discriminate between
different migratory flows based on criteria used to avoid the danger of social,
cultural, and political fractures, as well as the racial degeneration of the national
population. This legislation’s text referred to the need for the state:

to be able to select immigrants and exclude individuals who, on account of

their morality, nature, customs, and other personal circumstances, are
 Forging the Nation 15

undesirable elements or threaten to degenerate our race physically, under-

mine the morals of our nation, or weaken our political institutions.38

According to a Foreign Ministry document, Blacks and Chinese were the first
to be excluded, “to avoid the interethnic mixing that is scientifically proven to
cause degeneration among descendants.”39 Toward the late 1920s, the
Department of Health recommended applying immigration restrictions to
“Hungarians, Serbians, Czechoslovakians, Syrian-Lebanese, Russians, and
Poles, because these races are undesirable for our country, because they do not
assimilate, and mainly become social parasites, seriously damaging our com-
merce and industry.”40 A new law on migration passed in 1930 continued to
support individual and collective immigration, although restricting it to the
“races who are inherently more assimilable to Mexico and therefore beneficial
to our own race and economy.”41
But to what did the word “race” refer? Herein lay the core problem in dis-
tinguishing between desirables and undesirables. Except for the easily identifiable
Blacks, race was otherwise used interchangeably with nationality or else became
associated with certain nationalities. The legislation referred to races without
modification and to their supposed inclination or reluctance to assimilate with our
race. In April 1934, the Interior Ministry issued confidential circular 157 prohi-
biting the entry into Mexico of “African or Australian Blacks, Mongoloids or
Yellow-skinned individuals, Eastern Indo-Europeans, Hindustanis, from the is-
land of Ceylon, Olive-skinned or Malaysian people”; it also confirmed and ex-
panded the list of undesirable nationalities already stipulated in circular 250 in
October 1933 that referred to Poles, Armenians, Czechoslovakians, Russians,
Syrians, Lebanese, and Israelis, by adding new groups: Palestinians, Arabs, Turks,
Bulgarians, Persians, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Albanians, Algerians, Egyptians, and
Moroccans. Jews had a separate section, as a type of immigrant “whose psy-
chological and moral qualities make them particularly undesirable.”42
Since the early 1920s, confidential orders regulated the entry of foreigners
based on racial criteria. The aforesaid circulars 157 and 250 concentrated, ex-
panded, and refined previous prohibitions on immigrants’ nationalities and
occupations.43
These restrictions were applied with extreme arbitrariness, notably in the case
of Blacks. U.S. firms with African-American employees objected to the ban,
resulting in some exceptions to the restrictions. For temporary stays in Mexico,
these “immigrants”—or rather, their employers—had to pay a bond to cover any
repatriation expenses incurred. Essentially, this was the case for railway employees
(barmen, waiters, cooks), musicians who crossed over the border to perform in
bars and nightclubs, and stable hands who looked after horses running in races in
the border area.44
The ban on entry affected Blacks temporarily resident in Mexico and those
who wanted to visit or settle in Mexico, leading to complaints and calls for
16 Forging the Nation

explanations from the United States. In 1926, C. Barnet, director of Associated

Negro Press, a news service that supplied information to more than one hundred
newspapers across the United States, wrote to the Mexican president, Plutarco
Elías Calles, requesting clarification on the reasons for the prohibition. In his
response, Calles’s interior minister explained that restrictions on “colored in-
dividuals” exclusively applied to manual laborers, “since the government wishes
to protect our braceros [farm workers] who face severe competition in their work
due to the large numbers of such individuals.”45 This was the regular justification:
that the restrictions sought to prevent labor competition given that Blacks
“would exacerbate Mexico’s labor problem.”46 It was a blanket ban, however, as
reported by the Mexican consul in San Antonio who remarked in 1929 that it
was applied “all along the border, to the extent that not a single American citizen
of that race could cross any border point into Mexico even for a brief
excursion.”47
Another argument used to justify this ban was that Black people supposedly
had criminal tendencies. In 1929, new complaints by African-American profes-
sional associations called for explanations from President Emilio Portes Gil. In
response, the Migration Department contended that Mexico had “always banned
the entry of colored individuals following reports of them frequently committing
crimes”48 while adding that these prohibitions still permit in “truly exceptional
cases, the entry of colored individuals who can prove themselves to be trust-
worthy, upon payment of a bond of 10,000 pesos (5,000 dollars), refundable
upon proof that they have left the country.”49 As an example of just how ex-
ceptional such cases were, even the intervention of Mexico’s ambassador in
Washington failed to make it possible for the Black boxer Harris Wills to cross the
border to participate in a bout in the Mexican capital in October 1929.50
If African Americans faced trouble securing even temporary entry permits, the
mere prospect of establishing agricultural settlements employing Black North
American workers triggered a furious response. In 1922, in reaction to rumors
spread about a new settlement project, an editorial in a Mexico City newspaper
fumed:

Our country has enough trouble as it is with the Indian issue to then have
to put up with other ethnic problems. Of course we should welcome the
Germans, Spanish, French, who will help strengthen and improve our own
race. But Blacks? What for?51

This animosity toward African Americans contrasts with developments on the

Belizean border, where the ban was the same in theory but not in practice. This
region had a low population density combined with economic activities in re-
mote jungle areas. Immigrants were in fact posses of workers hired by English,
U.S., and Mexican business owners to exploit natural resources of timber and
resins. Agreements with the Agriculture Ministry regulated these activities
 Forging the Nation 17

stipulating that in the absence of Mexican laborers willing to enter jungle regions,
these businesses had authorization to hire Belizean workers. After 1924, when the
first ban on the entry of Blacks took effect, disputes arose that were generally
settled in favor of the business owners who were allowed to bring in seasonal
laborers. Elizabeth Cunin has studied the characteristics of these African-Belizean
migrations, showing the flexibility in how racially based migratory norms were
put into practice.52 Those criteria were never made public, and only come to
light in confidential instructions, as shown by this example in 1925: “As a general
criterion, the government has strongly opposed the immigration of the Ethiopian
and Mongoloid races who, for well-known ethnological reasons, pose a threat to
our fledgling national identity.” These races who, “on account of their own
inferiority agree to work under slave-like conditions […] while throughout the
country we have out-of-work laborers bent on emigrating to the United States to
earn a decent day’s wage.”53
The arguments citing racial undesirability and the safeguarding of jobs were
equivocal. On the southern border, business interests in a virtually unpopulated
area made it possible to negotiate and nullify the implementation of migration
regulations. The situation was different on the northern border, where Mexico’s
prohibitions were consistent with racism in the United States, and therefore did
not chafe with the authorities north of the border; on the contrary, they created
the illusion of a harmony between “our” race and theirs. Moreover, the con-
fidential status of these norms and the obfuscation in official explanations shows
an eagerness to conceal racial criteria that were condemned in public but
common in practice. Therefore, for example, to avoid the awkwardness of po-
tential complaints by African-American organizations, the Interior Ministry re-
commended Mexican consulates to avoid racial justifications for refusing visas or
deporting Blacks, and instead refer to the African-Americans in question being
involved in “prostitution, crime, and alcohol abuse.”54
Racial selection was pervasive in Mexico’s migration legislation well into the
twentieth century. The premises were the same as in high-immigration countries
that claimed the supposed superiority of Whites, except that in Mexico it was
because the already-weak “national race” was threatened by the presence of
undesirable races. Mexican mestizos needed protection from biological back-
sliding, but official efforts in this regard were fraught with contradictions both on
account of the ambiguous definitions of nationality and race when judging un-
desirability and the imprecise use of categories such as “sub-race, blood mixture,
ethnic indicators,” and so on, throughout confidential instructions when re-
gistering foreigners.
At the same time Mexican anthropology was distancing itself from evolu-
tionary racism, the country’s migration authorities were heading in the opposite
direction. In the mid-1920s, classification tables began to appear alongside in-
structions for racial restrictions. One year before the 1926 Migration Law entered
into force, indications circulated about the need to define the racial affiliation
18 Forging the Nation

(Indigenous, White, Black, Yellow, Mestizo, or Mulatto) of those seeking to

enter Mexico, underscoring the importance of “not classifying as White (as had
been the case) those mestizo or genuinely indigenous individuals, who constitute
the majority of our emigrant workers.”55
In May 1934, one month after circular 157 was issued, an additional
document provided rough information about the political geography and po-
pulation of the nations of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. An extensive table
gave an overview of the various countries, capitals and main cities, regions,
population, language spoken, and ethnic groups. All of this information was
compiled from the Espasa-Calpe Spanish encyclopedia. Another text attempts
to explain the meaning of the racial category, and it concludes with a classi-
fication table.56
This documentation defined race as a means of classifying physical differences
between humans—differences that arose from age-old interethnic mixing. It
begins by asserting that no pure races existed but that everyone was the product
of mestizaje under various natural and cultural influences. It referred to how each
race had certain bodily and spiritual qualities, while specifying that classification
systems only took into account bodily traits because “the spirit of a race, as
important and palpable as it appears, is far too complicated an idea to
represent.”57
Based on bodily features, this document reinstated the original eighteenth-
century divisions established by German anthropologist Johann Blumenbach
(Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malaysian) as the foundation
for an abstruse classification of ten races (Caucasian, Mongolian, Austrasian,
Papua Melanesian, Australian, Dravidian, Primitive African, Black, American,
and Polar), in turn subdivided into types (White, Yellow, Black, etc.), and
subtypes (Blond, Tan, Red, etc.) and families (Berber, Semitic, Pelasgian, etc.), in
order to present an indecipherable table. Apart from being confusing, the codi-
fication and nomenclature did not even correspond to the contents of con-
fidential circulars; hence these efforts to identify undesirable elements must have
come to nothing. It is difficult to identify the author of a document that ac-
knowledged the impossibility of classifying the “spirit of a race” while drawing up
a classification as detailed as it was useless.
The lack of precision created ambiguities and absurdities. Every regulation had
its exception, even the most restrictive ones such as the circulars 250 and 157.
Although there was a ban on Black immigrants regardless of their nationality,
exceptions were made for railway company workers and “tourists’ servants who
provided essential services” in clear reference to African-American employees. In
contrast to Blacks for whom no exceptions were made on grounds of nationality,
Asian races were subject to differentiated restrictions because “exceptions applied
to Japanese and Koreans” due to the friendship treaties between Mexico and
these nations; the same applied to the Philippines and Hawaii “that are considered
politically as North American.”58 Exceptions for Black and Asian races were also
 Forging the Nation 19

based on types of occupation. Qualified professionals of these races could enter

when requested by the National University or any other official entity; artists,
sportspersons, and tourists could also receive special permission. However, in
every case the Interior Ministry had the final decision on whether or not to
approve the visa. The ban on Gypsies and Jews was absolute; in the case of the
latter, the authorities used special methods of identification because “despite their
racial features it is very difficult to identify them due to their global presence.” As
a result, although racial classification no longer appeared on the population
census, visa applications required information on “race and sub-race,” and, for
Jews in particular, religion was also a defining factor, “since Jews almost in-
variably profess their religion to be Judaism, in other words Mosaic Law.”
Circular 250 stipulated a complete prohibition of Jews: “If applicants are found to
be of Jewish origin, regardless of their nationality, they should be banned.”
However, this same circular established an exception for Jews from the United
States, so that “as neighbors and out of reciprocity” consulates had authorization
to issue tourist visas to American citizens of Jewish origin.59
Although it was easier to identify Blacks than Jews, the problem was more
complex. Blacks who were Cuban presented a difficulty because their race was
prohibited but not their nationality. A similar issue arose with European Jews
who had become naturalized Mexicans and could apply for the entry of family
members whose nationality and race barred them from entry into the country.
More paradoxical still was the case of many naturalized Chinese whose physical
appearance led them to being registered as foreigners in the 1930 Census.60
Political, religious, and job-related factors added to this morass of racial pro-
hibitions. Therefore, independently of race and nationality, prohibitions applied
to “foreign vagrants,” in reference to hawkers, musicians, and street artists.
Similar bans were placed on “foreign preachers and clergy”; restrictions tightened
further after the Cristero War and targeted the mainly Spanish Catholic clergy. A
ban also existed on “foreign doctors” following complaints from the association
of medical professionals. Finally, Soviet citizens became persona non grata after
Mexico distanced itself from the Soviet Union and severed diplomatic ties; an
exception was made for Russians born in another country provided that other
restrictions (for example, Jewish-ness) did not apply to them.61
The racial prohibitions ended up creating a regulatory mess, based on the
confidentiality of orders and the decision to avoid any overt explanations about
the criteria justifying the selection of foreigners allowed into Mexico. Therefore,
these restrictions were subject to arbitrary interpretations that introduced the
possibility for negotiations marked by abuses and acts of corruption.62

Ideas about the Population

In Mexico, demographics started to become an interdisciplinary field with an
impact on public policy from the late 1920s and early 1930s. The global
20 Forging the Nation

economic crisis, the forced repatriation of thousands of Mexican workers from

the United States, and the influx of foreigners into Mexico, triggered discussions
about population strategies that answered calls for social justice in a society re-
building itself after the revolutionary decade. Surveys on births, deaths, internal
and international migrations that influenced population growth unleashed poli-
tical measures that responded to diagnoses that, in Luis Astorga’s words, turned
population-related issues into an authentic “demographic raison d’état.”63
That reason of state took the form of norms and regulations that were un-
doubtedly indebted to the new approaches to demographic issues in Europe.
After the ravages of the First World War, a wave of populationism became linked
to policies, turning state interventionism into a central tenet of political and
economic thought. In Mexico, this prevailing idea coincided with the revolu-
tionary governments’ need to respond to social demands. As a result, populations
were under particularly close observation, according to the imperative that no
nation could be forged without scientific knowledge of its inhabitants’ origins,
characteristics, and fundamental needs.
Specialists and technical experts such as Juan de Dios Bojórquez took stock of
these concerns and translated them into specific policies. At the end of the 1920s,
Bojórquez was working as director of the Department of Statistics. Convinced of
the need to create a national system of statistics, he sent two young Mexicans to
Rome to train under the prestigious economist and demographer, Conrado Gini.
The two men in question, Gilberto Loyo and Emilio Alanís, went on to become
Mexico’s first specialists in demography and statistics.64
Gilberto Loyo was primarily responsible for introducing demographic analyses
at a political level in an attempt to make population studies a planning tool. His
early research inspired the population proposals for the government’s six-year
plan (Plan Sexenal) of 1933, and two years later he published La política demográfica
de México, a research project on the country’s demographic policy commissioned
by the National Revolutionary Party in order to provide a scientific foundation
for the revolutionary program’s economic and social policies. This project un-
derpinned a natalist population policy applied since the mid-1930s, based on the
rationale that population growth was the only way to stimulate the economy.
Gilberto Loyo acknowledged the failure of all the attempts to attract for-
eigners. His conclusions spelled the end of the paradigm of migration: a country
such as Mexico that was “mestizo and culturally backward” could not expect
population growth through migration, because “as experience has taught us,
mestizo countries primarily attract adventurers, social rejects, undesirable ele-
ments who would be unwelcome citizens in any country and particularly det-
rimental in countries such as ours.”65 Without underestimating the advantages of
“good immigration,” he was convinced that the country needed to boost its
population by using its own reserves. He abandoned the notion that immigration
would increase mestizaje, thus marginalizing the role of foreigners in efforts to
modernize Mexico. In fact, Loyo inverted the theory of Argentine jurist and
 Forging the Nation 21

politician Juan Bautista Alberdi by arguing that Mexico’s modernization would

not depend on the vitality of immigrants, but that Mexico needed modernization
to attract desirable immigrants. “As the living conditions and moral rectitude of
the masses improve,” wrote Loyo, “more foreigners of a superior kind will come,
a situation that is very unlikely to materialize in the coming decades.”66 The
fundamental problem was the population’s low density and lack of culture. “With
eight inhabitants per square kilometer, even in the case of the more progressive
races, it is impossible to organize a modern society.”67 This was a problem of
quantity and quality of a population spread out unevenly over a vast territory.
The solution lay in increasing the birth rate, reducing the mortality rate, and
improving the education, health, and financial status of our race.
Subsequently, demographic policy became linked to the population’s natural
growth, promoting interethnic mixing to increase mestizaje. Immigration was
deemed negligible and it was also judged on immigrants’ proclivity to mix with
our race. Whereas for Juan B. Alberti governing was about inserting settlers on the
plains by the banks of the Río de la Plata, his Mexican admirers believed de-
Indianizing was the key to expanding the population. Loyo referred to Mexico as
a “social desert” that would not be transformed by the hands of hardworking
immigrants as in Argentina, but by a policy focused on the quantity and quality of
the native population. Combating early mortality rates and improving people’s
level of culture became central to the demographic program in the postrevolu-
tionary years. Loyo expressed this succinctly: “Mexico is the first country to
confirm that populating the country is a matter of transforming Indians into
culturally, politically, and economically modern people.”68 For Loyo, altering
that “social desert” was the job of government and not something to be left to
foreigners and private capital, because otherwise “we would be giving up on
Mexico being Mexico, or in other words, on Mexico being ours.”69
These questions gave shape to the first General Population Law. This piece of
legislation laid the foundation of demographic policy, and its criteria proved
surprisingly long-lasting, since they remained virtually unchanged until the 1970s,
defining as their priorities:

[Stimulating] population growth, and a racial distribution across the

national territory, the ethnic intermixing of different national groups;
protecting the professional, artistic, and intellectual activities of nationals
through migration regulations; preparing indigenous communities to make
a greater physical, economic, and social contribution from a demographic
perspective; [and] generally protecting, preserving, and improving the
human species.70

Mexico’s population policy reflected the state’s central role in the years of the
Cardenista presidency, a situation that led to the country’s most restrictive mi-
gration policy in its history.71 Apart from the limitations placed on employment,
22 Forging the Nation

this legislation established a system of immigrant quotas, set annually, lasting al-
most a decade. According to the law, these quotas “would take into account the
national interest, the level of racial and cultural assimilation, and the desirability of
[the immigrants’] entry, in order to prevent imbalances.”72
These quotas are worth analyzing because they distill the prejudices, arbi-
trariness, and above all, fears about new arrivals perceived to pose a threat to a
desired racial and cultural harmony. First, the quota system never set a limit for
people from the Americas, including Canada and the United States, due to “the
solidarity between all nations on the continent.” Spain and Portugal were also
exempt on account of “our Iberian cultural heritage.”73 Of course, most im-
migrants did not originate from Ibero-America, Canada, or the United States
(even fewer came from Portugal). Spain was the exception, and was included
because of the notion that “the Spaniard [is] the best immigrant that Mexico can
receive,”74 in the words of Gilberto Loyo. In this way, with the exception of
Spain, Mexico kept is doors open to all those who did not want to come, and
closed them to the nationalities that accounted for most migrants.
While German National Socialism turned racial purity into state policy,
Mexico consecrated mestizaje into a national insignia. In this context, the
Cardenista population policy went to great pains to demonstrate the wholesome
reasons behind its quota system. One of its aims was to put an end to the tangle of
confidential instructions on race and nationality. By setting annual quotas, the
authorities considered that it was time to trust in the rationality of a regulation
and in the fact that its strict application would root out all arbitrariness. Therefore,
in May 1937, circular 930 and a decree by President Lázaro Cárdenas repealed all
confidential instructions that set restrictions “based on race, nationality and re-
ligion.”75 An official document signed by the Interior Minister in mid-1939
underlined the fact that presidential decree was issued to reaffirm “that our
government is free from racial prejudices and consequently does not consider that
any human group deserves an inferior status.”76
In the summer of 1940, influential African-American organizations such as the
National Negro Congress, the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and the National Bar Association, alongside the Council for Pan
American Democracy, an anti-racist association presided over by journalist and
politician Gardner Jackson and anthropologist Frank Boas, contacted the
Mexican authorities to make a complaint owing to the continued discrimination
of American citizens “of the Black race.” The quota system gave complete ex-
emption for North Americans, although interior ministry officials rather than
consuls were responsible for authorizing visas for Black applicants. Sidney R.
Redmond, president of the National Bar Association, lodged a complaint about
the “unwarranted discrimination by your Government,” petitioning the Mexican
authorities to give equal treatment to all North Americans visiting “your beautiful
country.”77 These associations’ complaints reveal that restrictions were still in
place for Blacks, whether as tourists or permanent residents. The reply from the
 Forging the Nation 23

director of the Migration Department was evasive: “I must clarify,” he wrote to

David Efron, executive secretary of the Council for Pan American Democracy,
“that the laws of our country draw absolutely no distinction between races, and
therefore no such discrimination exists,”78 before immediately going on to point
out that it was not the case of an exception being made for Blacks, but rather a
regulation applicable to any foreigner wishing to settle in Mexico. However, the
legislation and its principles defended in official correspondence was one thing,
but the actions taken by immigration authorities, who continued to restrict the
entry of African Americans in the mid-twentieth century, were something else.

The Anti-Racism of Our Race

Xenophobia was widespread in Mexico during the 1930s and continued in the
aftermath of the Second World War. As racism was intensifying in Germany, and
with migration restrictions tightening across the Americas, Mexico used mestizaje
as the basis for its claims that the country was free from racial discrimination.
Whereas racist attitudes and measures sought to prove the advantages of racial
purity, the pro-mestizo discourse helped exorcise the racial demon.
However, the reality was quite different because it is impossible to eradicate
racist attitudes while citing racial categories to explain human differences. The
indigenous discourse swapped biological heritage for culture, without removing
Whiteness as a yardstick of civilization. Therefore, despite repeating the argument
that migration restrictions were free from racial discrimination, racial and ethnic
differences provided the bases for selecting migrants. The constant references to
mestizaje were clearly sophistic, as revealed in Mexico’s legal requirements for
foreigners wishing to enter the country: “[Visa] applicants shall state categorically
that they have no racial prejudices and are willing, where appropriate, to form a
Mexican mestizo family and to settle in the Republic permanently and without
interruption.”79 This statement required potential immigrants to be free from the
same racist attitudes as used by the migration authorities in their selection process.
This inconsistency was rife in the implementation of migration practices, as
shown in the differentiated treatment received by victims of persecution in
Europe.
Contrasting the experiences of Spanish Republicans and Jews persecuted by
the Nazis exposes the tensions between extranjería, mestizaje, and ethnic pre-
judice. From the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, President Lázaro Cárdenas’s
policies showed complete solidarity with Spain’s Republican government, clearly
expressed in the granting of asylum to the defeated Republicans.80 The political
desire to welcome these victims of persecution was coherent with the migration
regulations, hence a symmetry between political decisions and the legislation in
force. The 1936 Population Law included two provisions that helped in this
regard: Article 7 established that the government could encourage “the entry of
foreigners into the country whose nationality, race, sex, age, marital status,
24 Forging the Nation

occupation, education, and ideology it deemed appropriate, for as long as ne-

cessary and in the numbers required,” and Article 56 guaranteed the entry into
Mexico of foreigners who were “fleeing persecution in their home country.”81
The quota system never set a limit on the number of Spaniards, in recognition of
our “Iberian cultural heritage,” as set out in an Interior Ministry communiqué.82
Furthermore, in 1939 the quota regime created a new provision to offer assistance
to victims of political persecution. This introduced the category of political re-
fugee, while establishing that asylum requests would be refused if people were
leaving their countries for personal reasons, or if they were making their appli-
cation in a country other than the one in which they had suffered persecution.
Another requirement stipulated that “no foreigner entering the Republic as a
visitor […] temporarily or as a tourist or in transit, will receive refugee status.” 83
One year later, the immigrant quota system incorporated a new criterion: for-
eigners who had lost their nationality would be refused visas. Stateless persons
would be admitted “in exceptional circumstances of particular benefit to the
country, through direct and express permission from the Interior Ministry.”84
Developments in Europe had a bearing on these changes to the quota system’s
provisions. Mexico reaffirmed its solidarity by including victims of political
persecution regardless of their country of origin, but it closed its doors to stateless
individuals. These provisions applied both to German and Austrian Jews stripped
of their nationality by the Nuremberg Laws, and to the Jewish communities of
Eastern Europe who faced various obstacles in securing visas, and, if they were
successful, were unable to claim refugee status.
While in the Spanish case, the willingness to accept refugees was consistent
with the legislation that recognized the potential for “assimilation,” it was an
opposite situation in the case of the Jews. Based on a strongly anti-Jewish sen-
timent expressed in confidential circulars that barred them from entry, a quota
system was added in order to cap the number of East European immigrants, on
top of the refusal to offer asylum to stateless applicants. In this way, an exception
existed for the Spanish Republicans while entry was denied for Jews, who were
confronted with strictly applied migration regulations.
The glorification of mestizaje inverted the formula of extreme racism ex-
pressed in European anti-Semitism. For the Mexican authorities, the danger was
not that Jewish blood might pollute a supposed racial purity, but precisely the
opposite. Mexico saw fit to bar Jews on account of their inability to intermix
with the mestizo nation. In March 1939, Manuel Gamio expressed this view:
“Jewish immigration is ethnically ill-adapted to Mexico’s demographic policy.”
These were people unwilling to “mix with nationals in order to increase mes-
tizaje,” and also because “the Semites are so much more culturally advanced than
the indigenous population that the former would not be able to pass on properly
their cultural attainments to the latter.”85 Being White and well educated was not
enough; immigrants also needed to show their full commitment to join in the
mestizaje process. Hence Spaniards were preferred. In July that same year, Isidro
 Forging the Nation 25

Fabela, at a plenary session of the League of Nations, explained the reasons why
Spaniards made better immigrants:

The Spaniards constitute one of the racial ingredients that, when mixed
with the indigenous population, have formed the protoplasm of
nationality. Their incorporation into the Mexican family is eminently
viable due to the similarity in their blood, attitude, and customs;
therefore, they can settle in Mexico more easily and permanently than
citizens from other countries whose assimilation process is much slower
and sometimes incomplete.86

Political organizations and unions strongly supported the Cárdenas government’s

policy of offering asylum to Republicans, whereas the conservative press bitterly
opposed it.87 Such support was absent or weaker in the case of the Jews, for
whom solidarity was limited to statements and speeches, such as the one given by
Fabela on that same occasion in Geneva: “Mexico does not discriminate against
foreigners on grounds of race, religious beliefs, or political views. Immigration is
simply subject to normal regulations.”88 The problem was that those same reg-
ulations confirmed the prejudices denied by Fabela.

Mestizos around the World

Events in Europe in the early 1940s prompted Mexico to reinforce and project
mestizaje as the antithesis of Nazi racism. In the Americas, the Mexican gov-
ernment led two initiatives to challenge that racism. In 1940, the First Inter-
American Indian Congress took place in Pátzcuaro. In an atmosphere suffused
with the spirit of the New Deal, this event became a sounding board for cultural
and pro-mestizo ideas. Notwithstanding the various delegations’ differing ap-
proaches to the indigenous question, the resolutions adopted by the Congress
bear the hallmarks of Mexico’s influence by reaching basic agreements on three
points: first, in considering the indigenous question as a key issue of public in-
terest in American societies; second, the prescription of norms and practices based
on racial differences, affirming the principle of equal rights and opportunities for
every population group; and last, an agreement was reached on a policy to
promote respect for the indigenous cultures’ “positive values,” to raise their
socioeconomic levels, and to further their assimilation with national commu-
nities, giving them access to modern technologies and universal culture.89
The Cárdenas government’s social reforms placed the country in an ideal
position to design policies that tackled poverty and social marginalization. The
challenge was not to de-Indianize the indigenous population but to Mexicanize
it, by incorporating indigenous communities into the main tributaries of civili-
zation through a transformation of land ownership models, access to credit,
education, health, and housing. “Any state seeking to become genuinely
26 Forging the Nation

democratic,” Cárdenas said in his inaugural address at this Congress, “must

consider using the virtues of the indigenous races and eliminate the vices or
scourges of oppressive systems, as an essential precursor to collective progress.”90
This Congress led to the creation of new institutions such as indigenous affairs
offices in various countries across the continent, as well as the establishment of the
Inter-American Indigenous Institute for the coordination of research projects that
would generate proposals to develop pro-indigenous policies. This institute,
based in Mexico City, was set up in 1942 and directed by Manuel Gamio for
almost two decades.91
At a time when Hitler’s racism was behind the plans and implementation of
the mass extermination of millions of human beings, Mexico was putting into
practice its ideas for racial mestizaje in the Americas as the foundation stone for a
fairer and more democratic order. The defense of mestizaje directly challenged
racism based on the advantages of racial purity. Although, as Alan Knight points
out, the construction of an ideology and official policy that challenged Euro-
centric racism did not mean the eradication of racial prejudices and racist practices
from Mexican society and the state apparatus.92 The founders of Mexican an-
thropology not only believed they could interpret the feelings of indigenous
communities,93 but they were also convinced that the Revolution had eradicated
racism. The argument was that discrimination resulted from socioeconomic
causes rather than racism, and that inequalities needed to be tackled through pro-
indigenous policies. This anthropological strategy, an instrument of state na-
tionalism, provided the ingredients for a culturally and racially homogenous
nation.94
The First Inter-American Congress of Demography, organized by the
Mexican government and held in October 1943, provided an opportunity to
expound anti-racist arguments and to safeguard an open-door immigration policy
in connection to extranjería. By that time, Mexico had declared war on the Axis
powers, and publicly and unequivocally condemned Nazism and its policies of
racial hygiene and extermination.
The other nations in the Americas were quick to support this Congress.
President Manuel Ávila Camacho’s instruction to organize the event expressed
the underlying reasons for this Mexican initiative. Some believed that the end of
the war would cause a massive redistribution of the world’s population, especially
among the Europeans, producing a flood of emigrants heading to the Americas.
The idea was to put policies in place to address this situation, seeking interna-
tional cooperation so that “after the defeat of Nazi Fascist regimes, the interna-
tional action of the most powerful allied nations” could help “organize and
develop the economies of the least developed countries in the Americas” in order
to ensure the absorption of the new influx of immigrants.95
The Mexican delegation consisted of more than twenty officials from the
migration and statistics agencies, as well as experts, notably Manuel Gamio,
Alfonso Caso, Miguel Othón de Mendizábal, and Gilberto Loyo. They drew up a
 Forging the Nation 27

long agenda for each of the Congress’s sections: demography, ethnology, eu-
genics, and demographic policy. The last working group looked at migration
issues, whereas for the former ones migration was just one of many other matters
that included quantitative and qualitative records of national populations, statis-
tical methods, public health standards.
An analysis of some of this Congress’s resolutions reveals how Mexico took
the initiative to promote the exchange of knowledge and to make re-
commendations on public migration policies; it also points to international
consensuses in which Mexico played an active part, though without implying the
eradication of discriminatory practices that continued to contradict the state’s
supposed anti-racism.
In line with Gilberto Loyo’s demographic ideas expressed a decade earlier, the
Inter-American Demographic Congress made anti-Malthusian recommendations
to promote the organic growth of national populations, “notwithstanding the
added stimulus of extra-continental migratory flows, provided that these con-
tributions are eugenically and economically useful”96—or, in other words, as
long as these additions did not pose a risk to public health or the proper “bio-
logical development” of national communities, and did not cause imbalances in
labor markets. In fact, these resolutions enshrined selection policies where the
main variable was the ability to “integrate.” The idea was to avoid the creation of
“exotic groups” that, once embedded in the host society, rejected any attempt at
assimilation and prevented “the complete integration into the country that has
taken them in.”97
Furthermore, and in the context of the Second World War, this Congress
recommended rooting out any racial discrimination and therefore defined the
word “race.” In various conferences, Mexican and foreign anthropologists exiled
in Mexico, such as the Spaniard Juan Comas and the German Paul Kirchhoff,
challenged the idea of racial purity and superiority, explaining that the human
race was inherently hybrid from the dawn of civilization.98 The work of these
experts paved the way for the Congress to agree that the word “race” was only
permissible for describing hereditary physical features without any association to
psychological, cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics. In this same sense,
to draw a clear distinction from Nazi eugenics, the Congress also established that
any eugenic policy needed to focus on social and biological improvements,
“regardless of the race in question,” underlining its rejection of any practice
seeking to “incite feelings of racial superiority.”99 In the wake of these anti-racist
statements, another resolution was to remove the word “undesirable” from mi-
gration laws when referring to immigrants of certain nationalities.100
This Congress passed more than thirty resolutions in total. Many of them
related to national populations’ ethnic composition, statistical methods to mea-
sure their characteristics, health policies to reduce child mortality and infectious
diseases, and the design of scientific research to improve knowledge of their social
and medical conditions. Special chapters recommended raising the economic and
28 Forging the Nation

cultural levels of indigenous and Black populations, placing particular emphasis

on recommending policies to guarantee “equal treatment of civil and social
rights” for all populations, “without discriminating on the basis of race, color, or
creed.”101 Mexico actively promoted these resolutions and, to ensure their ap-
plication, it proposed setting up a new agency to coordinate activities based in
Mexico City to be known as the Inter-American Demographic Committee,102 as
well as the Inter-American Indigenist Institute, although ultimately this resolu-
tion was not implemented.

The Postwar Scene

At the end of the Second World War, and given the evidence of the Nazi
genocide, racial paradigms were incompatible with the design of population
policies. Mexico was engaged in this issue, in addition to the fact that the
country’s leaders were convinced that the devastation brought about by the war
would bring a huge wave of migrants to Mexican shores. In December 1945,
President Manuel Avila Camacho expressed these fears: “The destruction of
European nations and their current predicament, combined with Mexico’s
promise of comfort and opportunities, will attract large numbers of foreigners
after they have lost their countries, families, and homes.” This prospect prompted
Camacho to amend existing legislation in order to “adjust Mexico’s demographic
challenges to present-day realities in the war’s aftermath.” The president an-
nounced that his draft bill that passed into law “in no way discriminated on racial
grounds, because Mexico supports the equality of all races in their rights and
freedoms” before immediately adding that the proposed legislation only sought to
ensure “the most effective selection of immigrants.”103
The “assimilation” criteria used since the late 1920s reappeared in the new
legislation passed in 1947 and remained in force for the subsequent three decades.
“It is obvious,” said the president,

that attempts to assimilate a high proportion of immigrants already in the

country have all failed. Only in a few, exceptional cases have foreigners
become authentic Mexicans due to their cordial relationship with our
country and identification with the Mexican way of life, adopting its
customs and basic conduct.104

In the early postwar years, the state once again revealed its interest in homo-
genization by insisting on the pressing need to increase mestizaje and “to defend
ourselves from rampant immigration that poses the obvious threat of substitution
or supplantation, which would also be socially and economically counter-
productive in every way.” Therefore, the law stipulated that the state’s mandate
was to “apply the criteria on the immigration of foreigners as it sees fit, depending
on their ability to assimilate.”105
 Forging the Nation 29

These approaches did not leave any room to promote immigration policies.
The 1947 law set the admission criteria for immigrants and these rules shut the
door to urban and rural workers, or unskilled migrants. Visas were reserved for
investors, rentiers, students; in exceptional cases, skilled workers and professionals
were eligible after proving that their employment did not displace Mexicans.106
The migration restrictions proved effective. The 1940s and 1950s saw a sharp
decrease in the numbers of new foreign residents,107 although the government
perceived things differently. In 1950, Ernesto Uruchurtu, the deputy interior
minister who went onto become head of Mexico City’s government, spear-
headed a strident campaign that targeted foreigners, justified by many immigrants’
supposed involvement in illegal activities. “It is unconscionable to allow only the
dregs of the world into Mexico,” wrote the politician, after affirming that
“Mexico is one of the few countries in the world that affords foreigners so many
opportunities.”108
As in the 1930s, anti-foreigner sentiment began to take grip, and newspaper
and magazine articles turned xenophobia into a matter of pride. One journalist,
Gonzalo de la Parra, defended Uruchurtu by saying:

It is bad enough for foreigners to be displacing Mexicans from many jobs

and monopolizing others, and thriving through deceit, but worse still is
their scorn for Mexico and the Mexicans. They plunder our country and
then slander it. If Uruchurtu is xenophobic about this rabble, that means all
Mexicans are even more so.109

The Xenophobic Tendency of Our Race

At the same time as he published La Raza Cósmica—a eulogy for racial
mixing—José Vasconcelos wrote in the press: “We need to realize that our
country is excessively xenophobic.”110 The real or imagined influx of foreigners
repeatedly incited a defensiveness of our race. Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, two decades
before becoming president, noted that “the xenophobia of most Mexicans is born
of foreigners’ lack of assimilation, and essentially their conquistador mentality.”
Foreigners had nothing in common with Mexicans: “Nothing brings them close
[to Mexicans] except necessity or a mercenary desire to take advantage of them.”
Indeed, the government official working for the Office of National Statistics at
the time said, “foreigners who come to Mexico only stay here long enough to get
rich and then they scurry back home.”111
Mexicans always perceived foreigners’ presence as a threat, regardless of their
occupation. During the early years of the postrevolutionary period, counter-
balancing the insistence on immigrants’ benefit for agriculture was the hostility to
the competition they represented in the business sphere. Indeed, during the
1930s, this commercial rivalry sparked rabidly nationalist campaigns against
30 Forging the Nation

the Chinese, Jewish, and Lebanese business communities. The few immigrants
who arrived did not work in agriculture, a sector that offered so few incentives
that Mexicans working in rural areas emigrated themselves. Jobs were in urban
centers where competition sparked conflicts that led to restrictive migration
regulations and to the 1931 Federal Labor Law, which limited the number of
foreign employees of any company to a maximum of 10 percent of the total
workforce.112 Whereas in the 1930s complaints about competition from for-
eigners came from the working class and businesspeople, in the postwar years it
was the turn of professionals to protest.
In fact, middle-class sectors began to call for tightened restrictions on pro-
fessional licenses from the 1920s. The issue appeared on the legislative agenda in
1924,113 followed two years later by a discussion on a draft regulation criticized
by the press as “inexcusable xenophobia” because it proposed six-month or one-
year permits for foreigners to exercise their profession.114
Two decades later, given the perception of a genuine danger, new legislation
began to focus on the exercise of liberal professions. In 1943, legislators started
drafting a regulatory law on Articles 4 and 5 of the Constitution on employment
rights and the exercise of professions. Discussions took place on emergency
legislation to prepare for many of the problems expected in the postwar period by
establishing “the bases for defending Mexican professionals and the country’s
technical and scientific work.” The expected problem was the arrival of a “flood
of European immigrants who would force us to sleep on the streets and lose our
homes to foreigners.”115 After the debates and draft bills, Articles 15 and 18 of the
May 1945 law prohibited all foreigners and naturalized Mexicans from exercising
their profession if qualified with a foreign diploma.116 The legislation enshrined
inequality in the rights of Mexicans by birth and by naturalization, in breach of
Article 4 of the Constitution that guaranteed the freedom to work to people by
virtue of being resident in the country, regardless of their Mexican or foreign
status.
Congress passed legislation on professions based on migration criteria, without
considering the object of the regulations—namely the type, validity, and regis-
tration of professional diplomas independently of the nationality of those holding
them. Therefore, unlike naturalized Mexicans or foreigners, Mexicans by birth
with professional qualifications earned abroad could obtain official registration to
exercise their professions.
When deputies discussed the draft bill during a plenary session of Congress,
Herminio Ahumada was the dissenting voice when he sought to attenuate the
“chauvinist” aspects of the law by arguing against treating all foreigners the same
way. José Vasconcelos’s son-in-law expressed the need to distinguish between all
foreigners and “our brothers from Latin America along with Spaniards who are
also our kin.” By failing to do so would be to dishonor “Mexico’s generous
spirit.”117 Ahumada’s fellow legislator, a deputy named Andrés Serra Rojas,
 Forging the Nation 31

countered this objection, to applause in the Chamber, by pronouncing: “When

protecting my country’s interests, I’m generous with no-one!”118
Three years later, however, the Supreme Court of Justice issued a ruling on an
issue overlooked by the legislators. Faced with an increasing number of writs of
amparo, the Court upheld the view that the legislation was unconstitutional by
prohibiting foreigners from freely exercising their professions and distinguishing
between Mexicans by birth and by naturalization. This high court decision
prompted the executive branch to send to Congress, in December 1948, a draft
bill to amend the Law on Professions in order to bring it into line with the
Constitution. The deputies approved the revised legislation in general; however,
the executive branch’s proposed amendments never passed into law. A jur-
isprudential decision in 1954 declared Articles 15 and 18 of the Law on
Professions to be unconstitutional,119 yet they remained in force until 1993.120
So why did these unconstitutional provisions remain within the Law on
Professions for almost half a century? Some of the voices disagreeing with the
proposal to amend the controversial articles offer a clue. These arguments can
explain why the unconstitutional regulations survived for so long. The deputies
Victoriano Anguiano and Miguel Ramírez Murguía called for non-observance of
the ruling on these articles’ unconstitutionality, arguing that the individual
guarantees enshrined in the Constitution were subordinate to the defense “of
Mexican professionals and the country’s supreme values.” Anguiano contended
that:

It would be an injustice for our country, our people, and the middle class to
pass [the bill to amend Articles 15 and 18] simply on the basis of a highly
debatable constitutional article, and I repeat, it would be unfair to give this
freedom to foreigners.121

At stake was the matter of labor skills which, in Anguiano’s opinion, warranted a
privileged status protected by law:

Anyone can see how foreigners have been taking over and displacing
Mexicans elsewhere, in businesses and small enterprises. They come to a
country as if to conquer it. We open our doors and they overcome all legal
obstacles to take control of the means of production and economic
activities, supplanting Mexicans and reducing them to the status of pariahs
or slaves.122

Employment qualifications were only one part of this controversial piece of

legislation. Racial factors soon came into play, such as the inherent dangers facing
a fledgling race that easily fell victim to foreign ambitions, the national fragility,
and the inferiority of Mexicans who needed protection (as if underaged citizens)
to survive:
32 Forging the Nation

Regrettably, our country suffers from many examples of a lack of culture

caused by the population’s uneven distribution and lack of density,
insufficient communication infrastructure, the activities of the Church
and above all poverty, creating an attitude of submission to or admiration
for the other. This makes us suppose that a doctor named Raschbaum, or a
lawyer with a German, English, or French surname, is somehow superior
to members of our own professional class who—despite their humbleness
and daily challenges—have the same intellectual and professional worth as
these interlopers with fancy names that impress our people. Therein lies the
danger.123

The idea that foreigners posed a threat given Mexicans’ racial “inferiority” was
used as a pretext to defend the interests of professional guilds despite a lack of
constitutionality. This attitude also reveals the blurred lines between the ex-
changes between an “us” and a “them” in Mexico in the mid-1900s. Deputy
Miguel Ramírez Murguía did not hide his displeasure at the privileges granted by
Mexican “inferiority” to foreigners—advantages eventually guaranteed by the
Constitution itself:

In professional competition, foreign individuals from better socio-cultural

backgrounds than in Mexico—some of whom (though not all) with
superior cultural knowledge than taught in Mexican educational
establishments—come over here and their privilege begins with a foreign
surname that often helps them because the public clearly prefers it;
afterwards, by taking advantage of that well-known situation, whereby
Mexican themselves often fall victim to something we might refer to as our
fellow countrymen’s undue feeling of inferiority, we see those professionals
competing with an unfair advantage, and are now going to allow under the
protection of the Constitution.124

Mestizaje remained a watchword three decades after Gamio’s call to forge a

nation made of iron and bronze. In 1942, the author Mauricio Magdaleno in-
sisted on the “dreadful divorce of our races” that stood in the way of an “ele-
mental” notion of “nation and nationality” and advocated strengthening the
mestizo as the most “genuine kind of Mexican.”125 Five years later, Leopoldo
Zea, pronounced “we need Mexicans for Mexican-ness to exist. It is imperative
we stop referring to Indians and Whites, creoles and mestizos; just Mexicans.”126
In this forge of the nation, racializing extranjería proved remarkably effective at
disguising highly xenophobic employment requirements and a strong tendency to
focus on identity. The ambition to forge a nation made it necessary to praise ethnic
mixtures by arguing that racial hierarchies did not exist. But this same mixing gave
an advantage to the White European element, and at the same time the desired
Whiteness was interpreted as a privilege that threatened to perpetuate the
 Forging the Nation 33

exploitative conditions rooted in the country’s colonial past. As such, Whiteness

became just as threatening as any other foreign presence, infusing mistrust within
the core of immigration policies.
The constant references to our race boiled an irresolvable conflict down into a
concise form by deploring the role played by foreigners throughout Mexican history
while also acknowledging their cultural contribution. Therefore, all attempts to
manage the assimilation of foreigners by racializing their biological and cultural traits
were as useless as supposing that all modern nations consist of one blood.

Notes
1 See Brading, 1980; González Chong, 2012; Zermeño, 2011.
2 See Lund, 2012; Pérez Vejo, 2010 and 2017.
3 See Lomnitz, 2010.
4 See Gamio, 2010, 24 and 38.
5 See Boas, 1964.
6 DDCC, 2005, 1441.
7 El Nacional, 19 December 1929.
8 Ibid., 12 January 1933.
9 El Universal, 5 February 1935.
10 See Santos Ruiz, 2015; Hurtado, 2007; Díaz Ruanova, 1982.
11 See Bartra, 1981.
12 Ibid., 1987.
13 El Universal, 22 October 1918.
14 El Nacional, 14 October 1937.
15 Ibid., 19 March 1938.
16 Article 8 of the Constitution does not give foreigners the right of petition; Article 9
contains similar restrictions on the right of assembly and association; Article 11 refers to
limitations on foreigner’s freedom of movement in relation to immigration laws; Article
27 limits their property rights; Article 32 establishes a legal system that gives preference
to Mexicans, and finally; Article 33 not only bans foreigners from involvement in
domestic politics but also confers the prerogative upon the head of state to expel them
without requiring court proceedings. Naturalized Mexicans were not given right to
hold political office or senior posts within the civil service. See chapter 4.
17 See Gamio, 1969 and 2010.
18 AALyP, “Manuel Gamio, “La futura población de la América Latina,” April 1921,
mimeographed document. An abridged version of this text was published as “La raza
indígena” in El Universal, 24 July 1921.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Rivera, 1931, 144–149.
22 AALyP, “Manuel Gamio, ‘La futura población de la América Latina,’” April 1921,
mimeographed document.
23 El Universal, 5 June 1921.
24 Ibid., 4 April 1923.
25 See Alanis Enciso, 2003 and 2007.
26 See Castles and Miller, 2003
27 See Zolberg, 2006; Higham,1988; Daniels, 2004.
28 Lytle Hernández, 2010; Foley, 2006; Ngai, 2004; Lee, 2003.
29 Quoted by Lytle Hernández, 2010, 30.
34 Forging the Nation

30 Eco, 2012, 8.
31 Gamio, 2010, 23.
32 DGE, 1933, XV.
33 See Astorga Almanza, 1990.
34 Durón González, 1925, 7 and 8.
35 “Ley de Inmigración,” DOF, 20 December 1908, 2.
36 See chapter 2.
37 The total number of foreigners in Mexico increased from 57,000 in 1900 to 117,000
in 1910 (Secretaría de Economía, 1956, 34).
38 “Ley de Migración de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” DOF, 13 March 1926.
39 Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 1927, 512.
40 AHINM, file 4/360–1930/9358.
41 DOF, 30 August 1930, 6.
42 AHINM, file 4/350.2.33/54.
43 See Secretaría de Gobernación, 1933.
44 AHINM, file 4/350–403.
45 Ibid. 4/350-127.
46 AHINM, file 4/350–385 and AHSRE, files NC-1192-10 and NC-1192-10.
47 AHINM, file 4/350–403.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 El Universal, 22 June 1922.
52 See Cunin, 2014; Saade Granados, 2009.
53 AHINM, file 4/350/32.
54 Ibid. 4/3627/1931/728.
55 AALyP, “General guidelines for filling out migration forms,” 31 October 1925,
vol. 1.
56 AHINM, file 4/350.2.33/54.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 See Augustine-Adams, 2015.
61 AHINM, file 4/350.2.33/54
62 See chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion.
63 See Astorga Almanza, 1989.
64 See Alanís, 1990 and 1974.
65 Loyo, 1935, 373–374.
66 Ibid., 375–376.
67 Ibid., 1932, 6.
68 Ibid., 1945, 13.
69 Ibid., 1932, 24.
70 “Ley General de Población,” DOF, 29 August 1936, 1.
71 In its chapter on immigration, this law barred foreigners from exercising liberal pro-
fessions (Art. 31); it limited foreigners’ business or industrial activities around the
country to ensure that nationals retained control over the country’s economy (Art. 32);
it also reserved the right to establish the place of residence for migrants in order to
regulate their distribution around the country (Art. 7). With a view to protecting jobs
for nationals, foreigners were prevented from engaging in the systematic and re-
munerated employment in intellectual and artistic activities (Art. 33); and immigrant
workers and those engaged in commercial activities (other than exports) were pro-
hibited indefinitely (Arts. 84 and 87). Finally, limits were placed on the entry of foreign
technical experts (Art. 86). DOF, 29 August 1936, 4 and 6.
 Forging the Nation 35

72 “Ley General de Población,” DOF, 29 August 1936, 2.

73 AHINM, file 4/350–710
74 Ibid., 4/350.58/7244.
75 Ibid., 4/350.2.34/54.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid., 4/350/40/864.
78 Ibid.
79 DOF, 1 October 1938, 2.
80 See Matesanz, 2000; Plá, 1999; Lida, 1997; Rubio, 1977.
81 “Ley General de Población,” DOF, 29 August 1936, 1, 2, and 5.
82 AHINM, file 4/350/38/710.
83 DOF, 1 October 1938, 3.
84 Ibid., 30 October 1939, 4.
85 AHINM, file 4/350–1935-228.
86 El Universal, 7 July 1939.
87 See Pérez Vejo, 2001.
88 El Universal, 7 July 1939.
89 Pineda, 2012, 22.
90 Cárdenas del Río, 1940, 4
91 See Giraudo, 2006.
92 Knight, 1992, 71.
93 See Knight, 1992, 75; Brading, 1988.
94 See González Chong, 2012.
95 AHSRE, file III-762-1 (1943).
96 Primer Congreso Demográfico Interamericano, 1943, 15
97 Ibid., 16 and 21.
98 See Juan Comas, “El mestizaje,” 1943, and Paul Kirchhoff, “Composición étnica de
la población mexicana,” conferences given at the First Inter-American Demographic
Congress in AIPGM-FTM, Inter-American Demographic Congress, 1943, vol. 4.
99 Primer Congreso Demográfico Interamericano, 1943, 15.
100 Ibid., 16.
101 Ibid., 22.
102 Ibid., 24. See Welti–Chanes, 2011.
103 DDCD, 7 January 1946, 4.
104 Ibid., 28 December 1945, 23.
105 “Ley General de Población,” DOF, 27 December 1947, 4.
106 Ibid., 7.
107 The growth rate of the foreign population in Mexico was 5.13 percent in 1930 and
fell to 0.30 percent in 1950 (Castillo, 2010, 554).
108 El Universal, 1 September 1950.
109 Ibid., 5 September 1950.
110 Ibid., 28 December 1925.
111 Ruiz Cortines 1934, 270.
112 “Ley Federal del Trabajo,” DOF, 28 August 1931, 4.
113 El Universal, 7 October 1924.
114 Ibid., 24 September 1926.
115 DDCD, 20 December 1943, 26.
116 Article 15 of this law established: “No foreigner may exercise the scientific technical
professions subject to this Law. Naturalized Mexicans who have completed their
higher education in institutions authorized by this Law have equal rights as Mexicans
by birth to exercise their profession.” Article 18 stipulated that foreigners and nat-
uralized Mexicans with foreign diplomas could only be: “I. Teachers of specializa-
tions not yet taught or in which they are unquestionably qualified to do so, in the
36 Forging the Nation

opinion of the General Directorate of Professions. II. Advisers or instructors for

establishing, organizing, or establishing centers of civilian or military education, and
essentially scientific laboratories or institutes. III. Technical directors for the mining
of the country’s natural resources, within the limits established by the Federal Labor
Law and other relevant legislation.” DOF, 26 May 1945, 3.
117 DDCD, 21 December 1943, 9.
118 Ibid., 10.
119 Góngora Pimentel, Genaro David and Acosta Romero, 1987, 184.
120 Pursuant to the North American Free Trade Agreement, President Carlos Salinas de
Gortari signed a decree that amended, added to, and repealed various articles of the
Law of Professions. Article 15 of the 1945 Law was replaced by the following text:
“In the Federal District, foreigners may exercise the professions subject to this Law, in
accordance with the international treaties signed by Mexico. In the absence of any
relevant agreement, foreigners’ professions will be subject to reciprocity in the ap-
plicants’ place of residence and must comply with the other requirements established
in Mexican legislation.” Article 18 of this Law was repealed. DOF, 22 December
1993, 41.
121 DDCD, 20 December 1948, 32 and 35.
122 Ibid., 33.
123 Ibid., 33.
124 Ibid., 20.
125 El Universal, 21 June 1942.
126 El Nacional, 30 March 1947.
2
THE MIGRATION SERVICE:
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK
AND INSTITUTIONAL FLAWS

Mexico’s Migration Service was born of the need to restrict immigration, rather
than any desire to promote it. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Mexican
elites entertained the notion of an immigration-driven utopia where new settlers
in rural areas would modernize agricultural production and increase the popu-
lation’s size and quality. Such a foreign immigration consisted of agricultural
settlers enticed by state-backed as well as private-sector offers, while the
Development Ministry was responsible for implementing the new pro-settlement
regulations. As such, the regulations on the entry and permanent residency of
these foreigners in the country were linked to the set of rules and obligations
(transport, landownership, farm equipment, funding for agricultural activities,
etc.) established in the various pieces of legislation designed to encourage
settlements.1
This attempt to attract settlers was unsuccessful. A small handful of exceptions,
particularly in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, include the sur-
vival of Italian settlers in the states of Morelos, Puebla, and Veracruz, and of the
Mormons who established a presence in the state of Chihuahua.2 The meager
number of foreigners is testament to the failure of this plan for settlements: in
1895, no more than four thousand foreign settlers arrived, among more than fifty
thousand foreigners who were resident in Mexico.3
The schemes to attract skilled labor to rural and urban areas met a similar fate.
Mexico could not compete with the magnet of the booming U.S. economy, to
the extent that Mexicans themselves were abandoning their country to swell the
numbers of emigrants constantly heading to the United States.
Despite the negligible number of immigrants, foreigners doubled their pre-
sence between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. By 1910,
there were just over 120,000 in total. The economy’s steady growth, its impact
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256182-3
38 The Migration Service

on transport infrastructure as well as increasing trade and banking activities at-

tracted immigration connected to manufacturing and commerce. This increased
the size of Spanish, American, French, and English communities, for example,
which had an established presence in the country and together continued to
represent a majority of the total foreign presence in Mexico.
However, at that time a new community emerged and grew quickly. The
number of Chinese immigrants in Mexico grew from around one thousand in
1895 to more than thirteen thousand in 1910.4 Two factors explain this phe-
nomenon: first, official policies to attract this immigration implemented during
the Porfirio Díaz regime. In the early 1880s, and supported by Díaz’s develop-
ment minister General Carlos Pacheco, the government set up the Compañía
Mexicana de Navegación del Pacífico to bring over Chinese laborers to work on
laying railway lines, in mining and agriculture, especially in the northern states
that soon transformed due to the increasing economic activity that was largely the
result of connecting these regions with the U.S. markets. Second, the expansion
of these Chinese communities in Mexico was also the result of U.S. prohibitions.
Since 1882, successive governments in the United States restricted the entry of
immigrants from Asia and even banned them outright. As a result, Mexico be-
came both a country of refuge for Asian communities expelled from the United
States, and a launch pad for these groups to cross over the border to enter the
United States illegally.5
Mexico’s first migration law, passed in 1908, was not a reaction to the in-
creasing size of established foreign communities but to the influx of Asian im-
migrants, whose work, business practices, social behaviors, beliefs, and physical
appearance were racialized and became the archetype of undesirable immigration.
These strange new arrivals had to run the gauntlet of social and political injustices,
and swiftly became scapegoats in a variety of conflicts. Antagonisms in the urban
and rural labor markets were intertwined with racist ideas and practices that
stigmatized this immigration, considered a danger to Mexicans’ material well-
being and their very biological make-up. The bases of this anti-Chinese senti-
ment became firmly established in the late nineteenth century and gained strength
after the 1910 Revolution to become powerfully expressed in regulations and
practices that excluded them, implemented in the first two decades following the
Revolution.6
In late 1902, an outbreak of the bubonic plague hit the port of Mazatlán. The
port of origin of the vessel that carried the disease remained a mystery. Some
pioneering Mexican specialists in sanitation identified it as a U.S. flagged vessel
that had come from San Francisco,7 while others pointed the finger at a Japanese
ship.8 This incident raised the alarm about sanitary conditions across the whole
country, and specific measures were taken to detect diseases among immigrants
from Asian countries.9 Following this episode, and in response to widespread
alarm about the visible growth of Asian communities, Porfirio Díaz issued a
decree in October 1903 to set up an Immigration Commission in charge of
 The Migration Service 39

deciding whether to permit or restrict the entry of Chinese and Japanese, taking
into account sanitary, economic, and social factors.10 The Commission initially
laid the blame on the Chinese rather than the Japanese community, that consisted
of only “a few individuals and is unlikely to reach the size of the current Chinese
immigrant population.”11
Senator José María Romero, spokesman of this Commission, drafted the re-
port on Chinese immigration. Romero worked closely with Carlos Pacheco, and
was an enthusiastic supporter of new agricultural settlements and policies to
encourage individual, essentially European, immigration. As someone familiar
with successful migration initiatives in South America, Canada, and the United
States, Romero was aware of the trouble that this success had caused for leaders in
those countries, and the need to choose the most suitable candidates in order to
avoid jeopardizing progress. Romero drew lessons from the experiences of those
countries when helping to create a paradigm for Mexico’s immigration policy
that survived the 1910 Revolution and became more radical in subsequent
decades. Romero in fact incorporated the ideas of the pioneering U.S. expert on
the sociology of immigration, Richmond Mayo-Smith, author of Emigration and
Immigration: A Study in Social Science (1890). It is no coincidence that Romero’s
1904 report began with an epigraph extracted from this work: “No nation can
exist and be powerful that is not homogenous.”12
Romero used that sentence and also translated into Spanish Mayo-Smith’s
views on Chinese immigration in the United States, applying the same diagnosis
for the Mexican case. The essential problem of this type of migration “is based on
the proven experience that the Chinese race cannot blend with modern nations
of European origin, nor can it assimilate with Western civilization.” The fact was
that Chinese “language, customs, society, and politics were hostile toward
European populations and nations of European origin” and therefore do not mix
with “other races, but assemble to constitute utterly distinct groups.” These were
Romero’s words, though in reality it was Mayo-Smith who argued that “the
pressure of social forces is ineffective to create an amalgam and that hetero-
geneous element exists and remains isolated in the midst of socially and eco-
nomically homogenous nations.”13
Mexico was by no means a homogenous nation. Its ethnic diversity, expressed
“in the isolation and ignorance of indigenous peoples,” represented a challenge
that the Chinese presence only aggravated. Why? For this illustrious figure of the
Díaz era, poverty, ignorance, and vice among indigenous communities was a
barrier that prevented the “union and mixing with the creole race and settlers of
European origin already established in the country, in order to create a single
social, economic, and political community.”14 The only means of lifting in-
digenous communities out of poverty was by increasing their daily wage, and
especially in those regions and types of work with a strong demand for labor. This
was the second reason why the Immigration Commission recommended re-
stricting Chinese migration; these immigrants worked for lower wages than the
40 The Migration Service

national average, and therefore their presence was defined as “harmful and dis-
astrous” for native workers and especially for those “who belong to the in-
digenous races.”15
As the Commission was preparing its report, Mazatlán’s bubonic plague out-
break led the health authorities to focus on health checks in the ports of departure
by the companies providing transport to Chinese migrants; other inspections were
the responsibility of Mexican authorities in the ports of arrival. To this end, Doctor
Francisco Valenzuela was appointed Migration Inspector in Hong Kong. This
public health officer visited many ports in the Far East before reaching Hong Kong,
the main point of departure for ships carrying Chinese immigrants to Mexico.
Once there he enforced strict controls on the documentation of immigrants,
preventing any of them from boarding if they showed any symptoms of contagious
diseases. In one report he mentioned: “I witnessed first-hand the numerous irre-
gularities committed by companies that send the dregs of society to Mexico.”16
These were the first steps toward establishing a record to identify immigrants,
although shipping companies were the ones in charge, in addition to the health
checks in the ports of departure and arrival. Valenzuela reported that during his
posting to Hong Kong he rejected up to 65 percent of Chinese immigrants al-
ready on board when he noticed that they had diseases such as trachoma, beriberi,
leprosy, and tuberculosis. Upon his return to Mexico, Doctor Valenzuela was
appointed health inspector with jurisdiction over the Pacific Coast ports—mainly
Salina Cruz, Manzanillo, and Mazatlán. During one season, he was also director
of the health office in Salina Cruz, where he noted that the checks he had put in
place in Hong Kong were not being carried out. Many people suffering from
trachoma were turned away at Mexican ports, and these public health measures
further increased the pressure on shipping companies, and immigrants without
their papers in order would disembark clandestinely in other ports along the
coasts of Chiapas and Guatemala, from where they would “cross over the un-
patrolled border of Suchiate and enter our country.”17
The presence of Chinese was already posing a problem for extranjería in
Mexico by the first decade of the twentieth century. Without effective controls
in place, the presence of these immigrants in the labor markets and in business
spheres was beginning to show signs of stirring up conflicts. Furthermore, the
U.S. authorities complained to their Mexican counterparts about the irregular
border crossings of Chinese, and about the issuing of naturalization certificates to
these immigrants who later sought to enter the United States as Mexicans.
The irregular border crossings of Asians became the object of a more wide-
ranging concern in the United States. Since the early 1900s, the United States
sent undercover immigration agents to Mexico to investigate the reason for the
steady flow of foreigners crossing the border. These agents boarded a ship in
Havana and headed to the ports of Veracruz, Tampico, and Progreso in the Gulf
of Mexico. Along the way these agents mingled with passengers and upon dis-
embarkation they discovered the strategies used to transit Mexico en route to the
 The Migration Service 41

United States. They conducted similar investigations on the Pacific coast, where
agents visited Salina Cruz, Manzanillo, and Mazatlán. In 1907, one report pre-
sented the intelligence gathered by these agents, who described how networks
introduced recently arrived immigrants to members of their home communities
who had already settled in Mexico, and how the latter (of Syrian, Lebanese,
Polish, and Japanese origin), along with Mexican railway employees, helped the
foreigners on their journeys up to the United States. One of the report’s con-
clusions was that in Mexico an established network existed for smuggling goods
and helping immigrants enter the United States, and that, “given this situation
and the large border area to be patrolled, the migration inspectors were rendered
practically useless.”18 The report emphasized that the lack of specific regulations
on immigrants entry into Mexico made it impossible to stop this traffic.
Since the dawn of the twentieth century, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration
sought an agreement, initially with Mexico’s railway companies and shipping
firms that used Mexican ports, and later with Porfirio Díaz’s government, in
order to authorize U.S. immigration agents to conduct their immigration and
health checks at the ports of arrival and railway stations within Mexico;19 this
same American government agency even produced a draft “memorandum of
understanding between both governments,” proposing that Mexico could au-
thorize the United States Department of the Navy to set up health camps on
Mexico’s Pacific and Gulf coasts.20 The U.S. State Department and migration
agency applied constant pressure on Mexico to stop the influx of Asian im-
migrants. In 1907, Porfirio Díaz held a meeting with Marcus Braun, one of the
U.S. migration agents who had investigated the trafficking networks into the
United States. The Mexican president informed him that his government was
aware and focused on these issues21 and that it had been working for the previous
two years on tightening controls and supervision of Chinese immigrants. It was
within this context, as revealed by the senator José María Romero, that the U.S.
immigration authority insisted on “the idea of establishing a general immigration
law that included health and other regulations designed to stem the inflow of
Chinese immigrants.”22 Porfirio Díaz accepted the proposal and commissioned
the former Immigration Commission, now directed by Eduardo Liceaga, to draw
up a draft bill.23 This proposed legislation was submitted to Congress and passed
into law in December 1908.
This act’s statement of purpose mentioned that “various laws […] passed in the
United States of America have been studied, and some of their principles have been
accepted as potentially applicable in Mexico.”24 What principles did the Mexican
legislators consider useful? Anti-Chinese sentiment clearly underpinned the first
immigration law and many of the exclusion criteria stemmed from health issues
connected to contagious diseases, with various measures established to diagnose and
curb their spread. Other reasons for exclusion were cited but without mentioning
specific instances to monitor them or ensure compliance. In fact, these were “dis-
eases” of a different kind, in this case social ones: membership of anarchist
42 The Migration Service

associations seeking the violent overthrow of governments or the murder of public

officials; female prostitution and the control over this trade exercised by foreign
men.25
In fact, this law created an Immigration Inspection Service that was to be run
by immigration officers and agents, each one dependent on the Interior Ministry
although working directly with health inspectors who, in practice, performed the
role of their migration counterparts in case of the latter’s absence. These im-
migration and health inspectors were under the authority of the customs de-
partment, wherever customs offices existed at the same authorized entry points
for people entering the country.26
The law clearly distinguished between individual immigrants and workers
who migrated when hired by mining, industrial, or agricultural companies—in
direct reference to the Chinese,27 who were subject to strict health controls.
Shipping companies held all the records of foreigners arriving at Mexican ports
and took most of the responsibility for the health of those on board. The law
obliged these companies to set up spaces for medical checkups at the ports that
lacked such installations or where they were insufficient.28 Unlike in the case of
foreigners arriving by sea, migration or health inspectors conducted the checks
on those entering the country at land borders. The law referred to inspections on
trains, or directly at the points of entry in the case of other means of transport.
In these cases, the Mexican authority registered the arrival of these immigrants
by using a similar system employed by the shipping companies.29
This initiative to establish a Migration Service fell apart when the Revolution
broke out in 1910. “The doors to the country were left open,” wrote Francisco
Valenzuela, and as a result “our nation was invaded by large numbers of freebooters,
mercenaries who […] came to take advantage of the widespread chaos.”30
In 1917, Francisco Valenzuela submitted a proposal to the director of Mexico’s
Department of Health to set up a Migration and Settlement Ministry. Alarmed by
the lack of control over migration from China, he drew up a long document, the
first of many that he submitted over the subsequent decade. Based on almost twenty
years’ experience, with detailed knowledge of immigration controls in the
Mediterranean and Far Eastern ports, and as a fervent admirer of the health policies
introduced by the United States in the Angel and Ellis Islands’ immigrant inspection
centers, Valenzuela held the firm view that selecting and attracting European im-
migrants was the only way to modernize Mexico’s economy and “to raise the
population’s ethnographic level.”31 His bid to increase immigration justified the
creation of a new government ministry to work alongside the foreign and devel-
opment ministries to promote, select, and manage the settlement of Europeans in
Mexico. The proposed institutional design tackled various issues, ranging from the
need for qualified government officials to encourage and administer immigration
(consuls in foreign countries, doctors, technical experts, etc.) to the creation of
offices of statistics, legislation, finance, industries, and education with a remit over
the insertion of Europeans in Mexico’s economy and society.32
 The Migration Service 43

As part of this project, Rafael Téllez Girón drafted a report on land settlements
within the postrevolutionary context. He was as convinced about the civilizing
impact of Europeans as he was about the unquestionable need to abolish lati-
fundios or large estates: “[which] are the thorn in the side of nations’ progress
hence the need to eradicate them as threats to society as a whole.”33 In Téllez
Girón’s view, land redistribution needed to address three basic issues: first,
autocolonización, referring to the provision of lands to communities of Mexican
campesinos; second, the establishment of farmsteads to be worked by Mexican
agricultural workers repatriated from the United States; and third, “mass im-
migration for new settlements across the country.”34 Land reform never led to a
policy of agricultural settlements by foreigners in postrevolutionary Mexico, apart
from the small-scale exceptions of Mormon and Mennonite communities in the
country’s north.35 However, this report introduced the idea of considering
the modernizing potential of repatriated Mexicans, in other words, the notion
that the country needed to take advantage of the experience gained by these
emigrants in U.S. agricultural firms, and to encourage a settlement policy that
might provide them employment upon their return. A decade later, Manuel
Gamio picked up on this idea in order to try to absorb the large numbers of
Mexicans returning to the county after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.36
The first wave of returning Mexicans took place in the early 1920s (1921–22)
when the shrinking U.S. economy triggered the repatriation of thousands of
Mexicans. This development gave the idea of reforming the 1908 Immigration
Law,37 and these concerns could not be considered in isolation from the impact
of policies that in Europe and America were clearly moving toward greater
restrictions and prohibitions.
At the end of the First World War, international migration flows resumed and
destination countries began tightening controls and imposing stricter conditions
as a result. The Great Depression in the United States brought an end to a
previously unrestricted trans-Atlantic immigration, while increasingly xeno-
phobic policies broadened the racial exclusions that had hitherto only affected
Asians. The supervision and selection of foreigners required stricter regulations
and agencies with a brief to manage immigration. As a consequence, identifi-
cation and registering techniques became more widespread on both sides of the
Atlantic.38 The United States imposed increasingly restrictive legislation through
a quota policy on the admission of foreigners by country of origin.39 In the wake
of these norms, Washington set up the Border Patrol in 1924, with the clear aim
of intensifying surveillance along the U.S.-Mexico border.40 Nativists in the
United States riled against the Mexican presence as the invasion of an “inferior
race,” threatening to push down the wages of U.S. workers and to increase the
tax burden to cover immigrants’ health and education.41
The racialized treatment of Mexicans who migrated to the United States began
to make an impact on decisions taken by Mexico on foreign immigration. In ad-
dition to the circular flow of Mexican migrants due to the cycles of seasonal farm
44 The Migration Service

work, deportations of Mexican workers began at a time when Mexican politicians

were seeking legitimacy through their promises to address the grievances of rural
and urban laborers. This set of circumstances shaped initial ideas about how to
define the country’s migration flows. Government officials asked themselves if
Mexico was a country of emigration or immigration. Andrés Landa y Piña, one of
the founders of the Migration Service, was correct in stating that “Mexico, seen
from a European perspective, is a country of immigration. However, from the U.S.
point of view, it is a nation of emigrants.”42 This situation turned Mexico into a
special case within the Americas; it was a nation where emigrants outnumbered
immigrants, with a government that claimed its commitment to generating jobs and
guaranteeing the workers’ rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Given this situation, when Mexico was invited to participate in the First
International Emigration and Immigration Conference, held in Rome in May 1924,
it was proposed to the participating delegation to handle migration in two ways: the
possibility of collaboration between countries’ emigration and immigration services,
and core principles for emigration treaties. In short, the recommendation was to
seek instruments to be included in treaties with the United States in order to “re-
solve the most difficult aspects of our emigration problem.”43 In other words, the
Mexican authorities wanted to address U.S. restrictions that prevented the free entry
and exit of Mexican workers; the Mexicans were also keen to find a way for these
workers not to be considered immigrants since they had no intention of establishing
permanent residency in the United States and would return to Mexico after
completing the temporary work for which they had been hired. A second issue
related to the terms of employment contracts; Article 123 of the Constitution en-
shrined the principle that agreements should ensure minimum standards of em-
ployment and remuneration, and that repatriation expenses should be payable by the
company hiring the workers. Indeed, in early 1924, Andrés Landa y Piña ac-
knowledged a lack of “any attempt to manage immigration and emigration effec-
tively in Mexico.” Everything, he said, “needed building from the ground up.”44

Institutional Designs
The need to revise legislation and to set up a migration agency in Mexico was
prompted by three realizations: first, the discovery of the country’s emigrant
profile; second, that foreigners who established their residence in Mexico did not
represent the ideal European immigrant; and third, that Mexico was becoming a
transit route for foreigners on their way to the United States.
Álvaro Obregón’s government had to address these questions, and the Interior
Ministry took some steps in this direction. To help resolve the critical situation
created by returning Mexican workers, it helped by providing train tickets for
them to travel from border crossings to destinations close to their home com-
munities in Mexico.45 As a compensatory measure and to defend its labor market,
in 1922 it placed restrictions on the entry of foreign day laborers to prevent them
 The Migration Service 45

coming over and “competing unfairly with our [workers].”46 At the same time,
preparations were underway to set up a special technical committee—after
analyzing migration and naturalization laws in the United States, Argentina, and
Brazil—to propose legislation reforms that would attract “immigrants who might
genuinely become a part of our nation.”47 The ineffectual Migration Service
established by the 1908 legislation was unable to cope with the new waves of
immigrants. In 1923, President Obregón admitted that this institution:

has been working tirelessly to prevent the entry of unwholesome

individuals such as criminals, prostitutes, and beggars as well as those
suffering from contagious diseases who are useless because of congenital
defects, old age, etc., and despite our strenuous efforts, a lack of manpower
has prevented [the Migration Service] from satisfactorily carrying out its
work; we lack vessels in several ports; we need more automobiles on the
northern and southern borders; we require checkpoints at river crossings
and sufficient agents given the size of the area to be monitored.48

In 1922, Francisco Valenzuela once again insisted on setting up a government

agency to handle migration and settlement issues. Abandoning the idea of a state
ministry, he took a more pragmatic approach by advocating the need for an au-
thentic Migration Service within the Interior Ministry. He revived his old argu-
ments, except that the situation was now more critical. “The current legislation’s
shortcomings and the poorly organized Migration Inspection Service” required a
complete reorganization, including the hiring of competent staff, overhauling
legislation, and creating infrastructure to carry out health checks on immigrants,
since “the sheds [in the ports] are currently dilapidated and unfit for purpose.”49
Since the mid-1920s, Michoacán’s Andrés Landa y Piña was the most notable
administrator of the government’s migration policies. In 1923, at the age of twenty-
six, he started working as an assistant in the Interior Ministry’s Office for Statistics, his
first job in a long career as a civil servant that culminated in his appointment as the
head of the Migration Department in 1930, a position he held until the early 1940s.
A decade later he became Director General of the Population Bureau, and from
1955 until his death in 1969 he directed the National Electoral Registry. Landa y
Piña’s only formal academic qualification was as a teacher, but he went on to become
a self-taught expert in statistics and subsequently in demographic issues, until be-
coming a central figure for all issues pertaining to population and tourism policies.50
He made up for his lack of academic expertise with technical knowledge gained
through long experience in the implementation of policies. Landa y Piña learned
from experts around him, assimilating their knowledge of anthropology, sociology,
and Mexico’s demographic issues: Manuel Gamio, Lucio Mendieta y Núñez,
Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, and Gilberto Loyo were some of the specialists who
worked in the Interior Ministry on designing and promoting migration policies.
46 The Migration Service

FIGURE 2.1 Appointment of Andrés Landa y Piña as Director of the Migration

Department
Source: AALyP.

Text reads: The President of the Republic, exercising the authority invested
in him by Article 89 (Section II) of the Constitution, hereby appoints you
as 411806 HEAD OF THE MIGRATION DEPARTMENT OF THIS
MINISTRY, attached to this same government body, with the salary as
established for this position in the budget of expenditures. I provide this
notification for your information and for the necessary purposes.
Signed by: Interior Minister, Carlos Riva Palacio
For the attention of: Andrés Landa y Piña
 The Migration Service 47

Francisco Valenzuela’s various proposals reached the desk of Andrés Landa y

Piña.51 Some of them appealed to him, perhaps because they were formulated at a
time of revising the approach to national statistics. In 1922, the National Statistics
Department was set up, with authority over the statistics offices in the various
government ministries.52 Landa y Piña worked on immigration statistics, and
therefore he paid particular attention when studying Valenzuela’s proposals for
immigration statistics to inform the corresponding policies, as well as compiling a
registry of immigrants settled in Mexico.

FIGURE 2.2 Andrés Landa y Piña’s photo identification card

Source: AALyP.

Text reads: The Interior Ministry hereby confirms its appointment of

Andrés Landa y Piña as Head of the Technical Unit of the Migration
Department. Signed and dated 10 January 1930.

In 1924, Landa y Piña proposed readjusting all immigration statistics because they
were not only “deficient but also incorrect.”53 The causes of these problems lay
in the lack of qualified personnel to carry out the work and a “certain re-
dundancy” in the type of information recorded and in the way the figures were
organized, leading to skewed or incorrect conclusions. For example, Landa y Piña
considered it wrong to refer to Mexicans returning after working temporarily in
48 The Migration Service

the United States as “immigrants.” He was a pioneer in insisting on the need to

create a specific statistical category to represent this particular type of immigra-
tion, as a prerequisite to understand its true significance.
Landa y Piña also made adjustments to questionnaires to gather information that
distinguished between nationals and foreigners in the country’s entry and departure
records, and to incorporate categories for each. A need existed to know the number
of repatriated Mexicans and foreigners entering the country, as well as their racial
and national profiles, markers that already defined the immigrant’s desirability. After
revising the forms people had to fill out when entering or leaving the country, in
1925, Landa y Piña—at that time already in charge of the Migration Department’s
statistics office—proposed the creation of immigrant identification cards, because “it
is a difficult task to locate records of foreigners’ entry into the country, and this
information is often completely non-existent.”54 These identification cards were
provided by the Mexican consular service at the points of departure or by im-
migration inspectors at the country’s ports and other points of entry.

FIGURE 2.3 Immigration entry form for foreigners (1926)

Source: AALyP.

Immigrants already residing in Mexico lacked identification documents. In

order to address this problem, Landa y Piña himself suggested creating a record of
all foreigners who submitted paperwork to the Migration Department. The
authorities had no option but to accept these proposals; however, a shortage of
personnel delayed their implementation.55
 The Migration Service 49

Landa y Piña insisted that Mexicans returning to Mexico placed the greatest
burden on the immigration administration, and to prove it he undertook a statistical
exercise, compiling the figures of nationals and foreigners entering the country
between 1920 and 1924. Over this five-year period, the entry of foreigners re-
presented on average less than one-third of the nationals returning to Mexico.56

1924

1923

1922

1921

1920

0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

Foreigners Mexicans

FIGURE 2.4 Entry of Mexicans and foreigners, 1920–1924

Source: AALyP, Official correspondence addressed to the Deputy Interior Minister, migration of
Braceros. 1925, vol. 1.

In 1925, the Migration Department had just over thirty offices spread across
the country, with around two hundred employees. Around a dozen other officials
worked in the headquarters compiling statistics on entries and departures in order
to keep a record of foreigners in the country.57 In 1926, Landa y Piña reported to
the Migration Department that the Interior Ministry was unable to control the
entry and departure of Mexicans who emigrated to the United States. Nor could
it assess the quality of foreigners entering the country, let alone justify “restrictive
measures when immigrants exceeded the limits, or define the right moment to
open the doors to a certain profile of foreigner.” At that time, according to Landa
y Piña, “there are no immigration statistics. To put it bluntly: these statistics
simply do not exist.”58
The magnitude of the immigration problem surpassed the government’s
ability to deal with it. In the mid-1920s, neither specific policies nor institutions
were in place to cope with the challenge represented by the return of Mexicans
and the entry of new influxes of foreign immigrants. The proposals made and
actions taken were often automatic responses to urgent situations. On the whole,
proposals that authorized administrative resolutions or imposed profiles of de-
sirability were incorporated into new regulatory frameworks. Even so, restrictions
on immigration were often vague or difficult to apply generally, hence the
widespread bureaucratic tendency to send around “circulars” that contained all
manner of confidential or public instructions on administrative or political
50 The Migration Service

matters. These instruments implemented practices to exclude immigrants, often

in breach of the legislation in force.59
At the start of his administration, in May 1921, President Álvaro Obregón
submitted to Congress a decree for an extension to the period of extraordinary
sessions in order to pass a Migration Law to replace the 1908 version. In the
introduction, this document emphasized that hospitality, despite being a virtue of
civilized nations, should be subject “to the requirements of public health and the
national interest.” It also explained that the effects of the global economic de-
pression were affecting the lower classes due to the high living costs, the closing
down of industries, and less available work. The government had to “protect the
interests of nationals under exceptional conditions such as those facing us today,
since they are threatened by the presence of workers from other countries who
are fleeing their homelands to improve their circumstances and well-being.” It
proposed stemming as far as possible “the influx of immigrants who at any other
moment in history would have helped the country’s progress and welfare but are
now aggravating the difficulties affecting Mexican workers.”60
In September 1921, Obregón raised the issue once again in the annual report
on his government administration submitted to Congress.61 Given the lack of
response, in October 1923 he submitted a draft law with a statement of purpose
that referred to the importance of immigration while also warning of the need for
the government to have the right tools to select and suspend the entry of for-
eigners “when it went against the interest of Mexican workers.”62 The draft bill
was never debated, and as a result Obregón’s four-year term in office ended
without any new legislation on immigration.
The difficulties for these draft bills to pass into law may explain why the
executive branch employed its extraordinary powers to legislate on migration
issues, as it did on fiscal and war-related matters.63 These powers were ratified
during subsequent presidential administrations, so that by the mid-1940s the
government decided on all migration regulations without any public debate.64
On the contrary, a series of legal and advisory agencies created the migration laws
and regulations.
Using these extraordinary powers, Plutarco Elías Calles revived the draft bill.
In March 1926, legislators passed a new law that for the first time considered both
immigration and emigration. This act primarily sought to defend society’s most
vulnerable sectors. In the case of emigrants, the idea was to keep a record of them
so that the government could potentially provide assistance as required; fur-
thermore, responding to a longstanding pressure, this bill called for the contracts
signed by Mexicans to work abroad to refer to the employer’s obligation to cover
repatriation expenses. As mentioned in chapter 1, foreign immigrants faced
stricter restrictions: apart from health checks, new requirements included literacy,
possession of employment contracts in the case of workers, and a certificate
confirming no criminal records, and proof of exercising a profession and an
honest livelihood.65
 The Migration Service 51

The act defined three areas that have since remained a constant aspect of
immigration policy. First, a new levy that was a direct tax, later to be supple-
mented with bonds and financial guarantees which, in theory, were intended to
create a fund to pay for the deportation costs for foreigners, and repatriation
expenses in the case of returning Mexicans. This would also create additional
resources to pay for the running costs of the Migration Department. The second
criterion was designed to distinguish between immigrants and tourists to distin-
guish between temporary visitors and those coming to settle in Mexico. This
initiative also marked the beginning of efforts to promote tourism, a sector that
developed into a mainstay of the country’s economy. Finally, the third issue
addressed the need for controls, supervision, and statistics. This introduced me-
chanisms to register foreigners with provisions to establish the requirement for
them to hold identification cards and to fill out surveys that defined names and
parentage, countries of origin, occupations, and professions, all with a view to
keeping a record of the foreign population and statistical data for decision-making
purposes.
Unlike the Díaz-era legislation that was solely interested in a Migration
Service to monitor the points of entry and to carry out checks on ships’ pas-
sengers and personnel, the same agency in 1926 took on more responsibilities to
handle the various trámites required by foreigners to ensure they remained legally
resident. In other words, the foundations were laid early that year for checking
and registering foreigners’ identities and activities.
However, the institution was not equipped to perform this duty. In the late
1920s, both funds and personnel were lacking, as mentioned by Rafael Jiménez
Castro, head of the Migration Department, in a letter addressed to the finance
minister: “The Migration Service cannot carry out its duties as defined in the
corresponding legislation, because the resources at its disposal to operate and
develop are so limited that we are rendered powerless to act.”66
The return of thousands of Mexicans from the United States, expelled
following the Great Depression, exacerbated this budgetary shortfall.67 In April
1929, the Interior Ministry issued circular 37, prohibiting “the entry of im-
migrant workers.”68 However, in November that year another circular (123)
specified that “with utmost discretion and caution” the restriction was lifted for
Europeans, and that the ban only continued to apply to “Syrian, Lebanese,
Armenian, Palestinian, Arab, Turkish, Chinese, Indian immigrants, etc.”69
Ethnic prejudices filtered into these orders and counter-orders that were sent to
immigration officers and the country’s Consular Service, although in fact they
revealed a clear ambiguity given the dilemma posed by the desire on the one
hand to promote a demographic strategy based on immigration and on the
other to implement policies that blatantly prohibited entry. In this context,
U.S. pressure was never far away. The mass return of day laborers made it
necessary to protect a weakened job market and, furthermore, the illegal entry
into the United States via Mexico also required tougher immigration controls
52 The Migration Service

in Mexico. Concerned about this situation, in late 1925 E. J. Henning, the

U.S. deputy secretary of labor, visited Mexico. After meeting President Calles,
he stated that he had gained a “keen sense [that the Mexican officials] were
supportive of adopting a system for the selection of immigrants.”70
The 1926 Migration Law was a prime example of the poorly formulated
migratory regulations, and it faced strong criticism before its promulgation. In
early 1926, Primo Villa Michel, then legal adviser to the Interior Ministry,
raised significant objections to the draft bill that eventually became law. His
objections were based on the argument that Mexico was suffering a “mass
invasion of undesirable foreigners” and the imminent legislation lacked the
specific means to remedy the situation. This invasion had two components:
first, “colored individuals, whose sheer numbers are damaging our race” and,
second, immigrants who “independently of their race or nationality come to
Mexico,” without any plans to “increase the country’s productivity but to
gravitate toward it.” Villa Michel referred to three groups exemplifying this
problem. First, there were the Spaniards who “come to learn about business,
accepting pitiful wages, to the extent that they have prevented young Mexicans
from securing employment in commerce despite their higher qualifications.”
And second came the Arabs, Armenians, Turks, Syrian-Lebanese, Poles,
Czechoslovakians, who “without any profession or trade, come to ply their
feeble business, wandering the cities and towns […] holding their capital in
their arms in the form of tights, ties, and other trinkets.” This immigration that
“consumed without producing” merely worsened the economy in urban en-
vironments, to the detriment of serious firms’ operations and development and
excluding “from business activities the poorer sectors of society who could
otherwise make a living as small traders.” Finally, the third contingent of
undesirable immigrants used Mexico as a springboard to enter the United States
illegally. This was a “large group consisting of Italians, Poles, and many other
nationalities.” By failing to establish clear mechanisms to prevent “this poor-
quality immigration,” the 1926 draft law left “arbitrary decisions” as the only
alternative, as in the case of the aforesaid confidential circulars.71
These criticisms were overlooked and three years after the 1926 law was
passed discussions began to take place about the need for a new one to enable a
“rigorous selection.” The tools for designing a new regulatory framework de-
rived from a collaboration that assembled the experiences and opinions of
Migration Service officials, alongside those of a group of experts who advised the
immigration authorities.72 Indeed, the 1929 crisis presented the authorities with a
situation described in a newspaper editorial as posing “the great difficulty of […]
striking a balance between attracting foreigners and selecting those being sent our
way by the rest of the world.”73
 The Migration Service 53

Migration Conventions
Soon after the 1926 Migration Law was passed, Landa y Piña detailed its flaws, in
areas such as the definitions and categories of foreign migrants entering the
country, the documentation and control of emigrants and immigrants, and the
migration agency’s inherent institutional weaknesses.
This government official trusted in the views of those in charge of each
Migration Service delegation. He was convinced that those experiences could
help define criteria to improve administrative procedures, feeding into discussions
that could help refine migration policies.74
Therefore, Landa y Piña supported a consultation mechanism to reform or
replace the 1926 Law. In November 1929, he requested employees to submit
“observations and suggestions” to incorporate “the most pressing needs and
problems of each office of the Service established in the country’s various re-
gions.”75 Some weeks later, the First Migration Convention brought together the
heads of the country’s migration offices. This gathering had two objectives: first,
“to unify criteria for applicable procedures at seaports and land borders for
running checks on passengers”; and two, “to discuss a draft migration law” in
order to replace the 1926 legislation by addressing the “country’s particular set of
circumstances and needs.”76
This Convention produced criteria to regulate migration through a wide
variety of administrative and fiscal measures. The recommendations included a
specific strategy to focus on tourism, and an intermediate category between
immigrants and tourists, creating a means for foreigners to undertake certain
temporary activities (as traders, company representatives, students) for a max-
imum of six months. Of all the proposals, the most transcendental was un-
doubtedly the one to create a National Migration Council as the body responsible
for collecting proposals and suggesting measures to “determine the types of de-
sirable immigration, based on racial or ethnic considerations, work skills, customs,
etc., and depending on the regions of the country.”77
Given the lack of legislative debate, such conventions defined migration
policy, incorporating the views of other government bodies as well as private
advisors. In the preamble to the draft law of 1930, these circumstances were
specified in the indication that this draft law was “the outcome of frank, au-
thentic, and independent exchanges of opinions, and the work of the most highly
qualified experts in migration issues.”78
The new legislation took on board recommendations made at the First
Migration Convention. The bill addressed a series of observations, ranging from
the requirements to enter the country as tourists, immigrants, and in transit; it
refined criteria on the registration, documentation, and control of foreign im-
migrants and Mexican emigrants, while also setting the fees and fines for in-
fringements of migration regulations.
54 The Migration Service

The desire to select the best immigrants became explicit with the stipulation
that immigration would be subject to racial criteria designed to defend the
Mexican mestizo, by excluding “races” that posed the threat of a biological re-
gression or that were unwilling to assimilate and become part of Mexican
culture.79
In its third chapter, this law created the Migration Advisory Council (CCM),
consisting of representatives from various government bodies, tasked with
studying the Migration Service’s general needs, analyzing the reforms needed for
it to operate efficiently, and to solve technical problems; the CCM also had the
brief of attracting immigration, ensuring a proper geographical distribution of
immigrants entering Mexico, according to the needs of each region. This
Council became the entity in charge of proposing measures to prevent or restrict
the entry of undesirable foreigners, at the same time as giving advice on the
necessary facilities and services to boost tourism.80
The CCM began to function in December 1930 as part of an effort to co-
ordinate decision-making. Its first task was to help organize the Second Migration
Convention, held in Mexico City in February 1931. Participants at this event
once again included migration delegates, on this occasion alongside re-
presentatives from various transport companies.
The Convention set out to incorporate experiences to draft the regulations for
the 1930 Law, which was approved in June 1932,81 although it also tackled other
issues that were not strictly administrative, such as “the advisability or otherwise
of implementing a complete ban on foreign immigrant workers,” as well as
provisions to distribute and accommodate immigrants already on Mexican soil,
“considering that many of them are not engaged in the activities as stated upon
their arrival.” Participants also discussed agents’ difficulties applying the law in the
country’s various regions, and the specific needs of the various migration offices.
Finally, they analyzed measures to select, distribute, and resettle Mexicans
repatriated from the United States.82
Landa y Piña encouraged the participation of Migration Department officials
who took the opportunity to air their complaints, opinions, and ideas. Criticisms
centered on the lack of infrastructure and low salaries, and many of the opinions
expressed revealed a wide range of prejudices. For example, the agent from
Manzanillo, Emilio Campos, argued that Mexico needed “new brains, more
manpower, and an injection of new blood for our decadent native race,” and
pushed for a careful selection of immigrants. He considered that “encouraging
desirable immigration” was “as useful and patriotic” as “rejecting the harmful and
useless kind,” stating that “Mexico must move decisively toward closing its doors
to immigrants who are clearly undesirable, either on account of their racial traits
or due to their non-assimilation of our customs.”83
This same public official, who defined himself as possessing a “broad criteria,
common sense, and ample knowledge of the subject” proposed restricting the
entry of the “so-called Syrian, Lebanese, Polish peddlers, etc., as well as
 The Migration Service 55

Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus.” The former, he explained, “are detrimental to

all established businesses through their illegal and ruinous competition, […] and
to society at large by undermining their hard work through the false hopes
created by installment purchases.” He described the Chinese, Japanese, and
Indians as being “well known for their foul and age-old diseases […],” empha-
sizing that Mexico needed to fix entry quotas for the entry of foreigners, using
“quotas as a defensive weapon, a customs barrier applying to people as it does to
merchandise.”84
A surgeon named Ulises Valdés, former director of the National University’s
Faculty of Medicine and general secretary of the Department of Health, took a
similar view. During one of the sessions at the Convention, he suggested ex-
pelling all the Chinese from Mexico; the Mexican government would transfer
them to Manzanillo and the Chinese authorities pay for their ocean passage back
to their places of origin. For the measure to maintain its “moral vigor” and until
the Chinese left the country, there would be “a concentration camp system as
used during international warfare.” In these camps, the detainees would do
“some kind of agricultural work” such as farming rice to ensure they had sus-
tenance. If the Chinese government refused to pay for their passage, and with a
view to securing funds, Valdés suggested deducting a percentage of their earnings.
The doctor did add, however, that the working conditions needed to remain
within the legal norms to avoid any allegations that they were in “forced labor.”85
In contrast to these views, J. González, an agent in Tampico, argued for a
careful selection before implementing a complete ban on the entry of foreign
workers, who “were useful when providing knowledge that could be greatly
beneficial for our working classes,” but not when “they competed with them on
equal terms.” He trusted that those in charge of immigration offices at entry
points would “be able to make the distinction very accurately.” He also suggested
that foreigners who stated that they were agricultural workers should be settled in
areas alongside groups of repatriated Mexicans, and that those who resisted should
be encouraged to leave the country within a reasonable timeframe. In particular,
he referred to Chinese citizens, who “should be forced to earn a living from
agricultural labors, a type of work they are competent to perform, in isolated
groups and in areas defined by the authorities.”86
After these discussions, the Convention agreed, inter alia, to prohibit the
immigration of foreign workers, and to expel all those who were not engaged in
the activities they declared upon entering the country. All these measures gave
priority, above all else, to issues pertaining to the repatriation of Mexicans.87
Consequently, during the first semester of 1931, various circulars reflected these
resolutions. On 30 April, an order was issued to ban the entry of races or na-
tionalities “prohibited or restricted by the law” except with prior authorization
from the Interior Ministry. Days later, an instruction was given to state governors
to report to the Migration Department the presence of gypsies in their jur-
isdictions.88 In mid-July, when the effects of the U.S. crisis became increasingly
56 The Migration Service

severe, a new agreement, this time published in the Diario Oficial (the govern-
ment’s official gazette), defined the terms of a new prohibition on the entry of
immigrant workers. It specifically prohibited the entry of all foreigners seeking
any kind of physical labor in exchange for a salary or a daily wage, and, to prevent
the entry of potential street hawkers, a further restriction on entry was placed on
foreigners who did not have at least 10,000 pesos, an amount that they were
obliged to invest within a period of six months in an agricultural, industrial, or
commercial venture.89
These conventions brought together officials and experts, and, with remark-
able swiftness, some of their conclusions found their way into official regulations.
Landa y Piña was one of the voices supporting the idea that immigration policy
should be defined by consultations at a moment when the problems of Mexicans’
repatriation and the arrival of “undesirable” foreigners were influencing public
opinion.
These concerns resurfaced at the Third Migration Convention held in the
summer of 1932. Unlike its predecessors, this time the meeting was notable for
the presence of government authorities, representatives of industry, commerce,
and transport; the capital’s newspapers also gave it broad coverage. The agenda
included about twenty items, and figures such as Manuel Gamio, Julio Jiménez
Rueda, and Rafael de la Colina all gave keynote speeches.90
Discussions focused on the impact of the global economic crisis on migration.
At the Convention’s inauguration, the Interior Minister highlighted this problem
by referring to how the “treasury’s lack of funds” was undermining the effec-
tiveness of government agencies, including work on immigration issues. The
crisis also “impoverished [Mexico] due to the continual drain of emigrants.”
Worse still, Mexico faced difficulties in “settling” Mexican nationals forced by
the crisis to repatriate. Andrés Landa y Piña was insistent in this regard, revealing
that a quarter of a million nationals had returned during 1930 and 1931, and that
the main challenge had been to transfer them from the border to the interior,
although the true problem lay “in resettling all those people so that they could
make a living.”91
The main thrust of that meeting was to seal the door more tightly to prevent
the arrival of new immigrants. Discussions focused on the need to detect
“spurious tourists”—those who, after entering the country, instead of “going on
excursions and spending their money” became involved in “illicit depravities, or
else competed with Mexican workers, taking away their livelihoods or lowering
the cost of labor,” in the words of Rafael Pérez Taylor, a high-ranking interior
ministry official.92
It became public knowledge that between 1928 and 1932 an annual average of
fourteen thousand foreigners had entered Mexico as immigrants. This low figure
in a country with a population of more than sixteen million Mexicans caused
such a panic that the proposal of setting immigration quotas resurfaced, emulating
the system applied in the United States since 1924. For this purpose, the CCM
 The Migration Service 57

was tasked with evaluating the proposal in order to submit it for the Mexican
president to consider.93
Selecting immigrants was a recurring issue. For José López Lira, a former
rector of the National University and interior ministry advisor, “the key task
[was] to define the identity, motivation, and purpose of immigrants coming to
Mexico.” The aim was to settle the problem of nationality and internal racial
integration before tackling the issue of foreign immigrants and “the potential
benefits of mixing blood, labor, and intelligence.”94
The meetings had a number of outcomes. In the short term, the policies of
applying restrictions through confidential documents peaked with the issue
of two resolutions contained within the aforesaid circulars (250 and 157) that
ratified or expanded bans on immigration from almost the entire world, with the
exception of Western Europeans, White North Americans, and Latin Americans.95
Meanwhile, the attempts to document and conduct surveys began to bear
fruit. Since the late 1920s, the Migration Department’s Office for Statistics
produced its first reports on emigration and immigration which, despite the
unreliable data at least on the number emigrants, as Landa y Piña acknowledged
himself, were used to justify decisions and criteria on migration issues.96 At the
same time, efforts began to draw up a register of foreigners resident in Mexico.
This proved a complicated task and took decades to materialize. Documenting
the various thousands of foreigners living around the country exposed the in-
stitution’s weaknesses. Since 1927, foreigners had been instructed to regularize
their immigration status. This initiative sought to document some immigrants for
the first time, and others who had entered as tourists and then settled in the
country without ever changing their status. A campaign to regularize immigrants
was launched in late 1928 and continued for more than a decade; the idea was for
foreigners to regularize their status with the immigration authorities in order to
avoid fines or even expulsion. The immigration offices in Mexico City received
the largest number of foreigners. In the spring of 1930, some five thousand
foreigners registered, out of an estimated total of forty thousand who were ac-
tually residents.97 A newspaper carried a story about the daily scene outside the
Migration Department:

The foreigners are forced to visit a single, understaffed office, to wait in

line for hours in a motley queue of different races, ages, and sexes, in
fairly unhygienic conditions, herded by lower-ranking, brusque, and
humorless officials, losing time that could otherwise be spent in more
productive ways and, to cap it all, giving them a woeful idea of our
public administration.98

There were frequent references to how “bureaucratic problems” caused endless

delays to all kinds of trámite that the Department could not even guarantee.
Several thousand foreigners lived in areas where immigration authorities were
58 The Migration Service

non-existent, obliging them to make long and difficult journeys. This was the
view expressed by a foreigner resident in León, Guanajuato, who argued for a
mechanism enabling people to submit their applications where they lived.99
This describes a few of the discrepancies between the obligations established
by the migration regulations and the ability to implement them in practice. The
idea was to select new immigrants, but also to know who and how many had
already entered the country. The campaign to register and document foreigners
was just beginning.

A New Immigration Policy?

In his electoral campaign, Lázaro Cárdenas pledged to make substantial changes
to government. The idea of a population policy arose for the first time and found
its way into the Plan Sexenal or six-year program of government in 1933; im-
migration would be encouraged in case of “foreigners who could easily be as-
similated into our culture,” giving preference to those from “Hispanic
backgrounds,” to “foreign farmers with a certain cultural background and spe-
cialist knowledge who can help us farm our land,” and to “technical experts in
various industries, whose services can help develop and perfect national in-
dustries.” On emigration, meanwhile, the government launched a campaign to
stem the flow of Mexicans leaving the country, perceiving this trend to be se-
verely harmful to the country’s economy. Given doubts about the effectiveness
about such measures in practice, efforts were made to prohibit individual emi-
gration in favor of collective departures that were made conditional on contracts
to ensure workers’ rights. The plan also contemplated consular protection and
proposals to help braceros to return and resettle in agricultural areas.100
In April 1934, the Interior Ministry presented the government program for
that year. This document, together with a series of provisions established in late
1933, defined the Cárdenas administration’s general approach to immigration. In
February 1934, the government restricted the entry of foreigners to those holding
professional or technical qualifications, artists, or sportspersons, whom the im-
migration authority considered essential and whose presence would not compete
in any way with nationals. The authorities would also welcome senior employees
and investors who could prove they had at least 20,000 pesos in capital. These
immigrants initially received one-year permits, and after five years of continuous
residence they could apply for a permanent resident visa.101 In El Universal, an
editorial captured the prevailing public mood at the time of these measures:

Not enough jobs are available for Mexicans in trade, industry, or

agriculture. Consequently, to solve the unemployment problem and above
all to prevent it from worsening, we need to close the doors to foreigners
seeking to enter our country.102
 The Migration Service 59

The Migration Department was responsible for ensuring compliance with these
orders, and its director, Andrés Landa y Piña, displayed a peculiar optimism. He
published a leaflet in 1935 that went in the opposite direction of these orders by
setting out some ideas for making populationism—now an official government
policy—compatible with encouraging immigration. He acknowledged that
Mexico had an “authentically prohibitionist” policy and pushed to transform it
“so that we can keep up with countries that are strong due to their cultures,
population densities, and wealth.”103 This statement sums up the ambiguity of a
position based on the chimera of the contribution of White and European stock
to Mexico’s mestizaje, whereas in fact prohibitionism remained in force with an
official discourse justifying selection in the same way as other “strong countries.”
The paradox lies in the fact that, unlike these “strong countries,” Mexico adopted
a prohibitionist stance after the failure of all its efforts to attract immigration.
Landa y Piña considered the Cárdenas administration as the first to promise a
genuinely demographic policy to tackle the country’s problems, the lack of
which explained the “increasingly restrictive, and mainly confidential, mea-
sures.” He added that many initiatives had “failed due to the absence of an
action plan” of the kind Cárdenas had now enshrined in the Plan Sexenal. In
other words, the determination that “above all, an increasing population should
result from higher birth and lower mortality rates, and that immigration should
be a fallback option” clearly showed that the demographic problem was no
longer “simply a migration issue, almost entirely limited to a straightforward
‘yes’ or ‘no’ to foreigners wishing to enter our country.” In 1935, Landa y Piña
considered that the policy “could, objectively, be defined behind closed
doors,” and yet he also argued that the time had come to roll out a new policy
based on a painstaking selection process.104
What was this proposal’s aim? In principle, it sought to “remove the con-
fidentiality of restrictions on immigration.”105 In late 1933, more than four
hundred public and confidential circulars remained in force.106 Basing decisions
on these norms, particularly the confidential ones, meant opening up the door to
an uncontrollable arbitrariness that, when applied by immigration and consular
officials, permitted “indescribable” acts.107 The Migration Department’s director
used this euphemism to refer to widespread corruption within the service.108
Landa y Piña also complained that these confidential provisions closed the doors
to almost all immigration and also prevented the arrival of families of immigrants
who had already naturalized as Mexicans. In other words, entry was denied to
“parents and siblings, the most direct relatives of a Mexican.” The Mexican
official concluded that this situation was “blatantly absurd.”109
For a decade Landa y Piña had been one of a group of officials laying the
foundations for a restrictive policy; however, at the start of the Cárdenas pre-
sidency, he asserted: “I feel deeply satisfied for always having strived to remove
restrictions on immigration, an unconscionable policy in my view.” This lent
credence to the idea of a fresh approach that Landa y Piña claimed would
60 The Migration Service

supplant the “heap of prejudices” of bygone eras that merely covered up “a false
nationalism.”110
The first changes took place soon after Lázaro Cárdenas became president.
The former Migration Department was folded into a new Population Directorate
and the CCM received a broader portfolio. In April 1935, interior minister Juan
de Dios Bojórquez reported that this collegiate body should have ten members
“who understand and may give their opinions on our problems, in order to point
out essential regulations on the population policy that should be applied
throughout the country.”111 In particular, the CCM’s mission would be:

to draft legislation on the issue, since [the CCM’s] conclusions will be

submitted to the consideration of senior officials who will define the
necessary legal regulations; furthermore, it shall handle particular migration
issues that, in the view of the corresponding office, should be exceptionally
considered using different criteria to the regulations in force, when these
provisions cannot resolve the cases in question, or when required due to
the law’s silence or impenetrability.112

Some days later, Bojórquez once again referred to the CCM’s reestablishment as
representing the most serious attempt “to avoid empiricism, a lack of preparation,
and bias in the regulations.” On the basis of admitting that all immigration policy
should be reviewed in order to give it a “scientific grounding,” the CCM focused
on two areas: the discussion of the Migration Law in force at the time, and the
need to abandon confidential circulars. These meetings’ agendas clearly reveal
Landa y Piña’s influence and the existence of a certain degree of consensus about
“the redundancy and harmfulness of legislating confidentially on migration issues,
when the country can and should adopt clear norms, taking into account its
demographic needs, without having to conceal its essential purposes.” These
issues gave rise to intense debates because, furthermore, the international pro-
blems that entailed the need for “confidentiality” were a source of concern,
especially with countries “whose citizens are systematically excluded, but without
Mexico being able to explain the procedure because it is governed by provisions
that cannot be officially cited, even though they are virtually a matter of public
knowledge.” To tackle this problem, as had been indicated some years pre-
viously, the only alternative to give the immigration prohibitions a legal basis was
“the advisability of indicating […] an annual figure for the immigration of for-
eigners of each nationality, according to our demographic needs.”113
Some members of the CCM analyzed these confidential circulars. In June
1935, the anthropologist Miguel Othón de Mendizábal submitted a report ac-
companied by some statistics that analyzed migration categories, activities, the
ethnic and social importance of some of the restricted races and nationalities. The
report concluded that “the social and economic status of the groups in question
do not make a clear case for maintaining the current restrictions, though it may
 The Migration Service 61

be advisable to exclude certain races for political and social reasons.” The solution
was to adopt a system of annual quotas based on the suitable circumstances and
proportions for the admittance of some foreigners following an analysis of their
activities, and that the advantages would include “not causing offence,” especially
in dealings with governments with whom Mexico had signed bilateral treaties
that included sections on migration matters.114
At another CCM session, Jorge Ferretis flagged up two long-standing di-
lemmas of immigration policy: first, the need to channel immigration to rural
areas as if this were necessary, in the time of Lázaro Cárdenas’s agrarian reform
program, not only to populate them but also, and especially, to modernize
agricultural production. The second issue related to the need to state “cate-
gorically in the regulations that Mexico does not exclude as potential immigrants
any individuals on the basis of their race or nationality, and that this decision will
only depend on their ability or inability to assimilate to our society as the basis for
deciding whether or not to limit the number of those allowed entry.”115
This artifice was soon incorporated into the application of migration practices.
In other words, reference was no longer made to racial factors or countries of
origin but instead to migrants’ supposed ability to assimilate, without specifying
the reasons for certain groups to be more or less compatible with the “national
soul.” In this way, Ferretis concluded, “not even the Chinese would be ex-
cluded.” For example: “if a Chinaman was settled in Mexico for more than
twenty years, there should be nothing to stop him from applying for a family
member’s permission to enter.” The idea was to set “an annual quota, let’s say,
three or five, but we shall declare categorically that Mexico does not prohibit any
single kind of immigration.”116
After being in session for a couple of weeks, Francisco de P. Jiménez, director
general of the Population Bureau, called upon the CCM’s members to redouble
their efforts to:

make the corresponding reforms to the Migration Law and Regulations in

force, incorporating within the text the relevant decisions currently
scattered across various circulars, so that any future legal findings by the
interested parties may originate from specific rulings based on the Interior
Ministry’s steadfast jurisprudence, preventing the illicit enrichment of the
officials in charge of applying the law […] or the need to interpret the
currently confusing and contradictory regulations.117

In the end, most of the prohibitions enacted through confidential circulars were
simply transposed into the General Population Law of 1936. As mentioned
previously, this was Mexico’s most restrictive legislation on immigration. It is
difficult to identify all those involved in its drafting. Core members of the CCM
certainly discussed some of its chapters, although judging by the meaning and
magnitude of the restrictions it appears that officials and advisors also participated
62 The Migration Service

who were not affiliated to the CCM but worked in the Interior Ministry’s Legal
Department, whose director was José López Lira, future minister of Mexico’s
Supreme Court of Justice.118
One week after the new legislation was passed, a report circulated among the
immigration authorities that revealed the core difficulties that made it impossible
to implement its chapters on immigration. Perhaps Landa y Piña was the author
of this document that judged the new Population Law as “blatantly prohibi-
tionist.” His criticisms focused on various aspects of this legislation, in some cases
referring to the disconnect between the immigration authority’s available infra-
structure and personnel and the obligations established by the law, such as the
supervision and control over the entire country. He made two observations in
particular: first, he picked up on the criteria for the quota system. The law es-
tablished that these criteria needed to be based on the capacity for immigrants to
be assimilated “racially and culturally”; however, Landa y Piña observed that the
government lacked “ethnic and biological” studies on the various communities of
foreigners, hence it would not be surprising “that these tables were drawn up a
priori, using non-empirical and even arbitrary methods.” His second observation,
as significant as the first, highlighted the fact that the Population Law was at odds
with the constitutional safeguards on the freedom of work and movement for all
inhabitants in Mexico.119
The new law maintained the CCM, though changing its name to the Consejo
Consultivo de Población (CCP)—or the Population Advisory Council—with a
very similar interministerial composition as the one established in the 1930 leg-
islation.120 Discussions among members of this consultative body reveal that, far
from promoting a “rational and scientific” immigration policy, it was as arbitrary,
improvised, and prejudiced as ever.
In discussions about the Population Law’s probable unconstitutionality, lawyer
and sociologist Lucio Mendieta y Núñez, representative of the Department for
Indigenous Affairs, was a dissenting voice among the chorus of officials who
staunchly defended the restrictions. Eugenio Maldonado, commissioner of the
Interior Ministry’s Autonomous Department of Press and Propaganda, was
the most extreme example of those who defended a law with shades of un-
constitutionality. His reasoning was eminently pragmatic: “If no one complains,
there can be no problem.” In the view of the head of official propaganda, by
prohibiting the exercise of professions and activities and by enabling the autho-
rities to decide where foreigners could live, the Population Law did not con-
travene but only limited individual guarantees. And if a constitutional
controversy were to arise, the next step would be “to consider reforming the
precepts of the Constitution.”121
Mendieta y Núñez countered this position, convinced that in reality the new
legislation violated the guarantees enshrined in Articles 4, 11, and 33 of the
Constitution, whose first paragraph grants foreigners the same individual rights
enjoyed by Mexicans. For this representative, the law was not only
 The Migration Service 63

unconstitutional but also “unworkable, immoral, and contrary to our sociology

and economy.” Unworkable, “because however many agents you had, there
would never be enough to control the thousands of foreigners and their places of
residence and activities.” Immoral, due to the increasing number of “employees
and officials, cabals of powerful figures and intermediaries who extort foreigners.”
Finally, it was contrary to the national interest because, in the view of one of the
founders of Mexican sociology, Mexico needed to expand the contribution of
foreigners “in order to increase the creole population and mestizaje” and because
“the country needs the capital, initiative, energy, vision, and character of for-
eigners to develop its industry and commerce.” In conclusion, “the Constitution
should not be amended to cater to a flawed and shortsighted policy based on the
criteria of a low-level local political leader.”122
No constitutional disputes arose, nor was the Population Law amended; it
remained in force until 1947. Instead, with the support of the CCP, the gov-
ernment took decisions that doubled down on prohibitionism. The mechanisms
to establish entry quotas by nationality of origin were a prime example. The
CCP, as the entity that received the drafts, had to approve these quotas often only
a few days ahead of the date set for their publication in the official government
gazette.
Mendieta y Núñez expressed the difficulties in setting this immigration quota.
In October 1938, at a session to approve the immigrant quota for the following
year, he objected to mistakes in the draft submitted by the director general of
population, which used the criteria of “race” interchangeably with nationality. “It
now transpired,” said Mendieta y Núñez, “that only by virtue of being from
Guatemala makes a Black person admissible, or that a Jew can apply for his
family’s entry because he is a naturalized Mexican.” In practice, these tables
simply repeated the same mistakes in the quota system that had already existed in
the confidential circulars, reproducing the ambiguity of setting quotas by na-
tionality when in fact the criteria were based on the exclusion of certain ethni-
cities. Nevertheless, the difficulties grew after inquiries into the proportional basis
used to set the number of potential immigrants by country of origin. This basis
was supposedly meant to be in proportion to the number of residents by na-
tionality; in theory, according to the immigration authority, this proportion was 2
percent, but Mendieta y Núñez flagged up the existence of similar quotas in
certain European countries that had different representations among the com-
munity of foreigners resident in the country, and the quotas that they established
for Asian and African nations which had a meager presence in Mexico. Finally,
Francisco Trejo, director general of population, was forced to admit that “there are
no accurate statistics on foreigners in Mexico” and that the criteria used was to
apply that 2 percent to the “less desirable races.” Nothing could be further from the
supposedly scientific criteria in the definition of immigration policy, especially
when—pinned down by Mendieta y Núñez’s observations—Trejo ended up
64 The Migration Service

acknowledging that given the global situation in 1938 “it would be foolish to think
that Europe is not anti-Mexico […] and therefore we have given priority to the
Americas and to Spain.”123
Landa y Piña moderated these sessions, and even though he may have agreed
with Mendieta y Núñez’s views, officially he supported a policy based on the
discretional approach taken by his superiors. As expected, the approved quotas for
1939 were in line with the original draft. In late 1940, Landa y Piña wrote:
“Without rigorous scientific bases, especially in quantitative terms, the immigrant
quotas must be considered […] as a basic or simplistic, if you will, yet effective
means for the time being of helping implement the law’s objectives.”124
Aspirations including the ethnic fusion of national groups, the increase of mes-
tizaje through the assimilation of foreigners, the defense of Mexican citizens’
economic, professional, artistic activities, and of course the protection, con-
servation, and betterment of the race.125
At the end of the Cárdenas administration, Mexico’s borders were practically
closed to immigration, except for the thousands of exiled Spanish Republicans.
The inflow of slightly more than twenty thousand Spaniards represents an atypical
phenomenon in the history of foreign immigration in Mexico, not only quan-
titatively in a context of strict immigration controls, but also due to its political
impact by connecting Mexican governments to the struggle against Nazism-
Fascism in Europe. Assisted by collaborators who displayed similar solidarity,
President Cárdenas’s political and humanitarian convictions proved decisive in
the move to open the door to thousands of refugees facing persecution across the
Atlantic.126 However, in this governmental decision, other factors came into
play. Gilberto Loyo expressed this pithily during one of the CCP meetings held
to assess the pros and cons of opening the borders to those on the losing side of
the Spanish Civil War: “This situation offers a rare opportunity for Mexico to
enlarge its Spanish population.”127

Old and New Restrictions during and after the Second

World War
The conditions imposed by the Second World War reduced international mi-
gration at the same time as countries in the Americas began implementing tighter
controls. Mexico was no exception, although it is notable that, whereas in recent
years the compulsory repatriation from the United States of thousands of
Mexicans justified the restrictions placed on new immigrant arrivals, this argu-
ment lost its weight during the Second World War years. The implementation of
the Bracero Program, signed in 1942, ushered in a new period of emigrants hired
to meet labor needs, essentially in U.S. agriculture.128
In late 1940, before the United States had even entered the war, Mexico’s
interior minister accepted the significant decrease in the number of Mexican
deportees due to “the contingency of an overriding need for labor to help in our
 The Migration Service 65

northern neighbor’s war industries.”129 The Bracero Program largely mitigated

the problem generated by the mass deportations of the preceding years; however,
this new context did not bring with it any change in attitudes to immigration. On
the contrary, restrictions became even tighter. In late 1938, Ignacio García
Tellez, interior minister at that time, eloquently expressed the meaning of the
restrictions by indicating: “For as long as […] there are Mexicans deprived of
lands and forced to remain idle due to lack of employment we cannot […] au-
thorize the arrival of foreign workers who may aggravate our domestic un-
employment problems nor allow the entry of traders who may exacerbate the
situation for the dispossessed in our country.”130
These same arguments supported the prohibitions on the entry of workers,
traders, professionals, and technical experts. Higher bonds were also set for those
entering Mexico, increasing from 250 to 500 pesos to authorize the entry of
temporary visitors and tourists, while investor visas required between 10,000 and
20,000 pesos.131 Government programs constantly referred to the need to select
immigrants to ensure their assimilation “ultimately to consolidate and unify the
Mexican nationality.”132 The official gazette trumpeted, “traditional immigrants
will no longer arrive: those lacking financial, intellectual, or moral merit […] will
remain in their homeland or some other country.” The only immigrants allowed
were technical experts and academics officially requested by government agen-
cies, artists, sportspersons, travel agents, as well as foreigners entering as directors
or high-level employees in existing businesses. All of them could enter the
country, albeit with a visa for just one year, renewable as the government saw fit.
Whoever wished to enter Mexico, “to engage in agricultural or industrial ac-
tivities had to prove that they had enough capital to create employment for
Mexicans.” Nothing suggested that this approach to immigration would change;
on the contrary, when the war’s outcome still hung in the balance, the broadsheet
El Nacional warned that as soon as the global conflict ended “hordes of people will
fan out from Asia and Central Europe, hordes that often change the face of
nations and make them disappear.”133
Despite the already-insignificant figures of those categorized as immigrants,
their numbers decreased further during the war years. In 1940, the Population
Directorate granted 1,470 immigration certificates to foreigners who had resided
in Mexico for five or more years, compared to just 663 in 1943.134 According to
census data, in 1940 just under 180,000 foreigners resided in Mexico out of a total
of almost twenty million Mexicans.135 Taking into account the constant re-
quirements for foreigners to apply for their identification cards, we can surmise
that many did not have their papers in order. This situation became evident when
Mexico declared war on the Axis nations in the spring of 1942, and during the
state of national emergency it enacted regulations to suspend individual guar-
antees and confiscate assets held by enemy nationalities.
With the country at war, Mexico perceived these immigrants as a threat to
national security. The Migration Department had to work closely with the
66 The Migration Service

Political and Social Research Office (DIPyS), which was also a part of the Interior
Ministry. Undesirables now included immigrants from Germany, Japan, and Italy,
who had become potential enemies capable of sabotage or spying on the Mexican
government.
In step with U.S. government regulations, in May 1942 President Manuel
Ávila Camacho ordered immigrants of enemy nationalities to leave their places of
residence in border zones and to relocate in the country’s interior. Thus began a
peculiar episode of concentrating immigrants unlike the equivalent procedures
in the United States and elsewhere on the continent.136 The main problem lay in
knowing the identity of these immigrants and where they lived. Despite the
existence of various immigration laws requiring foreigner registration, their im-
plementation had remained on hold until war prompted a presidential decree for
it to take effect immediately.137
This decree introduced the National Register of Foreigners—the Registro
Nacional de Extranjeros, the name by which it is still known to this day—as a
duty of the immigration authority. The Interior Ministry lacked the resources to
draw up a register that needed to contain information from across the nation, and
therefore it requested the collaboration of state and municipal authorities to
conduct a census capable of locating and identifying “subjects of enemy states.”
The DIPyS agents were responsible for immigration supervision and inspections
upon receiving reports of suspicious activities.
After 1940, people became fearful of the foreigners subject to supervision.
There was talk of spies and agitators plotting and collaborating with “national
traitors.”138 In the late 1930s, members of the traditional Spanish resident
community faced accusations of being Francoists.139 Groups of Germans,
Japanese, and Italians soon came under suspicion of being spies. The most famous
cases involved a group of Germans, some of whom managed to flee Mexico
while others ended up being arrested and deported to the United States.140
A similar fate awaited German, Italian, and Japanese diplomats who, in December
1941, after the severing of diplomatic relations, were deported to the United
States and swapped for Mexican and U.S. diplomats detained in Axis countries.141
The Japanese were the first to receive the order to concentrate in cities in
inland parts of Mexico. In December 1941, these immigrants began their exodus
to the country’s central regions. At the outset, the order affected communities
settled in northwestern Mexico, mainly in Baja California, and then those who
lived in Chiapas. The internment operation continued with Italians and Germans.
In the early stages, the Mexican government detained crew members of ships
flying Italian and German flags, who were then transferred to Guadalajara, then to
Mexico City, and eventually to the San Carlos fortress in Perote, Veracruz.142
Unlike Perote, which operated as a detention center and at one point held more
than six hundred people, in Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Cuernavaca the con-
centration forced Japanese, German, and Italians to register with the immigration
authority, and to establish a new place of residence with restrictions on mobility
 The Migration Service 67

outside those cities. It is hard to assess the number of foreigners concentrated in this
manner, but an estimate based on secret police files indicates that there were almost
three thousand with Japanese citizens accounting for more than half of that figure,
along with some eight hundred Germans and almost five hundred Italians.143 It was
a small number that cannot be compared to the multitude of foreigners con-
centrated in the United States and some other Latin American countries such as
Brazil, Peru, and Panama. In the United States, more than one hundred and twenty
thousand foreigners and naturalized Americans from enemy nations were interned,
while in Latin American tens of thousands of Japanese were concentrated.144
However, although on a small scale, the Mexican effort was not negligible, because
it managed to concentrate between 20 and 25 percent of the German, Italian, and
Japanese communities. Family members and communities were responsible for the
expense of transferring these foreigners, and for paying their upkeep. The Japanese
were the most notable case in this regard; some of their community leaders pro-
vided loans and donated land for productive enterprises in the south of Mexico City
and in Temixco in the state of Morelos, where hundreds of Japanese were given
board and lodging. For these reasons, the Perote fortress was also exceptional since
this ancient colonial building became Mexico’s first migrant detention center.
Some Italians, but mainly Germans and Mexicans of German origin, were held in
these facilities, and except for one small group, no links or activities in support of
the Nazis could be proved. In May 1945, the fall of Berlin spelled the end of the
concentration of Germans and Italians, though the Japanese had to wait until
September that year for their release.145
The Perote experience, over and above controlling immigration, responded to
the need to show an official commitment in alignment to U.S. requirements within
the context of the Second World War.146 This same governmental willingness also
formed the basis for taking decisions in the opposite direction. At a time when
Mexico had closed its doors to immigration and was concentrating immigrants
from Axis power countries, the Manuel Ávila Camacho administration, at the
request of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorized the entry of a group of
Polish war refugees who were fleeing Europe over an extraordinary route from
Siberia to the Californian coast via Iran, India, and the Far East.147 The Mexican
government’s decision was truly exceptional since immigration restrictions were
stricter than ever before and specific prohibitions existed for immigrants of Polish
nationality. None of this was deemed to matter, and the announcement of the
exaggerated number of refugees did not even trigger protests; there were press
reports of more than twenty thousand Polish refugees to be transferred from Tehran
to Mexico.148 The Mexican government’s agreement with Poland’s government-
in-exile obviously established that Mexico was not liable to pay the costs of travel
and maintenance for these Polish refugees. Instead, the United States and Polish
communities living there would provide the funding. Another stipulation was that
the refugees would only remain in Mexico until such time they could return to
their country of origin; and that under no circumstances “could they engage in
68 The Migration Service

activities that competed with Mexicans.”149 In the end, there were one thousand
five hundred of these refugees; they were mainly women and children, and almost
all Catholic. They stayed in an expropriated hacienda in the state of Guanajuato,
remaining there until 1947 when these facilities were closed. Most of the refugees
then set off for the United States, while some went to Mexico City or remained in
the cities of León and Guanajuato.150
In August 1945, the interior minister Primo Villa Michel reviewed the main
concerns of the Ávila Camacho administration during the last year of Second
World War. These included preventing “enemy activities, both as a matter of
domestic security and to assist the Allied Powers.”151 These concerns made an
impact on the agenda and institutional design of migration work. The
Demographic Department was set up in the 1930s to complement the Migration
Department, which had existed since the 1920s. Manuel Gamio became director
of this new government agency before Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán replaced him the
following decade. The founders of modern Mexican anthropology collaborated
closely on these issues, benefitting from this work that provided them the raw
material for their own research. During the Second World War, other new
government departments included the National Register of Foreigners and
Migration Control that were responsible for running checks on the background
and documentation of migrants.
Despite the dwindling numbers of new immigrants, the documentation of
those already resident in Mexico increased in the 1940s. Between 1939 and 1951,
the government issued around twenty-four thousand immigration certificates to
foreigners who had lived for more than five years in the country.152 Such an
initiative required organizing immigration records and designing basic control
mechanisms. Furthermore, tourism from the United States rose dramatically;
Mexico had begun developing the tourist industry some decades earlier, but the
sector grew continuously in the postwar years.

450000
400000
350000
300000
250000
200000
150000
100000
50000
0
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951

FIGURE 2.5 Entry of Foreign Tourists in Mexico, 1929–1951

Source: Julio Durán Ochoa, Población, Mexico City. FCE, 1955.
 The Migration Service 69

The growing number of tourists contrasted with restrictive immigration po-

licies, although many foreigners took advantage of the tourist visas, which al-
lowed only temporary visits, to remain in the country illegally. For the
government, the increase in tourism compounded fears of a mass influx of
Europeans due to the war’s conclusion. These phenomena combined to justify
the need for a new Population Law. Discussions on the new piece of legislation
began during the last year of Ávila Camacho’s administration, and President
Miguel Alemán passed the act in 1947. Immigration quotas ended during that
two-year period; the last ones were approved in late 1946. Despite these low
quotas, and the high costs of resident visas,153 halfway through that year a pre-
sidential decree established a new mechanism to authorize immigrant visas. A
Commission—comprising the Director of the Population Bureau as well as the
heads of the Immigration and Demographic departments—met on a daily basis to
recommend visa authorizations for approval by the Interior Ministry. For tourists,
a recommendation from the Migration Department and the green light from
senior officials was sufficient.154 This degree of centralization is more indicative of
a desire to control and restrict the entry of immigrants than of an interest in
making the administration more efficient.
Unlike previous legislation, the law passed in 1947 remained in force for
almost thirty years, crystallizing the accumulated experience and above all the
conviction that Mexico was not, nor could be, a country open to immigration.
Gilberto Loyo had helped establish that paradigm expressed in the 1936 law. It
limited immigrants’ possible activities to making investments in manufacturing
or finance, studying in public or private institutions, exercising a liberal pro-
fession “only in exceptional cases,” filling senior management positions in
private companies provided that the authorities did not consider that this
amounted to “a duplication of roles” or that “the position required the person’s
entry into Mexico,” and finally, providing technical services as long as the
authorities deemed that “Mexicans could not offer these [services].” As with
the first Population Law of 1936, exceptional cases existed for temporary
permissions for political asylum seekers,155 a regime that over the following
decades established Mexico’s reputation as a country that welcomed political
refugees.

A Grim Outlook
As indicated above, the Migration Service became officially established by law in
1926. The network of offices was restructured into delegations, agencies, and
offices distributed around the country’s main points of entry and departure. In
1930, there were fourteen delegations, with thirty-seven agencies reporting to
them. There were also five regional offices that specifically dealt with Mexican
migrants and the headquarters in the capital.
70 The Migration Service

FIGURE 2.6 Mexican Migration Service (1930)

Source: Prepared by the author, using AHINM data, file 4/130.1930.823.

There were nine delegations and twenty agencies in northern Mexico,

compared to one delegation and eight agencies along the country’s southern
border in Chiapas and Quintana Roo. The offices were set up along the Gulf and
Pacific coasts and located in the main seaports. The larger concentration of
premises in the north of the country and in capitals of states with high rates of
emigration attests to the importance of emigration from Mexico.
Around four hundred people worked for the Migration Service.156 Few had
any formal training for their duties. The salaries were low, working conditions
poor, and resources lacking. The United States was inevitably the reference point
for the Mexican authorities. The U.S. Border Patrol, set up in 1924, had nearly
five hundred agents by the end of the 1920s. With a budget exceeding one
million dollars a year, and an operating infrastructure with ample equipment,
communications devices, and vehicles, the Border Patrol was poles apart from its
Mexican equivalent.157
In March 1929, Andrés Landa y Piña, while still in charge of the Migration
Department’s Office for Statistics, received instructions to draw up a detailed
document on the Migration Service’s main failings, focusing on the most pressing
problems such as illegal immigration, the need for a group of investigative agents
to implement “the righteous campaigns against gambling and the trafficking of
women,” the inability to “monitor emigration flows,” the lack of offices and
 The Migration Service 71

equipment and even resources to print “the identification cards provided to

immigrants,” making it impossible to register foreigners.158
Landa y Piña prepared this report and sent it to the Finance Ministry, clearly
indicating that the main problem lay in the Migration Service’s incapability of
fulfilling its mandate. The problem was particularly visible in the north, “in the
clear contrast between the working conditions of our service compared to those
of the U.S. immigration authority.”159
In the 1930s, two-thirds of the Migration Service’s employees earned on
average 5 pesos per day (1.50 dollars), the remaining one-third earned a daily
wage of almost 20 pesos (5.50 dollars). “Second-tier U.S. employees working on
the border earned the same as, or more than, the most senior Mexican office
workers.”160 Indeed, the salaries across the border varied, according to the ca-
tegory, between 6 dollars per day at the lowest grade, up to 11 dollars for the
most senior employees.161 For Landa y Piña, the lack of hiring and low salaries
explained the personnel shortage, a situation compounded by increasing migra-
tion and new communications infrastructure. This combination of circumstances
led to the increasingly “frequent illegal entries.”162

TABLE 2.1 Migration department wage scales (1933)

Job title Monthly wage (Mexican pesos) Positions

Head of Department $638.76 1

Deputy Head of Department $501.88 1
Head of Unit (A) $353.88 1
Head of Unit (B) $306.44 2
Translator $243.34 1
Storage Worker, Grade 7 $146.00 1
Archivist, Grade 3 $146.00 3
Supervisor, Grade 5 $282.86 3
Official, Grade 1 $219.00 7
Official, Grade 2 $194.66 4
Official, Grade 3 $170.32 4
Official, Grade 4 $146.00 5
Stenographer, Grade 1 $146.00 13
Stenographer, Grade 2 $109.50 10
Typist $97.34 15
Agent, Grade 2 $170.32 18
Agent, Grade 3 $146.00 73
Agent, Grade 4 $121.58 77
Agent, Grade 5 $109.50 112
Head of Service (Primary Delegation) $282.86 11
Head of Service (Secondary Delegation) $243.34 6
Draughtsman $146.00 1
Office Assistant, Grade 2 $89.42 13

Source: Compiled by the author based on AHINM data, file 4-130.04.1933.7.

72 The Migration Service

Moreover, the phenomenon of Mexican emigrants working in the United

States constituted a problem of international dimensions, which Mexico was
responsible for addressing, “if not to stop, then at least to control.”163 The
Interior Ministry only aimed to authorize the departure of workers who met the
requirements of U.S. legislation, and thus avoid the dangerous border crossings at
unauthorized locations as well as the exploitation of Mexican labor.
To achieve these objectives, checkpoints were required along railway routes
leading north, along with migration offices in charge of checking migrants’ pa-
pers. To control this migration also required a repatriation policy that included
the transfer of migrants to their home communities, and also by a policy of setting
up agricultural settlements to provide employment for these workers. However,
Landa y Piña warned that “the Migration Service is unable to contribute to
carrying out a repatriation program of this kind given the lack of essential
resources.”164
In short, the report concluded that the Service “operated under extraordinary
conditions: there was a shortage of furniture, typewriters, filing cabinets.”
Without their own premises, officials worked in offices set up in rented spaces or
buildings belonging to other federal agencies. There is also “a complete lack of
vehicles, boats, and aircraft.” The working conditions were so precarious that
they could not perform even their most basic duties.165
Landa y Piña was not exaggerating. For decades, reports by Migration Service
inspectors detailed working conditions that indeed “seemed extraordinary.”
In 1930, in one of the reports from the northern border, he noted that the
agency’s premises in Sonoyta, Sonora:

did not look much like an office, but a shack with its walls and roof made of
interwoven sticks and adobe. The floors were earthen, and the room
looked appalling. The furniture is an embarrassment. […] everything in this
office is unfit for use. The typewriter is jammed and beyond repair. This is
the Service’s most dilapidated agency.166

This may have been the worst office that year, although the situation did not
improve over time. In 1932, another agent reported from Río Rico, Tamaulipas,
that the agency there had never received any office furniture, “not even a table
and chair where you can work. The filing cabinet was made out of a wooden
crate.” The agent in charge had bought a desk on credit that “he is still paying
for.” The Matamoros delegation had sent him a broken typewriter, so they had to
work using machines lent to them, “one from the customs office and another
from a private individual, and they only have access to them in the middle and at
the end of the month.”167
The new migration regulations were designed to control the increasing
numbers of immigrants in Mexico, but these norms were not matched by the
budgetary resources to pay the associated costs. The personnel were responsible
 The Migration Service 73

for enforcing the law as well as devising strategies to make up for budgetary
shortfalls. The Matamoros delegation did not have a vehicle; agents had to patrol
Río Bravo on horseback, even though there already existed a wide network of
roads suitable for vehicles—the mode of transport used for migrants and con-
traband. That delegation’s staff, who were “competent and reliable” in the view
of the inspector Francisco Fernandez Landero, made an unusual proposal to
the Interior Ministry, to which the inspector gave his enthusiastic support, “the
employees would buy a car that would always be owned in the name of
the office, as long as the central offices would continue paying fodder is if there
were still horses, enabling them to pay for the monthly maintenance costs to keep
the car in perfect condition.”168
Landa y Piña, as Director of the Population Bureau, accompanied by
Fernando Calzada Jiménez, head of the Migration Department, noted few
changes during an inspection visit in northern Mexico some twenty years later.
Reporting on the agency in Tecate, Baja California, he wrote to the interior
minister that: “This agency paints a depressing picture: the building does not
have a roof.” To give the “senior officials a rough idea of its dilapidated state” he
attached some photographs along with a detailed list of actions taken to rebuild
the structure, which the ministry’s senior managers “had ignored.” As incredible
as it seems, in this office located just fifty kilometers from Tijuana, “the furniture
is broken, the files cannot be checked because they are soaked after heavy rainfall
as water accumulates on the upper level and then begins to drip down into the
floors below. It is impossible to imagine anywhere more dilapidated.”169
Landa y Piña drafted his reports without imagining what he would find in his
subsequent visits to migration offices. After visiting the agency in Ensenada, Baja
California, he wrote “this office is located at the back of a courtyard in a vecindad
[a dwelling for low-income families], amid clothes lines, in a wood-and-
cardboard shack, worthy of a Mexico City slum.” On this occasion he refrained
from sending photographs, although he confessed that it would be pointless to
“even try to make senior officers imagine this office’s shameful state of disrepair.”
These premises received visits from “actual tourists from the United States,
mostly millionaires,” who docked their yachts to register before going fishing or
continuing their voyage to Acapulco. Landa y Piña indicated that this office was
an embarrassment and particularly since even the “foreign tourists” themselves
offered money to the municipal authorities to make this office “more dignified.”
The budget allocated for the rent was 50 pesos per month, an amount that was
“only enough for this hovel,” and moreover the property’s owner did not even
want to collect the rent so that the Interior Ministry would “get rid of the shack
in order to make room for a new building.”170
Landa y Piña pointed to the sharp contrasts between the Customs and
Migration services since they shared premises and certain responsibilities. He
referred to the salary differences of almost 50 percent between their respective
employees. Customs employees worked for eight-hour shifts, while their
74 The Migration Service

counterparts in the Migration Service were on duty for twelve and sometimes
even twenty-four hours. The staff levels were disproportionate; for example, only
one agent worked at the Chetumal immigration office, compared to the thirty or
so assigned to customs duties. He also referred to the disparities in infrastructure.
In El Ocotal, Chiapas, the Customs Service had recently inaugurated offices at a
cost of 250,000 pesos, whereas on the southern border, the Migration Service
“has never been able to secure premises costing more than 10,000 pesos.”171
Compounding the unsatisfactory premises and equipment was the quality
and quantity of the staff. From the mid-1920s, most reports repeatedly men-
tioned the lack of personnel to fulfil the required duties. Wages were low and
paid irregularly, with travel expenses only intermittently refunded; train
companies often suspended the “free passes” provided for the officials suppo-
sedly to conduct migration patrols. Until the 1940s, no regulations existed for
the payment of overtime, and work at seaports and land borders required long
days’ work that could not conform to office hours. Employees complained
about the lack of means of transport—horses, vehicles, and boats—they needed
to perform their jobs.
In January 1927, the inspector Fernando Félix, after visiting the Tijuana de-
legation, wrote to the Interior Ministry to report that employees did not comply
with the requirement to wear a uniform because they had to cover the cost
themselves and “since they earn such a low salary I thought it prudent not to
insist on them observing this requirement.”172 A few years later, another in-
spector, Ramón Tirado, took a different view on this matter. Looking into the
mirror of the United States, he saw images that contradicted the modernizing
ambitions of the postrevolutionary order. After visiting offices on the U.S.-
Mexico border in the state of Chihuahua, he pointed to the overriding need to
enforce the requirement to wear a uniform because:

it is shameful to behold our disheveled, unkempt, and non-uniformed

employees compared to the proper, smartly dressed Americans. While we
lose no opportunity to boast that we are no longer a backward nation, and
that Mexico is now a civilized country, foreigners’ first impression when
visiting our country will be one of the poverty and backwardness shown by
our employees and offices.173

Similar observations were made in Veracruz and Tampico, indicating that it

would be worthwhile to “remind agents to use the uniform.” In fact, the agents’
appearance illustrated just one aspect of a wider budgetary shortfall. The em-
ployees at these ports did receive bonuses if vessels docked outside normal
working hours, but this did not apply when ships were leaving the port. “Of the
steamships departing Tampico, 60 percent leave outside normal working hours”
therefore employees were obliged to work unpaid “for up to an additional five or
six hours.” Furthermore, the suspension of “passes” on the trains meant that
 The Migration Service 75

“employees had to pay for these journeys out of their own pocket […] eating into
their salaries, which, given the high living costs in the ports, placed them in a
difficult situation.” And that was not all. The Migration Service’s only launch in
Tampico needed a new engine, “because the existing one [was] broken beyond
repair.”174 The employees not only had to pay for their own uniforms, but also
their horses. In 1926, an inspector visiting Ciudad Camargo and Villa de Reinosa,
Tamaulipas, reported on offices “who have fulfilled all their duties,” except that
some agents “lacked horses to perform their jobs more effectively, and they were
urged to procure them without delay.”175
In the port of Guaymas, Sonora, immigration personnel shared an office with
customs officials; as was the case in most ports, the employees received no extra
payments for the delayed arrivals or departures of ships, and anyway, those mi-
grating illegally embarked or disembarked away from the port using services
provided by a network of boatmen who operated with the connivance of the
ships’ captains. In 1926, the Guaymas agency lacked a boat to monitor and try to
prevent this illegal trafficking. “If I may be so bold,” said one inspector, “I suggest
authorizing a monthly retainer” to hire some boatmen from the port, “for proper
supervision.”176
Other problems aggravated the situation. One issue was the authorities’ lack of
control over the agencies’ personnel. In 1953, Landa y Piña referred to the case of
the supervisor in Progreso, Yucatán, at an office that employed five agents and
one assistant. Two months previously this supervisor had moved to Mexico City
without giving any notice and without authorization; an assistant agent sub-
stituted him. A similar situation arose in Mérida, where the office supervisor lived
in Mexico City. When he learned of Landa y Piña’s visit he rushed to the
Yucatán state capital to be present during the inspection and then returned im-
mediately to Mexico City.177
Another vexing issue was the lack of coordination between the various federal
government agencies. The Highway Department was the subject of frequent
complaints for failing to build new checkpoints next to roads or near international
borders; the Postal Service also faced criticism for the delayed arrival of in-
structions, forms, and circulars which affected daily operations. The lack of co-
ordination was apparent within the Migration Department. Landa y Piña was
surprised to find the Coatzacoalcos office registering foreigners with forms and
fines “without any express authorization from the Interior Ministry.” 178
The reports portray a dire situation in southern Mexico. Controls were pre-
carious on the border with Guatemala, either due to a lack of capability, or a
shortage or the non-existence of personnel. Landa y Piña also visited this region
in 1953 and noted how Guatemalans crossed all along the border without any
migration officials in sight. There were no border controls or checking of goods
brought over by small traders from Guatemala who supplied businesses in
Mexico. No visa system was in place for these temporary visitors, let alone for the
day laborers who worked in the coffee plantations. Many offices “are run by a
76 The Migration Service

single agent” and therefore his work is necessarily “unsatisfactory, rushed, in-
complete,” while others often remained closed. “A good example are the offices
of Salina Cruz and Campeche, where one agent is responsible for carrying out
all of the administrative jobs as well as patrolling the area.” In the case of Salina
Cruz, this one agent was responsible for registering “the movement of passengers
from more than one hundred ships that dock at the port each month, the trucks
using the roads, the national and international aircraft arriving and departing.”
In Campeche, there was the additional task of checking the train passengers.
“We can see,” said the report, “that our agents are completely overstretched and
therefore unable to perform all these duties, compile statistics, and take care of
office administration.”179
Moreover, the campaigns to register and naturalize Guatemalans in the late
1930s and early 1940s were a long way from resolving the issue represented by
unregistered Mexicans and Guatemalans.180 Landa y Piña had participated ac-
tively in those campaigns, and almost twenty years later he acknowledged that
“this issue has only partially been resolved,” since Guatemalans naturalized as
Mexicans still lived together with immigrants resident for more than ten years in
the region and Guatemalan nationals who were able to obtain birth certificates
issued “by civil registrar officers in Amatenango, Frontera, Motozintla, and
Zapaluta.” This problem was not insignificant since many of these campesinos, of
uncertain nationality, could claim agrarian rights and many did so by obtaining an
allocation of ejido lands. Landa y Piña raised the alarm of the need to solve what
he called the “demographic problem”181 given the existence of a distinctly
Guatemalan atmosphere on Mexican soil; there were even reports that revelers
waved the Guatemalan rather than the Mexican flag during some national
celebrations.
Albeit on a smaller scale, the border with Belize was similarly problematic.
According to reports by the head of Chetumal’s immigration office, 80 percent of
the local population and along the Río Hondo were of Belizean origin. Landa y
Piña recorded that they were actually already Mexican families, with children
born on Mexican soil, hence the urgency for the government to take steps to
“declare once and for all the nationalization of these individuals or to recognize
their immigrant status in order to legalize their residency in the country.”182
Administrative inefficiencies exacerbated the shortage of professionally trained
employees. Landa y Piña remarked that U.S. immigration authorities had told
him during a conversation that they could perform the same work as the
Mexicans with half the number of employees. Landa y Piña acknowledged there
was truth in their claim, although he pointed out that despite their efficiency the
U.S. agents were still unable to control the influx of Mexican workers. However,
on the Mexican side of the border the disorganization, “poor planning” (entailing
more employees than necessary in places with less migratory transit), and a lack of
professionalization, all made a significant difference. “Although in the United
States, at the official border crossings, there are few agents, their offices are well
 The Migration Service 77

staffed and keep up to date the various records that are the ingredients for a
successful operation. We have only just become aware of such registers and
systems, and we could not emulate them due to staff shortages.”183 Indeed,
during his inspections of migration agencies, Landa y Piña noted (among other
anomalies) the absence of systematic record-keeping of the “blacklists”—in other
words, the orders banning the entry of foreigners with criminal records.184
In terms of immigration, the main problem was the lack of restrictions on
what has since been known as “local transit,” in other words, rules applying to
residents on the U.S. side of the frontier. These visitors had to cross the border
daily for family reasons, to work or conduct business, along with many more
who came as tourists. The large numbers of people crossing the border made it
difficult to distinguish individual reasons for travel; nor was there any control of
places of residence in the United States, not even for those who came over on
temporary, six-month visas. To complicate matters further, once these visas
expired, there was no authority capable or interested in locating these im-
migrants on Mexican soil.
Landa y Piña knew about the strategies to enter and remain in Mexico il-
legally, as well as the methods employed by American citizens to renew their
transit visas without needing to confirm their employment or work status. “The
problem is critical because the Migration Service has full knowledge of the illicit
acts and has legal authority over them, yet even so is unable to prevent them from
taking place or to remedy the situation.”185
In short, there were no checks or records of the influx of foreigners entering
Mexico across land borders. “Statistically, all these people arrive without having
to pay taxes or undergo checks; they are simply observed as they enter.” All
manner of legal and illegal businesses developed thanks to the promotion of
tourism: casinos, gambling, cantinas, night clubs, hotels, restaurants, and even
real-estate companies and highway infrastructure projects. As a result, “it is not
unusual to find groups of foreigners engaged in illicit activities within a stone’s
throw from immigration offices.”186
The Director of the Population Bureau viewed developments on the northern
border as a grave threat, as it was a “large and neglected area of the Mexican
territory with poorly defined boundaries.” The growth of tourism and its en-
ormous impact on the economy posed a fundamental “political and spiritual
threat.” Tourism had another, less welcome and more dangerous aspect: Landa y
Piña warned that “we are losing our national identity.” At the Tijuana racecourse
the U.S. flag “was hoisted above the flags of other countries on the continent”; in
Ensenada “American citizens are offered and guaranteed the legal purchase of
plots on subdivisions that are practically on the beach,” clearly violating the
Constitution. Even the English language was replacing Spanish: “English is used
to advertise all kinds of products. Buildings, businesses, drugstores, soda fountains,
movie theaters, etc., are all organized, decorated, and run according to U.S.
practices.”187
78 The Migration Service

Imposing immigration controls on American citizens damaged the tourism

economy, hence there was intense pressure. Landa y Piña also reported on this
situation. At one point, immigration checkpoints were set up inland, some
twenty or thirty kilometers from the border, and they ended up being closed
“due to the constant pressure exerted by local tourism businesses.”188
Landa y Piña was the most senior authority on migration issues, and as such
he acknowledged that the state had effectively given up implementing proper
controls of the entry of foreigners on the northern border. “We have seen that
on that border it is impossible, because we have stopped inspecting local
visitors, tourists, and almost all immigrants.” He continued: “By contrast, we
subject our own citizens to inspections that are sometimes rigorous; so it seems
that the only people we are concerned about entering illegally are Mexicans
who are always required to prove their identity. This is an absurd state of
affairs, but that’s how it is.”189
Although some immigration controls, albeit minimal, were applied to
Guatemalans at the opposite end of the country, the Migration Service mainly
focused on Mexicans returning from the United States. A gulf existed between
the plethora of norms on migration, and what happened on the ground. Interests
of private individuals in collusion with local or Mexican officials trumped the
federal authority in charge of migration. This government agency, instead of
remedying this situation and using its legally conferred authority, merely made
proposals of dubious merit. How was it possible to control and supervise foreign
immigrants who traveled beyond the border area to settle in different parts of the
country? Landa y Piña’s suggestion was to create a new branch of the Migration
Service, located away from the land borders and seaports. The idea was to set up
migration offices in inland Mexico, staffed by around one hundred highly qua-
lified and trustworthy inspectors in charge of areas with the highest concentration
of foreigners “to identify and apprehend those breaking the law.”190 In other
words, a group of agents to carry out the job not being done by the officials
stationed at the ports and border crossings. Another, even more inconsistent
proposal was to reactivate the Population Advisory Council, as the body to be
responsible for proposing solutions to demographic problems caused by
the entry of foreigners. This Council had ceased to function in the postwar years,
and it had contributed very little to solving problems during the years when it had
convened.
As a final measure, Landa y Piña proposed reorganizing the National Register
of Foreigners. He observed that the problem, one that continues to the present
day, lay in the fact that it is only a register for arrivals, without any information
about those who had departed the country or died. As a result, Landa y Piña
argued, the time would come when “the number of people on the list would be
greater than the number of Mexicans on the electoral roll.”191
In brief, the contrasts in immigration practices reached the extent of contra-
dicting the legislation in force. Landa y Piña acknowledged this situation:
 The Migration Service 79

The shortage of personnel and resources in immigration offices, combined

with the constant abuses by (mainly spurious) tourists, largely frustrate
efforts to provide entry papers only to those who meet the legal
requirements, neutralizing and almost nullifying the regulations imposed
by the Interior Ministry, since it is not improbable that fraudulent entries
outnumber legal ones. This leads to the conclusion that our borders are
effectively open to scoundrels from all around the world, because when
they cannot enter the country at legal points of entry, they can and do use
illegal alternatives, unauthorized locations that are unsupervised.192

After inspecting most offices in the country, Landa y Piña made a very graphic
analogy: to observe the Migration Service was like “watching a swelling river that
could equally carry fertile silt or cause irreparable damage, but being powerless to
contain it or alter its course.”193 His assessment on the administration of mi-
gration was categorical: “it is incapable and ill-equipped to help solve the pro-
blem of emigrants, immigrants, and tourists.”194
A wide gap existed between theory and practice. Controls over the foreign
population in the best-case scenario applied to immigrants who lived in Mexico’s
main urban centers, especially in the capital. With his experience of more than
three decades working on migration policy, Landa y Piña took a dim view of an
administration he considered inept and useless, and which had to choose whether
“to reform or die.”195
As if he were completely detached from any responsibility over these matters,
he proposed a simple solution: migration policy should be firmly based on the
strict application of the law, preventing “casuistic resolutions and trámites at
the ports and border crossings, as well as in the offices and in the headquarters in
the country’s capital.”196 If the law’s implementation was the exception, arbi-
trariness was the norm in an environment plagued by “casuistry,” improvisation,
and corruption.

Notes
1 See Fabila, 1981.
2 See Martínez Rodríguez, 2013; Aboites Aguilar, 1995; González Navarro, 1960;
Skerritt Gardner, 1995; Lloyd, 1987.
3 González Navarro, 1960, 46, 64, and 65.
4 DGE, 1898 and 1918.
5 See Young, 2014; Delgado, 2012; Chao Romero, 2010; Lee, 2003; Mishima, 1997;
Sucheng, 1991.
6 See Chang, 2017; Augustine-Adams, 2006 and 2015; Reñique 2003; Craib, 1996;
Puig, 1992; Gómez Izquierdo, 1991; Hu-DeHart, 1980 and 1982; Dambourgues,
1974.
7 See Carrillo, 2005 and 2016.
8 AALyP, “Francisco Valenzuela, ‘Apuntes sobre el problema de la migración en
México,’” 1922, mimeographed document.
80 The Migration Service

9 Carrillo, 2016.
10 The Commission’s chairman was Genaro Raigosa and its members were Dr. Eduardo
Liceaga, Rafael Rebollar, José María Romero, and José Covarrubias (Romero,
1911, 2).
11 Ibid., 3.
12 Ibid., 5.
13 Ibid., 1911, 80 and 82. See Mayo-Smith, 1890, chapters 11 and 12.
14 Romero, 1911, 92.
15 Ibid., 94.
16 AALyP, “Francisco Valenzuela, ‘Apuntes sobre el problema de la migración en
México,’” 1922, mimeographed document.
17 Ibid.
18 RINS, microfilm, reel 1, file 51411/1, “Report of conditions existing in Europe and
Mexico affecting Emigration and Immigration,” n.d., Series A. Subject Correspondence
Files, Part II, Mexican Immigration 1906–1930.
19 RINS, microfilm, reel 1, file 51463/A, Letter from the Treasury Department,
Bureau of Inmigration to the Director of Mexican Central Railways, Washington, 4
February 1904, and Letter from the Mexican Embassy in Washington to the State
Department, 16 June 1904.
20 RINS, microfilm, reel 1, file 51463/B. Letter from the Department of Commerce
and Labor. Bureau of Inmigration and Naturalization to the Supervisor of the
Migration Service in San Antonio, Texas and Memorandum, 28 December 1907.
21 RINS, microfilm, reel 1, file 51463/B. Letter to the General Commissioner of
Migration from Inspector M. Braun, Mexico, 3 May 1907.
22 Romero, 1911, VII.
23 After the death of Genaro Reinosa, Eduardo Liceaga became the Commission’s
president, and Emilio Rabasa was appointed Reinosa’s replacement.
24 “Ley de Inmigración,” DOF, 20 December 1908, 644.
25 Ibid., 645.
26 “Decreto que designa los lugares fronterizos autorizados para la entrada de pasajeros
en la Republica, 25 de febrero de 1909,” Secretaría de Gobernación, 1924, 3.
27 “Ley de Inmigración,” DOF, 20 December 1908, art. 25, 648.
28 Ibid., Art. 22, 647. These facilities were provided at the following ports: Tampico
and Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico and Guaymas, Manzanillo, Mazatlán, and Salina
Cruz on the Pacific coast (“Decreto que designa los lugares fronterizos autorizados
para la entrada de pasajeros en la Republica, 25 de febrero de 1909,” Secretaría de
Gobernación, 1924, 3).
29 The information to be recorded on these arrival cards included: entry number, name
and surname, sex, age, marital status, nationality, race, business or occupation, lit-
eracy, most recent address abroad, port of departure and final destination in Mexico.
For race, the instructions specified the options “White, Black, Yellow, etc.”
(“Reglamento del Servicio de Inspección de Inmigrantes en los puertos y fronteras de
la Republica, 25 de febrero de 1909,” Secretaría de Gobernación, 1924, 11).
30 AALyP, “Francisco Valenzuela, ‘Apuntes sobre el problema de la migración en
México,’” 1922, mimeographed document.
31 Valenzuela, 1918ª, 296.
32 Ibid., 1918b, 332.
33 Tellez Girón, “Estudio de adaptación correspondiente al proyecto del doctor
Francisco Valenzuela sobre la inmigración y colonización en México,” DOF, 25 May
1918, 260.
34 Ibid., 271.
35 See Aboites Aguilar, 1995; Sawatzky, 1971.
36 Alanís Enciso, 2015.
 The Migration Service 81

37 In 1918, the Interior Ministry announced that it was evaluating the possibility of
modifying the 1908 law, in response to “the current global situation, the country’s
evolution, new laws, land distribution, etc.” It implemented this initiative. El Universal,
4 June 1918.
38 See Caplan and Torpey 2001.
39 See Zolberg, 2006; Higham,1988; Daniels, 2004.
40 See Lytle Hernández, 2010.
41 AALyP, “Andrés Landa y Piña, ‘El Proyecto de restricciones a la inmigración
mexicana en los Estados Unidos de América y la actitud del gobierno de México,’”
December 1928, mimeographed document.
42 AALyP, “Andrés Landa y Piña, ‘El problema de migración,’” December 1927, mi-
meographed document.
43 AALyP, “Andrés Landa y Piña, ‘Comunicación al Oficial Mayor de la Secretaría de
Gobernación,’” March 1924.
44 Ibid.
45 Obregón, 2006a, 7.
46 Ibid., 2006b, 172.
47 Ibid., 2006a, 21.
48 Ibid., 2006b, 173.
49 AALyP, “Francisco Valenzuela. ‘Apuntes sobre el problema de migración en
México,’” 3 May 1922, vol. 4, mimeographed document.
50 Iturbe, 1966, 75–77.
51 As proof that Landa y Piña was an attentive reader of Valenzuela’s reports and
proposals, please see the first sections of the historic outline of the Immigration
Department published by Landa y Piña in 1930. See Landa y Piña, 1930.
52 See INEGI, 2007.
53 AALyP, “Andrés Landa y Piña, ‘Observaciones acerca de la estadística del movi-
miento migratorio mexicano,’” 1 April 1924.
54 AALyP, “Jefe del Departamento de Migración. Iniciativa sobre las tarjetas de
identificación para personas que entren o salgan del país,” 3 November 1925, vol. 1.
55 AALyP, “Andrés Landa y Piña, ‘Proyecto para crear con fines de investigación e
identificación el registro de inmigrantes, emigrantes y repatriados,’” 14 June 1925,
vol. 1.
56 Between 1920 and 1924, a total of 35,589 Mexicans and 11,255 foreigners entered
the country (AALyP, Official correspondence addressed to the Deputy Interior
Minister. Migration of Braceros, 1925, vol. 1).
57 AALyP, Migration Service offices, categories and assigned personnel, 1925.
58 AALyP, Andrés Landa y Piña, Memorandum, 23 January 1926, vol. 1.
59 See the first compilation of these orders in “Circulares giradas a los inspectores del
Servicio de Migración de la República,” DOF, 11 September 1925, 1–12.
60 “Decreto incluyendo la Ley que adiciona la de Inmigración de 22 de diciembre de
1908,” DOF, 7 May 1921, 1.
61 DDCD, 1 September 1921, 2.
62 Cámara de Diputados, 1923, 3.
63 “Decreto autorizando al Poder Ejecutivo para reformar la Ley de Inmigración de 22
de diciembre de 1908,” DOF, 21 January 1926, 1.
64 “Decreto por el cual se faculta al Ejecutivo Federal para que reforme la Ley de
Migración de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” DOF, 18 January 1930, 1; “Decreto
que autoriza al Ejecutivo Federal para reformar la Ley de Migración,” DOF, 31
December 1934, 1; “Decreto que autoriza al Ejecutivo Federal para expedir, en un
plazo que fenecerá el 31 de agosto de 1936, la Ley General de Población,” DOF, 31
December 1935, 1.
82 The Migration Service

65 Article 30 of the “Ley de Migración de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” DOF, 13

March 1926.
66 AALyP, Memorandum from the Interior Ministry for the Finance Ministry, 7 April
1929, vol. 7.
67 See Henderson, 2011; Overmyer-Velázquez, 2011; Alanís Enciso, 2007; Balderrama
and Rodríguez, 1995; Guerrín-González, 1994; Cardoso, 1980; Carreras de Velasco,
1974.
68 AHINM, file 4/350-1229/420.
69 Ibid., 4/100(015) 1929/38.7.
70 El Universal, 12 December 1924.
71 AHINM, file 4/350-1929/426. For more information on this trafficking of im-
migrants, see Garland, 2018.
72 AHINM, file 4/350-1919/426, vol. 1.
73 El Universal, 16 September 1926.
74 AALyP, Memorandum to the Head of the Migration Department, 23 April 1927,
vol. 2.
75 “Exposición de motivos. Ley de Migración de 1930,” DOF, 30 August 1930, 1.
76 AALyP, “First Migration Conference,” 1929, vol. 7.
77 AALYP, “Report on the main issues, approved during the meeting of delegates,
agents, and supervisors of the Migration Service in relation to the proposed reforms
to the corresponding law,” 1929, vol. 7.
78 “Exposición de motivos. Ley de Migración de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” DOF,
30 August 1930, 1.
79 Ibid., 6.
80 Ibid., 16. The CCM’s members were the Interior Minister, Director of the
Immigration Department, and representatives from the following ministries: Foreign
Affairs, Communications and Public Works, Finance, Industry, Trade and Labor,
Agriculture and Development, Public Education, as well as from the Public Health
and National Statistics departments.
81 “Reglamento de la Ley de Migración,” DOF, 14 June 1932, 1–36.
82 AHINM, file 4/350-1930-448, vol. 1/2.
83 Ibid., 4/100(015)-1930-541.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid., 4/100(015)-1930-541.
87 Secretaría de Gobernación, 1931, 34.
88 “Circular 91 del 30 de abril de 1931,” Secretaría de Gobernación, 1933, 61–64.
89 DOF, 17 July 1931, 1.
90 El Universal, 22 and 23 July 1932.
91 Ibid., 24 July 1932.
92 Ibid., 26 July 1932.
93 Ibid., 1 August 1932.
94 Ibid., 27 July 1932.
95 See Chapter 1.
96 Landa y Piña, 1930, 25.
97 El Universal, 11 April 1930.
98 Ibid., 15 May 1930.
99 Ibid., 24 August 1930.
100 Partido Nacional Revolucionario, 1934, 37ff.
101 Secretaría de Gobernación, “Programa de Gobierno para 1934,” DOF, 10 April
1934, section two; El Universal, 17 April 1934.
102 El Universal, 22 February 1934.
 The Migration Service 83

103 Landa y Piña, 1935, 6.

104 Ibid., 10–11.
105 Ibid., 13.
106 El Nacional, 9 December 1933.
107 Landa y Piña, 1935, 13.
108 See Chapter 3.
109 Landa y Piña, 1935, 13.
110 Ibid., 3.
111 AHINM, file 4/350-1935-228C.
112 Ibid.
113 AHINM, file 4/350-1935-228B 1 of 3.
114 Ibid.
115 AHINM, file 4/350-1935-228.
116 Ibid.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid.
119 AALyP, Some considerations about the 1936 law, 7 September 1936.
120 The following government ministries and departments participated in the CCP:
Public Education; Finance; Agriculture and Development; Foreign Affairs;
Communications and Public Works; Economy; National Defence; Public Welfare;
Public Health; Labor; Agrarian Affairs; Indigenous Affairs; Press and Propaganda;
Central Department; and Tourism.
121 AHINM, file 4/350-1935-228B.
122 Ibid.
123 Ibid., 4/350.42/948. Between 1938 and 1940, the quotas established that no upper
limits would be placed on the number of citizens arriving from every country in the
Americas, Spain and Portugal, and up to one thousand were permitted from the fol-
lowing countries: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France, Germany,
Holland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Only one hundred people
were allowed entry from every other country in the world. After 1941, the lack of limits
continued to apply for citizens from the Americas and Spain, but Portugal was now
excluded, and a maximum of one hundred citizens were allowed from each other
country in the world. DOF, 19 November 1937; 1 November 1938; 2 November 1939;
15 October 1940; 15 November 1941; 16 December 1942; 30 Octobre 1944; 31
October 1945; and 13 December 1946.
124 Landa y Piña, 1941, 13.
125 “Ley General de Población,” DOF, 29 August 1936, 1.
126 See Lida, 1997; Pla Brugat, 1999; Serrano Migallón, 2002.
127 AHINM, file 4/350.58/7244.
128 See Cohen 2011; Durand 2007; Calavita, 1992.
129 Secretaría de Gobernación, 1941, 69.
130 El Nacional, 17 December 1938.
131 Ibid., 15 July 1941 and 17 February 1944.
132 Secretaría de Gobernación, 1944, 56.
133 El Nacional, 18 February 1944.
134 Foreigners acquired immigrant status after residing in the country for a minimum of
five years without interruption. Secretaría de Gobernación, 1941, 74–75, and 1944,
61–62.
135 See Secretaría de Economía Nacional, 1943.
136 See Friedman, 2008; Quintaneiro, 2006; Takenaka, 2004; Barnhart, 1962,
137 “Decreto que declara obligatoria para todo extranjero residente en el país, su
inscripción en el nuevo Registro,” DOF, 4 March 1942, 2.
84 The Migration Service

138 El Universal, 15 May 1940.

139 Yankelevich, 2011, chapter 4.
140 Inclán Fuentes, 2013, chapter 3.
141 El Universal, 19 and 21 February 1942.
142 See Ota Mishima, 1982; Peddie, 2006; García, 2014; and Hernández Galindo, 2008
and 2011.
143 Inclán Fuentes, 2013, 103.
144 Ibid., 2013, 132ff.
145 AGN-DIPyS, box 421, file 01, and DOF, 1 October 1945.
146 Inclán Fuentes, 2013, 211ff.
147 See Piotrowski, 2004.
148 El Nacional, 23 December 1942.
149 Ibid., 27 June 1943.
150 See Carreño and Zack de Zukerman, 1998; Lukas, 1977.
151 Secretaría de Gobernación, 1945, 41.
152 Durán Ochoa, 1955, 173.
153 After 1946, for U.S. and Guatemalan citizens the cost was 500 pesos, for other
countries in the Americas the fee was raised to 3,500 pesos, and 5,000 pesos for the
rest of the world; 35,000 pesos was the required amount for an investor visa. El
Universal, 14 December 1946.
154 El Nacional, 2 August 1946.
155 “Ley General de Población,” DOF, 27 December 1947, 6.
156 AHINM, file 4/130.1930/823.
157 Masanz, 1980, 36.
158 AHINM, file 4/100 (07) 1929/94.
159 Ibid.
160 Ibid., 4/ 130.1930/823.
161 Ibid., 4/128/11-129/11.
162 Ibid., 4/100 (07) 1929/94.
163 Ibid.
164 Ibid.
165 Ibid.
166 Ibid., 4/161-159 (1930).
167 Ibid., 4/161-55 (1932).
168 Ibid., 4/161-1926-9.
169 Ibid., 4/161-252, vol. 1.
170 Ibid.
171 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Interior Minister,
5 March 1953.
172 AHINM, file 4/161-16 (1927).
173 Ibid., 4/161-159 (1930).
174 Ibid., 4/161-1926-8.
175 Ibid., 4/161-1926-7.
176 Ibid., 4/161-1925-5.
177 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Interior Minister,
5 March 1953.
178 Ibid.
179 Ibid.
180 See chapter 5.
181 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Interior Minister,
5 March 1953.
182 Ibid.
 The Migration Service 85

183 Ibid.
184 AHINM, file 4/161-252, vol. 1.
185 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Interior Minister,
5 March 1953.
186 Ibid.
187 Ibid.
188 Ibid.
189 Ibid.
190 Ibid.
191 Ibid.
192 Ibid.
193 Ibid.
194 Ibid.
195 Ibid.
196 Ibid.
3
THE MIGRATION BUSINESS

In his seminal 1955 study, Wendell Karl Gordon Schaeffer stated: “Mexico
continues to suffer the consequences of an ineffective, corrupt, and unprincipled
public administration.”1 This expert in government affairs considered that im-
proving the public sector required measures to address its lack of ethics and fiscal
laxity. Schaeffer believed that steps to tackle the ethical problems meant elim-
inating widespread dishonesty and the culture of the mordida, or bribery, and that
controls were needed to stop embezzlement and improper and excessive ex-
penditure. Achieving these objectives required three things: first, the appoint-
ment of suitable candidates for senior civil service posts, which required
coordinated and integrated duties to ensure their proper supervision; second, the
implementation of policies to hire competent and well-trained personnel; and
third, decision-making based on reliable and sufficient information, a measure
that presupposed the existence of proper research programs and reports. Gordon
Schaeffer made no attempt to hide his pessimism: “In Mexico, all of this is too
much to ask.”2
Schaeffer’s finding was nothing new. In the early 1940s, Lucio Mendieta y
Núñez, patriarch of modern sociology in Mexico3 and, as noted above, an active
member of the Population Advisory Council, published a lengthy study on
government bureaucracy, and reached the same categorical conclusion as
Schaeffer: “The mainly political incompetence of the senior bureaucracy, the
bureaucrats’ lack of vocation, discipline, and ethics explain the flaws in public
services.”4 Measures to remedy this situation depended on a suitable system for
selecting and supervising personnel, but essentially for creating a new institutional
framework to eliminate unethical practices. “We cannot excuse it, yet nor can we
completely decry the immorality of bureaucracy because, ultimately, it is merely a
reflection of the generalized lack of scruples [ … ]. No one has the right to throw
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256182-4
 The Migration Business 87

the first stone at bureaucracy; the rot that affects part of it is just one element of a
more general decay.”5
But this may not have been exclusively about unscrupulousness. Fernando
Escalante Gonzalbo has underlined that political corruption is “about mediating
to reduce the dissonance between society’s legal framework and actual practices.”
Indeed, corruption is part of the social order, “reproducing its forms, inequalities,
and contradictions,” and it has a clearly political significance by “meeting certain
social needs that form part of an informal order produced historically.”6 From the
outset, the Migration Service was rife with corruption and unethical conduct. It
was not an institutional anomaly; the irregularities enabled the operation of a
constantly improvised institution, without the right people or financial resources
to guarantee its operation. Notably lacking were the three conditions cited by
Gordon Shaeffer to remedy the public service’s ethical and fiscal deficiencies.
The emergence of these conducts refers back to the first norms designed to
regulate the entry and departure of Mexican nationals and foreigners, even before
the Migration Service was institutionalized after the revolution. The gap between
the law and the reality was widening as prohibitionism took root, and the
situation worsened with every new confidential circular. Secrecy increased ar-
bitrary applications of the migration regulations so that breaking the law turned
public-sector activities into a source of private enrichment.
Public officials committed extortion, although bribes offered by business-
people, traders, gestores (intermediaries for administrative matters), and migrants
were complementary aspects of the migration business. National and interna-
tional migrants were affected. Even tourists were caught up in the web of cor-
ruption; usually American, these new arrivals were treated with particular
indulgence from the late 1920s because of how their money supported parts of
the Mexican economy. Corruption was a constant source of concern for public
opinion and official rhetoric, for various reasons. First, it substantiated the fear of
the country’s contamination by foreign agents; the arrival of “others” threatened
an imaginary “us” that the laws were supposed to protect. The weight of the
“foreign danger” among the tributaries of creole nationalism, as referred to by
Claudio Lomnitz, ended up rationalizing corrupt practices in Mexico by asso-
ciating them with foreign forces that were challenging the country’s purity.7
Second, because corruption was a particular cause of anxiety for authorities in-
terested in showcasing a country that was back on track toward modernization
after a decade of revolution. Corruption, at least in its most visible forms, was the
subject of complaints, although the government’s much-vaunted efforts to fight it
never produced consistent results. Campaigns to tackle unethical behavior had
the virtue of quelling that anxiety by feeding into the fiction that combatting
corruption was a priority. Corruption was widely known and constantly referred
to in public, although almost nothing was done to eradicate it; on the contrary,
countermeasures had the perverse effect of causing it to spread. And, third,
corruption was a problem because its continued persistence and vigor normalized
88 The Migration Business

these practices until the authorities themselves became resigned in their skepti-
cism. That image described by Landa y Piña in 1953 and conveyed to the interior
minister, comparing the Migration Service to someone “watching a swelling river
[ … ] powerless to contain it or alter its course”8 largely referred to a corruption
that he himself was unwilling and unable to halt.
The earliest references to unscrupulous conduct were gathered by Landa
y Piña himself.9 The first health monitoring centers were set up in the first decade
of the 1900s in ports along the Pacific Coast. Private immigration and shipping
firms (which provided a service to the Far East and also connected Mexican ports
to U.S. and Canadian ports) provided the justification for checking passengers,
and for their detention in case of contagious diseases. These companies made
exorbitant profits, and their business conduct, Landa y Piña remarks, “did not
inspire honorability, because some of their health officers were clearly engaged in
criminal activities.” This led to the first outbreaks of “exotic” diseases imported
by immigrants who entered the country with authorizations obtained “in ex-
change for a few bills that unscrupulous delegates received from smugglers.”10
This marked the beginning of a profitable business, one that lasted decades and
later expanded as restrictions multiplied. In 1941, Nicolás Velarde, a doctor and
public health inspector who had worked since the start of the century in the port of
Salina Cruz, publicly revealed details of illegal operations involving senior public
officials in the Porfirio Díaz government. In 1907, Salina Cruz was the only port
with premises to observe the sick and equipped with a stove that disinfected using
dry vapor, the most modern equipment of the time to sterilize contaminated
material. One of the firms responsible for the trafficking of Chinese migrants, the
China Commercial S.S. Co. operated these installations. As indicated in chapter 2,
the shipping companies were responsible for these immigrants’ entire doc-
umentation. From their first arrival in Mexico, each immigrant carried a card
written in English and Chinese, containing their name, identification number, age,
profession, and marital status. These cards were stamped by the Mexican consul in
Hong Kong and also signed by a Chinese doctor stationed in that port and by a
Mexican doctor attached to the consulate. This procedure attested to the migrants’
good health, and this was largely the case. No sick passengers were detected during
the first disembarkations. As a preventive measure, passengers were concentrated
for ten days and, before they were allowed to board a train, which generally took
them to northwestern Mexico, they had to be certified free of any contagious
disease. This monitoring system was soon compromised after company re-
presentatives, in collusion with government officials, arrived in Salina Cruz to
demand less stringent restrictions and for passengers to board their trains without
delay. Some delegates, such as Nicolás Velarde and another doctor named Medina
Jiménez, refused to follow these “recommendations,” and detected people infected
with contagious diseases among those carrying identification cards that supposedly
certified their good health. Many of these sick passengers were returned to the port
of origin, others died in Salina Cruz, or on board the vessels.
 The Migration Business 89

The decision taken by these two doctors to continue with the health in-
spections earned them various years in prison on the charge of receiving bribes
from the shipping companies. The court proceedings took several years, and at
one point the judge presiding over the case asked Velarde “whether I had any
strong influence with Porfirio Díaz to grant us our freedom, because there really
was no crime to be punished, but an order had been given for us to rot away in
jail.” In this doctor’s opinion, the vice-president’s office had given the order and
that the vice-president himself, Ramón Corral, charged a commission of 10 silver
pesos for each Chinese immigrant brought to Mexico.11 These doctors also
discovered how the sick passengers, some of whom were seriously ill, carried
certificates of good health; it transpired that passengers were swapping their
identities at stop-overs in Korea and Japan. Migrants in good health were re-
placed by the sick; the former re-embarked for the United States while the
latter—“complete runts” in the words of Velarde—were sent to Mexico carrying
the healthy migrants’ identification cards.12
The illegal trafficking of Chinese citizens was a large-scale transnational
business that, as shown by Elliott Young,13 saw Mexico as a stepping-stone for
those eager to reach the United States. Shipping companies, government au-
thorities, businesspeople, and Asian communities all formed part of an extensive
network that stretched all along the Pacific coast from Central America up to
Canada, and that also comprised the Gulf of Mexico for the transit of Asians who
disembarked in Cuba. The Chinese became the quintessentially undesirable
foreigners and the stigmatization of their presence made them synonymous with
illegality. In the shadow of this status, often real and sometimes imaginary, all
manner of corrupt practices developed, and involved the Migration Service au-
thorities, as described in the following section.

Vectors of Corruption after the Revolution

From the mid-1920s, Mexico applied increasingly strict measures to document
and register its own nationals and foreigners entering the country. These reg-
ulations produced more red tape, further empowering a barely professionalized
public sector, a situation that engendered practices that bridged the gap between
the new regulatory demands and a reality largely disconnected from the rule of
law. Legality only applied on paper; the new legislation was not accompanied by
trained personnel and sufficient budgetary resources. Indeed, instead of com-
bating illegal practices, the new regulations perversely encouraged people to
violate the laws and increase corruption.
Entry and departure authorizations, the granting of permits and visas, and
various other trámites all appear connected to corrupt migration practices.
Dishonesty and abuses were rife throughout the Migration Service, and flagrantly
so in the agencies across the country. Each border faced particular issues. On the
frontier with Guatemala, the incorporation of the neighboring country’s
90 The Migration Business

communities on Mexican soil following the border treaty signed by the two
countries (Tratado de Límites de 1882) blurred the nationality of many residents,
since former Guatemalans who had become Mexicans were never documented as
such. Furthermore, a continuous flow of temporary workers mixed with the
descendants of those affected by the treaty of 1882.14 From the 1920s onward, the
legal status of those workers and the hiring and working conditions on the coffee
plantations triggered social conflicts and illegal practices involving migration
agents, public and military officials, Guatemalan campesinos and Chiapanecan
businesspeople. Meanwhile, the largely ignored border with Belize was also a
space associated with temporary employment in the timber industry, with the
particular characteristic that the workers were of African descent in a context
when Blacks were considered undesirable immigrants.
The northern border, the main gateway for entries and departures, was a
powerful magnet for Mexican and foreign migrants attracted by the strong U.S.
economy. This region was also notable for specific aspects related to the growing
“vice industries”—cantinas, casinos, horse-racing, brothels, drug-trafficking—that
experienced a boom after the U.S. government passed the Harrison Act (1914) that
regulated the manufacture and distribution of drugs and prohibited the production
and consumption of alcohol in the Volstead Act (1919).15 The Mexican side of the
border provided cover for these activities, many of them the result of investments
by Americans, either directly or in partnership with Mexicans. In this way, the
“industry” followed an ambiguous path: on the one hand, an attempt was made to
implement prohibitionist measures in line with the moralizing policies of a section
of the revolutionary elite; on the other hand, in practice such illicit activities were
treated with complicit tolerance as they provided substantial tax revenues to the
northern states and federal territories.16 All manner of corrupt practices flourished
under the auspices of this “industry,” particularly the migration agencies’ acts of
abuse, extortion, and mistreatment of U.S. “tourists,” Mexican travelers and mi-
grants, and foreign immigrants.
The agencies at seaports were not exempt from “irregularities.” On the Pacific
coast, these issues were linked to Asian migration, while the agencies on the Gulf
coast were associated with arrivals from Europe and the Middle East. In short, the
Migration Service’s institutionalization requires understanding the increase in
migration-related corruption in a context marked by four vectors. First, the U.S.
prohibitions and restrictions on migration impacted Mexico by increasing the
volume of foreign immigrants. Mexico became both a destination and a country
of transit; the desire to reach the United States boosted the illegal smuggling of
foreigners through networks based on extortion and corruption. Here we should
not forget that such abuses in fact met a national demand, because the U.S.
migration restrictions affected the Mexicans themselves, so that the illegal mi-
gration to the United States, which consisted mainly of Mexicans, was swelled by
foreigners. Second, the growing number of foreigners prompted successive
Mexican governments to implement restrictive legislation that sought to register
 The Migration Business 91

and control the flow of foreign immigrants and Mexican emigrants. The ob-
ligations enshrined by these laws encouraged all manner of corrupt practices,
including a growing number of intermediaries and gestores who set about un-
dermining the laws, or complying with them by making under-the-table pay-
ments for the services provided by the migration authorities and agents. Third,
increased corruption, particularly along the northern border, was linked to the
expansion of the aforementioned “vice industry,” introducing the “tourist” ca-
tegory in the migration regulations, largely to meet the demand of services of-
fered by that “industry.” Finally, aggravating corruption on the southern border
were the disputes surrounding a growing demand for Guatemalan labor on coffee
plantations, within the context of problems derived from the poorly defined
nationality of former Guatemalan residents and their descendants born in Mexico
within the framework of the 1882 border treaty.

Alcohol, Abuses, and Mistreatment

In May 1932, two migration agents, the brothers Everardo and José Luis
Cárdenas, posted to Nogales, Sonora, boarded a train packed with American
holidaymakers bound for Phoenix and Tucson. Shortly after the train departed,
and “for no other reason than their complete drunkenness, they unholstered their
pistols intending to shoot.” Railway and customs employees were able to disarm
them, averting “more dire consequences, because of the danger posed to some
American travelers, including ladies, young women, and children.”17 The case
became the subject of public debate, with one editorial piece asking: “Is this how
to attract tourism? When those with the greatest responsibility for being up-
standing and hospitable behave like gun-toting maniacs, striking fear into the
hearts of women and children.”18 The scandal grew, and KWX radio station in
Nogales, Sonora, voiced criticism of the Migration Service’s agency for em-
ploying unscrupulous individuals, hired on the recommendation of civil and
military officials who feel they have the authority to act like petty dictators.”19
The Chamber of Commerce of Nogales, Arizona, meanwhile, lodged a com-
plaint with the Interior Ministry. The scandal did not blow over and an in-
vestigation led to the dismissal of the agents. A warrant was issued for their arrest
on charges of drunkenness, making threats with a firearm, and disturbing the
public order. Four years later, the case was closed “because the statute of lim-
itations had already expired for the crime” without investigative police managing
to prosecute the former public officials.20
Alcoholism was a constant source of complaints. In March 1934, national rail
employees accused three inspectors of causing a ruckus aboard various trains. In
one case, on a train between Mexico City and Veracruz, Roberto Carreño and
Santiago Tamayo spent the journey harassing a woman traveling with her foreign
husband. This situation “prompted the lady to leave the dining car. Carreño then
addressed the husband, interrogating him about his entry into Mexico and asking
92 The Migration Business

him for his immigration card or papers.” In view of “Carreño’s obvious drun-
kenness,” a fracas broke out with the train’s conductors. Tamayo, who was
equally drunk, joined the fray after waking up from his slumber, because “he had
fallen asleep at one of the dining car’s tables.” The railway company’s complaints
filed with the Interior Ministry led to an investigation that immediately brought
to light a similar episode also involving Roberto Carreño along with another
migration employee, Alfonso R. Íñiguez, on board a train to Guadalajara: “Both
agents were in a drunken state and were sounding off in a first-class car and in the
Pullman, paying no regard to the families on board.” In mid-1934, the three
agents received punishment: Carreño forfeited five days of salary, compared to
three days for Tamayo and Iñiguez, apart from receiving “a record of misconduct
in their personnel files.”21
The alcohol-driven abuses of migration officers worsened, and involved
various levels of the public administration, revealing that municipal authorities
were subordinate to the whims of the federal agents. In November 1929, a secret
police agent attached to the Interior Ministry was sent to Manzanillo, from where
he reported that the head of the local migration office, Tirso Guerra, “had to be
tied town to his bed in an attempt to stop his drinking, because he had failed to
turn up to work for one month.”22 In late 1937, David Escobar, a refrigeration
engineer, was traveling along the border between Chiapas and Guatemala. In
various communities he witnessed how four migration officers, inebriated and
brandishing pistols, abused Chinese immigrants and Mexicans without distinc-
tion: in a letter to the Interior Minister, he wrote “I’ve seen with my own eyes
one of the most shameful sights that besmirches our honor as a nation.” In
Tapachula, Tuxtla Chico, and Pueblo Nuevo, migration agents who were “blind
drunk, waving pistols around, firing off rounds” abused Chinese traders by de-
manding their identification cards, and then frequenting cantinas and brothels
without wanting to pay their bill. After identifying each one of those public
officials, he reported that “the strangest thing is that the local authorities do
nothing because they say that they are federal agents, whereas Indians who have
just one drink and cause no bother are marched off to the jail.” Escobar con-
cluded: “Do you not consider, Señor Ministro, that such behavior is an em-
barrassment for us and for the government?”23 The Interior Ministry ordered an
investigation. This included a request for reports from the municipal authorities.
The municipal president of Tuxtla Chico, for example, denied “that federal
employees have committed abuses against foreigners or individuals,” detailing
that it was untrue that “the head of the local Population Service is always in a
state of drunkenness.”24 In contrast, an agent of the Interior Ministry itself
confirmed all the complaints:

The accusations made against the agent Florencio Flores Gómez are valid,
in the view of the head of the Tapachula-based Interministerial
Demographic Commission, because someone from the Commission
 The Migration Business 93

once had to step in to stop him from firing his pistol, completely drunk,
while standing by the door of the Hotel Berlín, which is opposite our
offices. We received frequent reports about his outrageous behavior in the
company of Alberto Le Maire, and the police have only abstained from
intervening because of the respect given to federal employees.25

Two other employees, Mariano Pérez Sánchez and Enrique Mier Troncoso,
despite “habitually imbibing alcohol, did not stir up trouble and are not con-
nected to Flores Gómez’s group.”26 The case even reached the desk of Manuel
Gamio, head of the Demographic Department at the time. Reporting to his
superiors, he revealed that, although a request had been made to transfer the most
troublesome agents, because Flores Sánchez “set a bad example for the other,
reliable employees,” he requested their immediate dismissal, because otherwise he
would continue “spreading disrepute wherever he is posted.” He requested that
the three other agents be “severely reprimanded” with the warning that they
would face severe penalties in case of a repeat offence.27
The complaints of Mexican nationals and foreigners against migration per-
sonnel demanded higher ethical standards for an institution that brought shame
on a country governed by public officials who, from Mexico City, insisted on the
need “to eliminate all employees who failed to carry out their migration work.”28
In view of these statements, a group of Mexicans resident in Columbus, New
Mexico, wrote to the interior minister Juan Cabral, urging him to put an end to
the situation experienced in the migration office of Palomas, Chihuahua:

Mostly when we need to cross the border, the supervisors are not in their
office. You cannot begin to imagine the hassles we face each time we arrive
in Mexico. When they’re not drunk, we have to pay for someone to fetch
them from their homes. As far as we know these officers are compadres,
that’s why there’s such chaos and they cover up for one another.29

Corruption was most obvious among public officials who had direct contact with
the public. The complaints reveal a range of strategies to obtain income illegally.
In December 1931, two Mexican workers in the United States applied at the
Ciudad Juárez migration office for a certificate to confirm their status as repa-
triated citizens, exempting from the customs tariffs for bringing in their personal
belongings. The female employee at the office gave them one copy of the cer-
tificate instead of the three required to complete the paperwork for the tax au-
thorities. The migrants returned to the office to request the missing copies, and
the office employee proceeded to charge one peso for each one. Refusing to
pay the required “surcharge,” the two Mexicans decided to file a complaint for
undue fees. The responses from the Ciudad Juárez agency’s personnel when
questioned by the official sent to investigate the case reveal the normality of the
practice that was the subject of the complaint. Esperanza López, the office
94 The Migration Business

employee in question, accepted having requested the bribe “because it is standard

practice, and she sees all the other employees doing it too.” During questioning,
another office worker confirmed that it was indeed customary, although in his
defense he argued that “they don’t do this with everyone, only those they see
have the money,” adding that the extra charge was trifling compared to the
amounts demanded by the gestores staked out in the vicinity of the offices and
who offered their services to the repatriated citizens. Señorita López was fired, no
action was taken against her fellow co-worker, and to prevent “future problems”
the municipal president was requested to place a police officer at the door of the
migration agency, “to ward off the unscrupulous coyotes.”30
Tourists, foreign immigrants, and Mexican nationals were all victims of this
greed for profit. Attempts to extract bribes from Mexican travelers were not the
exception. In early December 1937, Luis Monroy Durán was on a train to the
port of Veracruz when an agent:

Wearing the Migration Service uniform approached me to ask if I was

Mexican by birth, to which I answered in the affirmative, without being
able to prove it because our country did not have identification cards. Since
this agent considered I did not look Mexican, he wanted to charge me a
10 peso fine, a sum I flatly refused to pay.31

Monroy Durán complained about this incident to the deputy interior minister,
adding that the agent had tried to charge the same fine to three other passengers
“to whose nationalities I could not attest, although the receipts they were given
were not printed and bore the migration office stamp, they were not
numbered.”32
The charging of unofficial tariffs to tourists aboard trains or at road check-
points along the northern border were daily events: “The inspector charged 1
dollar for looking after the car or as protection money,” according to an in-
vestigation after a group of U.S. tourists filed a complaint in San Luis, Sonora, in
1932.33
Abuses were the norm, and government officials often became trapped in
these webs of bribery. In one case, migration employees “detained” and extorted
a lawyer, who was working at the time as an agent of the Federal Prosecutor’s
Office, together with various district judges from Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo
after they crossed over the international bridge in the city of Nuevo Laredo.34
Unlawful charges were the most frequent crimes. Delegations along the
border demanded payments for trámites that migrants had already paid for in their
places of origin; official fees were increased arbitrarily or else charged for pro-
cedures that should have been free. These practices even took place in relation to
jobs that the migration agency did not handle directly, for example, when a
request was made for municipal authorities to help register foreign arrivals to
Mexico. As indicated above, the idea of drawing up a register of foreigners had
 The Migration Business 95

existed since the early 1930s and came to pass several decades later. With each
new attempt, the Mexico City authorities received complaints of a “scandalous
trafficking in the registration of foreigners by some local municipal authorities in
the states where these registers have been put in place.” The complaints refer to
municipal authorities charging more than the official 10 peso fee “on all manner
of pretexts.”35

Mistreatment of Women
Migration regulations treated women as minors, and they attracted suspicion
when traveling unaccompanied. In fact, the law prohibited the entry of women
under the age of twenty-five who were traveling without the consent of a
“respected” resident or family member in the country.36 Migration agents
capitalized on this regulation. For example, in the port of Veracruz they
charged as much as 500 pesos in mordidas for unaccompanied women.
A Russian ballerina was forced to pay this amount for “making the mistake of
coming to Mexico without taking the precaution of bringing the required
paperwork.”37 Some years later, migration agents extorted Pilar F. Viuda de
Valdez, a Spanish widow resident in the port city, on the pretext that her
papers were not in order, and they also demanded 500 pesos “to sort out these
irregularities.”38
There were even more serious abuses at border crossings where there were
instances of officials demanding sexual favors to resolve “irregularities” or even
for simple trámites. Such exchanges were the norm in brothels, but these prac-
tices did not only take place in such places. In December 1940, Wilhemine V. de
Clausse, a woman married to a Mexican citizen and resident in San Antonio,
Texas, crossed the border in the company of her husband on their way to Mexico
City. In Nuevo Laredo, she received no papers at all. The Mexican officials,
without any legal justification, told her that she could enter the country without
any paperwork because she was married to a Mexican citizen. Some weeks later,
she received the news that her father was gravely ill, and she decided to return on
her own to San Antonio. Upon arrival in Nuevo Laredo, two migration agents
detained her on the grounds that she was undocumented. In her complaint, de
Clausse stated that one of the agents said that “Texans are neither Mexican nor
American citizens, and that he would have to investigate why and how I entered
Mexico, before authorizing my departure.” The other agent, meanwhile, “in-
timated to me that if I wanted to have a drink with him, and if I showed him
sexual favors, then he would let me cross the border without any further
trouble.” The agents prevented me from contacting the U.S. consul in Nuevo
Laredo, and after detaining me for a whole afternoon, they told her that
“she would have to spend the night in the jail or go to the hotel with them.” The
detained woman found a chance to escape and crossed the international bridge
helped by U.S. agents.39
96 The Migration Business

Similar complaints were made on the southern border. Victoria León Gracia, a
Mexican who lived in Suchiate, Chiapas, visited the migration agency in March
1945 to request a pass to cross the border to visit Ayutla in Guatemala. The agent
in the office “asked me to sleep with him.” Doña Victoria ended her letter to the
Interior Minister by saying, “on behalf of all the women in this nation, I would
like to ask the authorities to tell us when it became a requirement to sleep with
migration officers in order to be issued a border pass.”40
Such abuses of women compounded the problem of other, everyday corrupt
practices. The trade in local entry permits to Mexican nationals and foreigners
was one of many businesses on the southern border. In 1940, a confidential report
submitted to Andrés Landa y Piña about the office of Tuxtla el Chico mentioned
an employee there who was “always so drunk that it was an embarrassment to
find him lying in a stupor outside cantinas,” while the office supervisor was
notorious for his “amoral behavior.” Passes for local border crossings “were the
source of outrageous abuses,” because they were issued for between 50 pesos and
50 centavos, depending on the “individual’s financial means, and the office su-
pervisor pocketed all this money.” What was more, “people have to wait three or
four days to receive [the pass], because all the employees apart from one are drunk
the whole time.” The situation on the southern border is “truly shameful due to
the conduct of completely unethical individuals. Worst of all, they boast about
their dishonesty, help themselves to money wherever they can find it, to the
detriment of honorable employees whose reputations are sullied by the unethical
behavior of their coworkers.”41

Gringo Visitors
The 1926 Migration Law faced strong criticism in the United States because the
requirement for tourist visas jeopardized the business of cantinas, gambling, and
prostitution that existed thanks to the permanent border passes that were only
valid for a few hours. Visitors now had to apply for their pass at a Mexican
consulate or secure a local visitor identification card from the Mexican migration
agency. Delayed paperwork, these agencies’ disorganization, and blatant cor-
ruption threatened the profitable business of American “visitors” who crossed
over each week into Nuevo Laredo “just to have fun,” in the words of one local
newspaper article.42
The argument was that this was a “preventive” measure to deter undesirable
visitors and prostitutes. The inspector himself, Fernando Félix, countered these
complaints by pointing out that respectable foreigners wishing to enter Mexico
had nothing to fear because the migration law was aimed at “undesirables, drug-
addicts, drunks, and people of all kinds whose presence were potentially detri-
mental for the country.”43 Meanwhile, he reported confidentially, the migration
laws had not only prompted “thousands of complaints by Americans but also by
Mexicans from Nuevo Laredo, including the municipal president himself, “who
 The Migration Business 97

told me that this was a restrictive measure, because the people of Laredo were not
accustomed to completing any paperwork to cross the border.” Fernando Félix
pointed out that the municipal president was owner of one of the largest cantinas
and cabarets in the area, and an agent for a brewery.44
Many of the Migration Service’s employees in Nuevo Laredo were involved
in these businesses. The agent Antonio Merla, for example, “has permitted
the entry of undesirables, such as women of ill repute, later seen by his side
in the cabarets.” The same agent was accused of stealing from foreigners dozens
of identification cards that were undoubtedly then sold, with their photographs
removed, to American citizens. There were constant reports of agents au-
thorizing the entry of “American artists” who crossed this border without any
papers to work in cabarets and brothels. For the inspector Fernando Félix, a
group of employees at the Nuevo Laredo office were a “shocking mafia,”
because they charged undue fees, embezzled funds, including the money that
should have been spent on water. They also demanded money to buy fodder
for non-existent horses, and they even extorted American citizens by con-
fiscating their movie cameras on the pretext that “they recorded shameful
scenes that showed disrespect for the good name and reputation of the Mexican
people.” After an investigation lasting several weeks, he noted that these agents’
lifestyles were not commensurate with their salaries: they frequented cabarets
daily and “facilitated women for American citizens”; these individuals “be-
haved atrociously and unscrupulously.”45 The inspector concluded with a re-
commendation to “clean out all the dregs, setting an example for those who
remain. This may seem harsh but it’s also necessary.”46 Some months later,
almost the entire staff of the Nuevo Laredo office was removed, beginning with
the head of the office, Carlos Hoffman. Press reports referred to wrongful
applications of the law that had generated several complaints from people when
they had to cross the border or even on their return. These were employees
who created obstacles for which there was no legal basis, “creating shameful
situations.”47
Weeks after this “purge,” the well-known chronicler Jacobo Dalevuelta48
visited Nuevo Laredo to draw up a detailed report. He interviewed railway,
migration, and customs employees, as well as Mexican and foreign travelers. The
first complaint that he published dealt with migration agents’ abuses of those
entering or departing the country, charging a “50-centavo mordida”—an amount
already paid as a fee at Mexican consulates or in the headquarters of the migration
offices.49 The reports painted a dismal picture. For various days, his articles filled
the front pages of El Universal. They detailed the dwindling cross-border traffic to
and from the United States, a bureaucracy of “paperwork, paperwork, and more
paperwork,” and routine abuses and acts of corruption. Upon his return to the
capital, Dalevuelta was summoned by the interior ministry’s chief clerk, Gonzalo
Vázquez Vela, who asked him about of his observations in Nuevo Laredo. The
journalist revealed the details of that interview:
98 The Migration Business

I told him about the adventures of Señor Hoffman, as no complaints had

yet been received about his replacement, Señor Dávila. I referred to what
people told me in Laredo about the treatment of those arriving in Mexico,
about their pilgrimages from the train station to the migration offices, about
the complaints that drivers made against these offices because they are
prevented from providing transport for passengers unmolested, I told him
about the daily pilgrimages of foreign hustlers and drunks who were able to
cross the border unmolested, etc., etc., etc.50

The 1926 legislation that was designed partly to promote tourism soon became an
obstacle for the entry of American citizens. Jacobo Dalevuelta became aware of
this paradox when interviewing American tourists who reacted to the “diffi-
culties” and delayed paperwork by choosing to take their vacations within their
own country instead.51
The pressure exerted from Mexico City began to make things flow more
smoothly. In February 1928, the directors of the customs office in Nuevo Laredo
reported that tourists were once again being welcomed “after a purge of the many
unethical practices and violations of the Law.”52 In fact, migration paperwork
was just one obstacle, because at many border crossings the migration offices were
part of a bureaucratic network that included administrative procedures involving
customs and health inspections. Some of this red tape was reduced, and at various
points the requirements to obtain visitor cards were “temporarily” suspended,
and, in the case of the customs offices, franchises were authorized for “groups of
visitors” to enter; however, the “irregularities” continued affecting those who
were crossing the border as individuals.53 Pressure from the “vice industry” led to
the cancelation of local visitor cards, because in 1950 in the border area the
Migration Service only questioned visitors, and if they stated that they were
“Americans, they were taken at their word and allowed entry,” said the head of
the Tijuana delegation, adding that otherwise, “considering that the city’s live-
lihood depends on this local tourism, the economy would be greatly harmed.”54
In a context dominated by businesses of dubious legality, there were naturally
exchanges between migration agents and the owners or managers of cantinas,
casinos, and brothels. In early 1932, in Mexicali, it was known that “the Owl
cabaret was paying a monthly kickback to the migration office for services ren-
dered.”55 These “subsidies” were in exchange for permitting unlawful activities,
authorizing the entry and departure of people without papers, and even keeping
border crossings open in contravention of official opening hours.
The bribes also made up for budgetary shortfalls. The agents who performed
checks on the trains on northern railway routes “travel for twenty-four hours
straight on each journey, and as they do not receive any official travel expenses,
they face dangers and difficulties when trying to perform their jobs properly.”56
These poorly paid employees were driven to extortion in order to “do their
duty.” These workers were also inadequately trained and in most cases did not
 The Migration Business 99

speak English, and they always received the recommendation “to wear uniform
during working hours.”57 But there were also criminal networks, firmly oper-
ating along the blurred line between public service and crime, as reported in the
findings of a police investigation submitted to the Interior Minister in 1938,
warning that in Nuevo Laredo “the most serious and honorable people report as
fact that the most powerful drug smugglers are the Director of the Customs
Office, the Municipal President, and the Director of the Migration Office.”58

Agents and Coyotes

Corruption was not an anomaly of the postrevolutionary years, but simply a
continuation of well-established practices, despite the return to a constitutional
regime promising an end to unscrupulousness. In early 1919, gushing with op-
timism, one columnist celebrated the arrival of a new epoch in the nation’s
history when it seemed feasible to eliminate the custom expressed in the proverb
tener poder para poder tener (to have power to be able to have something).59 This
positive outlook was short-lived and within a couple of years there were con-
tinuous calls for better conduct from officials “to protect people from fraud and
the public administration from complicities and embarrassments.” This was a
demand to eradicate all the practices “that had become the norm: using official
positions not to provide services to the people” but for personal enrichment. In
another opinion piece, the author wrote that “not even among us is there the
moral censure that makes it possible to decry the corruption cultivated and
practiced in the shadows of the position held.”60
Complaints about the Migration Service featured prominently in press reports
in the capital. Articles, chronicles, and opinion pieces expressed their discontent
and when scandals erupted the authorities reacted with their customary pledge of
launching anti-corruption campaigns.
In a country where emigrants outnumbered immigrants, one of the main
sources of extortion, were the Mexican participants of the Bracero Program,
detained by migration agents at border crossings. In 1923, in exchange for
“different amounts,” agents allowed Mexican migrants to approach the inter-
national bridge of Ciudad Juárez, according to the complaint filed by the
Mexican consul in El Paso and the municipal president of Ciudad Juárez.61 In
Tijuana, meanwhile, it was revealed that the officials in charge of the migration
offices were also inspectors at the casinos, so that the same government authority
enjoyed power over migration and activities that formed part of the “vice
industries.”62
As a result of the increase in this type of complaint, in autumn 1925 the
Interior Minister ordered an investigation of all the Migration Service’s offices
along the northern border. Among other inspectors, Luis Vega y Pavón was
dispatched to Baja California and Sonora to ascertain:
100 The Migration Business

whether it is indeed true, as has been claimed, that one or more employees
in those offices are engaged in improper practices, accepting the entry of
illegal immigrants, mainly Asians, and also allowing the unlawful transit
into the United States of foreigners and Mexican nationals.63

Moreover, to address the issue of the casinos and cabarets, an investigation was
carried out to discover “whether migration personnel are responsible in any way
for negligence in their supervision of the border crossings or illegal entry of
people linked to such businesses.”64
All these practices took place in the migration offices, at a time when the 1908
law was still in force, a piece of legislation that essentially focused on controlling
Asian migration. The 1926 law introduced new elements to deal with visas as
well as migration registers and controls. Shipping and railway companies were
previously responsible for keeping records, but after 1926 the Migration and
Consular Services had the obligation to issue visas, along with a variety of ad-
ministrative and statistical duties.
The new law introduced new forms of extortion and abuses against migrants.
Coyotes began to expand their range of activities; whereas previously they were
only engaged in the “illegal trafficking of Mexican braceros into the United
States,”65 they now begun offering to facilitate paperwork within new contexts
of control and regulations. There were certainly material obstacles preventing
compliance with the law, but it is also true that many agents turned the law into
an excuse for extortion, blurring the boundaries between coyotes and officials
who were often blatantly colluding with them; sometimes they were the same
people.
Within months of the entry into force of the 1926 law, complaints were
lodged against abuses by “groups of bureaucratic criminals who assail im-
migrants to take their money on legal pretenses.” Far from ordering and reg-
ulating migration, the recently approved legislation had the effect of
“increasing unscrupulousness by opening the floodgates for rampant abuses by
public officials acting like coyotes by stalking travelers in the vicinity of our
customs offices.”66 The complaint referred to the situation in the Nuevo
Laredo office that employed some twenty agents, most of whom were posted to
the border crossing post, to check the documentation of train passengers upon
their arrival and departure from the station, and to register, complete ques-
tionnaires and forms in the office.
Braceros provided much of the business. The procedure for their departure from
Mexico required a card issued by the Migration Service, accompanied by a birth
certificate and a visa granted by a U.S. consulate near the emigrant’s place of re-
sidence. Each one of these administrative procedures, added to the corresponding
photographs, cost between 1 and 20 pesos, in addition to the 8 dollar “head tax”
payable by Mexicans upon entering the United States.67
 The Migration Business 101

A report of June 1926 revealed that in Nuevo Laredo most braceros lacked the
proper documentation and they had to put their papers in order at that border
crossing. These emigrants provided easy pickings for the “countless coyotes in the
area.”68 One of the many strands to this business was currency exchange.
Estimates suggest that this area had around thirty bureaus de change, and at least
another thirty coyotes on streets around the railway station “who work in this
business and do not miss any opportunity to take advantage of these poor, naïve
folk.” Whether or not they had their papers in order, when getting off the train,
the braceros received offers to help them cross the border without undetected by
the Mexican and American migration officers. It was a tempting offer: 2 or
3 dollars as opposed to the 18 dollars for a visa issued by the consulate and the
“head tax.” For those who had to remain in situ, the coyotes offered a smor-
gasbord of services: lodging, food, cantinas, prostitution, and gambling. The
coyotes even provided services to those crossing the Mexican border with their
papers in order, by helping them with their applications at the U.S. migration
offices, particularly with health checks and the lengthy rounds of questioning
when the braceros had to meet various requirements such as knowing how to
read and write.
Migration agents and coyotes worked blatantly in cahoots. Some complaints,
for example, referred to how braceros at the migration delegation in Nuevo
Laredo were coerced into buying bus tickets for their onward journey in the
United States. In collusion with transport companies in Laredo, Texas, they were
sold tickets to San Antonio for 3.10 dollars when the fare paid in Laredo was
2.50 dollars.69
These organizations operated on both sides of the border, facilitating Mexican
migrants’ round trips. In this case, services included bus transport to the inter-
national bridges, luggage services, lodging, currency exchange, and, once back in
Mexico, bribes to Mexican customs officials to bring into the country domestic
goods, and even to introduce firearms, a profitable business for gun sellers in El
Paso, Texas.70
On the trains heading north, it was common to find advertising for coyotes
who gave “free advice” to arrange border crossings into the United States; “if you
don’t have money, we can obtain [the permit] in exchange for a small advance
payment” and if the migrants did have money, the coyotes offered to “exchange
it at the best rate in town.”71
Exceptionally, reports point to a lack of coyotes operating on the northern
border. The ebb in the flow of emigration and tourism reduced their presence.
In 1929, Piedras Negras in Coahuila saw dwindling numbers of Mexican
emigrants after an insurgency known as the Escobar Revolution. For these
reasons, a migration agent mentioned: “I am delighted to report that no
coyotes are operating as such in the city, and our fellow Mexicans are only
rarely exploited by smugglers, money changers, hoteliers, or photographers.”72
Such businesses were profitable over and above migration issues. For example,
102 The Migration Business

in the spring of 1928, owners of hotels and photographic studios in Nuevo

Laredo complained because:

the migration office no longer has a presence at the railway station to pick up
the braceros who are heading to the United States after travelling up from
the south. They are given the freedom to arrange their own passports, find
their own lodging, and take their photographs wherever is cheapest for
them.73

The coyotes’ activities permeated the entire migration administration, from the
agencies on the borders to the headquarters. On various afternoons in April 1944,
a group of gypsies gathered on the forecourt of the interior ministry building to
await a decision on their residence permits. This episode would have been of
minor significance had the head of the Migration Department not detected the
presence of “power brokers,” “coyotes,” and “intermediaries” offering their
services to arrange these foreigners’ paperwork. The most senior migration of-
ficial considered this an unseemly spectacle, “because the flagrant activities of
power brokers give the appearance of a public auction,” and therefore he re-
quested the police to take appropriate measures to prevent this “shameful
sight.”74
This raises the question: What was shameful, the presence of coyotes, or the
fact that they were operating in plain sight? It is hard to know, though probably
both. Perhaps, when faced with the failure of all initiatives to purge the coyotes
from the Migration Department’s offices, the hope was that they would at least go
about their business discreetly.
Gestores entered the migration scene in the late 1920s. The capital’s news-
papers reported on the concern about the presence of these figures in the interior
ministry offices. In early 1929, Ignacio García Téllez, chief clerk of that gov-
ernment department at the time, reported that:

following efforts to combat abuses by high-ranking employees taking

advantage of their connections to top-level figures within the Interior
Ministry, the Ministry has put an end to the those boasting of their ability
to peddle influence to secure permits for foreigners’ illegal entry [ … ]
intensifying the prosecution of all acts of corruption within the
administration.75

One year later, interior minister Carlos Riva Palacio, denied all reports of
“coyotaje in foreigners’ registration applications, and in the paying of sums of
money for the issue of foreigner identification cards.” Subsequently, Rafael
Jiménez Castro, head of the Migration Department, added that “there is not a
single piece of evidence that could justify the existence of coyotes.”76 A few years
later, the same Rafael Jiménez Castro was forced to resign after complaints and an
 The Migration Business 103

investigation into a network of coyotes that handled immigrants’ documents.77

The interior minister at the time, Silvano Barba González, announced the launch
of a campaign against “the coyotes exploiting foreigners,” and in parallel an-
nounced the creation of offices “run by unquestionably respectable and com-
petent employees”78 who would handle all migration paperwork free of charge.
Soon afterward, officials within the ministry ordered an investigation into a law
firm located a stone’s throw away that promised a rapid processing of migration
and naturalization papers for foreigners. There was an interest in establishing a
possible link between the owners of that firm and a ministry employee; although
such a connection could not be proved, there were “very strong influences.”79 In
mid-1942, given the evidence of coercion and extortion, the same ministry
announced a complete purge of the department in charge of investigating foreign
residents’ activities, pledging to hire “individuals with impeccable ethical cre-
dentials” for this purpose.80 Eight years later it was the turn of Adolfo Ruiz
Cortines, interior minister, to acknowledge that he was “focusing on cleaning up
his ministry.”81 The existence of a network of coyotes that included employees
from this government ministry became public knowledge; on sale were false
migration registrations that were recorded in documents pilfered from the
Migration Department. Bernardo Zarco Zepeda, a driver at the ministry, was the
leader of this group that charged as much as 1,500 pesos to register and document
foreigners. “I needed to make some money to pay my household expenses be-
cause I have a very low wage as a driver,”82 he told the newspapers. Some weeks
later, another network was uncovered. This one included migration inspectors, a
Migration Department employee, and a Spanish immigrant, owner of a general
store that had become a “branch of the Interior Ministry” that issued immigrant
identification cards removed from the Interior Ministry’s offices.83 Foreigners
paid between 2,000 and 3,000 pesos for a trámite that started out in the Migration
Department’s offices and ended (with the successful outcome a foregone con-
clusion) in the Spanish immigrant’s general store. After her arrest, the secretary
confessed that there was no supervision of the records, so that anyone in the office
could gain access to them. After their arraignment, employees were often released
on bail, courtesy of the Interior Ministry’s Workers’ Union.84
Foreigners of prohibited or restricted nationalities had their own coyote
networks that connected their ports of origin to the ports of destination in
Mexico, making it possible to surmount the obstacles imposed by the confidential
circulars. Therefore, for example, from the late 1920s restrictions were placed on
Syrian and Lebanese migrants from entering or even re-entering. Gaspar O.
Almanza, the Mexican consul in Beirut, reported in 1930 that despite his refusal
to grant visas in accordance with the agreements to limit the entry of Lebanese
citizens, “it is an open secret that for 300 pesos” a Lebanese group in Mexico,
including high-profile members of the community, would facilitate the permits,
earning them fabulous profits.85
104 The Migration Business

The Chinese
Chinese migrants provided an important source of profit in the trafficking of
people to and from the United States. The first arrivals came when Mexico’s
northern neighbor began to implement its prohibitions, so that these migrants
met the demand for jobs in northwestern Mexico and at the same time swelled
the numbers of those entering the United States, either after having lived and
worked in Mexico, or alternatively making a journey from their ports of entry
until arriving on U.S. soil.
Shipping companies, community associations, businessmen, coyotes, and mi-
gration authorities on both sides of the border created a web of complicities that
aided a constant influx of Asians; these networks helped migrants searching for
better opportunities and Chinese reentering Mexico to evade the U.S. authorities.
As part of these networks, members of the Mexican community collaborated with
their compatriots living in countries such as the United States, China, Guatemala,
and Cuba. Lawful and unlawful businesses such as gambling, the sale of drugs and
alcohol, prostitution, and smuggling complemented the trafficking of immigrants.86
In addition to Mexican emigrants, Asians beat the principal paths later to be used by
European and the Middle Eastern migrants wanting to reach the United States.
Julian Lim described how a process of far-reaching economic and social transfor-
mations along that “porous border” permitted the extraordinary concentration and
mixture of people excluded from Mexico, the United States, and from around the
world, from Western Europe to the Middle and Far East.87 This frontier became a
place for testing out new migration control policies that were permanently chal-
lenged by waves of illegal migrants, and the volume of that traffic was such that it
can only have been possible with the complicity of the Mexican authorities at the
ports of arrival and departure.
As mentioned in chapter 2, ever since the late nineteenth century Chinese
immigrants began finding ways to circumvent health checks, and their techniques
began to grow more sophisticated. From the end of the second decade of the
twentieth century, records show that Chinese immigrants disembarked at distant
points on Mexico’s Pacific coastline that were not supervised by the maritime
authorities. There were also reports of people entering the United States along
cabotage routes between the ports of Sonora and Baja California and the coast of
California.88 The falsification of documents at ports of departure was a frequent
strategy during the 1920s. For example, it was known that a Chinese-run office in
Canton issued immigration cards with the requisite stamps, signatures, and false
numbers, costing up to 2,200 pesos.89
In the early 1930s, within a context of prohibitions in the United States and
tightening restrictions in Mexico, the migration authorities raised the cost for the
disembarkation of each Japanese migrant to 75 dollars.90 For each Chinese in-
dividual, meanwhile, it cost up to 130 dollars, according to statements by those
involved in a trafficking network for migrants heading to the United States.91
 The Migration Business 105

It was hard to avoid the migration agents’ extortion rackets, even after paying
the “fee” for an illegal entry. In 1930, a migration inspector reported that the
agent in charge of the office in Puerto de Guaymas, Sonora, operated a network
that “exploited Chinese residents who had entered the country illegally, de-
manding large sums of money under the threat of deporting them.”92 Once he
was caught, this agent fled, leaving the agency without a supervisor.
The Migration Service conducted internal investigations into these practices,
many of which reached the same conclusion, namely that the Chinese entering
Mexico from the United States in the late 1920s were concentrated in Nogales,
Sonora. A confidential report addressed to Landa y Piña indicated that “the
business of bringing over Chinese is very efficiently organized here: agents,
shippers, guides, intermediaries, etc.” These mafia had “ruled” that Asians en-
tering from the United States had to cross the border at Nogales, “because it
seems that due to the profitability of their business, some competition had arisen
at other entry points, pushing prices down.” Given these circumstances, inspector
Rogelio Hernández reported that he had decided to issue a “call to restore
order,” spreading the news that illegal Chinese immigrants would be deported,
while Mexicans who collaborated in the trafficking business would be consigned
to the authorities in the Federal District.93 These were rhetorical threats. Another
report drawn up some months later illustrated the connivance between migration
agents; Pedro Serrano, a typist at the Nogales delegation, with a daily wage of
4.50 pesos, “was showing off his car that cost more than 2,000 dollars,” but
instead of an investigation into this agent’s conduct, he was simply transferred to
Matamoros. The inspector said that “I think this approach does not increase
scrupulousness, because these unethical individuals, wherever they are, corrupt
others.”94
Landa y Piña received reports from Nogales about the authorization for the
entry of Chinese, with several referring to complicities that went all the way up
to the Interior Ministry offices in Mexico City.95 The migration-related cor-
ruption went beyond the migration administration itself to infect authorities in
other federal departments, such as the health and customs services, and other
levels of government. Honest migration officials frequently faced difficulties
confronting unhelpful municipal authorities in their attempts to tackle illicit
practices such as gambling and liquor sales involving foreigners. In the late 1930s,
Ramón Tirado, a migration inspector, reported that the municipal president of
Nogales, Sonora, was covering up these activities and protecting those behind
them, in exchange for “kickbacks.”96
Investigations revealed business transactions in Nogales, and in June 1930
Landa y Piña sent an ultimatum to Agustín Rodríguez Portas, head of the local
migration office:

I have been informed [ … ] that you have been involved in the

reprehensible business of smuggling Chinese citizens. I wish to warn
106 The Migration Business

you, in consideration of your background, and to avoid any sanction on

this occasion, that you must rectify this matter.

Moreover, he summoned Rodríguez Portas to Mexico City “to receive further

instructions.” He ended his letter by saying: “Please accept this warning as an
effort to help you and to avoid the need for stricter measures.”97 The official
replied promptly: “Although I do not claim ignorance of this affair,” he wrote to
Landa y Piña, he offered to give sufficient explanations “that will surely persuade
you that I had no other alternative.”98 Indeed, the explanations must have been
credible to prevent his dismissal and transfer to another post. One year later, the
head of that delegation requested Landa y Piña for a transfer to another area,
given the threats he received for standing up to those in charge of the “business
with the Chinese,” including some employees in the same delegation.99
The illegal business involving Chinese migration existed in many forms. The
business activities took place on the borders but also in the central offices. Apart
from the incentive to circumvent the prohibitions to enter Mexico and the
United States and the purchase of protection to avoid deportation, the business
was based on the demands made by members of Chinese organizations linked to a
variety of licit and illicit enterprises. The so-called Chinese mafia on each side of
the border controlled various activities such as the trafficking of opium, alcohol,
prostitution, and gambling; moreover, in turf wars between rival gangs, there
were business disputes that involved political conflicts related to affiliations that
the Chinese community in Mexico expressed for Chinese Nationalism at a time
when the Republic of China was being set up.100
The rhetoric about the “corrupting power” of Chinese money was trotted out
each time there were operations involving migration authorities and Chinese
immigrants. The latter paid for services, ranging from entry permits for their
compatriots to deportations of community members who were unwelcome
business competitors or political adversaries. One such scandal erupted in mid-
1931 when it was revealed that a network coordinated the expulsion and pro-
tection of Chinese, involving Pablo Meneses, head of the Interior Ministry’s
Confidential Department, which was responsible for investigations of foreigners.
This public official, along with some of his collaborators and a group of Chinese
were found guilty by courts in the Federal District and imprisoned on charges of
illicit association and bribery.101
The criminal investigation brought to light the authorities’ complicities with
the political, commercial, and criminal disputes between the Chee Kung Tong
and Lung Sing Tong lodges. Both groups constituted strong business commu-
nities in Mexico’s northern states and were firmly established in Mexico City.
Some of the leaders of the former lodge thought that an effective strategy to stop
the threats and extortions was to pay for the rival gang to be deported. As part of
the Confidential Department’s investigations into these lodges’ activities, with a
view to deporting undesirable immigrants from the country, the leaders of the
 The Migration Business 107

Chee Kung Tong lodge paid Pablo Meneses 20,000 pesos to include the names of
the leaders of the Lung Sing Tong lodge on the deportation lists.102 And indeed,
the investigation led by Meneses ended with the expulsion of around a dozen
“undesirable Chinese,” including two leaders of the Lung Sing Tong lodge. The
scandal erupted103 and for various weeks it was a front-page story in the national
newspapers; while the statements made by some the accused referred to other
attempts to deport more than one hundred Chinese and to negotiations for
amounts fluctuating between 100,000 and 250,000 pesos. The criminal in-
vestigation revealed collusions that implicated figures as high up as family
members of the interior minister, Carlos Riva Palacios, and General Agustín
Mora, chief of staff of the president’s office.104 A price was set for each “Chinese
head,” and there were discussions about whether this amount included the cost of
the sea voyage for their deportation and negotiations even included the “issue of
passes” signed by General Mora so that members of the Chee Kung Tong lodge
would not be harassed by local, state, or federal authorities. The court case lasted
several months. Initially, no evidence could be found of “illicit association,”
therefore those detained were released on bail and eventually acquitted for “lack
of proof that a crime had been committed.”105
At that time, the controversies triggered by these businesses fed into the anti-
Chinese campaigns’ discourses and practices that led to the forced expulsion of
entire communities in northern states. In the context of the 1930 economic crisis
and the mass deportations of Mexicans from the United States, Mexico’s
Migration Service collaborated with authorities in the border states and refrained
from any measure to stop the concentration of Chinese immigrants in border
towns in order to join forces to deport them to the United States.106 In August
1932, a migration agent in Naco sent a report to Andrés Landa y Piña indicating
the details of an expulsion of Chinese residents in Cananea:

As a result of these clandestine deportations carried out to save our

government money, U.S. migration officials summoned me to investigate
the cause of the exodus [ … ] because the Chinese had declared that the
[Mexican] authorities had forced them to leave Cananea. I told them that
no infringement had taken place, and that the aforesaid foreigners were in
fact absconding from the punishment imposed for their failure to comply
with the registration of foreigners, and because officials at the border had
stripped them of all their documents that could prove their legal residential
status in Mexico, they accepted my explanation. I share this information
with you in case that Department should question you about this affair.107

The migration agents stripped them of their migration documents and all their
valuables, according to another report received by Landa y Piña, this time from
Nogales, Sonora, informing of the “finding of an envelope containing some
108 The Migration Business

FIGURE 3.1 Cops and government employees caught in the web of the Chinese
mafia in Mexico
Source: El Nacional, 1 June 1931.

objects stolen from the Chinese. As you might imagine,” he added, “the en-
velope does not contain everything that was taken, including the money.”108
Moreover, coyotes benefitted from these expulsions; concentrated on the
border, many of the Chinese paid them for the crossing into the United States. As
in the case of other groups of foreigners, those coyotes were residents of the
border towns.109
Stigmatized as undesirables, these immigrants became scapegoats for the
Mexican authorities. The same mass expulsion and stripping of personal items was
 The Migration Business 109

FIGURE 3.2 Dirty dealing drags us all down

Source: El Nacional, 3 June 1932.

the apogee of official arbitrariness based on xenophobic racism rife with acts of
extortion and dispossession. This was not the news spread by official press outlets,
however. On the contrary, newspaper articles trumpeted how “thousands of
Mexican families deported by the U.S. government had already found employ-
ment “doing jobs that the Chinese used to control in Sonora” and that all this
“was achieved legally by exercising our national rights.”110
110 The Migration Business

The Southern Border

The remoteness of the Migration Service offices on Mexico’s southern border
had a marked effect on the extortion and bribes in that region. Until the mid-
1930s, the agencies had no telegraph connections, and the rough roads and terrain
made travel difficult. In practice, it was physically impossible to apply effective
controls along a largely unmonitored border. A report from the late 1920s in-
dicated that the Payo Obispo agency in the state of Quintana Roo had four
employees who were responsible for patrolling the entire border with Belize; the
boat journey down the Río Hondo took three days per month, “leaving the
remaining twenty-seven days without any patrols.”111
Absenteeism, alcoholism, and abuses of Mexican and foreign citizens were as
common as anywhere else in the country. Charges were made for temporary
visitor border passes, and registrations of Mexicans and foreigners outside normal
working hours required bribes: “It cost 5 pesos to get a document stamped in
Suchiate. I offered them 1 peso and they were happy with that,” wrote one
Mexican salesman to the interior minister in 1941, “but since most of the pas-
sengers were foreigners, they paid the full amount.”112 American tourists made
numerous complaints when detained in Tapachula “to extract from them all
kinds of gratuities and bribes.”113
In addition to these abuses, corruption took on a specific complexion de-
pending on the vectors referred to earlier in the chapter, in particular those linked
to the blurred nationality of many residents in these areas and an economy based
on vast coffee plantations, mostly owned by Germans, articulating a seasonal job
market that worked through a system of “enganchadores or facilitators” who
supplied the labor for the hacienda owners through coercion. In the words of one
migration inspector, “this was tantamount to the vile slave trade.”114
There were two aspects to the hiring of workhands: the work of the en-
ganchadores in Chiapas who were based in San Cristóbal and Guatemalan towns,
a situation that required systems of illegal border crossings of workers, involving
the hacienda owners in complicity with local and federal authorities. Given this
situation, the coffee plantation owners were the first to express their grievances
following the implementation of migration controls. These lords and masters of
the region saw the Migration Service as an obstacle to their business activities. In
an attempt to regulate the presence of Guatemalan workers, in mid-1926 a mi-
gration office was set up in Unión Juárez, Chiapas; three years later, this agency’s
supervisor stated that he had “drawn the battlelines with the plantation owners,”
and, “regrettably, sometimes the local authorities have given their support to
these hacendados.”115 The open struggle was not based on the presence of un-
documented foreign workers but the fact that the plantation owners, after ne-
gotiating “even with the President’s office” to authorize them to hire
Guatemalans, refused to pay for the migration registrations for each of these
workers. In other words, informal arrangements between plantation owners and
 The Migration Business 111

state and local authorities stipulated that in return for paying the visa fees, the
hacendados could hire Guatemalan workers. However, they were not paying
these fees and no public authorities could enforce this requirement. The delegate
in Unión Juárez complained bitterly about the lack of official support; from the
state governor to the head of military operations, they all refused to provide help
in making the plantation owners fulfill their obligations.
In this web of complicities, the official’s efforts proved fruitless. Subsequently,
the agents who replaced him joined in the business by extorting both hacendados
and workers: the former with the promise to let them off paying to register their
workers, and the latter in a protection racket under the threat of deportation.
This was all taking place just as the Interior and Foreign Ministries were rolling
out an ambitious joint program to verify the status of thousands of people without
identification, and where applicable grant them Mexican nationality certificates.
In 1934, a Guatemalan worker wrote to President Abelardo Rodríguez:

The situation, Señor Presidente, is that no one is bothered when there is no

coffee harvest, but as soon as the harvest approaches, the migration
authorities pursue us relentlessly, deporting people on the excuse that
they are unregistered, or because most of us are illiterate and indigenous
and have no means of justifying our long-time residence in the country.

Such harassments were clearly motivated by migration officials eager to “extort

large sums of money from the coffee plantation owners who need our help to
bring in the harvest.” The missive drew attention to the mass deportations:

Removing from the plantations those workers without the money or

inclination to pay off the head of the migration office in Tapachula, a man
who boasts widely that he has nothing to fear because he has the
unconditional support of current interior minister, General Juan Cabral.

As proof of this situation, the names of the owners who had paid up to 3.60 pesos
per worker were listed; these were mainly the plantations owned by Germans
who did not hesitate to tell this to their workers in order to prevent them from
fleeing. The letter ended with a plea: “Señor Presidente, please do not ignore us.
This is truly our second patria, not somewhere temporary but our home for
many, many years.”116
These accusations led to orders for an investigation. Information was requested
from the authorities in question, and special agents were also sent. In the case in
question, the head of the migration office in Tapachula was immediately trans-
ferred to another area. One investigator reported back in March 1935 that the
accusations were “utterly baseless.” The plantation owners’ payments were not
“bribes” but “recompense” for the migration agents who had traveled all the way
to the plantations to register the Guatemalan workers. The report concluded with
112 The Migration Business

the following clarification: “I cannot attest to the above information, but it was
reported to me by the local plantation owners and laborers.”117
Since the late 1920s and during the 1930s, military officers and migration
agents were embroiled in frequent disputes over the protection provided by the
army to the enganchadores who brought posses of workers from Guatemala to
work in Mexico. Although some evidence exists for these conflicts, it remains
unclear whether they arose from efforts to stop this trafficking or from the army
officers’ refusal to share their profits with the migration agents.118 Moreover, the
army and migration officers also shared some common ground.
In regard to the abuses of Guatemalans, there was also the “problem that they
pass themselves off as agraristas [beneficiaries of the agrarian reform’s land dis-
tribution program] and were being granted lands.” Xenophobia combined with
nationalistic migratory regulations when land distribution claimants could not
prove their Mexican nationality. “It is unfair,” remarked one migration agent,
“that our country has to bear the burden of handing over our lands to
Guatemalans, who instead of benefitting us are draining the riches of our state of
Chiapas.”119
During the 1930s, the Interministerial Commission tackled this situation by
downplaying the significance of the abuses against Guatemalans. Indeed, mem-
bers of this Commission reported many of these abuses. However, a decade later,
after the Commission’s disappearance, accusations such as the following began to
be made:

A dragnet by the head of the Suchiate agency and a former local police
officer detained dozens of Mexicans and Guatemalans. They were all taken
to the army barracks and released upon payment of 25 pesos each, under
the threat of deportation to Guatemala.

The authorities released them if they paid in full or advanced 10 pesos with a
pledge to pay the rest within six weeks. Of the 25 pesos, 5 pesos went to the
garrison’s commander and the rest distributed to the head of the migration
agency, the former police officer, and an individual who “provided personal
assistance and the horses to travel to the communities to arrest people.” The
report warned that this was the extortion method used before the arrival of the
Interministerial Commission, and that after it no longer existed “they have tried
to restore old customs,” ignoring the nationality documents that the victims
might have been able to show.120
Accusations and investigations were frequent, but punishments were rare and
did not alter the situation in the slightest. Corrupt employees were relocated to
other agencies. As elsewhere in the country, a public service that prized loyalty
over legality led to absolving people of blame, substituting officials, and waiving
obligations.
 The Migration Business 113

Opportunities Created by the Second World War

The Second World War years produced the conditions that widened the gap
between the letter of migration law and its actual implementation. New business
opportunities arose out of the combination of restrictions on foreign immigration
imposed by the 1936 law, the establishment of a quota system based on arbitrary
criteria rather than migration statistics, and the turbulence caused by the global
conflict that threatened to bring thousands of undesirable refugees to Mexico.
The Interior Ministry stepped up its monitoring of foreigners suspected of ac-
tivities that threatened to disrupt “public order.” Initially, and during the Civil War
in Spain, the secret police kept a vigil on Franco’s sympathizers, and some high-
profile Francoists were expelled from Mexico to set an example.121 German sup-
porters of the Third Reich and Italian fascists were also subject to discreet mon-
itoring from the mid-1930s;122 the Japanese, for their part, were already under close
supervision long before the attack on Pearl Harbor.123 In 1940, the Interior
Minister issued the first “urgent” orders to state governors and municipal presidents
to compile a register of foreigners.124 From May 1942, after Mexico became a
belligerent country by joining the Allies, the country applied stricter measures to
control and monitor the activities of Germans, Japanese, and Italians. As mentioned
in chapter 2, these foreigners were prohibited from living in coastal or border areas,
and there were ordered to move to inland cities, mainly Guadalajara, Cuernavaca,
and Mexico City, while some of these displaced citizens were concentrated in
specific locations. Germans, and to a lesser extent, Italians, were sent to the San
Carlos fortress in Perote, while the Japanese were mainly concentrated in the
country’s capital, as well as in Cuernavaca and Temixco in the state of Morelos.
The lack of updated migration registries created difficulties in enforcing these
regulations, hence the insistence on state and municipal authorities to compile such
lists.125 Corruption presented another problem. Coyotes soon began sniffing
around the opportunity to help foreigners put their migration papers in order or to
avoid appearing on the registry lists. In Orizaba in June 1942, accusations were
made about individuals who “were taking advantage of the current situation to
exploit foreigners, particularly Germans, Japanese, and Italians, who received offers
to regularize their papers by paying the usual bribes.”126 Many complaints were
made about abuses, while newspaper editorials reminded readers of the “in-
stitutionalized dishonesty in the migration services”127 and that the agencies along
the northern border in particular “ranked highest in the ongoing competition for
bribe-taking”; therefore, in the context of the Second World War, “the order to
concentrate foreigners from Axis nations was naturally seen as an opportunity by
these masters of bribery who did not skip a beat before retailing official forbearance
[ … ] even to those who did not need it.”128
The migration authority managed records and documentation, while agents of
the Directorate of Political and Social Investigations handled investigations, re-
location orders, and the concentration of the foreigners in question. Almost
114 The Migration Business

everything was negotiable with money on the table. In the case of concentrations,
the investigative agents sold extensions of weeks or months, as well as indefinite
delays to the implementation of relocation orders. In Mazatlán, for example, a
police report of August 1943 indicated that the agent Fortunato Barajas, had
charged a group of Japanese up to 2,000 pesos “to delay their concentration in
Mexico City.”129 Some months later, the newspapers in the port referred to
complaints against Interior Ministry officials who offered to use their influence
“in return for substantial sums” for Japanese to avoid being concentrated in
Mexico City.130 In Las Choapas, Veracruz, “extensions” could be granted for
three and six months, depending on the amount paid by the Japanese for this
“trámite.”131
During the Second World War years, and largely under the influence of the
U.S. intelligence services, Mexico was genuinely paranoid about propaganda
and sabotage by “Axis subjects”—German, Italians, and Japanese were under
suspicion on account of their nationalities rather than any possible activity as
spies, undercover operatives, or Fifth Columnists. A few were involved in this
work, as detailed by Carlos Inclán Fuentes,132 but for the authorities the
“discovery” that many of these immigrants’ papers were not in order turned
them into potential enemies. This focus on “suspect nationalities” led to more
instances of extortion.
As news spread about supposed conspiracies and intrigues, the Interior
Ministry announced the increase of personnel to monitor movements and ac-
tivities by these foreigners that “violate Mexican laws.”133 The broadsheet El
Nacional printed triumphalist reports. In late 1943, an official bulletin indicated
that the government “exercised complete control over Axis subjects.”134 For
those concentrated in Mexico City, Perote, and in Temixco, there were effec-
tively controls on residence permits and a prohibition on traveling to other parts
of Mexico, although many of these measures were negotiable. The fortress in
Perote was not a high-security facility; on the contrary, a thriving trade in licit
and illicit services took placed within the confines of this center that was guarded
by Interior Ministry officials and Perote’s local population.135 The installations in
Temixco were managed by the Japanese themselves through a Japanese
Committee of Mutual Assistance in permanent contact with the Interior
Ministry.136
Another business involved migrants of “prohibited” nationalities, particularly
Jews from European countries. Corruption was rife in migration administration,
from the lowest rungs—“when there was nothing of value left, they even ac-
cepted boxes of American cigarettes”137—to profitable businesses in the Interior
Ministry’s central offices. Everyone knew about them, sometimes because they
were directly involved and benefitted, or else as witnesses or accomplices. In the
slang of migration offices there were two principal gold mines: “the Chinese and
the Jewish businesses.”138
 The Migration Business 115

The closure of Mexico’s borders to Jewish immigrants was concomitant

with the persecution and later genocide of Jewish communities in Nazi-
controlled Europe. The greater the need to flee, the more expensive the visa in
a market where corruption was widespread. As a result of migration prohibi-
tions, the Mexican consular service was unable to issue visas, which were
exceptionally approved from Mexico, and in case of authorization they were
sent to Mexican consulates in Europe where immigrants needed to apply for
their migration papers.
In 1930s, Mexico, Jewish immigrants were a source of such visa applications
for their relatives to enter the country and reunify their families. These appli-
cations were generally successful and bribes possibly affected their outcome. The
requirements were straightforward: applicants had to prove their period of re-
sidence in the country, have their migration papers in order, and show “proof of
solvency and rectitude” in addition to documentation to confirm kinship.
However, matters could become complicated. For example, Jacobo Hazan
Cohen, a Jewish trader of Syrian origin, submitted a visa application for his
seventy-six-year-old father. The applicant was a prosperous textile merchant who
could prove his solvency through receipts for tax payments and bank accounts.
The application procedure began in January 1935 and involved a migration agent
making a “visual inspection” of the business premises. Some time later, the same
agent reappeared in the company of an accountant, claiming that to continue the
procedure it was necessary to take a physical inventory of the merchandise to
compare its value against the figures in the ledgers. Furthermore, the accountant
accompanying the agent had to carry out this operation. The accountant’s fees
were so high that Jacobo Hazan refused to pay them, given that he had already
shown other documents to prove his solvency. In May that year, without any
other requirement, the application was approved.139 It is not hard to deduce how
the applicant was able to “comply” with such burdensome requirements.
Procedural difficulties appeared out of nowhere as a precursor for payments that
could make them disappear. However, not all applicants had the same luck. In the
late 1930s, Israel Tanembaum, a Polish Jew, owner of an antique store, made a
visa application for his twenty-five-year-old son who was living in Warsaw. After
meeting all the requirements, the authorities rejected his application on the basis
that he could not prove that he “had enough capital of his own” to support his
son, “in addition to the fact he was Polish.”140
The other source of visa applications came from European Jews without any
family connections to residents in Mexico. In such cases, a complex web of
Jewish solidarity associations in Mexico, the United States, and Europe were
instrumental in the visa process for those fleeing Europe after the outbreak of
the Second World War. As Daniela Gleizer shows, Mexico received just under
two thousand Jews, and the purchase of visas was one of the many methods that
enabled these arrivals. A member of the Jewish-Mexican community was an
intermediary, liaising with the Interior Ministry and providing the names of the
116 The Migration Business

applicants for the visas that needed to be delivered at the Mexican Consulate in
Marseille. After approval by the Interior Ministry and passed to the Foreign
Ministry came the payment of up to 500 dollars for each visa. Other Jews,
whose papers were “irregular” (possibly purchased in Europe) could disembark
in Mexico, with the assistance of “contacts” with “influential” politicians in
Mexico and by paying bribes to migration agents in the Gulf and Pacific
seaports.141
One individual case illustrates the methods of removing obstacles that pre-
vented Jews from entering Mexico. In February 1939, Manuel Esparza, the
Mexican consul in El Paso, Texas, wrote to his friend Andrés Landa y Piña. In a
long letter, he began by explaining the background of Maurice Schwartz before
requesting a favor. Mr. Schwartz was a businessman settled in El Paso, and the
senior figure in a dynasty of Hungarian Jews that owned, among other businesses,
“La Popular,” a large department store founded by his uncle Adolph Schwartz in
1900. These immigrants’ connections to Mexico went back to the late nineteenth
century, and Adolph began his business enterprises in the cities of Chihuahua and
Juárez, before settling permanently in El Paso.142 Maurice Schwartz was not only
a prominent businessman but also a famed philanthropist and a respected member
of the Jewish community with a vast network of political and economic contacts
throughout the U.S. southwest. The consul described him as “a powerful eco-
nomic and political figure and a distinguished member of society, someone we
might call a heavyweight.”143 If that was not enough, the consul added, “Maurice
Schwartz employed more than three hundred Mexicans in his store, all of whom
are well looked after and treated fairly and with respect, a rare thing around these
parts.”144
The businessman approached the consul to explore the possibility of the
Mexican government granting visas to thirty-seven members of his family who
were in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia “fleeing persecution.” Mr. Schwartz’s
powerful influence had proved ineffective in the United States in his attempts to
overcome the restrictions on migrations that prevented his family from entering
the country. Therefore, he contacted the Mexican Consul to look into the entry
requirements for Mexico and to tell him that “he was willing to put up all the
necessary bonds, to provide enough capital, and to comply with all our legal
requirements” in order save his European family members.145
Some weeks later, Andrés Landa y Piña replied to the Mexican Consul: “I
regret to inform you that, though you are well aware of my willingness to attend
to my friends’ recommendations, in this case I am unable to help you in any
way.” The head of the Migration Department explained that the current legis-
lation’s immigrant quotas were very low, a situation that “makes it not just
difficult but impossible to obtain the permits requested by Mr. Schwartz.”146
The consul did not give up and recommended Maurice Schwartz to travel
to Mexico. He made a telephone call to Landa y Piña and wrote another letter,
urging the senior migration official to treat the businessman “with his usual
 The Migration Business 117

kindness, and do his utmost to achieve a favorable outcome to this request.”147

His efforts were not in vain. Schwartz met with Francisco Trejo, Director
General of Population, Landa y Piña’s immediate superior, and they swiftly
reached an agreement. Landa y Piña gave the following report to the consul:
“In regard to Mr. Schwartz, Trejo took an interest in reaching a favorable
resolution, considering this person’s honorable reputation and the kindness
shown to the Mexicans in his employ.”148 The Consul was unable to hide his
surprise at the swift and favorable response: “Frankly,” he wrote to his friend,
Landa y Piña,

there is such a marked difference compared to the contents of your first

letter, that I am most pleasantly surprised. But that is why it is good to have
such estimable friends who can help overcome the difficulties that can
unfortunately arise.149

The Interior Ministry issued the entry permits for more than thirty family
members. However, a series of difficulties in Nazi-occupied Europe prevented
the whole family from making the journey. There were problems securing
passports, combined with the trouble for U.S. consulates to issue transit visas
for the family members to pass through the United States on their way to
Mexico. Furthermore, the Mexican permits only had a six-month validity,
hence Maurice Schwartz was obliged to apply for extensions which he was able
to obtain exceptionally.150 Eventually, in April 1940, after his lobbying ac-
tivities had even reached the level of Congressmen in Washington, Maurice
Schwartz obtained authorization from the U.S. government for five family
members to enter. As the youngest in the family, they were the ones chosen to
travel in order to save their lives. In April 1940, without any difficulty,
Schwartz applied for the visas in Ciudad Juárez. He paid almost 4,000 pesos as a
repatriation bond and deposited a further 12,000 pesos in the Banco Nacional
de México “to pay for the upkeep of the five family members for one year.”151
In June that same year, he wrote to Landa y Piña to thank him for another six-
month extension of the visas for the rest of the family still in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia.152
The children—Lazlo, León, Miksa, Samuel, and Meyer Schwartz, aged be-
tween 16 and 19—arrived in Genoa in the winter of 1940, and awaited the transit
visas that the U.S. consulate delivered with some delay. At that port they em-
barked on a ship bound for New York before immediately boarding a train to the
Texan border. They arrived in Ciudad Juárez in late April.153 The relatives in El
Paso rented a house and immediately enrolled them in high school. They lived
there for two years before receiving their U.S. residence permits. The Nazis
murdered the rest of the family, apart from five women who survived the ex-
termination camps and who were transferred to the United States in 1945.154
Some years later, Albert Schwartz, Maurice’s son, was asked about this family
118 The Migration Business

FIGURE 3.3 Miksa and Samuel Schwartz’s migration records

Source: AGN-RNE.

tragedy. In response to a question about how his father obtained the visas, he
replied that in the United States he obtained them thanks to Texan senator, R.H.
Thomason, who “aggressively interceded” in Washington; and he was categorical
about the situation with the Mexican visas: “my father told me that it took plenty
mordida.”155
 The Migration Business 119

Andrés Landa y Piña

The constant announcements of campaigns to raise moral standards were at odds
with reality. As if echoing one of the many scandals about coyotes working in
cahoots with public officials, Vicente E. Lemus, former director of the Migration
Department, published an article in 1935 that outlined the situation of completely
normalized corruption:

With each new interior minister, it is laughable to read the headlines

splashed across the front pages of the country’s broadsheets: “The
Migration Office, Now Corruption-Free,” “Coyotes Consigned to
History,” etc. As if the former boss was the root of the problem and as if
they newly anointed replacement is the redeemer of all ills. But coyotes still
operate, and corruption still flourishes. Of course, the shiny new arrival is
not yet familiar with the Migration office and does not know where the
trouble lies. Yet they praise him to the heavens. The former director knew
the score, but the prevailing situation doomed his efforts. Let us be clear:
the problem is the rotten microbe that has always existed, sometimes as a
natural condition and sometimes activated by someone, but always firmly
attached to the fat of the migration office [ … ]. The problem is not in the
head but in the very bowels of the institution.156

The public officials were the problem, not the legislation. For Lemus, “every-
thing would be fine” if the authorities performed the most basic migration duties
properly. “There are laws and regulations; more than four hundred published
circulars and seven hundred more unpublished; instructions on migration; and
much else besides.” The Migration Service is in “complete chaos, with nothing
working apart from the occasional guidance of some public officials”—with
Lemus singling out Andrés Landa y Piña whom he judged to be one of the few
people who knew where the “rot of corruption existed and could find a
solution.”157
In one sense Lemus was right: the problem was not so much the laws, which
had chapters on punishments and criminal procedures in place for those who
violated the regulations. The first law of 1926 and all the subsequent legislation
defined crimes and established penalties for public officials, migration agents,
immigrants or their representatives, transport company employees, and “en-
ganchadores, accomplices, or abettors”158 found guilty of any illegal conduct. In
the case of public officials and migration agents, sanctions included suspensions
without pay, fines, and dismissals in case of repeat offences “without prejudice of
possible consignment to the appropriate authorities” if any crime had been
committed.159 However, all of these prescriptions remained words on paper.
Crimes were investigated and details emerged of migration-related businesses, yet
120 The Migration Business

there was not the slightest repercussion despite that the fact that, as Lemus noted,
Landa y Piña knew where to locate the disease and how to cure it.
Andrés Landa y Piña made notable efforts to professionalize the Migration
Service. He was a public official with a thorough understanding of migration
administration, partly because he was one of the architects of the Service and was
involved in the fine details of its organization. He had worked for more than
three decades in the field, and his career spanned from his pioneering attempts to
design identification cards and immigration survey forms, to interministerial in-
itiatives to regulate migration and promote tourism.
Landa y Piña was aware of the need to boost the ethical standards and re-
spectability of an institution in which he had worked for years and directed for
almost a decade. His achievements are evident; he personally left records of the
dishonest practices found throughout the service. It is instructive to look carefully
at this official’s conduct to understand how the institutional dynamics fanned the
flames of corruption instead of rooting it out.
Conscious of the migration personnel’s weaknesses, Landa y Piña formed a
select advisory committee or “mesa auxiliar de la jefatura” of students or recent
law graduates, translators, and journalists with a high standard of Spanish. This
was a veritable “high-performing and absolutely trustworthy elite.”160 It num-
bered only a dozen employees, in addition to some inspectors whom he regularly
dispatched to audit the agencies dotted around the country. This was a genuine
work team and he entrusted it to handle important matters such as receiving and
preparing confidential reports on awkward situations.
Landa y Piña had a peculiar leadership style. He worked hard to foster personal
relationships with agents and employees, he listened to their complaints, asked their
opinions on how to tackle administrative difficulties, advised and protected per-
sonnel, helped with family matters. He was convinced that experience in the daily
workings must be translated into practices that would increase efficiency. He always
longed to forge an esprit de corps among his subordinates, a feeling of pride in
belonging to a team specialized in dealing with migration issues: “It is essential that
we train people whose criteria are applied equally on every border, with utter
exactitude, and utter fairness,” he wrote, in reference to a supposed “model-man
with absolute rectitude, present at all times and in every corner of the country
where a migration issue needed to be resolved.”161 Behind this model-man stood
Landa y Piña himself, believing himself to embody such professionalism. However,
as a rule, migration officials did not have a vocation for service, and in the best case
Andrés Landa y Piña along with his small band of helpers thought themselves to be
the exception—in the sense of trusting that their continued employment depended
on the trust of their bosses and their honorable conduct. In early 1928, a rumor
circulated that Adalberto Tejeda would leave the Interior Ministry; given the cli-
mate of uncertainty engendered by a change in senior management, Félix Salinas, a
migration inspector and future member of the Mesa Auxiliar, wrote to his friend
Landa y Piña, head of the Office for Statistics at the time:
 The Migration Business 121

Experience teaches us that all public-sector employees should fear a new

boss, but our minds still tell us that an honest and reliable worker can keep a
job. This is my belief, and it should be the one held by all those men who
like you have worked with intelligence, rectitude, and honesty in all your
positions.162

It is hard to pinpoint the boundary between the unacceptable and the acceptable
in relations based on personal connections that provided a benevolent protection
in exchange for favors and loyalties. Landa y Piña’s correspondence reveals close
personal ties through compadrazgos and friendships with Migration Department
officials. In their reports on agencies and delegations, some inspectors often ad-
dressed their superiors with a familiarity that is surprising for official correspon-
dence (“Mi fino amigo,” “Muy estimado Don Andrés,” or “Querido Andresito”)
and that many of these reports begin by recounting the adventures and mis-
adventures of family members and friends.163 Insofar as possible, Landa y Piña
reciprocated with all kinds of assistance: authorizations for temporary leaves of
absence on health grounds, new job appointments, favors to secure school en-
rolments for employees’ children, and, of course, to find employment in the
Migration Service itself or else in another government department. Relations
based on shared regional connections began to form among friends and ac-
quaintances. These networks centered on Jungapeo in the state of Michoacán,
where Landa y Piña was born and many of his family still lived, while others had
relocated to other parts of Mexico. Landa y Piña received a wide variety of
correspondence, from municipal presidents to relatives and neighbors seeking
work, support for a public infrastructure project, recommendations, and advice.
He always showed complete solidarity with his compadres, and he gave a job in
the Migration Service to one of his ahijados, who worked as an agent in the south
of the country for many years.164 He obtained grants for other ahijados to study
in teacher training colleges. He received all manner of requests from his com-
padres: contacts for business ventures, help on health matters, and loans. One
such request was made by J.J. Farías who lived in Tlaquepaque (Jalisco) and in
early 1939 he reported that when he visited Chapala he noticed the presence of
“at least ten Polish citizens of the most undesirable type. I am certain they were
smuggled into Mexico and I was minded to ask them for their migration papers.”
Farías asked for an appointment as an honorary migration agent, “to clean out all
the Poles who are overrunning the area.” The request mooted the possibility that,
in return for an agent’s identification card, he promised to provide a steady stream
of fines to the ministry. “I assure you that you will see results three days after I
receive my identification badge.”165 There are no documents to confirm whether
or not this badge was issued, but the very request points to how the Migration
Service offered a profit-making opportunity. Only through this lens is it possible
to understand Landa y Piña’s multiple recommendations for Mexicans and for-
eigners whom he knew personally or were recommended to him by friends,
122 The Migration Business

public officials, businessmen, and politicians. He sent letters to the heads of

migration agencies to prevent the harassment at checkpoints of travelers needing
to cross the country’s borders and “to smooth out any troubles that might
arise.”166 In July 1939, for example, he sent one such letter to Rosendo Herrera
who, as we will see below, was involved in disreputable business activities. Landa
y Piña was aware of the issue and had no qualms about writing to Herrera, head
of the Migration Service in Nogales, Sonora, requesting him to assist a Spanish
Republican who needed to travel to the United States:

I suggest you help him to obtain a permit to transit U.S. territory, and to
entrust a U.S. border agent to help him identify the bus or means of
transport needed to make the journey, [ … ] and to accompany him to buy
his ticket and put him on the vehicle that should take him to his
destination, in order to save him any trouble.167

He was asking Rosendo Herrera to do what he did anyway as a business, except

that in this case without any extortion. Landa y Piña headed up a Migratory
Department with blurred the lines between public and private duties. His
daughter died in August 1939, and a while later he wrote a letter of re-
commendation to the head of the migration office in the Port of Veracruz for a
certain Dr. Juan Solares, who “cared for my daughter when she was gravely ill.”
The request was “to provide [Dr. Solares] all assistance possible, providing him
access to the ship on which some of his family members are travelling.”168
Investigations and reports frequently flagged up problems such as the setting of
bad examples and the lowering of moral standards in government offices. The
punishment for such wrongdoing seldom went further than a mild rebuke, and if
the problem threatened to become a scandal the next step was a simple transfer to
another office within the Migration Service; officials rarely lost their jobs.
Regulations on the hiring and ongoing employment of public officials only
came into effect in the late 1930s, and under the union’s protection the norms
focused more on defending workers’ rights than on their competence to perform
specific functions. Loyalty took priority over competence in the employment and
management of personnel, and this loyalty was not necessarily connected to
honesty. On the contrary, patronage caused complicities and negligence due to
abuses of authority and acts of blatant corruption. After 1936, federal public
officials began to unionize and three years later the unions were already attached
to the Confederation of Mexican Workers and the Party of the Mexican
Revolution.169 Loyalties were not only personal; they developed into policies
that undermined any attempt at professionalism in the public administration.
Civil servants such as Landa y Piña had to negotiate with union leaders for the
hiring and continued employment of personnel. In cases of corruption, the union
defended its members, putting up bonds and filing for constitutional protection
under amparos, and shielding dishonest employees. In early 1940, the inspector
 The Migration Business 123

Elías Contreras visited the agencies along Mexico’s southern border, from where
he sent the following message to Landa y Piña:

In accordance with your instructions, I am sending two reports: one official

and the other confidential, for your eyes only. [In the latter] I will tell you
the unvarnished truth, even if it discomforts the people in question, Señor
Landa, because it is truly shameful what is going on down there [in
Suchiate, Tapachula, Tuxtla Chico, and Unión Juárez]. The migration
personnel are utterly unscrupulous, and worst of all they boast of their
behavior and grab money however they can, to the detriment of honest
personnel who are then tarred with the same brush as their dishonest fellow
employees.170

The inspector detailed many examples of such “unscrupulous” conduct and re-
quested Landa y Piña not to make any public accusation of the union’s complicity
for fear of reprisals. For example, he referred to respectable heads of office who
“provided attentive service to the public and performed their duties reliably” but
without the authority to discipline some of their subordinates “who do what they
want and at every step of the way threaten to report their manager to the union if he
tries to force them to carry out their work”; absentee employees who did not carry
out their inspections yet charged travel expenses, the ones who did not have horses
but still charged for fodder; “drunks and revelers who often leave their offices
unattended and abuse members of the public to continue with their vices.”171
The advent of official unions deprived the authorities of control over ap-
pointing people for certain positions or plazas, and as could be imagined, per-
sonnel were not hired primarily for their competence and qualifications. From
1939, when friends and compadres asked Landa y Piña for recommendations and
jobs, he replied by saying that he was no longer in a position to satisfy their
requests: “Current circumstances prevent me from helping because all workers in
the public administration are unionized, building an unsurmountable wall even
with the highest recommendations.”172 Rodolfo Elizondo, head of the Ciudad
Juárez office, had a brother who was an agent in the same delegation, who had
resigned. Therefore, he wrote to Landa y Piña asking for him to intervene with
the interior minister to hire Miguel Rodriguez Cáceres, “who is highly re-
spectable and with a clean record.”173 His reply revealed his dwindling influence
due to the presence of the union: “Despite my willingness to offer whatever help
I can, my hands are tied in this matter. The vacancy left by your brother has
already been filled by mutual agreement with this Ministry.”174 These difficulties
must have been genuine because Landa y Piña was also unable to help his friend
Raymundo Gutierrez García after securing his appointment as an agent in the
Tuxtla Chico office in Chiapas in the mid-1930s. Gutiérrez García reported all
manner of troubles, including death threats from another agent, Manuel Fuentes
Martínez, who drunkenly attacked and insulted him in the office. “I was forced
124 The Migration Business

to call the police and they had to put him in jail [ … ] I humbly request that you
transfer me to another office because otherwise you will receive dire news.”175
Landa y Piña interceded personally and also requested the administrative super-
visor in the Interior Ministry “to take the necessary steps with the Union” for the
agent’s transfer to Veracruz, yet his efforts proved fruitless:

With the same willingness I have always shown and of which you have
proof, I will remain attentive to the first opportunity to achieve what we
both wish to happen. In the meantime, I urge you not to give up or lose
your patience. Sooner or later there will be a definitive conclusion for such
disagreeable matters.176

Landa y Piña had detailed information about such issues, and since his appoint-
ment as director of the Migration Department he had been working to mediate
between reports of investigations and resignation at the impossibility of forging a
“spirit of service” among those unscrupulous employees. His reactions to the
administrative failures and the crimes committed by the personnel reveal a
complicit condescension akin to a toothless educational paternalism to impose the
decency and pride that he preached. In May 1931, he received reports that the
head of the migration office in Naco, Sonora, was “forever getting drunk and
without making any attempt to hide the fact.” Landa y Piña’s response was to
send him a missive, indicating that:

Since your behavior discredits both you and your office, contrary to the
impression that I have always had of you, I consider it my duty to inform
you that for your own good you should refrain completely from repeating
such behavior.177

In another case, in a letter addressed to the head of the migration agency in

Tecate (Baja California), who had been accused of absenteeism, he wrote that “if
such irregularities are repeated, it will be necessary to reprimand you more
formally, but I prefer to give you prior warning and urge you to abstain from
repeating such acts.”178
Landa y Piña’s complacency included everything from misdemeanors such as
absenteeism to serious offenses including embezzlement and the illegal trafficking of
foreigners. Reports of investigations into employees who made a living from
racketeering usually ended up with the following conclusion: “This employee’s
conduct damages the reputation of our government, which will not tolerate
continued abuses of tourists.”179 As in many other cases, Landa y Piña limited
himself to sending an official communiqué to the head of the office in question,
indicating that “I recommend that you do your utmost to supervise your personnel
strictly in order to prevent further anomalies that bring the service into
disrepute.”180
 The Migration Business 125

Paradigmatic Cases
In early 1932, the inspector Javier Larrea received the instruction to visit the
migration offices on Mexico’s northeastern border. Over a couple of weeks, he
traveled the area and reported the state of affairs in detailed reports sent to interior
minister Manuel Téllez. In the places where the authorities had closed gambling
dens and cantinas, he noted the almost complete absence of tourists. In Río Rico,
in the state of Tamaulipas, he had “nothing of note to report.” He found a similar
situation in Reynosa, where “tourism has dried up since they closed the two
gambling dens. One could almost say that this dirty, dusty town is lifeless.”181
Nuevo Laredo with its “many tourists and repatriated Mexicans” was a different
case entirely. Arnulfo de los Santos was the head of the local delegation, and he had
worked for the Migration Service since 1914, although he had taken leave of ab-
sence on various times. On one occasion he had left the Service to become mu-
nicipal police chief where “he made some money. This gentleman is a tough
character who speaks little or no English, treats his underlings despotically, and is
generally harsh with the public. He also leaves the delegation very frequently,
leaving town for two or three days each week.”182 The root of the problem was
that this official was a partner in a transport company that was a “service provider”
for Mexican emigrants. De los Santos was a pollero or people-smuggler who worked
in partnership with Candelario Guajardo, a notorious smuggler who owned a fleet
of cars, as well as a railway inspector named Noriega, the person in charge of issuing
tickets to repatriated Mexicans. Their business involved registering emigrants at the
migration delegation and taking them to their destination in the United States.
“Emigrants who agree to buy their train tickets from Guajardo are offered all kinds
of assistance from De los Santos, but those who refuse, and state their intention to
enter the United States using buses on the other side of the border, face all manner
of obstacles in leaving the country.”183 This triumvirate’s scheme encompassed
other money-making activities. First, the tickets they sold were much more ex-
pensive than on the U.S. side of the border. For example, “the bus fare from Laredo
to Chicago cost 25 dollars as opposed to 39.50 dollars in one of Guajardo’s auto-
mobiles.” The fleet of cars itself was another source of lucre: faced with extortionate
import duties, repatriated Mexicans had the “opportunity” to sell them at rock-
bottom prices, with part of the payment being the railway tickets, “so that Noriega
could give them the ones paid for by the government to the entire family of re-
patriated Mexicans.”184
The reports by inspector Larrea reveals the deeply entrenched systems of cor-
ruption within the public administration. Nepotism, complicities were interwoven
with personal loyalties, lack of scruples, and lucre. From late 1931, Daniel Duarte,
political “brother” of a deputy interior minister, ran the Matamoros agency. Some
years later, Duarte was caught up in a case of corruption but at the time he was not
the subject of any complaints except for one report that claimed he was “completely
ignorant of the office’s operations.” Therefore, he requested the transfer of an agent
126 The Migration Business

working in the office of Camargo, also in the state of Tamaulipas, offering him the
post of deputy director. The inspector Larrea referred to this character as follows:
“I have known him since 1929 when we worked at the greyhound racetrack in
Camargo. He’s very friendly with the Americans who gamble on this sport on the
northern border [ … ] I doubt his trustworthiness, and I consider it necessary to
transfer him to another part of the country.”185 Rather than requesting the dismissal
of such officials, the corrective measure was to transfer them elsewhere. Larrea
made the same recommendation in regard to the business run by Arnulfo de los
Santos in Nuevo Laredo. He sought to dismantle schemes by transferring the
employees in question “to locations where they did not have vested interests,”186 as
a remedy that revealed the lack of controls on the hiring and permanence of
personnel. Therefore, for example, Larrea indicated that in Villa Acuña, Coahuila,
head of delegation Pedro Acuña had been dismissed in September 1931, only to be
reinstated in his position a year later, despite his notorious relationships and former
professional connections to the greyhound racing business and gambling dens.187 In
addition to this network of complicities, the unions guaranteed that its members
held onto their jobs in exchange for a profitable trading of sinecures and favors
among union leaders and the senior political bureaucracy.188
Clear connections existed between coyotes and Mexico’s migration au-
thorities, and in several places with American border agents too. In both towns
of Nogales—in Sonora and Arizona—Ramón Preciado operated for many
years as a notorious and much-feared coyote who charged as much as 20 or 30
dollars per person for the border crossing. Preciado worked in association with
Jesús Cárdenas Carranza, head of the migration office in Nogales, and also with
U.S. agents, giving them tip-offs about the presence of illegal Mexican workers
when they refused or delayed payments for services rendered. Most of the
officials in the Mexican agency were complicit with the coyotes’ multifarious
activities such as the sale of identification cards and residence visas to foreigners
and the smuggling of luxury items and drugs in an official delegation auto-
mobile, “with official number plates that meant it was not checked.”189
According to a Mexican investigator’s report, Jesús Cárdenas Carranza “fails to
show up at work, and can always be found on the streets in his automobiles, in
the company of Mexican and foreign smugglers.”190 In the wake of these
accusations, Cárdenas Carranza was transferred to Nuevo Laredo. In July 1938,
following fresh complaints about racketeering, smuggling, and abuses of au-
thority, this public official faced disciplinary proceedings. A lengthy report
described his various infringements. Jesús Carranza was summoned to Mexico
City for his deposition in response to the accusations made against him. The
allegations without any more evidence than the statements themselves must
have been enough to sway Landa y Piña in his recommendation to those above
him, namely that “after a full investigation to identify the genuine culpability of
the delegate Cárdenas Carranza, but with only the accusations and the defense
statements, it is impossible to reach a definitive conclusion.” Therefore, and at
 The Migration Business 127

the express request of the person under investigation, I recommended his

transfer to Nogales, Sonora.191
If there was something that Landa y Piña was not lacking was information
about the big business interests within the agency he was responsible for running.
Perhaps Rosendo Herrera represents the most scandalous example of all. In early
1937, Herrera was head of the migration office in Mexicali, the subject of
complaints about the charges of a 1-dollar daily fee per foreign dancer in the local
cabarets. Equally, it was known that he demanded the “businessmen” to pay his
lover, the dancer Carlote Morley, a resident of Calexico, “an inflated salary so
that he could continue to support the cabaret rather than cause it problems.”192
In September that year, Herrera was transferred to Nuevo Laredo to replace the
aforementioned Daniel Duarte who had become a federal deputy for Zacatecas.
In his new position, he received a complaint filed by an employee at the dele-
gation who revealed that the new boss would charge a “monthly fee” for the
agencies and sub-agencies under his remit. Daniel Vázquez Dávila, who made the
complaint, had refused to pay this fee that was demanded in return for Herrera’s
supposed assistance for Duarte’s transfer to the Monterrey offices. This was one of
the main reasons behind the complaints, but there were others that unearthed a
more complex web of personal interests and union fees. The investigation re-
vealed stark compromises and divisions among the employees themselves in the
Nuevo Laredo delegation, resulting from Herrera’s direct intervention by seeking
to coopt the General Secretary of the local section of the Interior Ministry’s
Workers’ Union. Herrera failed in his attempt to impose a subordinate, and so he
needed to join forces with his former rivals who controlled the union. “This was
the reason behind the accusations, resentments among the union’s majority and
minority groups, as well as personal animosity to the boss.”193
The conflict escalated and accusations against Herrera piled up. His “mis-
demeanors” included adding gasoline expenses as a budget item in offices without
automobiles, charging tourists and visitors for their entry permits in dollars,
adding a surcharge “pocketed by the employee making the charge, scandalously
in the full knowledge of the office supervisors.”194 It was also known that Herrera
had set up a profitable currency exchange business in the delegation offices, and
on trains running between Nuevo Laredo and Monterrey. Migration agents
forced tourists to pay visa fees and repatriation bonds in dollars with a wide spread
between the buying and selling rates. The tourists’ payments supplied the ne-
cessary capital for this business, and the money was deposited haphazardly into
the Finance Ministry’s account. Herrera used these resources for the employees
assigned to the train inspections to be able to work as “currency exchange
agents.”195 When Finance Ministry and Migration inspectors audited the Nuevo
Laredo delegation in March 1938, they found it in a “terribly chaotic state.”
More than 15,000 pesos were missing, revealing an embezzlement scheme that
had begun during Daniel Duarte’s term as the head of the delegation and that
Herrera had expanded upon. Many of the delegation’s employees received
128 The Migration Business

“loans” from the money generated and beneficiaries included Daniel Duarte
himself. Based in Mexico City, Duarte gave instructions to his former treasurer in
Nuevo Laredo to transfer money to Texas to buy materials for a ranch that he was
building. The treasurer and Herrera himself argued that “a sense of loyalty”196
prevented them from turning down requests from the former boss, whose po-
sition as a federal deputy gave him immunity from facing criminal proceedings.
However, Herrera was subject to a criminal investigation despite having obtained
a federal amparo when he claimed to be “a victim of performing my duties
overzealously, particularly by working to clean up the many irregularities in the
office.”197
Rosendo Herrera was suspended and summoned to Mexico City. Before
departing he made sure to bring some incriminating papers, including one in
which he appeared to be involved in the activities of Jesús Garza González, “a
drug trafficker” who had been deported to the United States.198 In April 1938,
Herrera was put on trial for embezzlement and abuse of authority; the latter
charge was dropped a few weeks later, though he continued to face the former
while remaining out of custody.199 The prosecution must have failed because he
was back in the office by late 1938, working as head of the delegation in Nogales,
Sonora.
Rosendo Herrera was from Jiquilpan, Michoacán, and claimed to be a close
friend of President Cárdenas. However, one of his accusers wrote “I do not think
that General Cárdenas would be on friendly terms with such unscrupulous in-
dividuals” because “this gentleman extorts money from all American citizens
entering Sonora, even if he does not provide them any service.”200 In July 1939,
the Interior Ministry’s union sent a telegram to Cárdenas, accusing Herrera of
being “an unworthy public official who boasts of having your support, spends his
time extorting foreigners at his personal office adjacent to the delegation’s offices.
This office prosecutes migration-related matters.” The union requested Herrera’s
dismissal. Months later, a fresh accusation landed on the desk of interior minister
Ignacio García Téllez, adding further information. Herrera, “who claims to be
related to the president” profited from selling entry permits to tourists. Moreover,
he was working in partnership with a notorious gambler and drug trafficker “with
the surname Falcón, in an office that posted bonds in a building next door to the
delegation.” Herrera forced all foreigners entering through Nogales to put up a
bond to ensure possible repatriation expenses.201
The ensuing investigation resulted from a lawsuit against Spanish citizen, José
Matiella, who lived in Nogales (Arizona) when he was detained by Rosendo
Herrera in Nogales (Sonora) in November 1939. Matiella’s daughter, who lived
in Nogales, Sonora, filed for an amparo and her father was released after one day
in jail. Local newspapers covered the story. Matiella was in a family business and
had strong political connections. The chambers of commerce in both cities of
Nogales raised objections to the charges, as did Sonora’s governor. Herrera
alleged that Matiella lacked a visa for his business activities and therefore fined
 The Migration Business 129

him 250 pesos, and at the Spaniard’s refusal to pay he sentenced him to fifteen
days in jail and then deportation. The migration regulations did not contemplate
such a punishment, and in any case the non-payment of a fine was a matter for
the Migration Department authorities in Mexico City. The root of the problem
was that José Matiella’s daughter owned the house that Herrera rented in
Nogales, Sonora. Matiella informed Herrera that she would be putting up the
rent. Angered by this news, he told her that he would not pay and moreover that,
as a foreigner with residence in the United States, it was illegal for her father to
engage in business activities. Therefore, Herrera demanded a bribe of 300 pesos
“in cash, to settle the matter” or else he would get Matiella sent to jail. The
Spaniard refused to pay up.
The case of Matiella’s detainment was the latest addition to a raft of accusations
against Herrera. Given this situation, interior minister Ignacio García Téllez re-
quested Andrés Landa y Piña to carry out an investigation in order to “draw up a
clear and well-documented report solely to safeguard the ministry’s reputation
and the dignity of its representatives.”202 In late December 1939, Albino Villegas
Segura, a migration inspector, compiled a detailed report confirming the accu-
sations and providing extra details on Herrera’s business activities. First, the in-
spector discovered that a “tourism committee” was used as a façade for charging
between 10 and 20 dollars as a “courtesy permit” for Americans to obtain border
passes. Herrera provided these documents and delivered them signed in blank to
Jim Kerson, an American citizen in charge of this “tourism committee” and
owner of the largest cabaret in Sonora.203 Second, the report proved the ex-
istence of an agency of the Compañía Central de Fianzas, S. A., run by Herrera
through an employee named Carmen Corral, who received a monthly salary of
90 pesos. Herrera charged a commission of 20 percent of the cost of each bond.
And third, Villegas Segura unveiled evidence that Herrera charged between 100
and 120 dollars to issue temporary residence cards to American citizens.204 For
each one of these crimes, the inspector gathered documentary evidence and
signed statements by victims of this public official’s abuses. All these documents
reached the desk of Andrés Landa y Piña. Consequently, he summoned Rosendo
Herrera to appear in Mexico City before Landa y Piña and the chief clerk of the
Interior Ministry. In his defense, Herrera showed a collection of letters—all dated
after the Matiella case—sent to the President and Interior Minister, in which
members of the Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Committee attested to this
public official’s exemplary conduct. Landa y Piña used all these documents to
draw up a report that is paradigmatic of the authorities’ level of connivance with
the crimes committed by their subordinates.
The only charge that Landa y Piña acknowledged was Herrera’s “excessive
severity” in his dealings with Matiella, while also agreeing that Herrera was in the
right, because the Spaniard lacked the proper migration status to allow him to
charge rent for a house that was in the name of his daughter. The “excessiveness”
was based on the fact Herrera should have given Matiella a reasonable period in
130 The Migration Business

which to pay the fine. In regard to the sale of “tourist cards,” although he re-
cognized that there was no justification for a private citizen to have cards signed
in blank, the issue was in doubt because of the possibility that these cards were
issued through accredited tourist agencies that needed to pay bonds and were
regularly audited. In this sense, Jim Kerson’s role required a more thorough
investigation. Landa y Piña acknowledged that the issue of the bond company
was “another delicate matter,” especially because of the “confusion between
collecting fees for the issue of official documentation and charging premiums in a
privately run business,” but “a complete clarification of these matters with a
statement by Señor Rosendo Herrera and Señorita Carmen Corral remains
pending.” Finally, addressing the accusation of charging for administrative pro-
cedures that should have been free, Landa y Piña also recognized the gravity of
the accusation “and if fully proven this would be grounds for Señor Rosendo
Herrera to face the most severe disciplinary measures.” In short, he concluded,
“the accusations are a very delicate matter” but any decision would need to take
into account that “it seems that the migration inspector who conducted the
investigation interviewed people with particular grievances against Herrera,”
possibly causing his report to be biased. In conclusion, to “prevent any mis-
carriage of justice,” Landa y Piña issued the following decision:

Given the seriousness of the accusations and the excessive severity in the
case of Rosendo Herrera’s handling of the case of the foreigner Matiella
[ … ] the time has come for the Honor and Justice Committee to intervene
in order to clarify this matter and issue the corresponding verdict [ … ]
because if a resolution were to be made before this Committee has reached
its decision, the procedure would be one-sided given that the head of the
office in Nogales, Sonora, has not had the opportunity to put forward
arguments in his defense.205

It is hard to know anything about the Honor and Justice Committee because no
such body existed within the Interior Ministry’s internal regulations.206 Landa y
Piña chose not to apply the punishment established in the Population Law for
such cases; furthermore, when he drafted this “clear and well-documented” re-
port, the federal Congress had already passed the first Federal Employees and
Officials Liabilities Act that included all the charges facing Rosendo Herrera, as
well as the crimes that Landa y Piña would be committing by failing to act on the
investigations that could lead to the dismissal and imprisonment of his sub-
ordinates.207 What commitments prevented Landa y Piña from setting in motion
an administrative procedure that might lead to Herrera’s dismissal? What were the
complicities that delayed—to the point of nullifying—the legal proceedings that
began with the criminal accusations facing this public official?
The report of the investigation ordered by Landa y Piña reached Sonora’s
governor, who in turn issued instructions to the state attorney’s office to
 The Migration Business 131

undertake a further investigation to inquire into the truth of the accusations.

A Sonoran state prosecutor traveled to both towns of Nogales (in Sonora and
Arizona) where he interviewed public officials, businessmen, merchants, migra-
tion employees and the U.S. and Mexican Consuls, and reported confidentially to
the governor: “I did not encounter a single person who would vouch for Señor
Herrera as an exemplary federal government official.”208 However, none of those
interviewed “wants to accuse Herrera publicly out of fear of reprisals.” Even
American officials and businessmen were reluctant to do so. A certain
Mr. Ward—an owner of a ranch near Hermosillo who was periodically extorted
by Herrera—told the investigator: “I don’t want to get caught up in any trouble
by making any accusations. I’m afraid of retaliations since I have businesses in
Mexico.”209
Neither the state nor the federal authorities ended up prosecuting Herrera; no
information is available about any action taken by the Honor and Justice
Committee mentioned by Landa y Piña. Exonerated of all charges, Herrera re-
turned to his job in Nogales in late January 1940. Some months later, two further
inquiries by an Interior Ministry political police investigator reported that he
continued his business activities: he overcharged for visitor permits, issued re-
ceipts for false bonds, and failed to provide receipts to foreigners for their pay-
ments of migration fees. He had returned to his old tricks, though making a
minor shift in his modus operandi. He transferred his bond agency from Sonora
to Nogales, Arizona, with the same female employee attending the clients. In the
case now under investigation, Herrera had denied entry into Mexico of various
“Colored individuals” who worked in Arizona but were living in Sonora with
their wives and Mexican children. The delegate detained them, saying that “their
migration status was irregular, but that they did not need to worry because there
was an office in Nogales, Arizona, that would arrange everything.” Once in the
office, Señorita Corral informed them that the fee was 100 pesos for “each Black
individual,” a cost broken down as follows: 10 pesos for the migration paper-
work, 40 pesos for Señorita Corral, and 50 pesos for the Boss for providing this
“bit of help.”210
Herrera’s career not only continued unchecked but went from strength to
strength. In August 1940, he was appointed head of the delegation in Progreso,
Yucatán, and in June 1941, in private correspondence with Miguel Alemán
Valdés, interior minister at that time in President Manuel Ávila Camacho’s ad-
ministration, he reported that he had “already taken up his position as head of the
delegation in Ciudad Juárez.”211
How did Landa y Piña benefit from defending and retaining public officials
such as Herrera? Studies on corruption in Mexico reveal that in a public sector
without job security, and in a labor market that offered few opportunities for
social mobility, loyalty toward more senior officials prompted employees to
participate in corruption networks or at least tolerate them. Since junior em-
ployees could only ensure their continued employment by inspiring the
132 The Migration Business

confidence of their seniors, few were prepared to jeopardize that trust by re-
vealing acts of corruption. Following the rules of the game was the only way to
keep a job. And those rules are the ones that force public officials to participate in
webs of corruption.212 Did this situation apply to Landa y Piña’s situation?
Probably. The tolerance of subordinates’ corruption was perhaps the expression
of that criteria of loyalty toward an elite the held the reins of power across the
entire country. Subordinates had to show a certain tolerance of corruption. How?
There is no evidence to suggest that Landa y Piña participated in any illegal
business. Was corruption the price for ensuring his agents’ loyalty? And if so,
what purpose did such loyalty serve? Landa y Piña was one of the few public
officials who carved out a career in migration, tourism, and population admin-
istration; he worked for the interior ministry for many years, from his beginnings
as an office assistant in the 1920s until his death in the 1960s, when he was
director of the Federal Electoral Registry. He left and rejoined the ministry on
several occasions, but never on account of any work-related problem. On the
contrary, he enjoyed a reputation among top-ranking Interior Ministry officials as
an honorable, efficient, and loyal employee; his subordinates and leaders of
various expat communities also respected him. He received several honors and
receptions from Migration Department employees and distinguished members of
immigrant communities, and more than one foreign government decorated him.
Landa y Piña knew that although such accolades were important, there were not
sufficient to guarantee a career in the government bureaucracy. True re-
commendations came from the elite: people close to the president, regional
caudillos or strongmen with national influence. We will never know whether
Landa y Piña had detailed knowledge of the business of that elite, but he was wise
enough to sense that the removal of one of his subordinates could affect wider
circles where business activities and politics were intertwined.
In June 1930, he received his first appointment as director of the Migration
Department. However, in the space of just over a year the Interior Ministry had
four directors, a situation that must have caused anxiety for departmental heads
and their subordinates fearful of losing their jobs.213 In October 1931, a letter
from General Abelardo Rodríguez guaranteed Landa y Piña’s continued em-
ployment in his position. This caudillo and businessmen in the “vice industry” on
the northern border,214 wrote the following to the interior minister Manuel
Téllez:

In keeping with the established protocol in the various state ministries of

appointing staff with a close relationship to new ministers or enjoy their full
trust, I would like to recommend Señor A. Landa y Piña, Head of the
Migration Department, whom I know has provided valuable services to the
government during his time at the helm of this office. Señor Landa y Piña
has loyally worked with the government’s program to encourage high-
quality tourism in Mexico, and during my time spent on the border of
 The Migration Business 133

California all the reports I have received give me the confidence to report
to you that Señor Landa y Piña is an honorable and trustworthy public
official, who is also respected and held in high regard by the U.S.
authorities.215

Landa y Piña would have been unlikely to receive such recommendations by

dismissing corrupt employees. This reputation as an “honorable and trustworthy”
employee came at a cost, and Landa y Piña paid heavily for this distinction.

Notes
1 Gordon Schaeffer, 1955, 288.
2 Ibid., 1955, 308, and 309.
3 See Olvera Serrano, 2004.
4 Mendieta y Núñez, 1942, 306.
5 Ibid., 297, 296, 313, and 314
6 Escalante Gonzalbo, 1989, 333, and 338.
7 See Lomnitz, 2000.
8 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Interior Minister,
1 June 1953.
9 The doctor José Valenzuela provided this information to Landa y Piña, see note 51,
chapter 2.
10 Landa y Piña, 1930, 6.
11 El Nacional, 13 August 1941.
12 Ibid., 12 August 1941.
13 See Young, 2014.
14 Castillo, Toussaint, and Vázquez, 2006, 201
15 See Recio, 2002, and Sandos, 1980.
16 See Taylor Hansen, 2000, 33–37; Ceballos Ramírez, 2001; Márquez, 2007; and
Chenillo Alazraki, 2010.
17 AHINM, file, 4/013-9-1932-15.
18 El Noroeste, Nogales, 25 May 1932.
19 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1932-15.
20 Ibid.
21 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1934-31.
22 AGN-DIPyS, box 50, file 1.
23 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1937-87.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 El Universal,, 30 September 1934.
29 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1934-41.
30 Ibid., 4/013-9-1932-3.
31 Ibid. 4/013-9-1937-88.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 4/013-9-1932-11.
34 El Universal, 22 April 1924.
35 El Nacional, 13 June 1932
36 “Ley de Migración de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” DOF,, 13 March 1926.
37 AHINM, file 4/103-9-1927-18.
134 The Migration Business

38 Ibid., 4/103-9-1932-10.
39 Ibid., 4/013-9-1941-110.
40 Ibid., 4/130–1938-2676.
41 AALyP, Report by Elías Contreras to Andrés Landa y Piña, 24 January 1940.
42 El Eco del Bravo, Nuevo Laredo, 1 July 1926
43 La Prensa, San Antonio, Texas, 8 August 1926.
44 AHINM, file, 4/161–1926-12.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 El Universal, 1 January 1927.
48 Pseudonym of the journalist Fernando Ramírez de Aguilar.
49 El Universal, 5 February 1927.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 6 February 1927.
52 Ibid., 27 February 1927.
53 Ibid., 15 March 1928
54 AALyP, Report by Raúl Zertuche Garza, Head of the Population Office in Tijuana,
12 March 1941.
55 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1932-9.
56 Ibid., 4/013-9-1932-18.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., 4/161–1938.62 C.
59 El Universal, 23 January 1919.
60 Ibid., 23 May 1922.
61 Ibid., 22 June 1923.
62 Ibid., 16 August 1923.
63 AHINM, 4/161–1925-5.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid., 4/161-47.
66 El Universal, 1 December 1926.
67 See Treviño, 1928.
68 AHINM, file 4/161–1926-12.
69 Ibid.
70 El Universal, 1 February 1925.
71 Ibid., 21 May 1927.
72 Ibid., 4/161-52.
73 El Universal, 10 May 1928.
74 AGN-DIPyS, box 319, file 57.
75 El Universal, 26 March 1929.
76 Ibid., 10 May 1930.
77 Ibid., 3 November 1935.
78 Ibid., 2 November 1935.
79 AGN-DIPyS, box 309, file 6.
80 El Universal, 4 July 1942.
81 Excelsior, 2 December 1950.
82 El Universal, 5 December 1950.
83 Excelsior, 13 December 1950.
84 Ibid., 15 December 1950.
85 AHDSRE, file IV-397-19.
86 See Taylor Hansen, 1994, 41–57.
87 See Lim, 2017
88 El Universal, 29 May 1921.
89 El Nacional, 19 October 1930.
 The Migration Business 135

90 AHINM, file 4/360-130/8218.

91 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to the Interior Ministry’s Head of the
Confidential Department, 18 June 1931.
92 AHINM, file 4/161-130.
93 AALyP, Letter from Rogelio Hernández to Andrés Landa y Piña, Nogales, Sonora,
27 June 1930.
94 AHINM, file 4/161-130.
95 AALyP, Letter from Guadalupe González to Andrés Landa y Piña, 17 June 1930, and
Letter from Rogelio Hernández to Andrés Landa y Piña, Nogales, Sonora, 27 June
1930.
96 AALyP, Letter from Ramón Tirado to Andrés Landa y Piña, 5 December 1930.
97 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Agustín Rodriguez Portas, 23 June
1930.
98 AALyP, Letter from Agustín Rodriguez Portas to Andrés Landa y Piña, Nogales,
Sonora, 30 June 1930.
99 AALyP, Letter from [illegible signature] to Andrés Landa y Piña, Nogales, Sonora,
23 February 1931.
100 For a study of these lodges, see Chao Romero, 2010; Cauich Carrillo, 2002; Trueba
Lara, 1990.
101 El Nacional, 3 June 1931.
102 AGN-TSJDF, Octava Sala, file 577050 (1932).
103 See El Nacional, El Universal, and Excelsior during June 1931.
104 AGN-TSJDF, Octava Sala, file 577050 (1932).
105 Ibid.
106 See Reñique 2003, 231–289; Dambourgues, 1974; Delgado, 2012; Chao Romero,
2010; Hu-DeHart, 1982; and Parra Sandoval, 2005.
107 Quoted by Parra Sandoval, 2005, 102.
108 AALyP, Confidential letter from [illegible signature] to Andrés Landa y Piña,
Nogales, Sonora, 23 February 1931.
109 Parra Sandoval, 2005, 97–98
110 El Nacional, 29 July 1932.
111 AHINM, file 4/161-26-9.
112 Ibid., 4/.013–9-1941-113
113 Ibid., 4/013.9.1942.122.
114 AALyP, “Moisés Salcedo, ‘La región cafetera de Chiapas, sus problemas de migración
y de trabajo,’” May 1929, mimeographed document, 10.
115 Ibid., 3
116 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1934-45.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid., 161/157–1930.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid., 4/013-9-41–111.
121 See Yankelevich, 2006.
122 AGN-DIPyS, box 33, files 362.2. (726.1) 2 and 362 .3 (72)1. See Friedman, 2008
and Von Metz, Perez Montfort, Radkau, and Spenser, 1988.
123 See Chew, 2015; García, 2014; Hernández Ponce, 2013; and Hernández Galindo,
2011.
124 El Nacional, 18 November 1941.
125 AGN-DIPyS, box 742, file 2.
126 El Universal, 13 June 1942.
127 Ibid., 7 July 1942.
128 Ibid., 1 August 1942.
129 AGN-DIPyS, box 95, file 7.
136 The Migration Business

130 El Alacrán, 9 October 1943.

131 AGN-DIPyS, box 90, file 16. See Peddie, 2006.
132 See Inclán Fuentes, 2013.
133 El Nacional, 2 August 1941.
134 Ibid., 6 November 1943.
135 See Inclán Fuentes, 2013.
136 AGN-DIPyS, box 379, file 21.
137 El Universal, 1 August 1942.
138 Ibid., 7 July 1942.
139 AHINM, file 4/350-7-341.
140 Ibid. 4/350–1930-1596.
141 Gleizer, 2011 and 2015a.
142 Fierman, 1980, 5 and ff.
143 AALyP, Letter from Manuel Esparza to Andrés Landa y Piña, El Paso, Texas,
14 February 1939.
144 Ibid.
145 Ibid.
146 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Manuel Esparza, Mexico City, 8 March
1939.
147 AALyP, Letter from Manuel Esparza to Andrés Landa y Piña, El Paso, Texas,
14 April 1939.
148 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Manuel Esparza, Mexico City, 26 April
1939.
149 AALyP, Letter from Manuel Esparza to Andrés Landa y Piña, El Paso, Texas, 3 May
1939.
150 AALyP, Letter from Rodolfo Elizondo, Head of the Migration Service in Ciudad
Juárez, to Francisco Trejo, Director General of the Population Bureau, Ciudad
Juárez, 25 March 1940.
151 AALyP, Letter from Rodolfo Elizondo, Head of the Migration Service in Ciudad
Juárez, to Andrés Landa y Piña, Ciudad Juárez, 5 April 1940.
152 AALyP, Letter from Maurice Schwartz to Andrés Landa y Piña, El Paso, Texas,
14 June 1940.
153 AGN-DM, files 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118, box 3, 1940.
154 Fierman, 1980, 33ff.
155 Ibid., 39.
156 El Universal, 26 August 1935.
157 Ibid.
158 “Ley de Migración,” DOF, 13 March 1926, 6–8.
159 “Ley Federal de Migración,” DOF, 30 August 1930, chapter XVIII, 10–12.
160 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1931-1. In 1932, Landa y Piña summarized the duties en-
trusted to this group in a report sent to the Interior Minister: “[The committee] is
responsible for translating foreign-language communications; [ … ] preparing
teaching materials for correspondence courses set up to increase the cultural level of
the migration service’s employees; drafting reform bills and regulations, and other
intiatives to improve the service; writing reports and circulars; and handling con-
fidential correspondence.” (AHINM, file 4/013-9-1931-1).
161 AHINM, file 4/350–1930-448.
162 AALyP, Letter from Félix Salinas to Andrés Landa y Piña, Manzanillo, 21 February
1928.
163 AALyP, Letter from inspector E. Salas Pérez to Andrés Landa y Piña,” Tuxtla Chico,
Chiapas, 24 March 1928; Letter from the Migration Delegate in Tampico [Illegible
signature], Tamaulipas, 28 January 1928, and Letter from the agent Raymundo
Gutiérrez, Tuxtla Chico, Chiapas, 18 March 1940.
 The Migration Business 137

164 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Roberto Rivas Serrano, Mexico City,
27 January 1939.
165 AALyP, Letter from J. J. Farías to Andrés Landa y Piña, Tlaquepaque, Jalisco,
7 March 1939.
166 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Perfecto Gutiérrez Zamora, Head of
the Population Service in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, 15 July 1939.
167 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Rosendo Herrera, Head of the
Population Service in Nogales, Sonora, 18 July 1939.
168 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Oscar R. Peralta, Head of
the Population Service in the Port of Veracruz, Veracruz, 18 April 1940.
169 See Pardo, 2005.
170 AALyP, Letter from the inspector Elías Contreras to Andrés Landa y Piña, Veracruz,
24 Janury 1940.
171 AALyP, Letter from the inspector Elías Contreras to Andrés Landa y Piña,
Veracruz, 24 January 1940.
172 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Juan Buitrón Ortíz, México, 9 August
1939, and Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Rafael Torres Soto, Municipal
Treasurer of Jungapeo, Michoacán, Mexico City, 10 August 1939.
173 AALyP, Letter from Rodolfo Elizondo, Head of the Population Service, to Andrés
Landa y Piña, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, 18 June 1940.
174 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Rodolfo Elizondo, Head of the
Population Service, Mexico City, 31 July 1940.
175 AALyP, Letter from Raymundo Gutiérrez García to Andrés Landa y Piña, Tuxtla
Chico, Chiapas, 18 March 1940.
176 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Raymundo Gutiérrez García, agent,
Tuxtla Chico, Chiapas, Mexico City, July 1940.
177 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to Abelardo Apango, Mexico City, 22 May
1931.
178 AALyP, Letter from Andrés Landa y Piña to René Aguilar, Mexico City, 22 May
1931.
179 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1932-11.
180 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1932-3.
181 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1932-18.
182 Ibid.
183 Ibid.
184 Ibid.
185 Ibid.
186 Ibid.
187 Ibid.
188 See Mendieta y Núñez, 1942, chapter 6.
189 AALyP, Letter from the migration inspector in Nogales, Sonora [illegible signature]
to Andrés Landa y Piña, Nogales, 23 February 1931.
190 AGN-DIPS, box 76, file 1.
191 AHINM, file 4/130–1935-1671.
192 Ibid., file 4/130–1935-1622.
193 Ibid, 4/013-9-1938-93.
194 Ibid.
195 Ibid.
196 Ibid.
197 El Universal, 6 May 1938.
198 AHINM, file 4/013-9-1938-93.
199 Ibid., 4/130–1935-1622.
200 Ibid.
138 The Migration Business

201 Ibid.
202 Ibid.
203 Ibid.
204 Ibid.
205 Ibid.
206 See the Interior Ministry’s internal regulations, DOF, 28 November 1929 and
25 August 1938.
207 Inter alia, see Articles 18 and 19 of the “Ley de Responsabilidades de Responsabilidades
de Funcionarios y Empleados de la Federación, del Distrito y Territorio Federales y de
los Altos Funcionarios de los Estados,” DOF, 21 February 1940, 8.
208 AHINM, file 4/130–1935-1622.
209 Ibid.
210 Ibid.
211 Ibid.
212 Morris, 1992, 63–87.
213 From 1930 to 1931, the Interior Ministers were Carlos Riva Palacios, Octavio
Mendoza González, Lázaro Cárdenas, and Manuel Téllez.
214 See Ramírez Rancaño, 1982 and Gómez Estrada, 2007.
215 AALyP, Letter from Abelardo Rodríguez to Manuel Téllez, Mexico City,
26 October 1931.
4
FOREIGNERS’ NATURALIZATION
AND RESTRICTED CITIZENSHIP

Regulations on nationality are instrumental in defining a nation and constructing its

political representation through a state. As Patrick Weil rightly points out, while a
territory imposes geographical boundaries on a state’s sovereignty, nationality de-
fines the limits of its population.1 A nation’s constitution defines the membership
underpinning its sovereignty; in this sense, nationality is the legal attribute that
determines an individual’s belonging to a state and by virtue of that attribute the
state grants rights and sets obligations. To use the words of Hannah Arendt, in the
modern world, nationality is the basis for having the “right to have rights.”2
How was this matter addressed in a nation where foreigners were a constant
source of anxiety? The foundations of Mexico’s naturalization policy were laid in
the nineteenth century.3 However, in a context of increasing mistrust in for-
eigners, the 1910 Revolution brought about a substantial change in ideas about
nationality and how it could be acquired, and in the different “tiers” of citi-
zenship. Members of Congress began to debate these issues in 1917 and dis-
cussions on the topic continued for almost two decades.

Jus Soli or Jus Sanguinis

Extranjería and international conflict are central to any study of migration and
naturalization polices in Mexico. It is worth recalling that, during the nineteenth
and some of the twentieth century, discussions centered on whether the founding
principle of nationality should be based on place of birth (jus soli) or parentage (jus
sanguinis). Until the 1930s, Mexico stood apart from the rest of the Americas by
prioritizing jus sanguinis over jus soli.
What can explain this lag when Mexico, like the other countries on the
continent, pinned its hopes for modernization on the possibility of attracting
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256182-5
140 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

immigrants to boost the young American nations’ economies, culture, and racial
quality? The statement of purpose of the 1886 Law of Extranjería and
Naturalization, drafted by Ignacio Vallarta, systematized the issues that lay at the
core of the debates on these questions ever since the time of Independence,
ultimately establishing a canon that proved remarkably long lasting—it remained
in force for almost two decades after the 1917 Constitution.
The so-called Vallarta Law was based on the premise put forward by its author
that in regard to migration, capital, and foreign relations, the nation had “painful
memories of diplomatic conflicts [and] of the speculations of mercenaries who
only come here to exploit our misfortunes.”4 In 1885, the traumas of Mexico’s
war with the United States, whose origins can be traced back to the policies of
populating and colonizing Texas—combined with protests about outstanding
international debts that prompted Maximilian’s imperial adventure—provide
sufficient evidence to gauge the extent of the “painful memories” cited by
Vallarta. These wars, invasions, losses of human life and territories must have been
more powerful influences than any European anti-feudal liberalism to justify the
modern relevance of jus sanguinis in Vallarta’s mind. One’s place of birth, argued
the Mexican jurist, is an accident, whereas family links are powerful and en-
during; to ascribe nationality based on where someone happens to be born
“would be to maintain the feudal tradition that considers man to be dependent on
the land.”5 In the name of liberty, rights of kinship were connected to individual
freewill, and just as people’s freedom maintains the contract that connects them to
the state, something similar must take place with foreigners who wanted to be-
come Mexican’s, since their free decision would be based on the possibility of
naturalizing rather than the accident of their place of birth.
Like Vallarta, the members of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1857
Constitution were unable to ignore the “painful memories” of historical con-
frontations with foreign interests. Article 30 of the Constitution stipulated that
“anyone born to Mexican parents, whether in or outside the Republic’s territory,
is a Mexican.” This overt principle of kinship was completed with the declaration
that all foreigners who had chosen to adopt Mexican nationality through the
specific legal channels would be considered Mexicans. However, complications
began to arise when section 3(a) of this same article established that foreigners
who acquired property or had children in the Republic of Mexico would be
considered Mexicans “provided that they did not declare their intention to
preserve their nationality.”6
The Vallarta Law of 1886 sought to address the inconsistency of adopting the
principle of jus sanguinis while also considering the children of foreign parents as
Mexicans. Foreigners would no longer have their original nationality if they
chose to naturalize, and acquiring properties or having children would be a “fast-
track” to acquiring nationality. It is important to note how this Mexican legis-
lation inverted the expression of individual free will by making the acquisition of
nationality the result of an abstention or a negative act, whereas legislations and
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 141

legal practice considered naturalization as a positive act, in other words the

manifestation of the desire to acquire a new nationality.
The Constitution and the Vallarta Law established an ex officio nationalization
that could only be avoided if foreigners expressed their intention to continue
being a foreigner within a specific time frame. The Vallarta Law stipulated that
foreigners’ children would still be considered foreigners until they reached legal
age when they might make a sworn declaration of their wish to retain their
parents’ original nationality; otherwise, in the absence of such a request, they
would be considered naturalized Mexicans.
This law was born of the weakness of a state that attempted to shield itself from
international claims. Therefore, instead of expanding the borders of the com-
munity and thus increasing the size of the population with equal political rights
by incorporating foreign residents and their offspring, the Mexican government
sought to place properties under national sovereignty, preventing foreigners from
invoking the protection of their governments to defend their property. In other
words, the state stripped foreigners of their filiation rights to make them
Mexicans if they owned properties or had children born in Mexico.
The weakness and fear of further international conflicts led the members of the
Constituent Assembly of 1857 to double down on the principle of filiation, but it
also laid a path to naturalization that subverted the meaning of individual free
will. Instead of requesting Mexican nationality, foreigners with properties and
children born in Mexico automatically acquired Mexican nationality, whereas the
state still considered the children of foreigners and naturalized Mexicans as for-
eigners, until such time as these children were to “freely” express their wish to
confirm this status. Otherwise, and one year after reaching the age of twenty-one,
these children would be considered Mexican nationals.
These procedures gave rise to major complications. In her study of these cases,
Erika Pani coined the concept of “naturalización por despiste” or absent-minded
naturalization, to refer to foreigners or their descendants who never stated their
desire to retain their nationality out of ignorance or forgetfulness, and upon
reaching the legal deadline became Mexicans, probably without many of them
even realizing it.7
Naturalization remained something that revolved around men well into the
twentieth century. In the 1886 Law, all foreign women married to Mexicans
automatically lost their nationality and acquired their husband’s.8 Mexican wi-
dows of foreigners could also regain their original nationality if they so requested,
as could foreigners who provided official services to the Mexican government.
Two distinct models for ascribing nationality existed in the Western world:
the French jus sanguinis, and the Anglo-Saxon jus soli. The differences lay in the
conception of individual freedom, and the mass-migration events throughout
much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries pushed the two models further
apart. For countries on the European continent with high rates of emigration, jus
sanguinis made it possible to retain the links of loyalty with citizens and family
142 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

members living abroad; in other words, it enabled an extension of sovereignty

beyond the countries’ geographical borders. On the other hand, for countries
with high levels of immigration, jus soli empowered processes of inclusion and
integration by allowing the children of immigrants to lose their nationality of
origin and to become citizens of the nations where their parents chose to settle.
Mexico adopted the jus sanguinis model, combining it with a route for for-
eigners and their children to obtain nationality by partly incorporating the
principle of jus soli, though without any interest in expanding political rights. In
fact, naturalizing foreign property owners and their offspring, who would inherit
these properties, turned the question of property rights into the core issue for
naturalization policies.

Mexicans “By Origin” and Citizen Rights

In Mexico, jus soli was a model adopted ambiguously in response to a policy
focused on nationalizing property rather than immigrants, and the limits imposed
on citizenship clearly reflect this approach. Among the rights and obligations
acquired by foreigners upon their naturalization are those of an exclusively po-
litical nature. Nationality and citizenship refer to two different conditions, al-
though the former is a pre-requisite for the latter. Citizenship refers to the legal
status that enables individuals to participate fully in the country’s politics and
government. In other words, a citizen is a national who has political rights and
can therefore take part in the country’s public affairs and government. The 1857
Constitution, like its successor in 1917, drew a distinction between the status of
Mexican nationals as opposed to citizens,9 and these differences are found in the
regulations on naturalization. In the case of the Vallarta Law, Article 30 clearly
established that the political rights and duties of foreigners who became Mexicans
by naturalization equated to those of Mexicans “by origin,” with the sole ex-
ception of the right to hold those positions or jobs that the Constitution reserved
exclusively for those born on Mexican soil.10 Specifically, naturalized foreigners
could not become presidents, ministers of state, or ministers of the Supreme
Court of Justice, in accordance with Articles 77, 87, and 93 of the 1857
Constitution.
However, the 1857 Constitution and the 1886 Law left some gaps in the
definition of a Mexican by birth or “by origin.” The former stipulated that
Mexicans were “all those born to Mexican parents, whether or not on Mexican
soil”11 and the latter that “Mexicans are those born on Mexican soil to a father
who is Mexican by birth or by naturalization.”12 None of these definitions
contemplated foreign children born in Mexico who, upon reaching legal age,
chose to become Mexican citizens. In this case, it was unclear if they were
Mexicans by birth.
Venustiano Carranza attempted to settle this matter, and in the draft used by
the Constituent Assembly of 1917 he proposed to amend Article 30 of the 1857
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 143

Constitution. This text established that “Mexicans by birth are the children of
Mexican parents who were born on Mexican soil or elsewhere,” whereas for-
eigners and their children could only acquire nationality by making an official
application, and therefore they would be considered naturalized Mexicans.13
Carranza had a well-founded interest in defining the limits of Mexican na-
tionality. The 1910 Mexican Revolution had revived a deep-seated nationalist
sentiment. In reaction to further attacks and threats from abroad, but also in the
context of a political struggle involving Mexicans born to foreigners, the re-
volutionary norms erected a barrier around the nation in order to guarantee that
the sole beneficiaries of fundamental rights were Mexicans “by origin.”
The Constitution approved in February 1917 limited foreigners’ scope for
involvement in economic and political affairs, requiring a redefinition of who
were nationals, and how non-nationals could become Mexicans. Carranza’s
proposed amendment to Article 30 confirmed that Mexican nationality was based
on jus sanguinis. This proposal was approved with one modification that, as in the
1857 Constitution, restored the ambiguity between jus sanguinis and jus soli as a
condition to define the nationality of origin.
The final wording of this article sheds light on the meaning of extranjería and
naturalization in post-revolutionary Mexico. The Constituent Assembly of 1917
discussed Article 30 over the course of four sessions, and at the root of this
lengthy process lay the citizenship rights for naturalized foreigners and foreigners’
children born in Mexico. A majority agreed on limiting the political rights of the
former, but much of the debate revolved around whether a child born to foreign
parents in Mexico could hold an elected post.
The controversy began even before the opening of the Constituent
Assembly’s sessions. During preparatory meetings, the deputy Rubén Martí
found himself at the center of a controversy that reignited soon after the Assembly
was formed. Rubén Martí was twenty-five years old when elected a member of
the Constituent Assembly. Born in Cuba in 1891, he had arrived in Mexico at
the age of eight and lived in the country ever since. Shortly before the
Revolution broke out, he chose to adopt Mexican nationality and for reasons not
entirely clear he ended up joining the ranks of General Álvaro Obregón’s forces.
His nationality of origin antagonized some members of the Assembly. In line with
the 1857 Constitution his election was lawful, since the requirement was “to be a
Mexican citizen exercising his political rights.”14 However, a group of
deputies—spearheaded by Nayarit’s Cristóbal Limón, Hidalgo’s Rafael Vega
Sánchez, Puebla’s Epigmenio A. Martínez Ponce, and Sonora’s Juan de Dios
Bojórquez—harangued Martí with arguments that barely concealed political
differences and personal enmities. Their argument to thwart his appointment
crudely invoked Article 56 of the 1857 Constitution, which established the re-
quirement “to be Mexican by birth.” When it was made clear that this was
fallacious, an appeal was made to the sovereign power of Congress to decide the
case. Patriotic sentiments were ignited to prevent a “foreigner” from becoming a
144 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

member of the Assembly: the deputy Juan de Dios Bojórquez contended that
Martí “is a man who has renounced his patria and therefore someone who could
never help us with the same passion, enthusiasm, and interest as one of our fellow
countrymen born in Mexico, to Mexican parents.”15 The emphasis was on the
insufficient evidence of Martí’s revolutionary past and that, in the best case
scenario, he appeared among the Constitutionalist forces somewhat late in the
day, in 1915. Martí was depicted as a parvenu from abroad only distinguished by
the fact he was a nephew of the Cuban liberator. Deputy Rafael Vega sniped:
“Someone born in Cuba with the surname Martí does not go begging for a patria
elsewhere. A man named Hidalgo or Juárez would not seek the nationality of
another country.”16
Those in favor of his accreditation, apart from referring to the legal basis of an
election held in accordance with the 1857 Constitution, also based their argu-
ment on other issues including the benefits of immigration and the meaning of
citizenship rights as a way of including foreigners within the national community.
“I am not here to defend Martí but the law,”17 indicated the deputy from the
state of Hidalgo, Alfonso Cravioto, before going on to put forward arguments
that set the tone for subsequent discussions on extranjería after the Congress was
in session.
José Yves Limantour was a figure who loomed large in many of the debates
throughout the Congress meetings. As the son of a foreigner, powerful finance
minister and key científico or technocrat during the Díaz regime, Limantour was
the archetype of the enemy who climbed the political ladder to become a state
minister from where he could transfer the country’s riches to foreign hands. As if
this were not enough, he had always aspired to replace Porfirio Díaz. Or at least
this was the view shared by the most xenophobic members of the Constituent
Assembly, and his case permeated discussions about extranjería and political
rights. As Epigmenio Martínez warned: “We cannot have a foreigner in our
midst,” before immediately adding, “we should remember what happened with
the Porfirio Díaz government, when men such as Limantour and other foreigners
were also plotting; that is why I ask for patriotism, national dignity, and a vote
against approving Martí’s accreditation.”18
Such arguments largely drowned out more moderate voices that, in addition
to Cravioto, included Francisco J. Múgica from Michoacán and Félix Palavicini
from Tabasco. These figures supported a nationalism “not as some cliquish hatred
of foreigners, but as a means of giving preference to Mexicans when all other
things are equal.” For the proponents of this point of view, it was important to
consider that the growth of foreign investments in the Mexican economy and
resulting power of foreign businessmen was not the result of the presence of
Limantour but of an “error of the dictatorship that chose the wrong route in its
honorable intention to usher in a policy of increased industrialization, banking
services, and railway infrastructure” for the country’s development. “We have all
reacted to this mistake,” Cravioto said, hence the need to reconcile the “pro-
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 145

Mexican spirit with the nation’s genuine needs” which included, he emphasized,
the promotion of an authentic immigration policy.19
This entire discussion took place under the shadow of the issue of Rubén
Martí’s accreditation. The disagreements escalated. “I propose,” exhorted
Emiliano Nafarrate from the state of Tamaulipas,20 “that we should only accept
citizens who are Mexicans by birth and blood.” This suggestion’s only justifi-
cation was the axiomatic proverb of the time: “Mexico has always been a mother
for foreigners and step-mother for Mexicans.” Countering this view, Cravioto
argued:

Señor Martí meets every constitutional requirement to be elected deputy.

Therefore, his accreditation is constitutionally legitimate. We have the
obligation to respect Mexican citizenship and if this Constituent Assembly
rejects Señor Rubén Martí on the grounds that he is a naturalized Mexican,
then, Señores Diputados, we should also efface from our illustrious history
the names of Francisco Javier Mina and Nicolás de Régules on the basis
that they were Spaniards.21

In the roll-call vote, 57 out of 158 deputies voted against accrediting Rubén
Martí22—one-third of the Constituent Assembly consented to violate the law in
force. Martí eventually received accreditation, making him the last naturalized
Mexican able to occupy an elected post.
The controversy over Martí’s accreditation prefigured the debate over Article 55
of the Constitution that regulates the requirements for candidates to run for
elections as national deputies. The committee that revised Carranza’s draft bill
agreed to change section 1(a) of the article: the requirement changed from being “a
Mexican possessing political rights” to being “a Mexican citizen by birth possessing
political rights.”23
What spurred this change? The longstanding mistrust of foreigners in Mexico
among the members of the Constituent Assembly increased with the massive
influx of foreign investment during Porfirio Díaz’s regime. Heightening this
sentiment were two other factors: first, political disputes fractured the elite of the
Díaz era in its clashes over his potential successor; second, the political positions
of the main foreign communities and their respective governments in reaction to
Venustiano Carranza’s revolutionary movement. In the words of the deputy De
la Barrera: “We have been generous enough in allowing foreigners to make their
fortunes in Mexico through their work, but we are not going to hand over our
political institutions to foreigners.”24
Paulino Machorro Narváez, member of the advisory committee that proposed
including “nationality of origin” among the requirements for becoming a deputy,
embodied this hostility toward foreigners. Mexico was a weak nation, and that
weakness explained how foreigners were able to excel and dominate. “Foreigners
are stronger because they are more resolute and have a stronger spirit than ours”
146 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

and that national weakness meant that “naturalization in Mexico is a legal pro-
cedure rather than a genuine concept.”25
The Constituent Assembly’s plenary session was the forum for discussing the
requirements to become federal deputy candidates, and the debates hinted at
views on the policy of naturalization. For Machorro Narváez—a graduate of
Guadalajara’s College of Jurisprudence and future member of the Supreme Court
of Justice—a foreigner’s naturalization was not a positive step:

Foreigners come to Mexico and obtain naturalization but fail to assimilate

to the Mexican nation. Their biological make-up and natural psychological
qualities are set in stone and have more in common with the strong [spirit]
of their former nation. Sociologically, foreigners do not blend in with us,
they do not come to form a family or meld with our nationality; foreigners
continue being foreigners.26

Increased mestizaje would remedy Mexico’s national weakness and it was es-
sential to protect the mestizo project until its crystallization. “No assimilation is
possible between foreigners and us,” argued Machorro Narváez. Foreigners
“always come with their own way of thinking; however much they say they
love Mexico, it’s not true. They love their businesses, not the country. When
the Constitutionalist Revolution triumphed, foreigners were all against the
Revolution.”27
The core precepts in this debate shifted away from the universalist French and
North American traditions; nationality ceased being simply an attribute founded on
a foreigner’s personal decision to choose to become a legal subject of his or her
adopted country’s laws through naturalization. On the contrary, in the wake of the
racist and xenophobic aspects of German and French nationalism, revived by the
French Third Republic, Mexico’s Constituent Assembly was convinced that na-
tionality and citizenship would be compatible only insofar as they linked powerful
patriotic sentiments. In other words, citizenship was less reliant on a legal act than
on an emotional identification with the adopted nation. The Congress of
Querétaro nurtured something that in German-speaking countries was known as
volk,28 in other words the idea of a nation united by a natural essence. The basis for
this idea was the certainty that citizenship could not be conferred; everyone is born
with a nationality and hence with citizen rights that cannot be understood as a legal
category because they are actually attributes carried in the blood. The deputy,
Antonio de la Barrera Aguilar, made this point emphatically when defending the
Commission’s ruling, invoking the case of Rubén Martí:

No foreigner, such as Señor Martí, a Cuban who naturalized as a Mexican,

can feel love for a land in which he was not born, because the mere
certificate issued by the minister granting him naturalized status could never
extract the Cuban blood coursing through his veins.29
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 147

The arguments of Paulino Machorro Narváez, member of the advisory committee

that submitted this amendment to the draft version of Article 55, clearly reveal the
hostility toward foreigners. The ideas of the Frenchman Gustav Le Bon not only
inspired this deputy’s statement; he even read out paragraphs from the French
doctor and author’s influential book of the time, La Psychologie politique et la défense
sociale, which expressed his firm belief in the dangerous political consequences of
going against the natural inequality between human races, such as the role played by
sentiments over the course of history.30 Paradoxically, the nationalism behind these
ideas took a different direction to European reactionary nationalism, especially
those positions that, in their most xenophobic aspects, led to the doctrine of Blut
und Bonden (blood and soil) in the citizenship legislation of the Third Reich. In the
Mexican case there was also the notion of considering foreigners as a threat to
nationality, but the other way around. In other words, Mexico did not fear the
biological and cultural intermixing with “weak races” but on the contrary, it was
the weakness of the Mexicans that made it necessary to restrict foreigners’ presence,
to fend off the existential threat to a nation not yet fully formed.
Discussions about extranjería revolved around the idea of foreigners as ene-
mies of the Revolution, and the idea of the Revolution as the cornerstone and
expression of national sentiment:

The economic invasion of foreigners in Mexico has been formidable,

leaving Mexicans with political rights but without wealth. So let us defend
the last thing belonging to us. We are like an island with our political rights,
surrounded by an ocean, so let us plant our flag of nationality there.31

Mexico’s revolutionary leaders, irritated by the presence of foreigners, adopted

Emmanuel Sieyès’s classic formula, namely that the nation can only speak through
its representatives, leading to the right of representation being limited to nationals
“by birth.” On 6 January 1917, this requirement was approved by a qualified
majority of ninety-eight votes in favor to fifty-five votes against.32
The difficulties arose some days later during discussions about Article 30, which
defines Mexican-ness, because the members of the Constituent Assembly began by
approving the requirements for deputies (Article 55) and only then debated the
nature of each one of these requirements. As the deputy Fernando Lizardi ex-
pressed, “we began by demanding future deputies to be Mexicans by birth, and
only then decided on how to define who qualified as a Mexican by birth.”33
From 16 to 21 January 1917, the deputies held heated debates about Article 30,
which establishes the conditions for Mexican nationality:

The distinction between Mexicans by birth and Mexicans by naturalization

is of practical interest because our laws demand the former as a requirement
for certain public positions, a very fair demand and one that requires
defining what it means to be a Mexican by birth.34
148 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

As mentioned above, Carranza’s draft bill considered “Mexicans by birth” to be

children born to Mexican parents either in Mexico or elsewhere, whereas the
children of foreigners born in Mexico and foreigners resident in Mexico could
become Mexican by naturalization. The Committee that ruled on this bill
warned that, if passed, it would eliminate positions of popular representation both
for naturalized foreigners and for children of foreigners born in Mexico. In regard
to the latter category of Mexicans, especially the members of the Constituent
Assembly who were children of foreigners but born in Mexico, there was a
proposal to amend Carranza’s draft to include among Mexicans “by birth” those
who were born on Mexican soil, to foreign parents, if, during the year after
reaching legal age, they declared their wish “to opt for Mexican nationality” with
the Foreign Ministry.35
The jurist José Natividad Macías, one of the authors of the draft Constitutional
text submitted by Carranza, pointed out the mistake of altering the draft text: “A
citizen by birth is someone who is born a Mexican and not someone who ac-
quires nationality at a much later date.”36 In a lengthy speech, he explained the
reasons why it was essential to have a cast-iron definition of who were Mexicans
by birth and who were naturalized Mexicans, because, as noted by Macías, who
was the rector of the National University at the time, “what has always happened
is that our laws have not tallied with constitutional precepts but have been drafted
in response to the needs of the time.”37 The argument did not carry the day
because the needs of the time continued to define the country’s regulations, even
constitutional provisions.
Macías’s explanations reveal the significance of the political dispute over de-
fining different forms of nationality. At the heart of the problem was the censure
of the científicos. As glimpsed in the debates over Rubén Martí’s accreditation,
discussions about the nationality and political rights of naturalized Mexicans re-
volved around José Yves Limantour, because, among other matters, this child of
foreigners aspired to run for president. For Macías, the powerful former finance
minister’s candidacy could be prevented when Porfirio Díaz understood, at the
insistence of justice minister Joaquín Baranda, that the mere possibility of
Limantour becoming president would trigger violence: “General Reyes would
lead an uprising and everywhere people would take up arms because Señor
Limantour was not a Mexican by birth.”38 The specter of the científicos em-
bodied by Limantour built up the public imagination of a dictatorship willing to
cede to foreigners even the presidency. Therefore, Macías pointed out: “When
national interests are on the line, Mexicans’ hearts begin to pound [ … ] and they
abhor any steps toward giving away public positions to foreigners.”39
Porfirio Díaz’s webs of political power help explain this revulsion. José
Natividad Macías expressed this situation clearly:

I will begin by asking the deputies: Will you accept Señor José Yves
Limantour as a Mexican citizen by birth? Answer me truthfully, with your
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 149

hands on your hearts. (Voices: No! No!) Will you accept Oscar Braniff,
Alberto Braniff, or Tomás Braniff as Mexicans by birth? (Voices: No! No!
Down with the científicos!) Do you think that such foreigners would hold
the Republic dear? Of course not, it’s as clear as day; obviously, no
Mexican citizen fond of his country would accept, with pleasure or even
without revulsion, such an individual as a Mexican citizen by birth.40

As a symbol of a perfidious foreign presence, Limantour gave meaning to the

norms that would regulate the naturalization of foreigners. Macías, like Machorro
Narváez before him, reiterated that “many foreigners become naturalized
Mexicans to reap the benefits of naturalization, and once they have achieved all of
their ambitions they depart for their home country and leave their nationality
behind like some unwelcome burden.”41
After Limantour became the quintessential foe, references to him fed into
ideas about the necessary connection between jus sanguinis and patriotism.
Deputy Enrique Colunga chimed in:

Was Señor Limantour’s brand of politics disastrous for Mexico because of

the French blood running through his veins? If that were the case, we
would have to concur with the absurd suggestion that it was the Zapotec
blood in the arteries of General Díaz that made him place his trust in the
científicos. Moreover, Mexicans by birth such as Don Pablo Macedo,
Casasús, Pimentel y Fagoaga and many others also supported the techno-
crats’ policy, as did many others who were Mexicans by birth and children
of Mexican parents.42

Rafael Martínez de Escobar argued that the convergence between jus soli and jus
sanguinis did nothing to guarantee patriotism, because “we have seen how some
Mexicans went begging to a foreign prince and now they are asking for U.S.
intervention”; not forgetting, added Enrique Colunga, “that the nation itself was
built by another group of foreigners’ children, such as Allende, Aldama, Abasolo,
and others on that illustrious list of Mexican heroes.”43
Macías realized the impossibility that the Constituent Assembly could accept
jus sanguinis as the exclusive principle of nationality. Resigned to consecrating a
contradictory norm that would allow the children of foreigners born in the
country to hold elected posts, he fought his corner and managed to incorporate
the residence requirement for the children of foreigners who opted to become
“Mexicans by birth” into the constitutional text. Such children’s nationality thus
required a combination of the place of birth (jus soli) and residence (jus domicilii) in
order to expand their citizen rights.
Article 30 was approved unanimously on 21 January 1917.44 Mexican na-
tionality could be obtained by birth or by naturalization. Mexicans by birth were
those born either to Mexican or foreign parents, provided that, in the latter case,
150 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

during the year after reaching legal age, they declared their wish to opt for
Mexican nationality and could prove their residence in the country for the six
years prior to said declaration.45 In other words, the children of Mexican parents
were fully Mexican, whereas foreigners’ children were “half” Mexican and had to
renounce the nationality of their parents in order to make the transition to be-
come a complete Mexican.
Naturalized foreigners had fewer political rights than under the 1857
Constitution. No longer did they enjoy citizen rights to occupy elected posts (as
deputies, senators and governors, Articles 55, 59, and 115). Furthermore, the
requirement to be a Mexican by birth was ratified for some positions in federal
government administration (state ministers, magistrates of the Supreme Court of
Justice, and attorney general, Articles 91, 95, and 102). Moreover, one of the
conditions to become President of Mexico was the requirement to be a Mexican
by birth and the child of Mexican parents by birth (Article 82)46 thus introducing
a different grade of citizenship for Mexicans by birth who were the children of
foreign parents. Finally, in direct connection to Catholicism and the recognition
of the Vatican as having a different political sovereignty to Mexicans, Article 130
of the Constitution restricted the political rights of the clergy of all religions to
deny them voting rights and the right of political association; and as an extension
of this provision, the same Article (130) prohibited naturalized foreigners from
becoming priests, since this activity was reserved for Mexicans by birth. The same
prerogative was established for enlisting in the army and police forces, as well as
commanding officers in the merchant navy (Article 32).
With the criteria defined in this way for those considered Mexicans by birth,
Article 30 of the Constitution established three possible ways to qualify through
naturalization. First, children of foreigners born in Mexico who, upon reaching
legal age, have not met the six-year residency requirement; in this case, the
children in question could become Mexicans by naturalization. Second, for-
eigners who had been resident continuously for five years and were engaged in a
respectable profession, and who received their naturalization through the Foreign
Ministry; in this case, the revolutionaries increased the residency requirement
from two to three years. And finally, Latin Americans settled in Mexico would
have the privilege of gaining Mexican nationality. The origin of this prerogative
is directly connected to the aforementioned controversy surrounding Rubén
Martí. During the debates over Article 55, a few members of the Constituent
Assembly sought to moderate the prohibition on naturalized foreigners from
occupying seats in Congress, by proposing that the requirement should be for
Mexicans by birth or naturalized Latin Americans.47 They justified this exception
because such people belonged to a single “linguistic and racial community,”
respecting the Bolivarian “ideal of Latin American unity.”48 These arguments
proved futile. In the words of Francisco Múgica, they sought to establish a ne-
cessary distinction between the fraternal extranjería among Latin Americans, in
contrast to the less-welcome extranjería of “Spaniards and Americans.”49 In fact,
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 151

the hostility toward foreigners prevented the success of a motion that opened the
possibility for naturalized foreigners from occupying a seat. However, the Latin
Americanism of deputies made it possible for a foreigners’ “Indo-American”
origin to be considered a privileged route to Mexican nationality. Therefore, and
as an indication of “our desires of fraternity that bond together our countries of a
single race,”50 Article 30 of the Constitution enshrined this privilege.
Jus sanguinis continued to be the guiding principle of nationality, whereas jus
soli was applied additionally in the case of children born to foreign parents. In
economic terms, foreigners and their descendants born in Mexico, if they did not
become naturalized Mexicans, still had to submit themselves to national jur-
isdiction to settle any legal dispute. The novelty introduced in 1917 was to curtail
citizens’ rights. In the late 1930s, Eduardo Trigueros, an expert in international
law, reached the conclusion that no legal justification existed for granting a single
nationality with “different levels of intensity.” Trigueros wrote that there seems
to be “mistrust of naturalized Mexicans, as if they acquired nationality merely for
the sake of appearances.” If any doubt were to exist about a naturalized for-
eigner’s potential for integrating into Mexican society, that doubt should be
translated into greater care being taken when granting naturalized status, and not
by creating types of nationalities of differing strengths. From a legal standpoint,
such an approach was a veritable “aberration.”51 By reserving high-level political
and public administration positions solely for Mexicans by birth made Mexico’s
naturalization policy highly restrictive. If the interest in the nineteenth century
already appeared focused on forcing foreign property owners to naturalize, then
these restrictions became even more pronounced after 1917.

Red Tape and Regulatory Adjustments

The Vallarta Law set the requirements for acquiring Mexican nationality.
Foreigners, without any prerogative to apply for nationality through extra-
ordinary channels, had to comply with a minimum two-year residency, have a
record of good conduct, and to have “an activity, occupation, profession or rental
income from which to live.” After meeting these requirements, application
procedures began with the applicants’ declaration to the local municipality in
their place of residence of their wish to naturalize and renounce their foreign
nationality. Six months later after this declaration, a district judge—to whom
foreigners had to “renounce all submission, obedience, and loyalty to all foreign
governments, and especially to the one that the applicant had been a subject; all
foreign protection from Mexican law and authorities; and all rights granted to
foreigners by treaties or international law”—considered the application. In other
words, applicants did not express their intention to renounce their nationality;
they had to renounce it even before receiving Mexican nationality. With this
declaration, the judge prepared a file that included testimonies that attested to the
applicants’ conduct and activities. If the magistrate ruled that the applicant
152 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

complied with the requirements, the courts submitted a request to the Foreign
Ministry for a naturalization certificate and “ratifying [the applicant’s] re-
nouncement of their foreign status and stating their adhesion, obedience, and
submission to Mexican laws and authorities.”52
The court authorities’ intervention did not turn the naturalization process into
an act of justice. In other words, foreigners did not thereby invoke their right to
acquire naturalization and consequently the application went forward, because
the judicial authority was only responsible for compiling and ruling on the
background, and on that basis requested the executive branch (represented by
the Foreign Ministry) to authorize the naturalization. The Foreign Ministry had
the power to grant nationality; as Pani has indicated, “it was an act of grace rather
than justice.”53 As a political dispensation, the decision to grant nationality had a
high level of arbitrariness that left foreigners little room for maneuver.
The changes to the definition of nationality in 1917 complicated procedures
since the constitutional text incorporated regulatory requirements. For example,
it set the minimum residency period for foreigners to be able to apply for nat-
uralization, and introduced the prerogative for Latin American status, while
leaving out other types of privileged categories.
In a context where immigration was still considered to boost modernization,
in 1923 a group of senators led by Pedro de Alva54 submitted to the plenary of the
Senate a draft program of constitutional reforms and additions on extranjería and
naturalization. This represented the most serious criticism to date of the chau-
vinism plaguing the constitutional regulations on extranjería. For these legislators,
the time had come for Mexico to forge a new nationalism, one that was capable
of breaking away from “the hermetic isolation and hostility toward all for-
eigners.”55 The country had lagged behind other Latin American countries be-
cause the restricted rights of foreigners did nothing to help the essential policies of
“assimilation” of the new contingents needed to join in the task of transformation
promised by the revolutionary governments: “We need agricultural settlements,
reputable capital, technical experts, professionals, and scientists” and the way of
attracting them was not by considering such migration as “a threat” but as a
“reserve of healthy, honest, hard-working and entrepreneurial arrivals to be fully
committed to our public life and to form part of the great Mexican nation of the
future.”56 For these legislators, there was no doubt that the attitude toward
foreigners was justified by how the nation had been “victim of international
intrigues and armed invasions.” However, the legislative proposal argued that part
of that “threat” was based on a Mexican view that a failure to encourage the
naturalization of foreigners boosted segregation, prevented assimilation, and kept
them in a situation of “privilege” in their search for the protection of their
governments to resolve public and private problems. “It is not a question of
offering greater prerogatives to naturalized foreigners but to place their rights on
the same level as Mexicans by birth.”57 The 1917 Constitution was a regression
in terms of extranjería and naturalization, and therefore this proposal included the
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 153

adoption of jus soli for foreigners’ children born in Mexico, reduced the residency
period for the naturalization of foreigners who were agricultural settlers, scien-
tists, and investors, and in terms of political rights it only preserved the re-
quirement for nationality by birth for those aspiring to be president or state
governor, while all other public-sector jobs were accessible for naturalized for-
eigners. “Frankly,” Senator Pedro de Alva argued, “our laws do not currently
offer any benefit to naturalized foreigners but instead impose all manner of ob-
ligations.”58 Mexico should have followed the example of the United States and
Argentina in its ability to assimilate foreign and well-qualified labor: “We need
good administrators, good technical specialists, good scientists, who are assimi-
lated to our national culture.”59
This draft proposal was not enacted, although it set the precedent for the need
to introduce changes in the Constitution and secondary laws. Meanwhile, reality
exposed situations that lay beyond the scope of regulation. The 1926 Migration
Law established for the first time a visa regime to regulate the entry and settle-
ment of foreigners. This legal framework for migration issues was projected onto
the requirements to attain nationality, so that migrants who lacked documenta-
tion to prove their legal residence, on account of having entered the country
prior to the promulgation of the aforesaid law, could not apply for nationality.
Moreover, the increase in nationality applications encouraged fraud, corruption,
and the falsification of supporting documents, without any means of penalizing
such conducts. The lack of any regulation for Article 30 of the Constitution
meant that the Vallarta Law continued to be in force, although this legislation did
not contemplate the new requirements established by the Constitution and the
new situations resulting from the increase in the migration flows and natur-
alization applications.
Part of the problem largely existed due to the adoption of jus sanguinis and its
juxtaposition with jus soli and jus domicilii in the case of foreigners’ children. The
intermingling of these principles, and especially the defining of when foreigners’
children could become Mexicans “by origin,” created ambiguous situations such
as cases of dual nationality: the parents’ nationality in addition to Mexican na-
tionality available for the children of foreigners born in Mexico if they applied for
naturalization up to a year after reaching legal age.
In 1929, a draft regulation for Article 30 of the Constitution included an
amendment by ratifying jus sanguinis, although it included a change in jus
domicilii, specifically in relation to the moment when a foreigner’s child should
apply to become a Mexican “by origin.” A committee of experts concluded
that this time should come one year after reaching legal age, but with the
condition of having resided continuously in Mexico for the six years prior to
having reached legal age. As in the past, the debate revolved around searching
for guarantees for this child of foreigners to be infused with the spirit of
Mexican-ness. The draft regulations’ statement of intent, which again failed to
become enacted, read as follows:
154 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

Foreigners’ children who live in the Republic during those six years will
attend official, high-level schools or [ … ] they will be working, in either
case being surrounded by Mexicans, using our language, joining in our
celebrations, imbibing our culture. In a word, they will be influenced by
their surroundings.60

The Vallarta Law’s Replacement

In early 1930, the Foreign Ministry concluded a new draft bill that proposed a
constitutional amendment, while setting out regulatory processes on naturaliza-
tion and extranjería. Genaro Estrada, deputy foreign minister at the time, sent a
text to President Emilio Portes Gil that resumed the work of a commission that
compiled the opinions of other state ministries, public officials, and legal experts.
The idea was to replace the Vallarta Law because “it is no longer relevant to
Mexico’s social, economic, and political needs, and instead of improving work in
this area, it is making it increasingly difficult.” The new proposal was submitted
“for Mexico’s national and international benefit, for its social development, for
the modern demands of countries, and in line with the principles of the Mexican
Revolution.”61
What was new about this proposal? Nothing less than the adoption of the
principle of jus soli and the continuation of jus sanguinis for the children of
Mexicans born abroad. In other words, anyone born on Mexican soil would be
considered Mexicans by birth, regardless of their parents’ nationality. How is it
possible to explain this shift in the definition of Mexican nationality at a time of
ingrained nationalism expressed in strident anti-foreigner campaigns accompanied
by severe restrictions on migration?
In the context of the Americas, Mexico and Haiti were the only countries that
kept the principle of filiation as the basis of nationality. On foreign policy issues,
in the early 1930s, Mexico having rejoined the international system, its partici-
pation in international meetings and conventions brought to light the need to
adapt its regulations to those in force in other parts of the world. This desire
mainly found expression in the signing of the “Convention on Foreigner Status”
within the framework of the Panamerican Conference (Havana, 1928), as well as
the acceptance of the Convention of the Hague (1930) on conflicts between
nationality laws.62
Over and above these commitments provided as justification for the proposed
change, the adoption of jus soli was in fact based on the recognition that jus
sanguinis had constituted “a model that was ill-suited to our circumstances.”63 But
how was it ill-suited? The argument was that the foreigners were “privileged”
due to their filiation rights. Foreigners’ children born in Mexico, instead of
making use of the prerogative that enabled them to become Mexicans “by
origin,” preferred to maintain their status as foreigners, and therefore they
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 155

adopted a defensive position “to protect the rights that they believed they had,
remaining indifferent to the latest progress in the social and political order and
presenting a true obstacle when this progress constitutes a material sacrifice.”64
This explains the adoption of jus soli, in the hope of remedying a strategy that had
supposedly failed.
This created a vicious circle: the idea was that these foreigners born in Mexico
did not naturalize because of the potential advantage of securing protection from
their governments. However, unlike in the past, the 1910 Revolution had de-
signed mechanisms that safeguarded political rights and property from foreign
interference. Therefore, where was the privilege inherent in the extranjería,
when the members of the Constituent Assembly of 1917 had worked to guar-
antee the primacy of Mexicans “by origin” over foreigners and naturalized
Mexicans?
The privilege that jus soli sought to eliminate had no other basis than the
“painful memories” of the past, as referred to by Vallarta to justify jus sanguinis,
except that there was no longer the need to appeal to the liberal principles of
individual will, expressing the decision to acquire a new nationality.
Revolutionary nationalism ended up resolving this dilemma, considering anyone
born on the country’s soil to be a Mexican. The new proposal, like all previous
legislation, was not designed to expand the political community; on the contrary,
it was based on the need to put an end to a privileged status that was being passed
down through the generations. In other words, the adoption of jus soli, far from
deeming it to be a privilege to be born in Mexico and to be a Mexican, was
processed as a mechanism that would make it possible to end the privilege of
being a foreigner. This was established in the statement of legislative intent of the
draft law when it expressed that jus soli “is an excellent means of linking our fate
to all those for whom life in common should create the same obligations.”65
Acquiring Mexican nationality became a matter of duty, given that rights were
understood as prerogatives that needed to be contained.
These were also the reasons for the proposed amendment of Article 37 of the
Constitution to regulate the reasons for losing the attributes of nationality on
the one hand and citizenship on the other. In the case of naturalized Mexicans,
the constitutional amendment meant that the granting of nationality was re-
vocable. In other words, it established the possibility of annulling nationality
acquired through naturalization if a naturalized Mexican resided continuously for
five years in his or her country of origin, and stated a foreign nationality in an
official document, or obtained or used a foreign passport.66
This was not a measure to annul naturalization due to fraudulent or un-
scrupulous means to obtain it, as contemplated in the draft law,67 but a declaration
that enshrined the revocability of nationality. This constitutional amendment, in
addition to establishing various constitutional limitations on the rights of foreigners
and naturalized Mexicans, ensured that formerly foreign citizens could be stripped
of the Mexican nationality that had been granted to them.
156 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

Another core aspect of this proposal was its declaration of legal equality between
spouses. In other words, a Mexican wife married to a foreign husband would not
lose her nationality. This change was justified by the adaptation of the Mexican
regulation to what were considered the latest foreign laws on the matter, making
particular reference to the 1922 Cable Act in U.S. legislation.68 This change bore
no relation to the demands for broader access to citizenship for women, as was the
case in the United States,69 Instead, it sought to adapt Mexican law to international
regulations—a development that, among other things, sought to prevent divorced
Mexican women living abroad from becoming stateless. However, the nationa-
lizing drive of the new law provided ex officio naturalization to foreign women
married to a Mexican husband, resident in Mexico, by guaranteeing that they could
retain their new nationality should they divorce. In other words, Mexican and
foreign women were treated differently when it came to marriage. In the case of the
former, it would not lead to the loss of their nationality, whereas this would be the
case for foreign women married to a Mexican.
Apart from assuming jus soli and these issues surrounding marriage and
women, the new law established a broad range of privileges in regard to the
acquisition of nationality for those who met various requirements: foreigners who
established industrial, business, or socially beneficial activities in Mexico; for-
eigners who had legitimate children born in Mexico; children of a foreign father
and a Mexican mother born abroad but with residence in Mexico; foreign men
married to Mexican women; settlers in the country; Mexicans by birth who had
lost their nationality; and finally, Latin Americans who had established residency
in Mexico.70
If they met any of these conditions, applicants could submit the paperwork for
a “privileged” route to naturalization that exempted them from the requirement
to appear before the judicial authorities as part of the process. This “privileged”
route established that such applicants could lodge their applications directly with
the Foreign Ministry.
Compared to the 1886 Law, this new legislation severely complicated the
administrative process and requirements for foreigners to obtain the naturalization
certificate through ordinary means. The process began with the immigrant de-
claring their wish to acquire Mexican nationality. This declaration had to be
made to the Foreign Ministry, with the basic requirement to obtain the certifi-
cation from the municipal authorities that the applicant had met the obligation of
a minimum of two years’ uninterrupted residency in the country. Also, this initial
file had to include a certificate of legal residence issued by the migration au-
thorities, a certificate of good health, proof of being at least eighteen years old,
four photographs, and a declaration about the previous place of residence before
entering the country. Provided they had not interrupted their residency in
Mexico, three years after conducting the first part of the process applicants had to
appear before a district judge requesting the naturalization certificate. Foreign
applicants had to prove to the judge that they had lived in the country without
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 157

interruption for five years, with a record of good conduct, an honest livelihood,
an ability to speak Spanish, good health and up to date with their tax filings. Once
the dossier had been prepared, the judge would notify the Foreign Ministry
before the notice appeared in government’s official gazette and in a newspaper
with a nationwide circulation of an extract of the application process; naturally,
the applicant had to pay for the expenses of the publication. Only then, the
judge—in conjunction with the public prosecutor’s office—would analyze the
supporting documents submitted by the foreigner, and if the authorities deemed
the documentation to provide sufficient proof, the interested party had to request
a naturalization certificate through the intercession of the judge, and to accom-
pany this request by expressly renouncing “any submission, obedience, and
loyalty to any foreign government, especially the one to which the applicant has
been subject.” In this law, similarly to the 1886 legislation, the judicial authorities
were responsible for checking the authenticity of the supporting documentation,
as well as expressly establishing that the “exclusive authority” for granting na-
tionality lay with the executive branch: “Once the Foreign Ministry receives and
approves the application, the naturalization certificate will be issued to the in-
terested party.”71
The complexities of a naturalization application through ordinary channels
helps explain the prerogative of the extra-ordinary means by exempting appli-
cants from the need to go through the judicial authorities. Anyway, the red tape,
often exacerbated by applicants’ difficulties in meeting the legal requirements,
indicate a policy that sought to discourage naturalizations at a time when the
government was worried about the increasing number of applications. On the
other hand, the increased demand for naturalizations intensified corruption that
the law tried to counteract in order to “prevent as far as possible the fraudulent
naturalization of unscrupulous foreigners who hire the services of equally un-
scrupulous lawyers or fraudsters.”72 An entire chapter of the law defined the
punishments for acts of fraud and falsifications committed by public officials,
applicants, and witnesses involved in naturalization processes.
It took four years for this draft law, as well as the for the approval of the
proposals for constitutional amendments. The bill was formally submitted just
days before the end of the Emilio Portes Gil’s presidency, in early 1930; it was
abandoned during Pascual Ortiz Rubio’s administration, and subsequently re-
sumed during the Abelardo Rodriguez’s term in office. The succession of three
presidential administrations delayed its process that originally, in January 1930,
was published in the newspapers purposely so that “as pointed out by Genaro
Estrada, it can be discussed by everyone willing to work with the government in
order to perfect this text.”73 Throughout the year there were favorable reactions
to the ideas contained within the proposal:

The 1917 Constitution was far less liberal than the 1857 text, in terms of
the status of naturalized foreigners. The 1917 Constitution is notable for
158 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

accentuating the distinctions between Mexican nationals and foreigners,

and this was surely in reaction to Porfirio Díaz regime’s exaggerated policy
of seeking to attract and give preference to foreigners in its desire to boost
the country’s economy. However, the regression has gone too far,
[therefore] following the calming-down of the passions unleashed by the
revolutionary struggle, the need exists to remove the obstacles facing the
assimilation of foreign elements.74

The draft was sent to the Interior Ministry for review. In late 1931, Genaro Estrada
at the Foreign Ministry protested to the Interior Ministry about the delay in de-
ciding on the draft and sending it to Congress.75 The Senate received the text in
1932. Initial obstacles arose during the debates in the committees, when the an-
ticlerical Jacobinism represented in some state legislatures saw an opportunity to
radicalize anti-Catholic positions based on the proposal to amend Article 37 of the
Constitution that regulates the loss of nationality and citizenship. The Veracruz
legislature, with the support of its counterparts in the states of Puebla and Chiapas,
submitted to the Senate a proposal that contemplated withdrawing Mexican na-
tionality from any member of the clergy who acknowledged a foreign dignitary as
his main superior. The proposal, clearly targeted at Catholic nuns and priests, was
conceived to turn these Mexicans into foreign citizens as that would give the ex-
ecutive branch the power to “apply with full justification Article 33 on the basis that
they constituted a danger for the solidarity of the institutions and the public
order.”76 It is illustrative to consider the course of action taken by a sector of
revolutionaries in response to the conflict with the Catholic Church. Not content
with depriving them of their citizen rights, an issue already enshrined in the
Constitution, they sought to strip the nationality from priests and nuns to expel
them from the country. In other words, the authorities saw fit to demote Mexicans
to a foreign status to resolve the political conflict arising from their opposition to
the government.
In addition to these issues, complaints about jus soli soon arose. For some it was
a racial and political issue. At this time of fervent pro-mestizo sentiment, the
supposed capability for assimilating foreigners of different backgrounds became a
central tenet of migration policy. The problem lay in the fact that mestizaje
needed to reach “more than eight million indigenous people living in the
country” in relation to which not any “race” was suitable for ethnic mixing.
“Accepting the children of foreigners from all races as Mexicans, including the
most remote and dissimilar from the Mexicans in terms of their temperaments
and customs, would make it much more difficult to resolve the problem of
forming a nationality.” Accepting foreigners’ children as Mexicans “who will
never be able to assimilate or comprehend Latin problems” would entail serious
political consequences, given that they would have citizen rights and therefore
could aspire to elected posts “which would prove most damaging for the well-
being and progress of Mexican society.”77 The spokesman for these positions was
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 159

none other than the father of revolutionary mestizophilia, Andrés Molina

Enríquez, who sent a document to the Senate, affirming that “most of the
country’s population disagrees with the reforms that grant nationality to for-
eigners’ children born in Mexico.”78
Mexican legislators adopted different criteria: the draft law and constitutional
reforms were deemed necessary in order to prevent communities of foreigners
from reproducing themselves in the children and grandchildren born in the
country. Furthermore, at the urging of Molina Enríquez, the idea was to ensure
an influx of immigrants who were “healthy and suitable, in accordance with the
prior selection requirements established by the law” thus ensuring that “they
would mix with the Mexican population.”79
The Senate approved the constitutional amendments and the Nationality and
Naturalization Law in November 1933; the Chamber of Deputies followed suit
one month later, and the official gazette published the texts in January 1934.80 In
December that same year, weeks after Lázaro Cárdenas took office as president,
the first amendment was made to bring about the acceptance of jus soli for for-
eigners’ children. A transitional article of the new law put in place a special
mechanism to allow those children, born before the law’s enactment, to choose a
fast-track route to attain Mexican nationality. In those cases where people opted
not to avail themselves of this prerogative, the first amendment to the new law
established that “if those children chose not to naturalize, they would then be
refused permission to acquire land and concessions to exploit natural re-
sources.”81 The opinion columnists of El Nacional interpreted this amendment as
a declaration that those foreigners’ children who refused to avail themselves of the
prerogative established by the 1930 Naturalization Law “placed themselves in a
dangerous refuge for the collective interests that the revolutionary government
must be careful to forestall.” Seventeen years after the Constitution’s pro-
mulgation, the refusal to become Mexicans confirmed that “being a foreigner in
Mexico has been tantamount to a privileged status. [ … ] The very nature of our
colonial background enshrined the supposed superiority of the new arrivals over
the native, aboriginal, or mestizo population.” In this sense, the prohibition
instituted by this agreement apparently made it possible to close the final loophole
of privilege that foreigners sought to benefit from, thus “safeguarding the dignity
of the Nation by withdrawing benefits from those who shirk their duties.”82
The adoption of jus soli as an underlying criterion of Mexican nationality has
remained in force since 1934. The Nationality and Naturalization Law, which
was passed in that year, remained in force until 1993, when a new legal regulation
introduced some changes, including the removal of the judicial branch’s in-
volvement in naturalization applications, placing the entire process under the
responsibility of the Foreign Ministry.83
A substantial change in nationality law came in 1997, when the inescapable
weight of Mexicans’ emigration to the United States led to the introduction of
the principle of dual nationality only for Mexicans by birth, accompanied by a
160 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

series of safeguards limiting their citizen rights. This adjustment made it necessary
to introduce a constitutional amendment that, inter alia, stipulated that no
Mexican by birth could be stripped of their nationality.84 These changes were
subject to legal and political debates. Experts in international law argued over the
pros and cons of acknowledging dual nationality,85 while several politicians spoke
in defense of Mexican migrants who had lost their Mexican citizenship after
acquiring U.S. nationality.86
In fact, these changes to the nationality regulations provided the means for
Mexicans by birth to regain their nationality, without these alterations entailing
any substantial change to the meaning and the procedures for foreigners without
Mexican parents to acquire Mexican nationality. The basic principles and re-
quirements for this trámite have remained constant in Mexico since 1934.

Notes
1 Weil, 2001, 17.
2 Arendt, 2017, 307.
3 Pani, 2009, 2012a, 2012b, and 2015.
4 Vallarta, [1885] 1993, 306.
5 Ibid., 306 and 307.
6 Constitución Federal, 1857, 35.
7 Pani, 2015, 44.
8 See Peña Delgado, 2012 and Augustine-Adams, 2006.
9 Articles 30, 31, and 32 of the 1857 and 1917 Constitutions refer to the duties and
rights of “Mexicans,” while Articles 34 to 38 refer to the category of “Mexican ci-
tizen,” their rights, obligations, and situations when they could lose their citizen rights.
10 “Ley de Extranjería y Naturalización, 20 de mayo de 1886,” INM, 2002, 99.
11 Constitución Federal, 1857, 35.
12 “Ley de Extranjería y Naturalización, 20 de mayo de 1886,” INM, 2002, 93.
13 DDCC, 2005, 1173.
14 Constitución Federal, 1857, 45.
15 DDCC, 1960, vol. 1, 359.
16 Ibid., 354.
17 Ibid., 355.
18 Ibid., 354.
19 Ibid., 356.
20 Ibid., 357.
21 Ibid., 356.
22 Ibid., 363.
23 DDCC, 2005, 1426.
24 Ibid., 1472.
25 Ibid., 1442.
26 Ibid., 1442.
27 Ibid., 1443 and 1445.
28 See Burrow, 2002 and Núñez Seixas, 2001.
29 DDCC, 2005, 1472.
30 See Le Bon, 1983.
31 DDCC, 2005, 1447.
32 Ibid., 1497.
 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship 161

33 Ibid., 1183.
34 Ibid., 1176.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 1199.
37 Ibid., 1198.
38 Ibid., 1199.
39 Ibid., 1207.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid. 1209.
42 Ibid., 1217.
43 Ibid., 1213 and 1218.
44 Ibid., 2005, 1223.
45 The text of Article 30, approved in 1917, stipulated that “Mexican status is acquired by
birth or naturalization: I) Mexicans by birth are the children of Mexican parents born
either in Mexico or elsewhere, provided that, in the latter case, the parents are
Mexicans by birth. Mexicans by birth are those who are born on Mexican soil to
foreign parents, provided that within one year of reaching legal age they declare before
the Foreign Ministry that they are opting for Mexican nationality and can prove that
they have lived in the country for the last six years prior to said statement.”
(Constitución Política, 1917, 17).
46 DDCC, 2005, 1916.
47 Ibid., 1431.
48 Ibid., 1480.
49 Ibid., 1447.
50 Ibid., 1175.
51 Trigueros, 1940, 84.
52 “Ley de Extranjería y Naturalización, 20 de mayo de 1886,” INM, 2002, 97.
53 Pani, 2012b, 361.
54 The committee’s members were senators Pedro de Alva, Manuel Rivas, Francisco
Trejo, Federico Gonzalez Garza, Gerzayn Ugarte, Jose Macías Rubalcaba, José
Heredia, and José Morante.
55 DDCS, 11 December 1924, 6.
56 Ibid., 7.
57 Ibid., 7 and 8.
58 Ibid., 11.
59 Ibid., 12.
60 AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 56.
61 AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 59.
62 See “Convención sobre las condiciones de los extranjeros” (OAS, 1928) and
“Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws,”
(UN, 1930). The signing of these international commitments led to this draft legis-
lation also including the amendment of Articles 73 and 133 of the Constitution: in the
former, expressly authorizing Congress to legislate on extranjería, migration, and
naturalization; and in the latter, granting authority for the Senate to ratify international
agreements.
63 AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 152.
64 Ibid., 153.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., f. 67.
67 Articles 36, 38, 39, 40, and 41 of this draft naturalization law accompanying this
constitutional amendment defined the penalties for anyone caught fraudulently ap-
plying for a naturalization certificate, and its Article 41 referred to the annulment of a
naturalization certificate obtained illegally. AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 167.
162 Naturalization and Restricted Citizenship

68 AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 159.

69 See Lewis Bredbenner, 1998.
70 AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 72.
71 Ibid., f. 68–71.
72 Ibid., f. 158. See chapter 5.
73 AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 60.
74 El Universal, 18 March 1930.
75 AHDSRE, file 10-4-14, f. 207 and 208.
76 Ibid., f.218 to 222 and DDCS, 21 October 1932, 7.
77 El Universal, 14 April 1933.
78 DDCS, 19 October 1933, 19.
79 El Universal, 12 January 1934.
80 DDCS, 28 October 1933, 10; DDCD, 19 December 1933, 10 and DOF, 18 January
1934, 206–208 and 20 January 1934, 237–242.
81 El Nacional, 1 January 1935.
82 Ibid., 2 January 1935.
83 “Ley de Nacionalidad” DOF, 21 July 1993, 9–12.
84 “Decreto por el que se declaran reformados los artículos 30°, 32° y 37° de la
Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos,” DOF, 20 March 1997,
2 and 3.
85 Santos Villarreal, 2009; González Martín, 1999; Becerra Ramírez, 1998; and Castillo
del Valle, 1997.
86 La Jornada, 13 December 1997.
5
NATURALIZED MEXICANS: NUMBERS
AND MANAGEMENT

If the Interior Ministry’s statistics on migration were never consistent over the
course of the twentieth century, figures on naturalization were even more erratic.
Suffice it to mention that the Foreign Ministry only introduced standardized
statistical series on naturalized foreigners in 2007.1
In the twentieth century, the state published only one series of statistics on
naturalized Mexicans between 1828 and 1932,2 produced by the Office of
National Statistics, and this same series was updated up to 1936.3 This in-
formation provided the total figure for the years between 1828 and 1931, and
annualized numbers from 1932 onward, in addition to the breakdown the
naturalized Mexicans by nationality of origin. Throughout the previous cen-
tury, this series (and surely combined with data provided by the Interior and
Foreign ministries) formed the basis for three studies. Gilberto Loyo produced
the first of these reports; in 1935, in an effort to systematize Mexico’s main
demographic variables in the post-Revolutionary years, Loyo published the
figures of those who became naturalized Mexicans between 1929 and 1933,
breaking down the numbers by nationality of origin and occupation.4 In 1946,
again it was Gilberto Loyo, only this time in a press article, who referred to all
the foreigners from thirteen different nationalities who became naturalized
Mexicans between 1928 and 1941.5 The demographer Julio Durán Ochoa
produced another study in 1955, based on the series published by Loyo up until
1952, also including the total number of nationalized Mexicans, with a
breakdown by countries of origin.6
The drawing up of those historical series in the early 1930s was clearly
linked to the increase of migration flows from undesirable origins and ethnic
backgrounds, to the implementation of restrictive policies initially, followed by
outright prohibitions, and therefore to an increased demand for naturalization
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256182-6
164 Naturalized Mexicans

among immigrants who saw their residency in Mexico in jeopardy. These new
foreigners, and the resulting increase in naturalization requests, were deemed a
threat to the health of the Mexican nation, irrespectively of the tiny proportion
of these foreigners relative to the total population.7 In other words, the re-
activation of policies of exclusion was based on the perceptions imbued with
the “painful memories” referred to by Ignacio Vallarta, rather than on a sta-
tistical record able to calibrate the distance between fears of what was viewed as
an “invasion of undesirable immigrants” and, a balanced analysis of the figures
of those who formed part of these “invasions.” Moreover, and as we will see in
the next section, in terms of naturalization policy, immigrants from more
desirable nationalities and ethnic backgrounds did not receive any special
benefits; on the contrary, a foreign immigrant considered desirable was the
exception and not the rule.
In the second half of the twentieth century, no record exists of any official
effort to systematize global figures on naturalized Mexicans. This begs the
question: What were the bases for taking political decisions that amended con-
stitutional texts and secondary legislation on naturalization? Information on the
number of naturalized foreigners was clearly of little importance, or else was
subordinated to perceptions born of a powerful nationalist imagination rather
than hard figures.

Volumes and Composition 8

A total of 36,519 foreigners became naturalized Mexicans between 1828 and
1999. On average, just over two hundred foreigners naturalized each year;
however, this was not the real figure because 93 percent of naturalizations cor-
respond to the twentieth century and 75 percent of certificates were granted
between the end of the armed stage of the Revolution and the early 1950s. In
other words, around twenty-seven thousand people received their naturalization
certificates between 1920 and 1953.
3000

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

0
1828
1832
1836
1839
1842
1845
1848
1851
1854
1857
1860
1863
1867
1870
1873
1876
1879
1882
1885
1888
1891
1894
1897
1900
1903
1906
1909
1912
1915
1918
1921
1924
1927
1930
1933
1936
1939
1942
1945
1948
1951
1954
1957
1960
1963
1966
1969
1972
1975
1978
1981
1984
1987
1990
1993
1996
1999

FIGURE 5.1 Naturalizations in Mexico. Annual distribution (1828–1999), total

numbers
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.
 Naturalized Mexicans 165

90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1828-1899 1900-1953 1954-1999

FIGURE 5.2 Distribution of naturalizations (19th/20th centuries), percentages

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

Two-thirds of all foreigners who naturalized in Mexico over the course of 171
years obtained their naturalization certificates in just three decades. It is inter-
esting to note the numbers and origins of those foreigners who lost their original
nationality. As noted above, migration never accounted for a sizable proportion
of the national population, but the influx of foreigners increased between the
return to constitutional order in 1917 and the years following the Second World
War, making it possible to correlate the increase of immigration with the number
of naturalizations between 1920 and 1950.

30,000,000
25,000,000
20,000,000
15,000,000
10,000,000
5,000,000
0
1900
1910
1921
1930
1940
1950

1900 1910 1921 1930 1940 1950

Foreign Population 58,179 116,526 108,080 140,587 177,375 182,707
National Population 13,549,080 15,043,843 14,226,700 16,412,135 19,476,177 25,608,310

FIGURE 5.3 National and foreign population (1900–1950), totals

Source: DGE 1900, 1910, 1921, 1930, 1940, and 1950.
166 Naturalized Mexicans

1.00%
0.90%
0.80%
0.70%
0.60%
0.50%
0.40%
0.30%
0.20%
0.10%
0.00%
1895 1900 1910 1921 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

FIGURE 5.4 Proportion of foreigners as part of the national population (1895–2000),

percentages
Source: DGE, 1895–2000.

More than thirty-one thousand foreigners became naturalized Mexicans be-

tween 1828 and 1953. By breaking down these figures by nationality, Spain
accounted for most of these naturalizations (41 percent), followed by
Guatemalans (16 percent). The volumes and national origins of those granted
naturalization reveal the correspondence with the origins of Mexico’s various
immigrant communities. Therefore, for example, whereas in the nineteenth
century naturalized Western Europeans outnumbered Asians and arrivals from
neighboring countries, in the twentieth century the map of naturalizations reveals
migrants from different origins. During the 125 years from 1828 to 1953, three-
quarters of naturalization certificates were granted to nine nationalities (Spanish,
Guatemalans, Germans. French, Italian, English, Americans, Chinese, and
Cubans). Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the continued pre-
sence of some nationalities shows the continuation of traditional arrivals on ac-
count of the commercial, industrial, and financial relations that have linked
Mexico to the United States, England, Germany, France, and Spain. The figures
also reflect the proximity and historical ties to Guatemala and Cuba, and also the
arrival of new waves of migrants, such as the Chinese who came to Mexico in the
late nineteenth century to meet the demand for workers following the expansion
of manufacturing and transport in some parts of the country.9
In parallel with these continued trends, in the decades immediately after the
Revolution, the naturalization processes reflected the arrival of new nationalities.
The proportion of East European immigrants10 as part of the total number of
naturalizations grew from under 1 percent in the nineteenth century to 13
percent in the first half of the twentieth; naturalized Mexicans from Middle
Eastern backgrounds11 accounted for 8 percent, after having barely registered in
the statistics during the nineteenth century. Similarly, Japanese were largely ab-
sent from records of naturalizations in the nineteenth century, before reaching 2
percent in the first half of the twentieth.
 Naturalized Mexicans 167

TABLE 5.1 Naturalizations in Mexico (1828–1953), totals and percentages

Nation of origin Total numbers Percentages

China 1,443 4.62

Cuba 486 1.56
England 256 0.82
France 680 2.18
Germany 1,613 5.16
Greece 302 0.97
Guatemala 4,907 15.70
Italy 658 2.11
Japan 431 1.38
Lebanon 1,117 3.57
Lithuania 354 1.13
Poland 1,411 4.52
Russia 954 3.05
Spain 12,619 40.39
Syria 559 1.79
Turkey 330 1.06
United States 756 2.42
Others 236 7.58
Total 31,245 100.00

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%

China
Cuba
England
France
Germany
Greece
Guatemala
Italy
Japan
Lebanon
Lithuania
Poland
Russia
Spain
Syria
Turkey
United States
Others

1828-1899 1900-1953

FIGURE 5.5 Naturalizations by country of origin (1828–1953), percentages

Source: AHSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.
168 Naturalized Mexicans

Of the almost 2,500 foreigners who naturalized in the nineteenth century, al-
most half came from Spain, followed by 10 percent from the United States, 8
percent from France and Germany respectively, 7 percent from Italy, 5 percent
from Guatemala, 3 percent from Cuba and England respectively, and 2 percent
from China. By comparing these percentages to the thirty-four thousand natur-
alization certificates granted in the first half of the twentieth century, we can im-
mediately see an increasing proportion of applicants from China (5 percent) and
Guatemala (17 percent); it is also apparent that Spain while remaining the country
of origin for the largest proportion of naturalized Mexicans (nearly 40 percent), this
percentage was lower in relative terms compared to the nineteenth century. In fact,
the dwindling number of Spaniards formed part of a more generalized ebbing of
traditional migratory flows, since the proportion of Western Europeans in the total
volume of naturalized Mexicans during the first half of the past century decreased
from 75 percent in the nineteenth century to 50 percent. This same downward
trend can be observed among naturalized Mexicans originally from the United
States, whose numbers dropped from 10 percent in the nineteenth century to less
than 2 percent in the twentieth. These reductions were counterbalanced by mi-
grants from the crumbling Turkish empire, Eastern Europeans, immigrants from
China and Japan, and Latin Americans (mainly Guatemalans).
The least dramatic decrease took place among the Spaniards (47 percent to 39
percent). The proportion of Germans dropped by almost 40 percent from 8
percent to 5 percent. There were sharp declines in the number of naturalized
Mexicans originally from France (8 percent to 2 percent), England (3 percent to
0.62 percent), Italy (7 percent to 2 percent), United States (10 percent to 2
percent), and Cuba (3 percent to 1 percent).
What could be the causes of this falling number of naturalized foreigners with
deep roots in Mexico? First, we should recall that during the second half of the
nineteenth century the French, Italians, and, to a lesser extent the Germans, were
associated with ineffectual agricultural settlement programs that failed to continue
in the subsequent century.12 Second, French migration linked to the particular
experience of the Barcelonnettes that began in around 1830 before becoming fully
consolidated half a century later, surely made an impact on the proportion of
naturalized Mexicans originally from France during the nineteenth century.13
Third, Cuban independence completed a cycle of a notable presence of nationals
from this Caribbean island in Mexico during the nineteenth century.14 Finally, the
falling numbers of naturalized Mexicans originally from the United States, England,
and Germany after the 1910 Revolution could be related to a revolutionary leg-
islation that, by restricting property rights, increased the risks facing these nation-
alities of losing their government’s protection by falling under the jurisdiction of the
Mexican authorities.15 In other words, we can infer that the restrictions deriving
from the Revolution dissuaded Americans and Europeans who traditionally had a
strong presence in Mexico from choosing to naturalize. It is worth considering this
point through the prism of those who did opt for naturalization.
 Naturalized Mexicans 169

19th Century 20th Century

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
Western Latin Eastern Middle Asia United Others
Europe America Europe East States

FIGURE 5.6 Naturalizations by geographical area of origin, nineteenth/twentieth

centuries (percentages)
Source: AHSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

400

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0
1900
1902
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953

Eastern Europe Middle East

FIGURE 5.7 Annual distribution of naturalized Eastern Europeans and Middle

Easterners (1900–1953), totals
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

In the first half of the twentieth century, apart from the case of the Spaniards
and Guatemalans as discussed below, a clear connection exists between the mi-
gration policies’ restricted or prohibited nationalities and their increasing re-
presentation in naturalization statistics.
During the first half of the twentieth century, Mexico’s foreign population
tripled. In numerical terms, one hundred and eighty thousand foreigners were
living in Mexico out of a total population of almost twenty-six million Mexican
nationals. Despite this relatively insignificant proportion, this foreign presence
gave rise to two laws on migration (1926 and 1950) and two on population (1936
and 1947), in addition to new legislation on naturalization (1934), all of which
have been referred to above.
170 Naturalized Mexicans

These regulations largely responded to an increase in foreigners’ demand for

residents’ visas and increase in the applications for naturalization certificates by
foreigners settled in Mexico. As a consequence of prohibitionist laws on mi-
gration and in a strongly xenophobic context, more immigrants were seeking to
naturalize in order to maintain their residence rights, to facilitate the entry of their
family members into the country, and to ensure employment in businesses whose
workforces began to be subject to a quota of foreign workers.16 Naturalizations
were largely unrelated to an official policy of integration and citizenization, and
were even less connected to such an interest among applicants but instead formed
part of a strategy to achieve certain prerogatives in the labor market. Put dif-
ferently, in post-revolutionary Mexico many foreigners applied for naturalization
to escape the migratory restrictions at a time of exacerbated nationalism that
threatened to expel them from the country.
In the first half of the twentieth century, foreigners from East Europe and
the Middle East accounted for almost one-third of all naturalizations. A study
of the annualized statistics for these naturalizations shows that the end of the
First World War marked the beginning of a cycle of ups and downs that
continued until after the end of the Second World War. The moderate in-
creases seen in the 1920s gathered pace after the Great Depression, reaching an
apogee in the first half of the 1930s, at the time when Mexico was undergoing
its most xenophobic period of the twentieth century. Naturalizations began to
decline in 1933–34 at the time of discussions about the new naturalization law
and its eventual approval. Almost no naturalization certificates were granted
between 1936 and 1937, coinciding with the approval of the 1936 Population
Law that closed the doors to these immigrants before the number of certificates
recovered during the early years of the Second World War, perhaps in response
to applications from immigrants who needed to legalize firms that employed
family members and also due to having family members in those parts of
Europe under Hitler’s control and boosting the prospects of ensuring approval
for their entry into the country based on the argument about the need to
reunify families. Therefore, initially most naturalization certificates were
granted during the early 1930s, responding to requests mainly made by im-
migrants entering the country a decade previously, and then during the years
following the Second World War, when some of the applications were made
by those entering the country in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
A comparison of the trends in the numbers of naturalized foreigners from
Eastern Europe and the Middle East shows similar tendencies, regardless of the
differences in terms of their volume: 3,672 Eastern Europeans and 2,295 Middle
Easterners. These two groups faced a specific set of regulations and prohibitions.
Since the late 1920s and throughout the subsequent decade, Jews, Russians,
Poles, Ukrainians, as well as Arabs and Jews from the Eastern Mediterranean
region were classified as undesirable foreigners who work like “parasites” as street
vendors and were innately unable to assimilate within Mexican culture. These
 Naturalized Mexicans 171

foreigners, lacking protection from their governments and unable to travel back
to their home countries—often after having fled from ethnic persecution, for
example—applied for Mexican nationality to escape the pressures, restrictions,
and obstacles imposed by the Mexican authorities.
300

250

200

150

100

50

0
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1939
1940
FIGURE 5.8 Annual distribution of naturalized Chinese (1895–1940), totals
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

The Chinese faced a similar situation. The middle classes of Mexico’s northern
regions were unable to express the generalized anti-Chinese sentiment during the
last years of the Porfirio Díaz regime partly because senior government figures
actively encouraged Chinese immigration. Between 1895 and 1910, the Chinese
community multiplied twelvefold, and this increase soon spawned such resent-
ment that it prompted the government’s initial steps to curb immigration. Faced
with increasing hostility, the Chinese opted to apply for Mexican nationality. Of
the total number of naturalized Chinese between the late nineteenth century
until 1953, 25 percent became Mexicans between 1889 and 1917, compared to
66 percent during the following twelve years (1918–30). The number of these
naturalizations clearly fell after the 1930s following the mass expulsions from the
states in northwestern Mexico.

Guatemalans
The Guatemalan situation contrasts to other immigrant communities. As noted
previously, the Guatemalans represented the second-highest number of natur-
alized foreigners between 1828 and 1953: almost five thousand people, of whom
less than three hundred became naturalized Mexicans in the nineteenth century.
The remainder received their certificate in the first half of the twentieth century
and almost 90 percent were granted naturalization between 1936 and 1947. Such
a large concentration over a brief period is the result of issues surrounding the
172 Naturalized Mexicans

definition of Mexico’s southern border and economic activities taking place

there. In 1882, Mexico and Guatemala signed an agreement after a protracted
border dispute.17 These agreements led to the Soconusco region becoming a part
of Mexico, and from that point onward this area saw a boom in its coffee pro-
duction with the creation of large coffee plantations that employed many local
residents and temporary day laborers. Ensuring the regular availability of workers
was a chronic problem for coffee producers, and therefore Guatemalan laborers
supplemented the local workforce. These migrants mostly came from rural
backgrounds and were also mainly members of Mam indigenous communities.
Therefore, the foreign presence on Mexico’s southern border was markedly
different to the profile of migrants anywhere else around the country.18
In contrast to the few naturalizations during the late nineteenth century,
which, as Erika Pani has shown, mostly responded to the coffee plantation
owners’ strategy of ensuring available workforce by guaranteeing their legal title
to a plot of land for their laborers,19 the certificates granted from the mid-1930s
onward were the result of a policy of transforming the border zone. The nat-
uralization process appears associated with a governmental decision from the early
1930s that became firmly embedded during the Lázaro Cárdenas administration.
Four key aspects can help explain the reason for what was in effect a mass
naturalization campaign: first, the poorly defined nationality of members of rural
communities who had been Guatemalan; second, the restrictions on migration
imposed since 1929, targeting foreign laborers who competed with Mexican
nationals for the few available jobs, and which did not stop migration from
Guatemala but clearly revealed the illegal hiring methods used by the plantation
owners, combined with a well-established network of corruption that, as has
been seen, involved local, state, and military officials as well as Migration
Department employees. Third, the rising number of campesino revolts during the
1920s in Chiapas, a state that had remained on the periphery of the revolutionary
process due to the powerful connections between the political caciques and
hacienda owners.20 And finally, the implementation of pro-indigenous policies
through specific actions designed to combat social marginalization by supporting
the integration of indigenous communities as part of the mestizo nation.
With this background, Lázaro Cárdenas enacted wide-ranging land reform
in rural Chiapas during his presidency,21 and this policy included the estab-
lishment of the Interministerial Demographic Commission (CDI). The Foreign
Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and the Department of Rural Affairs ran this
body jointly with the aim of studying, proposing initiatives, and implementing
measures to address the statelessness of many people living in the Soconusco
and Mariscal border region. Guatemalans and their children lacked the doc-
umentation to confirm their nationality, and most Mexicans working on coffee
plantations were in a similar situation. Therefore, the abuses, mistreatment, and
all manner of injustices affecting Guatemalans had an impact on Mexicans too.
Resolving this issue was no trifling matter since Mexican nationality was a
 Naturalized Mexicans 173

prerequisite for permanent workers’ and day laborers’ access to land through
agrarian law.22
Since 1932, the federal government had shown interest in understanding and
regularizing the migration situation in southern Mexico. The Mexican and
Guatemalan governments held binational meetings that exposed the complete lack
of control over migration flows, and consequently the Migration Department
launched a program to draw up censuses for a registry of the Guatemalan popu-
lation.23 These were the first steps of an initiative resumed by the CDI, a com-
mission that began working in 1935 and completed its first phase in 1940. One year
later it was reorganized and continued to exist until 1947.24 An analysis of the
annual distribution of naturalized Guatemalans shows that almost 90 percent of
certificates were granted in that period. The CDI operated as a de facto civil registry
because, the declarations made applicants and witnesses, along with the scant
documentation in their possession, naturalization certificates were issued to those
who stated that they had been born in Guatemala, and nationality certificates were
granted to descendants of Guatemalans born prior to the adoption of the jus soli
principle in 1934. Similarly, according to a report in 1940, the CDI successfully
identified more than forty thousand people who could prove their status as
Mexicans.25
The high rate of Guatemalans naturalizing as Mexicans derived from the need
to gain an understanding and have records of the population settled on a border
that was largely beyond the authorities’ reach. Naturalization certificates were
granted at a time of political maneuverings triggered by campesino communities’
demands for lands. This led to naturalizations to enable land distributions or to
give security to those who had already received land grants but lacked the
documents to prove their nationality.

1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0
1883

1887

1889

1892

1894

1896

1899

1901

1903

1906

1908

1910

1912

1918

1920

1922

1924

1926

1928

1930

1932

1934

1936

1938

1940

1942

1944

1946

1948

FIGURE 5.9 Annual distribution of naturalized Guatemalans (1883–1949), totals

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.
174 Naturalized Mexicans

Spaniards
Although the Guatemalan case resulted from an exceptional situation, something
similar took place with the Spaniards despite constituting the most important
community of naturalized Mexicans since the first decades of the post-
Independence era. Quantitatively, the Spaniards constituted the largest propor-
tion of immigrants up until the mid-twentieth century.26 The tradition and
regularity of this migratory flow explains how more than 12,300 Spaniards be-
came naturalized Mexicans between 1828 and 1953, out of a total of just over
thirty-one thousand. However, an analysis of these figures reveals that, of this
total of naturalized Spaniards, only 10 percent corresponds to the nineteenth
century. Members of this foreign community with the strongest connections to
Mexico do not appear to have had any great interest in naturalizing as Mexicans,
or else it may have been difficult to attain. Erika Pani’s study demonstrates that a
lack of interest explains this low rate; remaining a subject of the Spanish crown
amid the political tumult, wars, and violent protests of nineteenth-century
Mexico afforded greater security for their properties and lives than any pride at
belonging to the “great Mexican family.”27 This attitude is confirmed by taking
into account that half of the Spaniards who naturalized as Mexicans before the
outbreak of the 1910 Revolution did so during the decades of the pax porfiriana,
when political stability and the guarantees offered to investors and businessmen
certainly encouraged foreigners to apply for naturalization.

1600

1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0
1828
1836
1840
1843
1846
1850
1853
1856
1859
1862
1867
1870
1873
1876
1879
1882
1885
1888
1891
1894
1897
1900
1903
1906
1909
1912
1915
1918
1921
1924
1927
1930
1933
1936
1939
1942
1945
1948
1951

FIGURE 5.10 Annual distribution of naturalized Spaniards (1828–1953), totals

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

After the Revolution, the trend for naturalizations began to change. The
Spaniards were not immune to revolutionary nationalism’s widespread disavowal of
foreigners. On the contrary, this nationalism was rooted in a memory that insisted
on linking the new waves of Spanish migrants to the conquistadors and settlers of
 Naturalized Mexicans 175

the colonial period. A climate of Hispanophobia prevailed in the years immediately

after the Revolution, boosted largely by the memory of favors and privileges en-
joyed by the most pre-eminent figures of Spanish communities during the Díaz
regime and due to these same sectors’ support for the counter-Revolution.28
Moreover, in the new century Spain lacked the reach to defend its nationals abroad
with any degree of success, so that the preservation of Spanish nationality did not
bestow any more privilege than simply being a subject of the monarchy.
This anti-Spanish climate became even more rarefied with the im-
plementation of restrictive regulations on migration, hence the interest in ac-
quiring Mexican nationality—similarly to the case of other communities of
foreigners who sought to sidestep restrictions and prohibitions—became seen as
a strategy to ensure residency and property rights. The annual distribution of
naturalizations reveals a substantial increase during the five-year period be-
tween 1931 and 1935 that corresponded to applications lodged since the late
1920s, while the falling numbers during the three years between 1936 and
1939, as in the case of other naturalizations, can be attributed to the admin-
istrative readjustments brought into effect by the new Extranjería Law (1934)
and the Population Law (1936).
An average of forty-three naturalization certificates were granted annually to
Spaniards between 1828 and 1939, compared to 565 per year between 1940 and
1953—a fourteen-year period that saw the naturalization of 65 percent of all
naturalized Spaniards over 125 years. The reason for this expansion is directly
linked to an exceptional circumstance in Mexico’s migration policy: the solidarity
with the refugees of the Spanish Civil War.
In early 1940, the Mexican government introduced a change in the 1934
Nationality and Naturalization Law, as one of a series of steps taken to welcome
all these political refugees. In the 1934 law, the requirements for eligibility for
nationality through this privileged channel—in other words, without having to
go through the courts or proving five years’ residency—had included applicants
from Latin American countries. The solidarity displayed for Spanish exiles be-
came another of the privileged paths to obtain Mexican nationality.29 This shift
introduced a period of “mass” naturalizations that made it possible, firstly, for
those lacking the proper documentation, due to the conditions of their departure
from Spain, to obtain a passport. Second, it facilitated access to employment in
sectors where restrictions applied for foreign workers, job markets in which
furthermore and particularly in the government sector, people viewed those with
Spanish backgrounds with particular mistrust;30 third, the Mexican authorities
expressed their wish that an immediate access to nationality would lead to
Spaniards—long considered the most desirable of foreigners due to their political
and ethnic backgrounds—putting roots down.
Between 1940 and 1944, 2,532 Spanish refugees received naturalization cer-
tificates; in other words, this five-year period saw just over 20 percent of all
naturalizations of Spaniards for more than a century. However, this situation was
176 Naturalized Mexicans

important not only due to the exceptional situation of a foreign presence linked
to a policy on migration but above all because the Mexican government’s de-
cision had an immediate impact on long-term Spanish residents. Established
members of the Spanish community in Mexico took advantage of the fast-track
facilities provided for refugees to naturalize, so that the numbers of naturalizations
increased after 1940 by those taking advantage of the prerogative granted for the
Spanish Republicans. Within three years, the numbers of such naturalizations had
already exceeded those of the Republican exiles. After 1944, a lack of records
makes it impossible to break down these two types of naturalizations of Spaniards;
however, it is possible to speculate that in the case of the Republicans, the ex-
pectations of a swift return after the Allied forces’ victory during the Second
World War must have deterred them from naturalizing. However, numbers
began to rise again after 1948 when, within the framework of the Second World
War, the U.S. government displayed its support for the Franco regime.

1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944
Spanish refugees 0 1163 950 310 100 9
Long-term Spanish residents 68 208 377 405 165 250

FIGURE 5.11 Annual distribution of naturalized Spanish refugees and long-term

Spanish residents (1939–1944), totals
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; L-E 1993; L-E 1120 A-K; and L-E 1121 L-Z.

Places of Residence
In the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of naturalized Mexicans had
their place of residence in seven states in Mexico and in the country’s capital. A
total of 7 percent of naturalized foreigners lived in the northern states of Baja
California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Sonora; just over 15 percent in Chiapas;
and 3 percent in Veracruz. The geographical spread corresponded to traditional
spaces occupied by foreign communities, with the cosmopolitan Mexico City
standing out during the twentieth century with more than 50 percent of nat-
uralized Mexicans coming from sixty-two different countries.31
 Naturalized Mexicans 177

19th Century 20th Century

90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Mexico Northern Veracruz Chiapas Others
City Border

FIGURE 5.12 Naturalizations by state of residence (19th/20th centuries), percentages

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

A comparison of these figures with those of the nineteenth century up until the
outbreak of the 1910 Revolution shows that the main places of residence did not
change significantly (the northern border region, Chiapas, Veracruz, and Mexico
City) although the volumes did change. The proportion of naturalized foreigners
living in states along the northern border and in Veracruz fell dramatically; in
contrast, the figures for Mexico City jumped from 25 percent to 55 percent.

Guatemala
1%
Others
China 17%
1%
Middle East
5%

Spain
Eastern 63%
Europe 13%

FIGURE 5.13 Naturalizations in Mexico City by nation/region of origin (1900–1953),

percentages
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.
178 Naturalized Mexicans

The share of naturalized Mexicans in Chiapas also grew, in direct con-

nection to the aforesaid strategy of naturalizing Guatemalans. In this way, most
foreigners who obtained their naturalization certificates in the post-
Revolutionary period resided in Mexico City and in Chiapas. Two factors can
help explain this phenomenon: first, the dynamic growth of Mexico’s capital
and consequently the job offers that attracted new waves of foreign immigrants
as well as those already established in the country who might have changed
their place of residence as a result of the revolutionary unrest elsewhere around
the country.32 Between 1910 and 1950, Mexico City’s foreign population rose
from 25,872 to 65,187,33 with the sharpest increases taking place during the
1930s and 1940s when this population almost doubled. The pattern of natur-
alization certificates granted during this period reflects this tendency; the
number of naturalizations began to increase in the mid-1920s and reached its
highest level in the subsequent decades. Secondly, the proximity to the Foreign
Ministry offices must have helped speed up processes particularly subject to red
tape. This situation probably led to many naturalizations of residents in the
country’s capital.

Others
Yucatán
Chiapas
Tamaulipas
Sinaloa
Coahuila
Federal District
Chihuahua
Baja California
Sonora
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

FIGURE 5.14 Naturalized Chinese by state of residence (1900–1953), percentages

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

Of the total number of naturalizations in Mexico City between 1910

and 1953 (11,864 people), 63 percent came from Spain, 13 percent from
Eastern Europe, 5 percent from the Middle East, and just under 1 percent
from Asia.
 Naturalized Mexicans 179

Others

Chihuahua

Veracruz

Tamaulipas

Nuevo León

Coahuila

Yucatán

Federal District

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

FIGURE 5.15 Naturalized Middle Easterners by state of residence (1900–1953),

percentages
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

An analysis of the states with most naturalizations reveals significant variations

in the distribution by nationality and their respective volumes. For example,
Chiapas was home to nineteen different nationalities, but Guatemalans con-
stituted 97 percent of those granted naturalization. In Sonora, naturalized
Mexicans originally belonged to twenty-seven nationalities, almost 70 percent
from China and the remainder originally from Japan, Eastern Europe, the Middle
East, the United States, and Germany. In Chihuahua, twenty-six nationalities
were present, but with a more even distribution: the Chinese represented 34
percent, Spaniards 24 percent, Middle Easterners 11 percent, and the rest came
from Eastern Europe, Japan, the United States, and Germany.
More than two-thirds of naturalized Mexicans originally from China and
Japan lived in northern states; Sonora alone was home to almost 40 percent of the
Chinese who obtained naturalization in the first half of the twentieth century. A
different pattern of residence existed for naturalized Mexicans who came from
the Middle East and Eastern Europe: 50 percent of the former settled in Mexico
City, in contrast to 80 percent of the latter. Most of the Lebanese, Syrians,
Palestinians, and Turks were spread between the country’s capital and the states of
Coahuila, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Veracruz, Tamaulipas, and Yucatán, while
most Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles settled in Mexico City.
The preponderance of naturalizations among residents in the capital is also
notable for the number of those originally from Spain, 80 percent of whom lived
in the capital. In the case of the Spanish Republicans, this proportion reached as
high as 95 percent, compared to 75 percent in the case of long-term Spanish
residents. In other words, during the first fifty years of the twentieth century, out
of a total of almost 9,500 Spaniards who naturalized, 2,200 of the 7,500 living in
180 Naturalized Mexicans

the capital were Spanish Republicans. Mexico City was almost exclusively the
place of residence for naturalized Republicans, while Spaniards who predated
these arrivals lived in Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Puebla, Tamaulipas,
Veracruz, and Yucatán.
With the exception of Asians and Guatemalans, the rest of the nationalities
were mainly concentrated in the capital. On the northern border, the dis-
tributions by nationality show varying degrees of distribution among those
originally from Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle and Far East; this
contrasts with the situation on the southern border where Guatemalans were
predominant among those who became naturalized. Spaniards, despite being
the largest and most widely spread group of those who naturalized as Mexicans,
mainly settled in the capital in the same way as other nationalities. This si-
tuation is a direct corollary of the large size of communities based in the capital
and the facilities for carrying out paperwork while living near the federal
government offices.

Marital Status and Gender

Naturalization, as indicated above, was a matter for men. Throughout the first
half of the twentieth century, women accounted for only 7 percent of all nat-
uralizations: in numerical terms, this equates to 2,100 women, 47 percent of
whom were from Spain, 23 percent from Guatemala, 6 percent from Eastern
Europe, and 3 percent from the Middle East.

Others
21%
Middle East
3%
Spain
47%
Eastern Europe
6%
Guatemala
23%

FIGURE 5.16 Naturalized women by country/region of origin (1900–1953),

percentages
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.
 Naturalized Mexicans 181

In the case of almost all nationalities, males accounted for more than
90 percent, with the Chinese being the most extreme case with men
constituting 100 percent of all naturalizations. The Guatemalan community
was the only exception, with a higher proportion of naturalized women
(12 percent).

Women Men

Middle East

Eastern Europe

China

Guatemala

Spain

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

FIGURE 5.17 Naturalized men and women by country/region of origin (1900–1953),

percentages
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

The small proportion of naturalized women (7 percent) is in contrast with the

average of 37 percent of foreign women recorded in population survey figures
between 1910 and 1950.34 Why should this be the case? By examining the in-
centives that could lead a woman to naturalize, it is perhaps possible to find some
of the reasons for their scant presence in the statistics. First, any aspirations to
exercise citizen rights should be overlooked because no evidence exists for any
such demands. Second, it is worth considering the marital status of those women,
because before the 1934 Naturalization Law a foreign woman married to a
Mexican man automatically acquired the husband’s nationality. Therefore, it is
unsurprising that more than two-thirds of naturalization certificates granted to
women during the first half of the twentieth century should have been issued
after 1934. Around 30 percent (almost six hundred) of these naturalized women
were married.
182 Naturalized Mexicans

Women Men
70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
married divorced single widowed

FIGURE 5.18 Marital status of naturalized foreigners (1900–1953), percentages

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

This number probably consisted of wives who lodged naturalization appli-

cations together with their foreign husbands, and also of foreign women married
to Mexicans, after taking the fast-track route provided for by the 1934 law. In
both cases, some chose to naturalize in order to secure legal protection over
properties and their right to work. And finally, 980 women (52 percent of the
total number of those naturalized) were single. Contrary to what might be
imagined, women did not often choose marriage as a means of obtaining na-
tionality, unlike the case with men who double the marital rate. The principle of
legal equality between spouses, as established in the 1934 Law, may have en-
couraged single women, widows, and divorcées to apply for Mexican nationality,
to safeguard family assets threatened by the twofold vulnerability of being women
as well as being foreign.
Moreover, studying the marital status of naturalized Mexicans without
breaking down the numbers sheds light on the contrasting patterns of the
main groups. In the first half of the twentieth century, 55 percent were
married and 40 percent unmarried. However, an exclusive focus on na-
tionality or region of origin shows that the levels of those who are unmarried
fell to between 6 percent and 8 percent of communities most affected by
restrictions on migration (Asians, Eastern Europeans, and Middle Easterners).
In these groups, 90 percent of those naturalized were married, compared to
61 percent in the case of the Spaniards and 14 percent among the
Guatemalans.
 Naturalized Mexicans 183

Divorced and widowed Single Married

Guatemalans

Middle Easterners

Eastern Europeans

Chinese

Spaniards

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

FIGURE 5.19 Marital status of naturalized foreigners by country/region of origin

(1900–1953), percentages
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; and L-E 1993.

Although naturalization was a matter predominantly pertaining to men, it is also

worth noting that most of those men were married. For most of these matrimonies,
information is lacking about the level of intra-community marriages. From some
studies, we can infer a high level of intra-community marriages among foreigners
from Eastern Europe and the Middle East,35 whereas among the naturalized
Chinese marriages were mainly outside the group.36 In any case, the high rate of
marriage reveals that the matrimonial bond, especially offspring born in Mexico,
constituted an indicator that the authorities used to validate permanent residency,
and consequently the extent of integration into Mexican society. This assessment
certainly depended on criteria of “assimilability” assigned by the authority to each
community of foreigners; this explains why marriage was most prevalent among the
least “assimilable.” The inverse correlation between “non-assimilable” foreigners
and their rates of marriage resulted from their need to counter the negative image
attached to them. As an example: the marital rates among the Chinese were close to
90 percent, whereas among the Spaniards, “ethnic affinities” explained a higher rate
of naturalization granted to single men. As a final note, the Guatemalans’ particular
pattern of naturalization might show that the authorities did not take marital status
into account, since more than two-thirds of Guatemalans were single. The high rate
of unmarried naturalized Mexicans among a nationality group with a higher-than-
average proportion of women suggests that Guatemalans were registered as single
because they lived together in a civil union or else because their poorly defined
national status proved an obstacle in registered matrimonies in civil registries.

Employment 37
Naturalized foreigners’ occupations perhaps reveal most clearly the failure of the
Mexican elite’s utopian ideas on immigration. As Erika Pani writes, in the
184 Naturalized Mexicans

nineteenth century one-third of those naturalized were engaged in business ac-

tivities,38 and in the first half of the nineteenth century the employment profiles
once again illustrate the disconnect between the ideal of attracting immigrants
able to modernize agriculture and industry, and the reality where immigrants
performed other kinds of jobs. The proportion of naturalized Western
Europeans—the most desirable of foreigners—began to fall. Moreover, large
numbers of this European demographic, alongside most of the immigrants from
different countries, worked in commerce, an activity that triggered strident na-
tionalist campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s.
Between 1900 and 1943, 38 percent of naturalized Mexicans worked in com-
mercial activities, with the remainder distributed among a variety of occupations
that, compared to the nineteenth century, reveals the expanding job markets in
cities, a result of an economic model that reveals the emergence of new industrial,
commercial, and service-related activities. The urban space attracted foreigners for
these reasons, but also because agriculture had lost its appeal following the wor-
sening conflicts caused by the 1910 Revolution.
A total of 22 percent of the naturalized Mexicans had technical qualifications,
were artisans, or worked as urban employees; if we add those involved in
commerce to this number, then most naturalized Mexicans were in the middle
class. We can infer that these groups were recent arrivals in these areas, because of
a work ethic and savings that offered the opportunity for a relatively swift rise up
the social ladder from the lower rungs they occupied in urban areas upon their
arrival in Mexico.

Others Farmers and rural

3% businessmen
6%
Rural workers
18%

Traders
Techincally qualified 38%
workers and artisans
10%
Urban
workers
and
Professionally qualified workers employees
10% 12%

Urban businessmen
3%

FIGURE 5.20 Occupations of naturalized foreigners (1900–1943), percentages

Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97; L-E 1993; L-E 1120 A-K; and L-E 1121 L-Z.
 Naturalized Mexicans 185

Significantly, 10 percent of the total number of naturalized Mexicans between

1900 and 1943 had professional qualifications, double the figure for the nine-
teenth century.39 With the exception of Guatemalans, immigrants from most
nationalities were not rural workers. Almost all Guatemalans were employed in
agriculture, the occupation of 18 percent of all naturalized foreigners. Finally, the
relatively low proportion of rural and urban businessmen shows that these groups
did not have much interest in acquiring Mexican nationality, unlike those in the
middle tiers of society. Despite this small representation, it is indicative that rural
businessmen were more willing to become naturalized than their urban coun-
terparts, a result of the generalized unrest in rural Mexico during decades when
the threat of agrarian reform undermined people’s confidence in their previous
acquired property rights.

100%

90% Others

80% Rural workers

70% Techincally qualified workers

and artisans
60% Professionally qualified workers

Urban businessmen
50%
Urban workers and employees
40%
Traders
30%
Rural businessmen
20%

10%

0%
Middle East Eastern Europe Europe North America Asia Latin America

FIGURE 5.21 Naturalized foreigners’ occupation, by region of origin (1900–1943),

percentages
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97, L-E 1993, L-E 1120 A-K; and L-E 1121 L-Z.

An analysis of occupations by communities of origin shows that more than

80 percent of Chinese and Middle Easterners who naturalized as Mexicans
worked in commerce, compared to the lower proportion of 61 percent among
Eastern Europeans and 40 percent among Spaniards. Although naturalized
Mexicans made most of their income from commerce, the differences are
significant for the rest of the occupations. Spaniards and Germans accounted for
almost 60 percent of those with professional qualifications, in contrast to the 17
percent of Eastern Europeans. Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, etc.,
who were associated almost exclusively with commercial activities, and these
were the nationalities that represented the highest number of professionals after
the Spaniards, Germans, and French. As indicated above, almost all agricultural
186 Naturalized Mexicans

workers were Guatemalans (98 percent), while three-quarters of urban workers

came from Western Europe. Meanwhile, Eastern Europeans accounted for 38
percent of urban businessmen, compared to 44 percent predominantly re-
presented by Spaniards, Germans, Austrians, and French. Of the naturalized
Mexicans who worked as businessmen in farming and livestock, 60 percent
came from Western Europe, 14 percent from the United States, and 13 percent
from China and Japan.
The annual distribution of jobs between 1920 and 1940, a period with the
highest-ever number of naturalizations, reveals the motivation of applicants
and the responses of revolutionary governments. Naturalized Mexicans
working in commerce far outnumbered those engaged in other activities, and
moreover the regulations on migration had a clear impact on naturalization
policies. The migration laws of 1926 and 1930 made it difficult for visa ap-
plicants working in retail employment, and the 1936 Population Law pro-
hibited those activities. Those years saw the most dramatic drop in the number
of naturalization certificates granted, so that the restrictions placed on im-
migrants working in commerce also applied to those who sought to acquire
nationality, despite being able to prove long-term residency in Mexico. After
each drop, the numbers of naturalization certificates granted rose again, partly
since most applicants worked in commerce, but probably also because of the
search for security in a highly charged political climate of disputes and com-
plaints against foreign traders. The falling numbers during the last year of
Lázaro Cárdenas’ rule could not be attributed to a particular piece of legis-
lation but the combination of a widespread hostility to gachupínes (a dispara-
ging term for a certain kind of Spanish immigrant perceived as rapacious), an
animosity generated by the pro-Franco political leanings of the established
Spanish community, along with the dramatic reduction in migration flows
since the early 1930s and the dwindling size of the Chinese community after
the expulsions of 1931 and 1932.
The desire to naturalize arose from applicants’ need to remain in Mexico.
The occupations associated with the most restrictions on migration are
strongly represented in the naturalization indexes during the years of the na-
tionalist campaigns. In addition to commerce, urban employment and the
work of technical professionals and artisans are also present. After 1931, the
number of naturalizations grew in the context of a recently approved Federal
Labor Law that, as indicated above, set the maximum percentage of foreigners
allowed in a company’s workforce. Family businesses constituted a large
proportion of immigrants’ commercial and industrial enterprises, so that the
option of naturalizing as a Mexican ensured the continuity of these sources of
employment, threatened by a legislation designed to ensure the hiring of
Mexican workers.
 Naturalized Mexicans 187

90%
80% rural workers
70%
60% traders
50%
40% urban workers and
30% employees

20% professionally qualified

10% workers

0%
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
FIGURE 5.22 Annual distribution of naturalized foreigners’ occupations, 1920–1943
(percentages)
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97, L-E 1993, L-E 1120 A-K; and L-E 1121 L-Z.

In the 1930s, following sharp contractions in the labor markets, naturalized

Mexicans began to be found working more in agriculture, a paradoxical phe-
nomenon directly associated with the Guatemalans in Chiapas. Finally, the in-
creasing number of professionally qualified naturalized Mexicans from the late
1930s reveals the impact of Spanish refugees. Between 1940 and 1943, 35 percent
of naturalized refugees were professionally qualified, in contrast to 7 percent of the
members of the established Spanish community. Spanish Republican refugees also
had an influence on the naturalization rates among employees and technically
qualified urban workers, and on employment for women, who not only performed
domestic duties but also worked in artistic, teaching, and service sector activities.
Long-term Spanish residents Spanish refugees

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Rural Traders Urban Workers Urban Professionally Technically Various
businessment Businessmen qualified qualified workers
and farmers workers and artisans

FIGURE 5.23 Spanish refugees and long-term Spanish residents, by occupation

(1940–1943), percentages
Source: AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97, L-E 1993, L-E 1120 A-K; and L-E 1121 L-Z.

In short, the low naturalization rates of foreigners in Mexico can be inter-

preted as the consequence of Mexican nationality being unappealing for foreigner
communities, or of a state policy that took little interest in broadening the scope
188 Naturalized Mexicans

of citizenship. The truth possibly lies halfway between these two explanations.
Mexican nationality was only attractive for some immigrant communities, and
furthermore the communities most eager to naturalize were the ones that raised
the most suspicion for the authorities.
The reconstruction of the complete statistical series of naturalizations in the
first half of the twentieth century reveals the impact of two exceptional political
decisions: the regularization of rural populations of Guatemalan origin who were
resident in Chiapas, and the government’s offer of asylum to Spanish
Republicans. The choice to naturalize more than 4,000 Guatemalans as Mexicans
and to offer asylum to 2,500 Spanish Republicans had a major impact on the
sociodemographic volumes and profiles of naturalizations. Guatemalans—mainly
from indigenous communities—represented almost all the naturalized Mexicans
working in agriculture. By contrast, the Spanish Republicans came from the
educated middle classes, many with university-level qualifications and all of them
resident in urban areas.
Besides these two communities, the experience of naturalization in the first
half of the twentieth century shows the mark of nineteenth-century patterns,
only exaggerated by the nationalist policy arising from the 1910 Revolution. In
other words, we need to consider the influence of a constitution and regulations
that curtailed foreigners’ property and employment rights, as well as the citizen
rights of naturalized foreigners, when analyzing the reasons for the applications
for—and granting of—Mexican nationality. Hence a symmetry exists between
the clear restrictions imposed on the presence of foreigners and the increase in
naturalizations. The search for Mexican nationality responded to the need to
ensure residence and employment rights, threatened by powerful nationalist
campaigns. One could surmise that some immigrant communities—mainly those
aware of their home governments’ inability to afford them protection—chose this
path. This was not the case among the Americans, English, French, and Germans,
whose rates of naturalization fell drastically compared to the figures in the
nineteenth century. Moreover, these communities clearly represented a smaller
proportion of the overall immigration in Mexico. In contrast, there was an in-
creasing number of naturalizations of other communities from Asia, Eastern
Europe, and the Middle East. For these groups, naturalization was a response to
employment restrictions and to exclusions on ethnic grounds, in the under-
standing that their presence was seen as a threat to the health of a nation striving
to impose mestizo homogeneity. In this regard, naturalization gave job security
and opened up the possibility of arranging the entry of family members denied
visas due to immigration restrictions.
The defense of mestizaje should have boosted the number of Spaniards nat-
uralizing as Mexicans; however, given the exceptional situation brought about by
the Republican refugees, many long-term Spanish residents made use of the fast-
track option now made available to them. This evidence makes it possible to infer
that obtaining Mexican nationality cannot have been easy for those Spaniards,
 Naturalized Mexicans 189

heavily burdened as they were by grievances dating back to the colonial past that
upset the balance between the advantages and desirability of such immigration in
the eyes of the authorities.

Arbitrariness and Corruption

Arbitrariness characterized the naturalization process. Sometimes this was clearly
driven by politics after the executive branch took certain decisions, such as on the
Guatemalans on the southern border or on the Spanish Republican exiles. This
unpredictability, expressed in the discretional use of power and abuses of au-
thority, opened the door to corruption, as shown in the activity of the coyotes
and lawyers who colluded with the authorities to facilitate the process of ob-
taining naturalization certificates.
As already indicated, these trámites were so complex that applicants had to pay
a gestor to surmount one of obstacles that could arise at any moment. To un-
derstand the levels of arbitrariness, it is important to realize that naturalization was
not an administrative procedure that recognized a foreigner’s rights. On the
contrary, applicants were at the mercy of the authorities. The foreign minister
himself, Eduardo Hay, in late 1936, responded in this vein to a Czechoslovakian
citizen’s request for an extraordinary approval after the Foreign Ministry rejected
his naturalization application, despite his ability to prove he was married to a
Mexican woman and was the father of children born in Mexico:

While accepting the accuracy of the information in [your] application, you

must realize that the current Nationality and Naturalization Law [1934],
similarly to its predecessor [1886], does not bestow upon foreigners any
right to naturalization by the Mexican State or its government departments.
In other words, the Executive has no legal obligation to accept a foreigner’s
naturalization.40

In this case, the minister was interpreting Article 19 of the 1934 Naturalization
Law in a peculiar way, because the legislation established that the granting of
nationality depended on the applicant meeting the requirements and the assess-
ment made by the Foreign Ministry of the application as a whole, and only if the
assessment indicated that naturalization was advisable then it would be ap-
proved.41 Therefore, going against the amparo granted by a judge to the
Czechoslovakian Carlos B. Macas, it was argued that the law gave the authority
the power, but never the obligation, to grant naturalization, so that “foreigners
do not have the right to naturalize as Mexicans, and the Executive’s refusal to
grant naturalization could not be considered to violate any rights.”42
In fact, it is hard to distinguish between the authorities’ requirements when
compiling the naturalization application file and the assessment on the advisability
of granting naturalization. Applications were generally rejected for failing to
190 Naturalized Mexicans

comply with some requirement established as part of the naturalization process; of

course, applications were also rejected on account of inconsistencies or manifest
untruths discovered in the supporting documentation, but also due to whimsical
interpretations of civil, employment, and commercial norms instituted in codes
and regulations. In this sense, the case of Carlos B. Macas’s application is in-
structive after the amparo was eventually rejected by the courts in March 1937.
His two children, Mexicans by birth, born to a Mexican mother, had been born
before the marriage. The legal arguments revolved around whether the two
minors were legitimate children even though Macas had recognized them at the
time of their birth, with this filiation registered in their birth certificate. The
Foreign Ministry based its argument on the fact that they had not been born after
the marriage, endorsing the amparo ruling to reject the application for natur-
alization through extraordinary channels.43
The jumble of requirements, some of which were hard to comply with, was
grist to the mill of gestores and coyotes. In some cases, for example, one re-
quirement was to produce the immigration documentation handed to foreigners
upon entry into Mexico, placing those with a long residency in the country into a
bureaucratic dilemma, because this kind of paperwork was not given system-
atically until the latter half of the 1920s. The search for alternative documentation
and its approval by the authorities delayed the process, led to the rejection of
applications by the authorities, or else caused applicants to withdraw them. One
of the requests was for the government authorities in the applicants’ countries of
origin to issue documentation to confirm the applicant’s nationality, or for
consular authorities to certify the renouncement of that nationality, which, as
mentioned previously, was also part of the procedure. The spelling of applicants’
and family members’ names and surnames was subject to scrutiny, and any in-
consistency, a common occurrence in foreigners’ names, entailed new requests
for documents and procedures. The list of requirements was diverse and ob-
viously the difficulty in meeting many of the demands gave rise to false statements
and documents that led to the rejection of applications upon their discovery.
It is hard to make a complete count of all rejected and withdrawn applications.
The archives that contain these files lack a means of consultation, making it
difficult to break down the reasons for the rejection of applications.44 Daniela
Gleizer estimated that just under twelve thousand applications were rejected or
withdrawn between 1900 and 1950; in percentage terms, this means that around
30 percent of applications failed to prosper. In other words, during the first half of
the twentieth century, seven out of ten applicants obtained Mexican nationality.
This percentage remained steady between 1925 and 1947,45 a period that, as we
have seen, saw the implementation of increasingly restrictive migration policies.
What made it possible for naturalization certificates to be granted in general,
and for foreigners of “undesirable” nationalities in particular? One possible an-
swer is that corruption was rife among networks of gestores and lawyers linked to
the authorities in different government departments responsible for handling
 Naturalized Mexicans 191

applications. A second explanation, along similar lines to the first, was that
members of the political elite and high-profile leaders of communities of for-
eigners participated in the trafficking of influences, sometimes involving bribes.
In any case, bribery and backscratching smoothed the path of an otherwise
obstacle-ridden bureaucratic process.
In May 1925, a 42-year-old Japanese doctor, Kainosin Osawa, who had en-
tered the country in 1918 and had since resided in Ensenada, Baja California, filed
his naturalization application with the local judicial authorities. In one of the
forms, for personal references he referred to the former president Alvaro
Obregón, the president Plutarco Elías Calles, and the senator for Sinaloa Manuel
Rivas, who also represented him in Mexico City throughout the application
procedure. The supporting documentation included a certificate of residency in
Ensenada signed by the president and secretary of the Ensenada Municipal
Council and by governor Abelardo Rodriguez. The recommendations for this
doctor and drugstore owner seemed impeccable. However, just a few months
later, the Foreign Ministry began to establish new requirements. In Ensenada, M.
Careaga became Osawa’s legal representative for handling the requests from the
Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Department, until he became so irked by the new
requirements that he wrote to President Calles. “All foreigners wishing to nat-
uralize must comply with infinite requirements that do not appear in any legis-
lation. For example, they must submit certain documents to accredit their
nationality, place and date of entry into the country, etc., etc.” Although the
judge admitted the validity of certain documents, the Foreign Ministry required
others “that the immigrant is not able to submit. For example, many immigrants
entered the country more than fifteen years ago when no document was issued,”
and that non-existent document was now being required by the authorities.
Careaga spoke on behalf of the Japanese doctor and other foreigners whom he
also represented. “In the case of my client Ramón Luis Song, after three years of
seeking his naturalization, the Foreign Ministry required him to prove his fi-
nancial solvency” and after satisfying this requirement, he received another of-
ficial request for him to prove his legal entry into the country. “Since he entered
more than thirteen years ago and given that the document requested does not
exist, the submission included a residency certificate, signed by the municipal
president, and to date no reply has been received.” Careaga handled other cases
where similar situations arose. “They have all provided evidence of living in the
Republic for more than five years and they comply with all of the legal re-
quirements, but the Diplomatic Department has so far simply set about delaying
the issuing of the certificates.” In Careaga’s words, this policy caused serious
problems for foreigners “because after renouncing their nationalities as a pre-
requisite to become naturalized Mexicans, they find themselves in the un-
welcome situation of being stateless.” But even more worryingly, as Careaga
complained to President Calles, was that all the applicants whom he represented
had received letters from individuals residing in Mexico City that stated their
192 Naturalized Mexicans

awareness that the Foreign Ministry was not issuing their naturalization certifi-
cates and that “using their pragmatism” promised to ensure a swift resolution to
their applications. “I do not know,” Careaga wrote, “how these people are aware
of the applicants or what steps they will take to ensure a favorable outcome.”46
The president’s office forwarded Careaga’s letter to the Foreign Ministry,
which replied by detailing the requirements for Osawa, as well as those estab-
lished for each one of the aforementioned foreigners. The same letter also spe-
cified the reasons for the requirements. Some of these explanations are
interesting, because the lack of any administrative logic reveals the firm com-
mitment to hold up the application until the applicant withdrew it or else found
the way, through bribery or backscratching, to find a means to circumvent the
requirement. All immigrants who entered the country before the 1926 Law had
to meet the entry requirements established by that legislation; in other words, the
norm was applied retroactively in the understanding that failure to comply
proved that “the foreigner broke the law at the time of entering the country, and
therefore,” in the reasoning of the head of the Diplomatic Department, “it can be
presumed that he will also break the other laws after becoming naturalized.”47
The Foreign Ministry established a series of requirements for Osawa, including
the need to prove his Japanese nationality with a certificate issued by a consular
authority which, in this case, was the Japanese consul in Los Angeles. The
Mexican authorities then had to validate this same document; Osawa then had to
prove the date of his first entry into the country, hence he requested the mi-
gration authorities in Ensenada to certify his declaration. In October 1927,
without the involvement of his representative, Osawa wrote to President Calles
informing him that he had met all the requirements and implored “his most
gracious assurance that this matter may be resolved favorably without further
delay.”48 This was not how things turned out. In February 1928, the Foreign
Ministry wrote to him, rejecting his naturalization application because Migration
Department files showed a previous entry into the country in 1925 without any
evidence of a prior departure, leading to the conclusion that Osawa had not
resided in the country for the five years prior to the application.
It was not easy for Osawa to prove that he had only been absent from the country
for two days. In 1925, Osawa crossed the border into the United States from Tijuana,
traveled to Nogales, Arizona, from where he took a train to Mexico City. However,
due to the lack of records, the Interior Ministry concluded that he could not prove
five years’ residency in Mexico. The Japanese doctor wrote again to President Calles
in March 1928, providing details of this latest setback, explaining that he was only out
of the country for forty-eight hours, and requested his assistance for the Foreign
Ministry to reconsider its rejection of the naturalization application. One month
later, the president’s office referred the case to the Foreign Ministry, which im-
mediately requested proof that the absence from the country had only been for two
days. There was no other way of giving such proof other than stating the facts. This
 Naturalized Mexicans 193

was the status until President Calles intervened once again and the naturalization
certificate was granted to this Japanese applicant in July 1928.
Not many foreigners could have had the head of state’s backing to help them
secure a naturalization certificate. Therefore, the successful outcome of applications
will have depended on the route offered by the “very pragmatic” individuals who
had written from Mexico City to the immigrants represented by Careaga.
In early 1931, as migration and employment restrictions became stricter, the
authorities viewed with concern the increasing number of requests for natur-
alization, and they soon noted that many of the applications all came via the same
offices in Mexico City, independently of the immigrants’ place of residence. The
Confidential Department was immediately tasked with investigating the matter. As
we saw above, Pablo Meneses headed up this investigative office and that same year
was arrested, taken to court, and almost immediately acquitted from the charges of
involvement in illegal businesses with members of the Chinese community. In any
case, this ministry’s administrative department ordered Meneses to investigate one
of those offices suspected of committing “irregularities and perhaps even bribing the
authorities” in charge of issuing documents to obtain naturalization certificates.49
Meneses ordered the questioning of one of his agents and the resulting information
shows the modus operandi of influence trafficking networks and the corruption
affecting most naturalization applications. In this case, it transpired that two
licenciados ran the office in question. One of them, Efraín Lazos, was Mexican, and
the other, David Markenson, a naturalized Russian. Suspicions were raised with the
naturalization in 1931 of Usher Lulka, a Jewish immigrant of Russian background,
resident in San Luis Potosí, whose application papers, including reference and
recommendation letters, were also signed and dated in Mexico City. The natur-
alization applicants visited the office, handed over the documentation that proved
their financial solvency, signed the necessary paperwork, including a power of
attorney to the aforesaid licenciados and the office take care of the rest of the
process, including the issue of medical certificates without any prior examination.
The interested parties only returned to sign receipt of the naturalization certificate.
The successful outcome of these procedures owed to the fact that the employees in
the office leveraged their contacts in various government offices to ensure the swift
processing of the documents required for naturalization, and specific reference was
made to contacts in the police headquarters and offices of the Mexico City gov-
ernment’s Central Department, “making it highly difficult to know whether these
individuals bribe employees.” No information was given about the cost of this
service, although it included reports of some city government officials visiting, of
their own accord, the domiciles of applicants resident in the city, demanding the
payment of certain amounts on the pretext that they needed to cover stamp duty
costs. The investigation concluded with the names and addresses of various other
firms that “were also engaged in this activity.”50
These offices offered a wide range of services. In the autumn of 1931, the chief
of the Mexico City police, in another investigation, reported that “undesirable
194 Naturalized Mexicans

foreigners” were choosing to purchase falsified birth certificates, showing that

they were born in Mexico as children of foreign parents, or else directly as the
children of Mexican parents, enabling them to circumvent the naturalization
process completely. “The Chief of Police has reports that these procedures are
carried out by people whose firms are regularly involved in such matters.”51
There are no indications that these investigations dismantled such illicit networks
which also, in the case of birth certificates, involved the collusion of civil re-
gistries all around the country. In 1939, for example, there was the case of Félix
Nader and his son Nacif. The father lodged an application for a naturalization
certificate for his son, because he had supposedly been born in Teziutlán, Puebla,
according to a birth certificate accepted by the Foreign Ministry. However,
probably due to a mix-up by the applicants, at another stage in the process a
different birth certificate was submitted, also issued by a civil court judge from
Teziutlán, only with different names of witnesses and dates.52
These gestores made it possible to obtain almost anything, from birth certi-
ficates, commercial references, police records, and even medical and residency
certificates. It is also clear that many of these offices bolstered their roster of
clients by using community networks, recommendations from fellow coun-
trymen, and the trust in these gestores who were members of immigrant com-
munities. In this way, for example, Eastern European immigrants flocked to
Marksenon’s office,53 as they did to the firms run by M. Rosemberg and Julio
Vinisky,54 both of whom were naturalized Mexicans. For those with Turkic
backgrounds, the business of Antonio Letayf and Negib Chemi55 was notable for
Letayf’s high profile as a benefactor among immigrants from the Middle East,
particularly those who came from Lebanon.56
There were around thirty firms, although not all of them were equally ef-
fective at producing successful outcomes for naturalization applications.57 These
trámites were processed within relatively short time frames compared to the years
and sometimes even decades they normally took. The key to success lay in the
quality of contacts in the government offices involved in issuing the documents,
and especially those working at the Foreign Ministry itself. The process revolved
around influence trafficking networks and bribery that involved former em-
ployees who had become gestores, as well as officials in active employment who
actively colluded with them. In June 1938, a police report revealed the existence
of one of these networks that implicated none other than the head of the Foreign
Ministry’s Legal Department, Armando Flores, who ran a firm in partnership
with another lawyer that provided a service to foreigners with Jewish, Arab, and
Chinese backgrounds who were charged between 300 and 1,000 pesos for as-
sistance with the naturalization applications; the “Arab coyotes, Chemi and
Letayf, were also often seen in these offices.”58 The accusation was serious en-
ough to warrant the request for confirmation. Some weeks later, this con-
firmation arrived: Armando Flores had a firm run by “Licenciado Aguilar” and
was frequented by “Señor Letayf, an influential member of the Syrian-Lebanese
 Naturalized Mexicans 195

community.” The informant was (or claimed to be) a gestor so that the report
acquired a broader scope by describing how a lawyer from the legal department,
recently separated from his post, had offered him his services, “to use his influ-
ence in exchange for a modest sum to help me avoid any difficulties,” although
the key point of this report was its pessimism about the prospects of successfully
dismantling these illicit networks: “I think it is very difficult to take any action
against Licenciado Armando Flores and his accomplices, due to this official’s
influence with General Eduardo Hay” [the foreign minister at that time.59
Foreign ministry officials were undeniably involved in these businesses. There is
no evidence that this investigation progressed, nor are there reports about the
questioning of other officials or these firms. The case of Letayf raised suspicions,
perhaps due to the volume of naturalizations he handled and his effectiveness, and
certainly for Letayf’s close relationships with high-level authorities and officials. In
fact, Ernesto, one of Antonio Letayf’s sons, was a Foreign Ministry employee in
1937 and 1938, first in the Diplomatic Department and then as head of the Protocol
Department, despite his lack of any professional background to qualify him for
these positions,60 a situation that hints at his father’s assistance in securing these jobs.
Did the protracted discussions about how and when immigrants could become
Mexicans, and the debates over jus sanguinis and jus soli, take on a particular bias in
view of the “undesirability” of certain ethnic or national origins? Did the strict
restrictions on extranjería have any impact on the granting of naturalization
certificates? Given the exclusion or reduction of citizen rights for naturalized
Mexicans, obtaining Mexican nationality offered little incentive other than cer-
tain advantages for employers and employees, traders, industrialists, or pro-
fessionally qualified workers. The entire regulatory framework clearly did little to
encourage naturalization; the procedures were lengthy and expensive, without
offering any guarantee of a successful outcome. In this sense, without any desire
to encourage the naturalization of foreigners, the tight restrictions provided a
source of income at the expense of those immigrants willing to take on the
challenge. Both desirable and undesirable immigrants had to bear this cost,
though it was surely more expensive for the latter.
In summary, the application for naturalization on the one hand, and its
granting on the other, bore little connection to the broadening of political par-
ticipation and representation. Citizen rights do not figure as an expectation for
those applying for Mexican nationality, or for those granting it. For the former,
applying for naturalization was a pragmatic way of improving their situation,
whereas for the authorities, granting nationality was modeled on the perception
of extranjería generally as a threat rather than being motivated by political or
economic expedience. As such, the decisions were so arbitrary that, just as they
benefitted Guatemalans and Spanish Republicans, they also turned a growing
number of undesirable immigrants into Mexicans. In any case, arbitrariness was so
rife in the restrictive naturalization policy that, among its other effects, it offered
an extraordinary business opportunity.
196 Naturalized Mexicans

Notes
1 See Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2019. Since the late nineteenth century, the
Foreign Ministry occasionally published information about naturalized foreigners,
without making any connection to statistical series. This information can be consulted
in the Ministry’s publication, Boletines y Memorias.
2 El Nacional, 10 November 1933.
3 El Nacional, 5 March 1937.
4 Loyo, 1935, 348–50.
5 See Loyo, 1946.
6 Durán Ochoa, 1955, 164–166. The interest in knowing the number of naturalized
foreigners reappeared in this new century, this time linked to historical research. In
2013, Theresa Alfaro Vercamp carried out a compact study of the volumes of nat-
uralizations between 1913 and 1931 (Alfaro Velcamp, 2013), while Daniela
Gleizer—in her research into the reasons for the rejection of naturalization requests
between 1928 and 1934—presented an approximate figure of rejections over this
period (Gleizer, 2015b). Finally, Erika Pani’s wide-ranging research into extranjería
and the construction of citizenship in the nineteenth century reconstructed the vo-
lumes of naturalized Mexicans between 1828 and 1917. These studies are based on
documentation contained in the AHDSRE archives (Pani, 2015).
7 See Buchenau, 2001.
8 This information comes from three files kept in the AHDSRE archives which contain
detailed lists of the naturalization certificates granted between 1828 and 1953
(AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97 and L-E 1993). One aspect that lends credibility
to the accuracy of this source of information is that it includes the numerical corre-
lation of every naturalization certificate granted by the Foreign Ministry over a period
of 125 years. To confirm the reliability of these figures, the author compared the
figures contained in the series, which are not always complete, of naturalized for-
eigners found in the Boletines and Memorias, published by the Secretaría de Relaciones
Exteriores and the Censos Generales de Población. This information was com-
plemented with information from the files L-E 1120 A-K and L-E 1121 L-Z held by
the AHDSRE on the naturalization certificates granted to Spanish Republican re-
fugees between 1940 and 1944. This dataset (1828–1953) was tabulated on the basis of
descriptors that sheds light on the annual volumes of naturalization and about in-
dicators on sociodemographic profiles. Finally, the overall data on naturalization in the
second half of the twentieth century were taken from the Memorias published by the
Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores between 1954 and 1999. For the sub-period
1954–1978, the figures obtained from this source were completed with information
from a database of naturalization files held by AHDSRE. This archive’s personnel use
this database to locate files.
9 Including, but not exclusively, see Chao Romero, 2010; Salazar, 2010; Bernecker,
2005; Meyer and Salazar, 2003; González Navarro, 1993; Lida, 1994; Meyer, 1980;
Von Metz, Radkau, Sharrer, and Turner, 1982; and Berninguer, 1976.
10 “East Europe” comprises Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia.
11 “The Middle East” comprises Arabia, Armenia, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine,
Syria, and Turkey.
12 See Martínez Rodríguez, 2013; Skerreitt Gardner, 1995; Viqueira and Ruz, 1995;
Aboites Aguilar, 1995; and González Navarro, 1960.
13 See Valerio Ulloa, 2015; Gamboa Ojeda, 2008; Antiq-Auvaro,1992; Proal and
Charpenel, 1986; and Gouy, 1980.
14 See Herrera Barreda, 2003.
15 See Freeman Smith, 1972; Knight, 1974; and Yankelevich, 2009b.
 Naturalized Mexicans 197

16 Article 9 of the Federal Labor Law passed in 1931 established a maximum of 10

percent of foreigners in the workforce of a company in any sector (DOF, 28 August
1931, 4).
17 See Castillo, Toussaint, and Vázquez, 2006; De Vos, 1993.
18 See Castillo and Vázquez, 2010; and Martínez Velasco, 1994.
19 See Pani, 2015.
20 See Benjamin, 1989.
21 See Reyes Ramos, 1992.
22 Article 44 of the the Agrarian Code of 1934 established that the distribution of ejido
lands was limited to those who could prove their status as Mexicans, either by birth or
naturalization. (DOF, 12 April 1934, 601). Article 163 of the new Agrarian Code of
1940 excluded naturalized Mexicans, stipulating that only Mexicans by birth could
benefit from land distribution policies. (DOF, 29 October 1940, 57).
23 The documentation of these binational meetings that dealt with the migration problem
on the southern border can be consulted in AHINM, file 4/358–447 and in
AHDSRE, files III-1728-1 (4 parts), III-170-19.1938, III-296.31.1934, CILA 334.4,
and CILA X-334.4.
24 See Gerardo Pérez, 2013; Castillo and Vázquez, 2010b.
25 Gerardo Pérez, 2013, 193.
26 Gil Lázaro, 2010 and 2013; Lida, 1997; and Plá Brugat, 1992.
27 See Pani, 2015.
28 See Illades, 1991; Yankelevich, 2006.
29 DOF, 23 January 1940, 2.
30 See Pérez Vejo, 2001.
31 These nationalities were: Albanian, American, Arab, Argentinian, Armenian, Australian,
Austrian, Belgian, Bolivian, Brazilian, Bulgarian, Canadian, Czechoslovakian, Chilean,
Chinese, Colombian, Costa Rican, Cuban, Danish, Dominican, Dutch, Ecuadorian,
Egyptian, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, German Greek, Guatemalan,
Haitian, Honduran, Hungarian, Indian, Iranian, Iraqi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian,
Lebanese, Lithuanian, Luxembourger, Nicaraguan, Norwegian, Palestinian, Panamanian,
Peruvian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Salvadoran, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss,
Syrian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uruguayan, Venezuelan, and Yugoslavian.
32 See Martínez Assad, 2010.
33 DGE, 1910, 1921, 1930, 1940, and 1950.
34 Ibid.
35 See Sanderson, Sidel, and Sims, 1981; and DellaPergola and Lerner, 1995.
36 See Hernández Juárez, 2018; Schiavone Camacho, 2012; and Augustine Adams, 2006
and 2017.
37 The documentation series consulted (AHDSRE, files L-E 1992; 26-23-97 and L-E
1993) registers more than five hundred occupations. This universe was tabulated into
eight groups: traders, urban workers, rural workers, technically qualified workers and
artisans, urban businessmen, rural businessmen, professionally qualified workers; and
others. This series also reveals a sharp contrast in the information about the occupation
of naturalized Mexicans. Between 1900 and 1936, no information is available about
the occupations of 2 percent of naturalized Mexicans, but this percentage increases to
98 percent for the 1937–1953 period. The only possible means of completing this
dataset is by consulting the individual naturalization files. However, current data
protection regulations only allow the consultation of files up until 1948. Since for the
entire 1900–1948 period we knew the total number of naturalized foreigners per year
and by nationality of origin, for the 1900–1936 sub-period 2 percent of the naturalized
Mexicans without data available were distributed in accordance with the proportion
observed for 98 percent of the cases where data is available. It was more complex to
construct the series for the 1937–1948 sub-period because it was necessary to consult
198 Naturalized Mexicans

the individual files using stratified randomized sampling. For this purpose, we con-
sidered a sample size of 20 percent of all naturalized Mexicans for each year with the
known distribution of nationality by origin. The historical series was integrated as part
of this method of constructing the series. In the case of the Spaniards, and given the
possibility of consulting the aforesaid series of documentation referring to the natur-
alization of Republican refugees (AHDSRE files L-E 1120 A-K and L-E 1121 L-Z) it
was possible to separate the Spaniards with long-term residency from the Republican
refugees. The sampling was carried out using the annual distribution of the naturalized
Spaniards broken down into one or the other group.
38 Pani, 2015, 186.
39 Ibid.
40 AHDSRE, file VII (N) 163-10.
41 DOF, 20 January 1934.
42 AHDSRE, file VII (N) 163-10.
43 Ibid.
44 From the “Rejected” series of the AHDSRE’s “Naturalizations” archive.
45 Based on current research, Daniela Gleizer provided me an update of figures contained
in Gleizer, 2015b, 118–9.
46 AHDSRE, file VII (N) 194-15.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 AGN-DGG, box 10, file 31 (2.360.29.60).
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 El Universal, 9 April 1939.
53 AHDSRE, file VII (N) 267-11.
54 AGN-DGG, box 10, file 31 (2.360.29.60).
55 AHDSRE files VII (N) 46-25 and 473-6.
56 Antonio Letayf arrived in Mexico in 1890 and nine years later became the first nat-
uralized Mexican born in Lebanon. Throughout his life in Mexico he maintained close
relationships with the political elites both during the Porfirio Díaz and Revolutionary
regimes. Thanks to these connections he became a successful businessman, and he used
his influence to play a leading role in naturalization and visa application processes,
entry permits, and all manner of trámites related to extranjería for most of his clients.
See Pastor, 2017; Carranza Trinidad 2017; Alfaro Velcamp, 2007.
57 For information on Antonio Letayf and Negib Chemi’s firm, see Carranza Trinidad,
2017.
58 AGN-DIPyS, box 322, file 50.
59 Ibid., box 107, file 43.
60 AHDSRE, file 42-25-12.
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GLOSSARY

ahijado literally, godson, though in Mexico and other Spanish-

speaking countries an ahijado has a particularly strong con-
nection to his godfather, or padrino, who will often become
their unofficial patron throughout life.
amparo within the Mexican judicial system, an action for constitutional
relief (writ of amparo) is a remedy an individual or legal entity
can use to challenge a court ruling or act of authority based on
constitutional precepts.
bracero a participant in the Bracero Program (1942–1964), an official
initiative under which Mexican farm laborers were granted
permission to work temporarily in the United States.
científico during the government of Porfirio Díaz, the científicos were a
cadre of technocrats closely aligned with the regime’s focus on
industrializing Mexico and attracting foreign capital.
compadrazgo the relationship between compadres (a godfather and his god-
son’s father) often creates a lifelong bond of trust and mutual
obligations.
enganchador a person who recruits laborers for large employers, often using
underhand methods and false promises.
extranjería a term that encompasses the Mexico’s migration and natur-
alization policies; the Extranjería Law of 1886 governed
every aspect of foreigners’ legal status in Mexico, from first
arrival to naturalization.
gestor a middleman who provides legal or administrative services,
helping to expedite administrative procedures and secure
 Glossary 215

favorable outcomes, often by leveraging contacts in govern-

ment agencies or through bribery of public officials.
hacendado the owner of a large estate or plantation, often with strong
political ties and protection.
licenciado a term used generically in Mexico for those with legal quali-
fications, often a license to practice a specific profession, and
sometimes for university graduates in general. Commonly used
as shorthand for an attorney.
mestizo/mestizaje this term for people of mixed European and native indigenous
descent assumed great importance for Mexico’s post-
Revolutionary governments as a means of defining a sense of
national identity.
mordida a bribe demanded or offered during dealings with officialdom.
Plan Sexenal government program for a six-year presidential term.
plaza in Mexican bureaucracy, plazas are stable positions within the
government apparatus (for example, in the Education
Ministry), often protected by unions. Occasionally, holders of
such posts are entitled to pass them on to someone of their
own choosing when they retire or leaving their job.
trámite a catch-all term for all kinds of administrative procedures,
formalities, or requests before government authorities.
INDEX

Acapulco, Guerrero 73 Australian 18, 197

African 15, 17, 18, 63, 90 Australian Blacks 15
African Americans 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, Austrian 24, 186, 197
22, 23 Ávila Camacho, Manuel 26, 28, 66, 67, 68,
Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo 45, 68 69, 131
ahijado 121 Ayutla (Guatemala) 96
Ahumada, Herminio 30
Alanís, Emilio 20 Baja California 66, 73, 99, 104, 124, 176,
Albanians 15, 197 178, 180, 191
Alberdi, Juan Bautista 21 Barajas, Fortunato 114
alcoholism 91, 110 Barand, Joaquín 148
Alemán, Miguel 69, 131 Barba González, Silvano 103
Algerians 15 Barcelonnettes 168
Almanza, Gaspar O. 103 Barnet, C. 16
Amatenango, Chiapas 76 Beirut (Lebanon) 103
American 77, 78, 87, 90, 91, 95, 126, 128, Belizean border 16, 90, 110
129, 131, 166, 168, 188, 197 Belizeans 17, 76
anarchism 41 Berlin (Germany) 67
Angel Island, California 42 Blumenbach, Johann 18
Anglo-Saxon 141 Boas, Frank 22
Anguiano, Victoriano 31 Bojórquez, Juan de Dios 20, 60, 143, 144
anti-Semitism 24 border patrol (United States) 43, 70
Arabs 15, 51, 52, 170, 194, 197 Bosques, Gilberto 10
Argentina/Argentinian 21, 45, 153, 197 Bracero Program 64, 65, 99
Armenians 15, 51, 52, 196, 197 braceros 16, 49, 58, 100, 101, 102
Asians 13, 14, 18, 38, 40, 41, 43, 63, 89, Braniff, Alberto 149
90, 100, 104, 105, 166, 180, 182 Braniff, Oscar 149
assimilation 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 33, 64, Braniff, Tomás 149
65, 146, 152, 158 Braun, Marcus 41
asylum 3, 23, 24, 25, 69, 188 Brazil/Brazilian 45, 67, 197
Associated Negro Press 16 bribery/bribe 5, 86, 87, 89, 94, 98, 101,
 Index 217

106, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 191, 192, Columbus, New Mexico 93
194, 215 Colunga, Enrique 149
brothels 90, 92, 95, 97, 98 Comas, Juan 27
bubonic plague 38, 40 compadres/compadrazgo 93, 121, 123
Bulgarians 15, 197 Compañía Mexicana de Navegación del
Pacífico 38
Cabral, Juan 93, 111 Confederation of Mexican Workers 122
caciques 172 Confidential Department (Interior
Calzada Jiménez, Fernando 73 Ministry) 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 42, 44, 45,
Campeche 76 47, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 66,
Campos, Emilio 54 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 81, 91, 92, 97,
Canada 22, 39, 89 102, 103, 105, 106, 113, 114, 115, 116,
Cananea, Sonora 107 117, 120, 124, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131,
cantinas 77, 90, 92, 96, 97, 98, 101, 125 132, 158, 163, 172, 192, 193
Cárdenas Carranza, Jesús 126 confidential/confidentiality 15, 17, 18, 19,
Cárdenas, Everardo 91 22, 24, 49, 52, 57, 59, 60, 61, 63, 87, 96,
Cárdenas, José Luis 91 103, 105, 120, 123, 131
Cárdenas, Lázaro 22, 23, 25, 26, 58, 59, 60, Contreras, Elías 123
61, 64, 128, 138, 159, 172, 186 Corral, Carmen 129, 130, 131
Careaga, M. 191, 192, 193 Corral, Ramón 89
Carranza, Venustiano 142, 143, 145, 148 corruption 4, 5, 19, 59, 79, 87, 88, 89, 90,
Carreño, Roberto 91, 92 91, 93, 96, 97, 99, 102, 105, 110, 113,
Casasús, J. 149 114, 115, 119, 120, 122, 125, 131, 132,
casinos 77, 90, 98, 99, 100 153, 157, 172, 189, 190, 193
Caso, Alfonso 26 Council for Pan American Democracy
Caucasian 18 22, 23
caudillo 132 coyotes/coyotaje 94, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103,
Chamber of Commerce of Nogales, 104, 108, 113, 119, 126, 189, 190
Arizona 91 Cravioto, Alfonso 144, 145
Chapala, Jalisco 121 Cristero War 19
chauvinism/chauvinist 13, 30, 152 Cruz, Wilfrido 8
Chee Kung Tong 106, 107 Cuba / Cuban 19, 89, 104, 143, 144, 146,
Chemi, Negib 194 166, 167, 168, 197
Chetumal, Quintana Roo 74, 76 Cuernavaca, Morelos 66, 113
Chiapas 40, 66, 70, 74, 92, 96, 110, 112, Cuesta, Jorge 8
123, 158, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, Czechoslovakians 15, 52, 116, 117, 189,
187, 188 196, 197
Chicago, Illinois 125
Chihuahua 37, 74, 93, 116, 176, 178, Dalevuelta, Jacobo 97, 98
179, 180 De Alva, Pedro 152, 153
China 42, 104, 106, 167, 168, 177, 179, De Clausse, Wilhemine V. 95
181, 186 De la Barrera Aguilar, Antonio 145
Chinese 12, 14, 15, 19, 30, 38, 39, 40, 41, De la Colina, Rafael 56
42, 51, 55, 61, 88, 89, 92, 104, 105, 106, De la Parra, Gonzalo 29
107, 108, 109, 114, 166, 171, 178, 179, De los Santos, Arnulfo 125, 126
181, 183, 185, 186, 193, 195, 197 De Régules, Nicolás 145
citizenship 139, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, Department of Health 15, 42, 55
147, 150, 155, 156, 158, 160, 188, 196 Department of Rural Affairs 172
Ciudad Camargo, Tamaulipas 75, 126 deportation 12, 44, 51, 65, 106, 107, 111,
Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua 93, 99, 116, 112, 129
117, 123, 131 desirability 9, 13, 14, 22, 48, 49, 189
Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz 75 Díaz, Porfirio 9, 14, 38, 39, 41, 51, 88, 89,
colonization/colonialism 7, 9 144, 145, 148, 149, 158, 171, 175, 198
218 Index

discrimination 3, 6, 10, 13, 22, 23, 26, Fuentes Martínez, Manuel 123
27, 50
diseases 2, 27, 38, 40, 41, 45, 55, 88 gachupines 186
drugs 90, 99, 128 gambling 70, 77, 96, 101, 104, 105, 106,
Duarte, Daniel 125, 127, 128 125, 126, 128
Durán Ochoa, Julio 163 Gamio, Manuel 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 24, 26,
32, 43, 45, 56, 68, 93
East European 24, 166, 170, 196 García Téllez, Ignacio 102, 128, 129
Efron, David 23 Garza González, Jesús 128
Egyptians 15, 197 Germans/Germany 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 27,
El Paso, Texas 99, 101, 116, 117 32, 66, 67, 83, 110, 111, 113, 114, 146,
Elías Calles, Plutarco 16, 50, 52, 191, 166, 167, 168, 179, 185, 186, 188, 197
192, 193 gestores 87, 91, 94, 102, 190, 194
Elizondo, Rodolfo 123 Gini, Conrado 20
Ellis Island, New Jersey 42 Greeks 15, 197
enganchadores 110, 112, 119 Guadalajara, Jalisco 66, 92, 113, 146
English 16, 32, 38, 77, 88, 99, 125, 166, Guajardo, Candelario 125
188, 197 Guanajuato 58, 68
Ensenada, Baja California 73, 77, 191, 192 Guatemala 40, 63, 75, 89, 92, 96, 104, 112,
Escobar, David 92 166, 167, 168, 172, 173, 177, 181
Esparza, Manuel 116 Guatemalans 75, 76, 78, 84, 90, 91, 110,
Estrada, Genaro 154, 157, 158 111, 112, 166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173,
Ethiopian 17, 18 174, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185,
ethnic prejudices 3, 23, 51 186, 187, 188, 189, 195, 197
ethnophobia 12 Guaymas, Sonora 75, 80, 105
eugenics 10, 11, 27 Guerra, Tirso 92
extermination 26, 117 Gutiérrez García, Raymundo 123, 136, 137
extortion/coertion 4, 5, 87, 90, 98, 99, Gypsies 19, 55, 102
100, 101, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112,
114, 122, 125 hacendados 110, 111, 215
extranjería 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 14, 23, 26, 32, Haiti 154, 197
40, 139, 143, 144, 147, 150, 152, 154, Havana (Cuba) 40, 154
155, 195 Hawaii 18
Hay, Eduardo 189, 195
Fabela, Isidro 25 Hazan Cohen, Jacobo 115
falsification 104, 153, 157 Hérnandez, Rogelio 105, 135
Far East 40, 42, 67, 88, 104, 180 Herrera, Rosendo 122, 127, 128, 129, 130,
Farías, J. J. 121 131, 137, 196
Fascist 26, 113 Hispanophobia 175
Félix, Fernando 74, 96, 97 Hitler 26, 170
Ferretis, Jorge 61 Hoffman, Carlos 97, 98
First Inter-American Congress of Hong Kong 40, 88
Demography 26 horse-racing 15, 90
First Inter-American Indian Congress 25 Hungarians/Hungary 15, 116, 117,
First International Emigration and 196, 197
Immigration Conference 44
Flores Gómez, Florencio 92, 93 Iberian 22, 24
Flores, Armando 194, 195 Immigration and Demographic
Franco, Francisco 113, 176, 186 departments 69
French 16, 32, 38, 141, 146, 147, 149, 166, Immigration Commission 38, 39, 41
168, 185, 186, 188, 197 Immigration Inspection Service 42
Frontera, Chiapas 76 Indians/Hindus 16, 51, 55, 197
 Index 219

Indigenist 11, 28 Lemus, Vicente E. 119, 120

Indigenous 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 18, 21, 23, León Garcia, Victoria 96
24, 25, 26, 28, 39, 40, 62, 83, 111, 158, León, Guanajuato 58, 68
172, 188, 215 Letayf, Antonio 194, 195, 198
Inter-American Demographic Letayf, Ernesto 195
Committee 28 Liceaga, Eduardo 41, 80
Inter-American Indigenous Institute 26 licenciados 193, 194, 195, 215
Interministerial Demographic Commission Limantour, José Yves 144, 148, 149
(CDI) 92, 112, 172, 173 Limón, Cristóbal 143
Iñiguez, Alfonso R. 92 Lithuanian/Lithuania 167, 185, 197
Israeli 15 Lizardi, Fernando 147
Italian 37, 52, 66, 67, 113, 114, 166, López Lira, José 57, 62
168, 197 López, Esperanza 93, 94
Los Angeles, California 192
Jackson, Gardner 22 Loyo, Gilberto 20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 45, 64,
Japanese 18, 38, 39, 41, 55, 66, 67, 104, 69, 163
113, 114, 166, 191, 192, 193, 197 Lulka, Usher 193
Jewish/Jew (see also “anti-Semitism”) 15, Lung Sing Tong 106, 107
19, 23, 24, 25, 30, 63, 114, 115, 116,
170, 193, 194 Macas, Carlos B. 189, 190
Jiménez Castro, Rafael 51, 102 Macedo, Pablo 149
Jiménez Rueda, Julio 56 Machorro Narváez, Paulino 8, 145, 146,
Jiménez, Francisco de P. 61 147, 149
Jiquilpan, Michoacán 128 Macías, José Natividad 148, 149, 161
Jungapeo, Michoacán 121 mafia 97, 105, 106, 108
jus domicilii 149, 153 Magdaleno, Mauricio 32
jus sanguinis 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 149, Malaysian 15, 18
151, 153, 154, 155, 195 Maldonado, Eugenio 62
jus soli 139, 141, 142, 143, 149, 151, 153, Manzanillo, Colima 40, 41, 54, 55, 80, 92
154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 173, 195 Markenson, David 193
Martí, Rubén 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 150
Kerson, Jim 129, 130 Martínez de Escobar, Rafael 149
Kirchhoff, Paul 27, 35 Martínez Ponce, Epigmenio A. 143, 144
Koreans 18, 197 Matamoros, Tamaulipas 72, 73, 105, 125
Matiella, José 128, 129, 130
Landa y Piña, Andrés 5, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, Mayo-Smith, Richmond 39
49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62, 64, 70, 71, Mazatlán, Sinaloa 38, 40, 41, 80, 114, 201
72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 88, 96, Medina Jiménez 88
105, 106, 107, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, Mendieta y Núñez, Lucio 45, 62, 63,
122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 64, 86
132, 173 Meneses, Pablo 106, 107, 193
Laredo, Texas 101 Mennonites 43
Larrea, Javier 125, 126 Mérida, Yucatán 75
Las Choapas, Veracruz 114 Merla, Antonio 97
latifundios 43 mestizophilia 159
Latin American 57, 67, 150, 152, 156, 168, mestizo/mestizaje 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
169, 175, 185 17, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 32, 54, 146, 158,
Lazos, Efraín 193 159, 172, 188, 215
Le Bon, Gustav 147 Mexicali, Baja California 98, 127
Le Maire, Alberto 93 Mexico City 16, 26, 28, 29, 54, 57, 66, 67,
League of Nations 25 68, 73, 75, 91, 93, 95, 98, 105, 106, 113,
Lebanon / Lebanese 15, 30, 41, 51, 52, 54, 114, 126, 128, 129, 176, 177, 178, 179,
103, 167, 179, 194, 196, 197, 198 180, 191, 192, 193
220 Index

Michoacán 45, 121, 158, 144 Nayarit 143

Middle East/Middle Easterners 14, 90, 104, Nazi/Nazism 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 64, 67,
166, 169, 170, 177, 178, 178, 180, 181, 115, 117
182, 183, 185, 188, 194, 196 nepotism 125
Mier Troncoso, Enrique 93 Nogales, Arizona 126, 128, 131, 192
Migration Advisory Council (CCM) 54, Nogales, Sonora 91, 105, 107, 122, 126,
56, 60, 61, 62 127, 128, 129, 130, 131
Migration Department 5, 16, 23, 45, 46, non-assimilation 14, 183
47, 48, 49, 51, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 65, 68, Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas 94, 95, 96, 97,
69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 81, 82, 102, 103, 116, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 125, 126,
119, 121, 124, 129, 132, 172, 173, 127, 128
192; )
Migration Service 5, 37, 42, 44, 45, 51, 52, Obregón, Álvaro 44, 45, 50, 143, 191
53, 54, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, Ortiz Rubio, Pascual 157
79, 80, 81, 82, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 97, Osawa, Kainosin 191, 192
98, 99, 100, 105, 107, 110, 113, 119, Othón de Mendizábal, Miguel 26, 60
120, 121, 122, 125, 136
Mina, Francisco Javier 145 Pacheco, Carlos 38, 39
Molina Enríquez, Andrés 159 Palavicini, Félix 144
Mongolian 18 Palestinians 15, 51, 179, 196, 197
Monroy Durán, Luis 94 Palomas, Chihuahua 93
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon 94, 127 Panama/Panamanian 67, 197
Mora, Agustín 107 Pátzcuaro, Michoacán 25
Morley, Carlote 127 Payo Obispo, Quintana Roo 110
Mormons 37, 43 Pérez Sánchez, Mariano 93
Moroccans 15 Pérez Taylor, Rafael 56
Motozintla, Chiapas 76 Perote, Veracruz 66, 67, 113, 114
Múgica, Francisco J. 144, 150 Persians 15
mulatto 18 Peru/Peruvian 67, 197
Philippines 18
Naco, Sonora 107, 124 Piedras Negras, Coahuila 101
Nader, Félix 194 Pimentel y Fagoaga, Fernando 149
Nader, Nacif 194 Polish/Pole 15, 41, 52, 54, 67, 115,
Nafarrate, Emiliano 145 121, 197
natalist 20 Political and Social Research Office 66
National Association for the Advancement pollero 125
of Colored People 22 Population Advisory Council 62, 63, 64,
National Bar Association 22 78, 83, 86
National Migration Council 53 Population Bureau 45, 61, 69, 73, 77
National Negro Congress 22 Portes Gil, Emilio 16, 154, 157
National Register of Foreigners 66, 68, 78 Portugal/Portuguese 22, 83, 197
nationalization 76, 141 Preciado, Ramón 126
nativism 13 Progreso, Yucatán 40, 75, 131
naturalization 1, 3, 4, 5, 30, 31, 40, 45, prohibitionism 59, 63, 87
103, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147, prostitution/prostitute 17, 42, 45, 96, 101,
148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 104, 106
156, 157, 159, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, Public health 27, 40, 50, 88
167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, Puebla 37, 143, 158, 180, 194
175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, Pueblo Nuevo, Chiapas 92
183, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192,
193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 214 Quintana Roo 70, 110
 Index 221

race/racial 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, Soconusco 172

15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, Solares, Juan 122
27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 40, 43, 48, Song, Ramón Luis 191
52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 80, Sonora 72, 75, 91, 94, 99, 104, 105, 107,
140, 147, 150, 151, 158 109, 122, 124, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130,
racism 2, 6, 10, 13, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26, 109 131, 143, 176, 178, 179
Ramírez Murguía, Miguel 31, 32 Sonoyta, Sonora 72
refugee/political refugees 24, 64, 67, 68, Soviet Union 19
69, 113, 175, 176, 187, 188, 196, 198 Spaniards 22, 24, 25, 27, 30, 52, 64, 129,
religion 7, 19, 22, 150 145, 150, 168, 169, 174, 175, 176, 179,
repatriation 12, 15, 20, 43, 44, 50, 51, 55, 180, 182, 183, 185, 186, 188, 198
56, 64, 72, 117, 127, 128 Spanish Civil War 23, 64, 175
Reynosa, Tamaulipas 125 Spanish Republican 23, 24, 64, 122, 176,
Río Bravo 73 179, 180, 187, 188, 189, 195, 196
Río Hondo 76, 110 spies 66, 114
Río Rico, Tamaulipas 125 Suchiate, Chiapas 40, 96, 110, 112, 123
Riva Palacios, Carlos 46, 102, 107, 138 Syrians 15, 41, 51, 52, 54, 103, 115, 167,
Rivas, Manuel 161, 191 179, 194, 196, 197
Rodríguez Cáceres, Miguel 123
Rodríguez Portas, Agustín 105, 106, 135 Tabasco 144
Rodríguez, Abelardo 111, 132, 138, Tamayo, Santiago 91, 92
157, 191 Tampico, Tamaulipas 40, 55, 74, 75,
Romero, José María 39, 41, 80 80, 136
Roosevelt, Franklin D. 67 Tanembaum, Israel 115
Rosemberg, M. 194 Tapachula, Chiapas 92, 110, 111, 123
Ruiz Cortines, Adolfo 29, 103 Tecate, Baja California 73, 124
Russians 121, 170, 179, 185 Teheran (Iran) 67, 196, 197
Tejeda, Adalberto 120
Salina Cruz, Oaxaca 40, 41, 76, 80, 88 Téllez Girón, Rafael 43
Salinas, Félix 120 Téllez, Manuel 125, 132
San Antonio, Texas 16, 95, 101 Temixco, Morelos 67, 113, 114
San Cristóbal, Chiapas 110 Teziutlán, Puebla 194
San Francisco, California 38 Third Migration Convention 56
San Luis, Sonora 94 Thomason, R. H. 118
Schwartz, Adolph 116 Tijuana, Baja California 73, 74, 77, 98,
Schwartz, Albert 117, 118 99, 192
Schwartz, Lazlo 117 Tirado, Ramón 74, 105
Schwartz, León 117 Tlaquepaque, Jalisco 121
Schwartz, Maurice 116, 117 tourism 45, 51, 53, 54, 69, 77, 78, 91, 98,
Schwartz, Meyer 117 101, 120, 125, 129, 132
Schwartz, Miksa 117 trafficking networks 41, 193, 194
Schwartz, Samuel 117 transport 37, 38, 40, 42, 54, 56, 73, 74, 98,
Second Migration Convention 54 101, 119, 122, 125, 166
Second World War 23, 27, 28, 64, 68, 113, Trejo, Francisco 63, 117
114, 115, 165, 170, 176 Trens, Manuel 8
segregation 13, 152 Trigueros, Eduardo 151
Semites 24 Turks/Turkish/Turkey 15, 51, 52, 167,
Serbians 15 168, 179, 194, 196
Serra Rojas, Andrés 30 Tuxtla Chico, Chiapas 92, 96, 123
Serrano, Pedro 105
Siberia 67 U.S. Bureau of Immigration 41
Siurob Ramírez, José 9, 11 U.S.-Mexico border 43, 74
smuggling 41, 90, 104, 105, 126 Ukrainians/Ukraine 170, 179, 185, 196, 197
222 Index

undesirable 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, Veracruz (port of) 94, 95, 122
27, 38, 52, 54, 56, 66, 89, 90, 96, 97, Veracruz (state) 37, 40, 66, 74, 80, 91, 94, 95,
106, 107, 108, 113, 121, 163, 164, 170, 114, 122, 124, 158, 176, 177, 179, 180
190, 193, 195 Villa Acuña, Coahuila 126
Unión Juárez, Chiapas 110, 111, 123 Villa de Reinosa, Tamaulipas 75
United States of America 10, 11, 12, 13, Villa Michel, Primo 52, 68
16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, Villegas Segura, Albino 129
43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 56, 64, 66, Vinisky, Julio 194
67, 68, 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 89, 90, Viuda de Valdez, Pilar F. 95
93, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106,
107, 108, 115, 116, 117, 118, 122, 125, Washington, D. C. 16, 43, 117, 118
128, 129, 140, 153, 156, 159, 166, 167, Whiteness/Whitening 9, 11, 13, 23, 32, 33
168, 169, 179, 186, 192 Wills, Harris 16
Uruchurtu, Ernesto 29
xenophobic 2, 29, 32, 43, 109, 144, 146,
Valdés, Ulises 55 147, 170
Valenzuela, Francisco 40, 42, 45, 47
Vallarta, Ignacio 140, 155, 164 Yugoslavs/Yugoslavian /Yugoslavia 15,
Vasconcelos, José 29, 30 196, 197
Vázquez Dávila, Daniel 127
Vázquez Vela, Gonzalo 97 Zacatecas 127
Vega Sánchez, Rafael 143, 144 Zapaluta, Chiapas 76
Vega y Pavón, Luis 99 Zarco Zepeda, Bernardo 103
Velarde, Nicolás 88, 89 Zea, Leopoldo 32