Defining Latin@/Indigenous Migration
Latin@/Indigenous Migration to The U.S.
Migration from Mexico
To end the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, the U.S. took 55% of the land in Mexico, now known as Arizona, New Mexico. They also took parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. It's estimated that about 100,000 Mexicans resided on that land then.
To mediate tensions with the local population, the United States promised to give the land owners and their families work citizenship to cross the newly formed border between Mexico and the U.S. This would be known as the first wave of Mexican migration into the United States. As time went on, the United States made it legally difficult for Mexicans to cross into the United States. Yet, Mexican migration kept growing exponentially, despite the legal challenges.
The second wave of Mexican migration occurred during Mexico’s former President Porfirio Diaz (1884–1911) presidency. Diaz put in place hurtful economic policies that ultimately left many people in Mexico jobless or landless. Mexicans were forced to travel north into the U.S. to help farmers harvest crops in search of better economic opportunities.***
But it wasn’t just job prospects in the United States that caused a surge of migration from Mexico to the U.S. The third wave of Mexican migration occurred during the Mexican Revolution. Violence rampaged through the region and pushed families out of Mexico looking for refuge. By 1910 - 1920, as much as 10% of the population of Mexico left for the US during the Mexican Revolution. During World War II, United States officials sought assistance from the Mexican Government looking for temporary agricultural labor, leading to the establishment of the Bracero Program. The initiative proved to be immensely popular, extending well beyond the war. From 1942 to 1964 Mexico supplied an estimated 4.5 million workers to the United States. ***
Migration from South America
South American migration is a complex topic involving many groups of people. In this section, we will discuss only a handful of countries and their immigration story. South American migration boomed between the 1970s and 1990s for various reasons, ranging from economic crises, and corruption to violence.
The Reign of Terror was one of the biggest motivators for many families to leave their home countries. Beginning in the 1970s with a gradual decrease in the late 90s, many Chileans, Argentinians, and Peruvians fled north. According to the MPI (Migration Policy Institute), only 89,500 immigrants from South America came to the United States in the 1960s. However, that number doubled in size in the 70s, reaching 255,500 immigrants.
Violence in countries like Colombia and a mix of economic crises and government corruption in places like Venezuela sparked an increase in migration after the 1970s, booming in the early 2000s and then tripling in the 2010s. In 2019, Colombia made up 23.9% of the South American immigrant population in the United States, and Venezuela made up 13.8%.
Migration from Central America
Central American migration spiked in 2014 with an increasing number of migrants and asylum seekers entering the United States. Nearly a quarter of a million migrants have left the Northern Triangle every year for the past five years, with the majority of them US-bound. Immigrants from the Northern Triangle make up about 86 percent of the Central Americans in the United States. People left their regions on top of trains. One of these trains is called “La Bestia”. Others use migrant caravans, composed of both asylum seekers and economic migrants, grouped for safety from gang violence and corrupt police. These caravans were organized by mothers of disappeared children who had perished in the journey. However, their long and treacherous walk from Central America to the Mexican border still resulted in multiple fatalities. Civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua were strong drivers for much of the emigration of Central Americans to the United States in the 1980s and 90s.
Other factors such as The Cold War, which was fought on Central American soil, and US financial support of torture and scorched earth policies left tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. Economic policies that specialize in a limited diversity of cash crops, led by unstable and often conservative regimes, have resulted in a concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite and have contributed to widespread poverty and insecurity in the region.
Often, these regimes were backed by US political and economic interests. Agriculture was also historically controlled by US companies such as the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands International). Following devastating civil wars, these countries faced issues of displacement, economic instability, and insecurity that have pushed even more migration northward, with many people arriving illegally. Unfortunately, the only pathway for legal immigration is if the individuals or
Migration from Puerto Rico
Most of the first wave of voluntary migration from the Caribbean to the United States began in the early 20th century. The movement was made up of laborers invited to the US to work on farms in labor-intensive crops, particularly during the world wars.
The US took from Puerto Rico its provisional independence, underway when the US declared war on Spain, and made islanders limited citizens in 1917. Their citizenship allowed them to fight during WWI.
In the 20s, Puerto Ricans began to migrate to NYC to work looking for economic opportunities in the tobacco business. That number only increased as the island descended into more poverty. During WWII, the US realized that they had been neglecting the health and development of Puerto Rico, and to alleviate that increase in poverty, they airlifted thousands off the island under Operation Bootstrap. This became the Great Migration, from 1946-64. By 1955, around 700,000 Puerto Ricans were living and working in the United States. Today a total of 5.7 million Puerto Ricans inhabit the United States, mostly in New York and Florida.
Migration from the Caribbean
Caribbean migration is often confused with Puerto Rican Migration. Although Puerto Rico is a part of the Caribbean, it's considered a U.S. territory.
Cuba and The Dominican Republic have the largest Spanish-speaking population in the Caribbean. Other languages in the region include French (25%), English (14%), Dutch, Haitian Creole, and Papiamento. Although small, the Caribbean makes up 10% of the foreign-born population in the U.S.. Of that 10%, 1.36 million Cuban immigrants and 1.17 million Dominican Republic migrants currently reside in the United States.
Cuban immigration in the United States boomed in 1959 after the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista ended. Fidel Castro, the leader of the revolution exiled many government officials and members who contributed to Batista's dictatorship to the United States. This was only the first wave of immigration from Cuba. Following Castros rise to power, many upper-middle-class Cubans, despite supporting him throughout the revolution, did not align with Castro's vision of a Cuba. Many of them feared the communism Castro swore to bring and chose to flee the country through a program called Freedom Flights, co-piloted by the U.S. and Cuba. After Castro ended the program, large and small waves of Cuban immigrants returned and left the island in search of stability.
The Dominican Republic (DR) has a similar story to Cuba. After surviving the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, The Dominican Republic fell into economic instability. The instability led many migrants, mostly women, to leave DR, and immigrate to the U.S. When the U.S. began its intervention on the island in the 1960s, immigration to the U.S. skyrocketed.***