This year, the country celebrated its 250th birthday. On our podcast Status Pending, we’re marking the occasion by looking back at U.S. immigration history at critical times. Today, we’re looking back to 100 years ago. That’s when laws around the southern border, and anti-immigrant sentiment ran wild. It’s also the same time that WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez’s great grandfather Ramon Serrano came to the U.S. from Mexico.
(Below is the transcript of our latest episode U.S. at 100: The Making of the Southern Border, which has been edited for length and clarity)
Jimmy Gutierrez: Do you happen to have the naturalization card? Do you still have that on your phone?
Michael Gutierrez: I have it right here. I printed it out.
JG: I didn't expect to do this story with you but then you sent me the naturalization card, which is wild to think about. One, that we have a record of our family being naturalized in this country, but then also that it happened 100 years ago.
This card belongs to my dad’s grandpa, my great grandpa, Ramon Serrano, who came to the U.S from Mexico 100 years ago, on June 3rd, 1926. This card is basically proof of citizenship for immigrants and foreign nationals. And it includes a bunch of personal information.
MG: The first thing that always hits me is that our color is considered white. You know that he was indigenous and was part of the Chichimeca tribe, back in that area of Irapuato, in the state of Gaunajuato. And he was dark, very dark.
We could do a whole episode on this but basically, citizenship at the time was reserved for white immigrants or those of African descent. But looking at this card, it’s my first time seeing it too. And learning more about Ramon, like how tall he was.
JG: He was five foot three inches, so we got his height.
MG: Yeah, but he was always a big man to me.
JG: How so?
MG: His tenderness not just to me but my cousins, to your grandma, my mom and his sons and his other two daughters And he was a hard worker. When he was working for the Chicago and North Western Railroad, he was driving a maintenance car and he took the horn and he had a special toot. It was two short, one long, one short and I knew it was him.
JG: Wait, what did that sound like?
MG: Toot. Toot. Toooot. Toot. And I would run out of the house, and his maintenance car, it was up a hill that I'd have to climb up to get onto the tracks. So I'm always looking up, up, up and I never knew he was five foot three until I saw this card.
This card helped fill in a lot of questions I had about my family, and our migration journey. Where they lived in Mexico and the exact date and location where Ramon crossed into the U.S.
Dr Carolina Monsivais: If you look at a present day map of the US-Mexico border and the 2000 miles, you will see sister sister cities right across from each other.
This is Dr. Carolina Monsivais, she’s an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She’s studied the borderlands around the time Ramon immigrated and the port of entry he came in through in Laredo.
Monsivais: Laredo is actually from the late 18th century. That was an old Texas city. And Nuevo Laredo was something that emerged after 1848 as a counterpart.
Some quick, incomplete, history: the border was formally established with the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, after the Mexican-American War. And this border, this new imaginary line, a line that people used to freely cross back and forth soon became violent. A way to deter people from coming into land that was always theirs.
Monsivais: There were different ports of entry that were also very tied into the eugenics movement. They were focused on this idea of people being disease ridden. So there are certain ports of entry like El Paso and Juarez, for instance, that established what they call disinfection centers. So people had to come into these centers more often than not stripped down. They were often sprayed, doloused with chemicals, and their clothes were put through ovens in order to clean them.
If you find that hard to believe, look into the Bath riots in 1917. And this dousing wasn’t happening by doctors, but border enforcement agents. And this is around the time my great grandfather Ramon enters the U.S.
In our last episode, we talked about the 250th anniversary of the U.S., and our immigration story through the lens of indigenous and Black history. Today, we’re looking at our immigration history from 100 years ago, specifically at the southern border. That’s when so many Mexicans, and others, started to migrate north for the promise of a better life. So what waited for people at this new border? And what did it take to fulfil the promise of a new America?
There are stories I’ve heard about mi bisabuelo Ramon Serrano from my dad. I even have a few treasured pictures of him. I knew he was indigenous, and tall – in character– but I didn’t know he was the first in the Serrano family to come over.
MG: So he entered first to start the process rolling for his wife and and his first born. They, as a family, entered the United States in 1927. And that was typical that somebody goes first and gets everything all situated for the family to come over.
Monsivais: [Ramon] likely would have had to go through the consulate like the embassy to enter the country. And it makes sense that he would have gone through a major port and maybe he did some agricultural work [when he first arrived].
Ramon spent a year in Laredo before moving to Milwaukee with the family. And Carolina, was spot on.
MG: When he first found work, it was working on the farms. And then he also found work working on the railroads in Texas.
I knew Ramon was from Irapuato and he had no formal education. And coming over for work was the only option he had to provide something better for our family. But what drove other Mexicans? Carolina says there were a bunch of different reasons.
First, at the turn of the 20th century, Mexican president Porfirio Diaz modernized the country. This was really his thing – “Order and Progress.” The country built railways, relationships with foreign nations. Developed major metro hubs. But it also brought profound poverty to a working class already struggling. Then, a few years later, he’s thrown out of office and the Mexican Revolution breaks out.
Monsivais: Over that ten year period about a million Mexicans entered the United States fleeing the violence. The flip side to that, though, is that industrialists and growers become heavily dependent on Mexican labor, and they want that labor to continue coming into the United States.
They wanted that labor so much so, they sent recruiters into Mexico. Possibly to Irapuato. Possibly with promises to people like my great grandfather Ramon.
Monsivais: They went into central Mexico looking for workers, so maybe somebody recruited him to come work in the United States. That's a possibility.
While politicians had a real problem with this boom of migration, which we’re getting to, I promise, the capitalists and industrialists loved Mexican labor.
Monsivais: And some of the arguments that they make is that Mexicans are better suited for this work because they're hard workers or humble. They're low to the ground, of course, none of this is scientifically based…
JG: Wait, low to the ground?
Monsivais: Yes, low to the ground. And they’re compliant, so they're used to backbreaking work.
JG: What was it like for him to go through this process to get naturalized in the first place? It feels like he's in the midst of a lot of change when it comes to the borderlands?
Monsivais: Well, there are many factors that can contribute to that. I'm looking at his naturalization card now and because he was working on the railroad, that would make it easier for him to migrate because this was a very powerful corporation. And I always found interesting about railway workers is that these corporations were much more interested in having a stable workforce.
Railroads and railways were one of the few industries at the time that wanted permanent workers. Even encouraging the men to bring their families over. But not everyone felt this way. Most industries loved the fact that workers came here part time, made their money, and then returned to Mexico. The idea of immigrants coming to the U.S., and staying, has always been a problem for some. After WWI, President Woodrow Wilson militarized the border, sending troops to patrol. Carolina says he was also the first to weaponize the borderlands terrain.
Monsivais: They began to deter traffic into areas that were more difficult to cross, like the desert or mountains. So they could actually use the natural terrain as a way to deter people from coming into the United States.
A few years later, comes more big changes.
Monsivais: So the Immigration Act of 1924 is intended to not only increase these requirements that they are establishing at ports of entry, but they want to place quotas on these countries from immigrants coming in.
At the time, besides Mexicans, the U.S. was worried about European immigrants. Immigrants who would come into Mexico, and try to enter in the same southern ports of entry like Laredo and El Paso.
Monsivais: This category of illegal alien is created because many people who are coming in are not actually Mexican. They're actually coming from other places that were placed under this quota system.
Immigration from Asia was also essentially banned. And pretty importantly, this is when the border patrol was created. A few years later, in 1929, the Undesirable Aliens Act passed.
Monsivais: What this did for the first time was to criminalize crossing over the US-Mexico border if they were not entering through a legal port of entry. So it made something that Mexicans and Mexican Americans had done regularly a crime.
When it came to labor there’s always been a push and pull of being dependent on immigrant labor, while criminalizing certain types of immigration. But 100 years ago, the country was up to its knees with think tanks, politicians and media peddling narratives about immigration that we’re still familiar with.
Monsivais: One thing that they would say pretty commonly would say was that this population cannot assimilate into the United States. They don't hold the same values. They don't understand democracy. Maybe they're radicals.
JG: It's such a common argument that we're still here today.
Monsivais: Right, well, you'll like this part then, because they are also more prone to violence. So they commit more crimes. They're disease ridden and they take jobs from Americans.
Not everyone made it across like my great grandfather Ramon. And if they did, they might not have been able to stay. Carolina studies the border, and the arrest records. Tons of people were detained at this time. Others, like we heard, were subjected to chemical baths. The border, this very new, invisible line, was now filled not just with potential, but with consequences.
JG: It's hard enough to find these histories when we think about what is US history. And we're not talking about the 1600s or 1776, we're talking about 100 years ago. It's so hard to find these stories of immigration, not just from the US, but even in our own families. What can we learn about ourselves by digging into this history and understanding this history?
Monsivais: Well, it is a very U.S. story and is a story of the history of the United States, and it is often omitted from the overall history of the country. And what that does is omit millions of people who helped build this country. So not just the southwest, although I would say Mexicans and Mexican Americans had a great part in building, much of the southwest, but also many of the industries in the United States.
Industries like the railways, which my great grandfather helped build and maintain.
JG: What do you remember about your grandpa? Not as a grandpa, but as a man.
MG: Well respected by the community, by the Mexican community. I don't recall anyone not calling him Don Ramon. Both men and women. And part of it was he started to come to work here in Milwaukee as a laborer for Chicago and North Western and he was a guy with no formal education, very poor English. He worked his way up to assistant foreman in one of the biggest railroads in the United States. That's quite an accomplishment. Then, he not only owned his own home, he was able to purchase, with no loan, a duplex. So he had additional income coming in from families who lived above them.
My dad told me about the mutual aid that existed in Milwaukee at the time. The way Don Ramon helped folks pay their rent if they were short. Or buy groceries. The same way he was taken care of when he first got to Milwaukee with his wife Augstina and their son, Raymond.
JG: How do you think his life and who he was as an immigrant impacted you?
MG: Oh, it instilled in me a sense of pride of being a Mexican American. And both of your great grandfathers were hard workers. And although they were domestic housewives, both your great grandmothers were hard workers. With Grandma Gutierrez, my mom, your grandma, she was a trailblazer as far as a woman working in the late 50s, in the 60s, having her own job, working in high school. Then I saw my dad, your grandpa, first working at a tannery, then a body shop. He was never without employment. That I figured, I got an obligation here. Although my name is Gutierrez, half of me is Serrano. So when I finally grew up and stopped being a clown, it made me realize, hey, I've got an obligation to continue the tradition of both sides of the family. Not to sound corny, but to do the best that I can and even go above and beyond. And I see you doing that, too.
JG: I do think about this sometimes, especially with this podcast and stories like, would Grandpa and Grandma be proud of me?
MG: Oh, I know they would.
JG: When they hear something like this, would they be happy that we're expanding these conversations about immigration or our family history because our family history is the American story, right?
MG: You don't know this, but what makes me so proud of you is that you're the voice that not Ramon or Augustina Serrano, or Juan or Frances Gutierrez had. You're their voice.
JG: Yeah, I don't think I'm ready to think about that. I think that's almost too much for me.
Monsivais: I think that we also need to remember that in our own homes, we have histories that we can ourselves uncover, whether that's in photographs or old home movies. And when we begin to piece those lives together, we're also piecing the history of this country together. And I think that's really important overall for all of us to see and understand.
