Wedensday, March 12

Discussed in class on March 12 was the Mexican "problem" that plagued much of the southern states of the United States during the 1920's.  A quick timeline for the early part of the twentieth century for Mexican migration to America starts in 1911-1913 when the Mexican Revolution was going on.  The Mexican Revolution or Mexican Civil War, "was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Diaz and lasted for the better part of a decade until around 1920.  Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order to a multi-sided civil war with frequently shifting power struggles. This armed conflict is often categorized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century, which saw important experimentation and reformation in social organization." (William Weber Johnson, Heroic Mexico: The violent emergence of a modern nation, Doubleday 1968, p. 69).  After the Mexican Revolution a "boom time" of Mexican migration to the United States happened during the years of 1917-1929 when almost every working class, able-bodied Mexican male was guaranteed a job working for low wages in the fields of the south particularly Texas.  Than during the years of 1930-1938 Mexican labor faced a slump due to the Great Depression and the lack of jobs for everyone of all ethnicity and classes and repatriation, the process of returning a person to their place of origin or citizenship was popular though contested during this time, because of the simple fact that during these years Mexican migrates and laborers were having children legally born in the United States and carrying American citizenship were shipped back to a country they might know nothing about.  During the years of 1938-1945 Bracceros or contracted Mexican labor became popular as many men went off to fight in World War II overseas.  
Some terms that were also brought up during class were Communism, the overthrow of the capitalistic government that was embraced by Russia at this time.  Socialism, soon to be embraced by Germany at this time.  Syndicalism, where company is owned by the company.  Anarcho-Syndicalism, which was revolutionary unionism.  Through all this time and changing ideas of how government should be run many constituted themselves as the "lost generation." 
This term the lost generation originated with Gertrude Stein who, "after being unimpressed by the skills of a young car mechanic, asked the garage owner where the young man had been trained. The garage owner told her that while young men were easy to train, it was those in their mid-twenties to thirties, the men who had been through World War I, whom he considered a "lost generation"—une génération perdue.
The 1926 publication of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises popularized the term, as Hemingway used it as an epigraph. The novel serves to epitomize the post-war expatriate generation. However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abide forever"; he believed the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost,"Fitch, Noel Riley, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation:  A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties.  Norton, 1985.