Mexicans in Interwar New York City: Steamships, the Mexican Consul, and Urban Placemaking

Abstract Through an examination of passport applications, ship manifests, newspapers, Mexican consulate records, and interviews conducted by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), this article emphasizes the need for an analysis of Mexican maritime migration to the United States during the interwar period. I argue that Mexican maritime migrants bypassed the US–Mexico land border through their privileged financial resources and their ability to purchase first-class steamship tickets. Furthermore, this article examines the Mexican community that took shape in New York City during the early twentieth century. This includes a focus on the diversity of professions, political engagements within it, and the ways in which the Mexican consulate portrayed the blossoming community. Moreover, I argue that although the Great Depression disrupted a burgeoning community, it did not break it. Although the individuals interviewed by WPA workers in the late 1930s shared their desire to return to Mexico to work, organize, and escape the hardships they faced in New York, they were still there a decade after the Depression started. This small, but active community fought to maintain their presence and preserve, to the best of their ability, the groundwork for the community that they had laid over the past two decades.