California Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday called for the state to commemorate the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, a 15-year period when nearly two million people of Mexican descent were deported to Mexico.
Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, and Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, introduced Senate Bill 537 to address injustices committed against Mexicans and Mexican Americans during the Great Depression. “People don’t know that the Repatriation ripped families apart.
They do not know about the generational trauma that was caused by it,” Becker said. “We need to memorialize it in a much bigger way.”
The two legislators held a press conference Wednesday to promote the legislation, which would require a statue or memorial to be built in California that recognizes this historic period of forced deportations.
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