Stories from the Border: Exploring the role the media played during the pivotal Latin immigrant experiences of 20th-century Los Angeles

    I. Introduction

Monday, June 7th, 1943. Headline: Zooters Threaten L.A. Police. The tension between the zooters and the police had been building up steadily over the past week, and after the most recent attack on them, the Zooters are looking to strike back. The Los Angeles Evening Herald Express writes, “Warn of Mass Riot Tonight,” “Zoot suit gangsters, furious at the punishment meted out to them in week-end forays by service men, who were determined to eliminate the juvenile gang menace here, threatened a mass riot tonight with the aim of ‘killing every cop we see.’” The paper explains that this attack was purely reserved for the police, not the servicemen or other groups opposing the zooters. Regardless, there is a promise of rioting and violence.[1]

This was the type of headlines and stories lobbied against the immigrant population of 20th-century Los Angeles: very one-sided, generalizing, and villainizing. The newspaper article of the previous paragraph is from the middle of the Zoot Suit Riots, one of the few major experiences and instances of injustice discussed in this paper. At least since the 20th century, immigrants have always been some kind of ‘problem’ in the U.S., or at least that is what the mass media says, often accompanied by generalizations and stereotypes. The immigrant situation (and subsequent concern) in the U.S. is indicative of other hot-button global immigration issues. Those will not be discussed. Rather, this paper focuses on the history and hardships of Latin immigration to the U.S., specifically in the 20th century. The themes of these events persist in the U.S. today, and analyzing them is particularly relevant considering the intensification of immigration discourse, ICE raids, and the 2025 U.S. presidency.

A useful case study for exploring the Latino immigrant experience is Los Angeles, California. Situated near the U.S.-Mexico border, the city saw significant migration between the two countries and became a major center of Hispanic identity and culture. This paper asks how key events in 20th-century Los Angeles were covered by the news media, what was covered and what was covered up, how mainstream reporting differed from grassroots accounts, and what consequences those representations had for public perception, government response, and Latino identity. By relying on personal accounts and grassroots stories to supplement generalized and often biased mass media coverage, the goal of this analysis is to reveal a fuller scope of the immigrant experience in Los Angeles. The paper argues that mainstream media often diminished or reframed the injustices affecting Latino immigrant communities, shaping public perception and reinforcing ideas whose effects persisted long after the events themselves.

This paper will analyze four major events that shaped the Latino immigrant experience in 20th-century Los Angeles: the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, the Zoot Suit Riots of the 1940s, the Bracero Program and urban displacement of the 1940s and 1950s, and the East Los Angeles Walkouts of the 1960s. Each case reflects a different form of injustice experienced by Latino communities through race, environment, education, labor, and public policy. In examining these events, the paper will first provide historical context, then compare mainstream media coverage with grassroots reporting and personal accounts, and finally, consider the social and political consequences that followed. By placing these case studies in conversation with one another, the paper argues that no single event can fully represent the immigrant experience in Los Angeles; rather, only a broader analysis of multiple moments and multiple forms of coverage can reveal the true depth and lasting effects of these injustices.

    II. Historical Background

At the turn of the twentieth century, approximately 300,000 people of Mexican descent lived in the U.S. following the Mexican-American War and the annexation of the Republic of Texas.[2] These communities were concentrated primarily in the American Southwest as former Mexican territories became part of the United States. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, Mexicans living in these territories were granted U.S. citizenship.[3] Mexican migration to the U.S. really spiked with the construction of railroad networks connecting Mexico to the American Southwest. This also bolstered commerce and employment, leading to increased labor demands. However, as more Mexican migrants began arriving with their families and establishing permanent communities, public and political attitudes shifted. Employers and policymakers who had once encouraged Mexican labor migration increasingly framed it as a social and economic concern. These changing attitudes laid the groundwork for future immigration and repatriation policies.[4]

Mexican immigration was not formally restricted until the Immigration Act of 1917. It was intended to address more general concerns about European and Asian immigration during World War I, so exemptions were initially made for Mexican laborers because of their importance to the Southwestern economy. These laws were later expanded through the Immigration Act of 1924, which reflected the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States.[5] During this period, Mexicans were portrayed through racialized stereotypes that described them as “unclean, improvident, indolent, and innately dull.” Many people of Mexican descent were reluctant to apply for or prove their citizenship because they knew that legal status did not necessarily guarantee social acceptance or protection from discrimination. These pressures helped contribute to voluntary repatriations in the early 1930s.[6]

Los Angeles became a major center of Mexican migration in the early 20th century due to its proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, the displacement caused by the Mexican Revolution, and the demand for labor in agriculture, railroads, and urban industry. Early immigrants settled in segregated neighborhoods known as Barrios, which formed in cities across the American Southwest. These communities emerged through a combination of economic necessity and social exclusion, as discriminatory practices limited where Mexican residents could live and work. Barrios became important cultural centers, preserving language, traditions, and community ties. Although they were often associated with poverty and overcrowding, they were not just places of hardship, but also spaces of resilience and identity formation.[7]

    III. Mexican Repatriation

The Mexican Repatriation (1929–1936) was a mass, largely unconstitutional deportation of approximately 1 to 2 million people of Mexican descent to Mexico in an effort to ease the pressures experienced by Americans during the Great Depression. Despite being advertised as an economic policy in principle, it was carried out unjustly and inhumanely. Local and federal officials asserted that removing people of Mexican descent would reduce competition for jobs for white Americans and ease the burden on public relief systems. It is estimated that between 400,000 and 1.8 million people of Mexican descent were repatriated, with at least 82,000 formally deported by the U.S. government. In excess of 75,000 people of Mexican descent were repatriated from Los Angeles alone, and 40–60% of those repatriated were U.S. citizens (mostly children).[8] These removals often forced families into unfamiliar and dangerous environments in Mexico, displacing communities and disrupting where people could live and work.

Under the Hoover administration, the government justified the Mexican Repatriation by blaming people of Mexican descent for high unemployment and the strain on public welfare resources. Mass media played a major role in shaping public opinion about Mexican immigrants, often generalizing and portraying them as “foreign”. Major newspapers frequently emphasized concerns about “illegal” border crossings and sensationalized federal immigration raids in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, assisted by the local police and county sheriff.[9] This framing contributed to a narrative that Mexicans were responsible for economic hardship, reinforcing support for repatriation efforts. Media coverage often blurred the line between Mexican identity and illegality, which made it easier to justify removals.[10] These portrayals were not neutral; they helped normalize discriminatory policies and shaped how the broader public viewed Mexican communities. As in many cases of institutional oppression, media narratives became a powerful tool in legitimizing government actions during.

Personal accounts from the Mexican Repatriation period reveal the human impact, detailing things like family separation and daily life struggles, countering the popular mass media narrative. Oral histories collected by institutions like the Smithsonian Institution describe overcrowded trains, limited food, and uncertainty about what awaited families in Mexico. Living conditions for those repatriated were often difficult, as many had little connection to the regions they were sent to and struggled to find housing or work.[11] Survivors and descendants describe families being pressured, intimidated, or misled into leaving, often leading to voluntary repatriation. Sometimes they were promised that transportation would be provided, only to be abandoned at the border and left to continue into Mexico on their own.[12] Children were pulled from school and sent to Mexico with or without their parents, where they faced hunger, disease, poverty, famine, and limited medical care. While most rampant in the American Southwest, repatriation, with the hardships it imposed, occurred throughout the U.S., even as far as Chicago and Denver.[13]

The long-term consequences of Mexican Repatriation were significant, especially in terms of demographic shifts and immigration policy. Entire communities in the United States lost large portions of their Mexican-heritage populations, which changed the cultural and economic landscape of cities in the Southwest. In fact, up to one-third of all Mexicans in the US were repatriated by 1934.[14] The experience also influenced future border enforcement strategies, eventually contributing to more formalized systems under agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol.[15]

The consequences of the Mexican Repatriation have persisted long after the event itself. Enough time has passed that its effects are not felt as deeply, yet it is still regarded as a signifier of governmental oppression and scapegoating of an entire population, justified by ideas of economic gain and blind villainization. The statistics, however numerous, do not do justice to the lived experiences of the individuals whose lives were disrupted as they were deported by force, voluntarily, or by coercion. These grassroots accounts from the marginalized individuals especially work to counteract the biased and diminished perspectives of the mass media and the oppressors.

    IV. Zoot Suit Riots

The Zoot suit riots describe the violent altercations between young Mexican men and U.S. servicemen in Los Angeles, most intensely, between 1942 and 1943. A series of race riots rooted in identity, politics, and even fashion, the clashes of the Zoot suit riots not only contributed to the criminalization of Latino identities but also benchmarked a stance for Latino communities in Los Angeles.

Among the consequences of WWII, the Bracero program, which will be discussed more in the next section, saw an influx of Mexican workers into the agricultural and service sectors, particularly to fill jobs vacated by those now serving in the military. Racism and nationalism built up in the atmosphere of wartime America, and white Americans were not particularly happy with the heightened immigration. They made their grievances known as they stormed into the barrios, into the theatres and bars, and attacked the young Mexican men they could identify by their distinct zoot suits.[16]

The Zoot Suit was particularly flashy, consisting of a broad-shouldered drape jacket, balloon-leg trousers, and, sometimes, a flamboyant hat and a watch chain. The wearers of this eye-catching costume referred to themselves as pachucos, a name linked to the Mexican American generation’s rebellion against both the Mexican and American cultures. The news media, on the other hand, referred to them as hoodlums, street thugs, gang members, juvenile delinquents, and draft dodgers. Affluent whites found their displays of youthful rebellion distasteful, disrupting the social decorum. Their judgment was seemingly justified, considering the U.S. War Production Board restricted the production of civilian clothing containing silk, wool, and other essential fabrics, making the oversized zoot suits “a flagrant and unpatriotic waste of resources.”[17] Select groups, mainly U.S. sailors and servicemen, took it upon themselves to ‘de-zoot’ the ‘zooters,’ attacking them on the streets and in their neighborhoods. The mass media glorified these attacks. A common narrative referred to the U.S. servicemen as vigilantes taking out the hoodlums or responding to an immigrant crime wave, while any retaliation by the Mexican Zoot Suiters was headlined as “New Hoodlum Attack,” or “Warn of Mass Riot Tonight.”[18] This double standard was exemplified as the public majority, the media, and even law enforcement colluded against the Zoot Suiters.

One eyewitness account revealed the extent of the violence that mainstream coverage failed to record. Writer Carey McWilliams painted a terrifying picture: On Monday evening, June seventh, thousands of Angelenos … turned out for a mass lynching. Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot-suiter they could find. Street cars were halted while Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked out of their seats, pushed into the streets, and beaten with sadistic frenzy.” A year before this incident, on August 2, 1942, José Gallardo Díaz, a 22-year-old agricultural worker, was found dead near the Sleepy Lagoon reservoir. The autopsy indicated his cause of death was blunt force trauma, and the police asserted that he was murdered by a rival Mexican gang. 24 people were arrested, 17 of whom were found guilty and charged with manslaughter, before their convictions were later overturned two years later because their constitutional rights to a fair trial were violated.[19]

The news media refrained from explicitly stating that the attacks of the Zoot Suit Riots were motivated by racism, not fashion or vigilantism, but this is evident from the first-hand accounts and experiences of the marginalized people. Then Los Angeles Mayor, Fletcher Bowron, concerned about the impact of the riots on the city’s image tried to take race out of the equation, saying, “There is no question of racial discrimination involved … We have here, unfortunately, a bad situation as the result of the formation and activities of youthful gangs … They are Los Angeles youth, and the problem is purely a local one.”[20] Archival data shows that the Zoot Suiters were predominantly young men, with some being attacked as young as 12 and 13 years old. The majority of the so-called draft dodgers were too young to enlist. There was a significant arrest disparity between the Latino youths and the white U.S. servicemen, with upward of 600 of the former being arrested.[21] Ultimately, the riots changed the Los Angeles landscape, with these laws being enacted, criminalization, and emergent stereotypes. It is through understanding the origins and biases of such tropes that they can be resisted and rewritten.

    V. The Bracero Program and Urban Displacement

Following the declarations of the “Good Neighbor Policy” by FDR in 1933 and efforts to ease relations between the U.S. and its allies, labor shortages during World War II led the U.S. government to negotiate with the Mexican government to recruit Mexican workers, all male and without their families, to work on short-term contracts in U.S. agriculture, railways, and other war industries. This was known as the Bracero Program, which redressed previous Depression-era deportations and repatriations.[22] After the war, Mexican workers were left vulnerable and restricted to low-paying, labor-intensive jobs. Mexicans believed that becoming braceros temporarily would enable them to acquire additional skills and knowledge while earning higher wages than available in Mexico. In practice, many became trapped in cycles of working abroad for higher wages in harsh manual labor jobs. The bracero program’s costs, employers’ abuse, and officials’ corrupt practices led many Mexicans to seek work in the United States illegally, within U.S. agricultural conglomerates and other employers seeking workers for lower wages. The bracero program persisted until 1964, despite its many problems, when labor and civil rights reformers successfully pressured for its termination.[23]

Under government legislation, such as Public Law 78, which was passed by Congress in 1951, the Bracero Program had safeguards to protect both Mexican and domestic workers, for example, guaranteed payment and work hours, sanitation and free housing, meals at reasonable prices, insurance, and free transportation back to Mexico at the end of the contract. “Employers were supposed to hire braceros only in areas of certified domestic labor shortage and were not to use them as strikebreakers.”[24] This made the program initially seem fair and just in the eyes of the public. Early media largely framed the program as a patriotic, mutually beneficial “good neighbor” initiative. Popular media, such as The Saturday Evening Post, focused on individual, positive stories of braceros to document the program’s impact, often highlighting the money saved and economic uplift. Over time, this narrative soured as media reports began focusing on the competition between braceros and American workers. This sentiment steadily grew nationwide with the intensification of illegal border crossings during the program, and in 1954, the Eisenhower administration launched Operation Wetback, another round of mass deportations by the U.S. Border Patrol.[25] By this point, it was clear that immigrant lives were seen as expendable, controllable, and vulnerable; useful when needed, removable when inconvenient.

The Bracero Program brought over 4 million Mexican laborers to the U.S., with peak admissions around 450,000 in 1956 alone. Their primary work was in agriculture, with 125,700 people admitted that same year.[26] They worked throughout the U.S., but their largest concentration was in California.[27] The legal length agreed upon for the Bracero program was six weeks to six months. However, many Braceros who traveled farther north stayed longer to maximize their earnings, sometimes staying in the U.S. for 4-6 years at a time. Those who stayed longer left their loved ones behind for possibly decades, and the only way they could communicate with them was through the mail. Some Braceros returned while others did not. Despite the initial assurances, braceros suffered difficult living and working conditions, mistreatment by employers, and withholding of salaries, all of which intensified as the program went on. Unions and strikes were raised in a series of attempts to resist the mistreatment they experienced. [28] The recruiters wanted manual labor, while braceros like Mauro Rodríguez wanted to survive by earning enough money. Angel Albiso’s only interest was working hard so that his children could study and have more options than he did. Cris Luna, a retired teacher in San Jose, California, looked at the program as a means of self-betterment. Manuel Alvarado joined because his uncles told him it was easy money, which allowed them to buy land and livestock back home. He proceeded to equate the treatment he experienced in California to slavery.[29]

By the end of the Bracero program, especially after the end of WWII and the return of the troops, the remaining Braceros were no longer paid livable wages. Though the program officially ended in 1965, the need for work remained alongside a population of Mexicans still dependent on U.S. wages. Record keeping became lax, leading to surges of legal and undocumented migration to the U.S. that persists today.[30] A subclass of laborers emerged with associated tropes and stereotypes, and the demographics of major cities like Los Angeles were forever changed.[31] A direct consequence of the program was the Immigration Act of 1965, when Congress once again tried to amend its immigration policies. Regardless, it is evident that the events of the Bracero Program were foundational to the long-held idea of immigrant labor as the backbone of the U.S. economy.

    VI. East L.A. Walkouts

The East Los Angeles Walkouts, also known as Blowouts, refer to a series of mass protests and demonstrations in Los Angeles in 1968 against the quality of education and the broader systemic injustices tied to education against Latino youth in Los Angeles throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Mexican-American students experienced a 60% dropout rate from high school, and those who did graduate averaged the reading level of an 8th grade white student. In many schools, teachers prohibited students from speaking Spanish, and were often underprepared, indifferent, and/or openly racist.[32] These schools funneled many Mexican American students into vocational programs and discouraged them from post-secondary studies. In response, (predominantly Latino) students, teachers, parents, and activists decided to take a stand.[33] The movement involved thousands of people and is considered the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican-Americans in U.S. history.[34]

The mass media coverage of the movement was very mixed. Notable outlets like the L.A. Times seemed to acknowledge the core motivations of the movement, framing it as a “call for unity civil rights, better education, and economic opportunity.”  They also acknowledged the youth and vigor of the movement.[35] Despite this, the tone of such coverage was subtly dismissive, making it seem surprising that such a movement could even exist, let alone persist. More hostile coverage focused on arrests and disorder, using those details to assert that the walkouts were driven by conspiracies to disrupt the education system. The media, as done previously, portrayed young protesters as criminals, agitators, or juvenile delinquents. Even when coverage was not overly negative, it frequently underreported the movement, focusing on the spectacle rather than the underlying causes and human elements.[36]

            The students of this movement expressed their dissatisfaction not only with the education they received but also with the teachers who degraded them and forced them to assimilate. Initially hesitant, one teacher, Sal Castro, made it clear to them that the only way they could make real change was by taking their grievances directly to the streets and to the press, to become activists, and take a firm stance. During the week after the first set of walkouts on March 5^th, 1968, over 15,000 students participated in the demonstration throughout East L.A. It was only after they were brutalized by police officers sent to quell their demonstrations that their parents got involved. The parents took the fight to the School Board, expressing their concerns both with the quality of education and their children’s safety. Local newspapers like La Raza (slang for the people or community) spread the grassroots experience and stories, emphasizing the Chicano identity of the movement. All this effort led to a few concessions by the school board, but also the arrests of 13 students connected with the walkouts and the firing of Sal Castro.[37]

            In line with the Civil Rights Movement, the East L.A. Walkouts have been glorified for its success as a stance for civil rights and resistance to injustice. It served as a launch pad for the Brown Berets, a Chicano organization modeled after the Black Panther Party. After more public efforts and demonstrations, the charges were dropped against those 13 students, and Sal Castro was reinstated to his teaching position. The school board made concessions such as hiring more Mexican-American educators, establishing bilingual/bicultural education, expanding Mexican-American history curricula, and reducing overcrowding. Consequently, Latino student enrollment increased, dropout rates reduced, and Latino people began getting more teaching and administrative jobs. Similar Chicano student protests spread across the Southwest and California, with major demonstrations occurring in Denver, San Antonio, and across 39 cities and towns in Texas. Though the protests were represented as negative and violent, their consequences were overwhelmingly positive, with far-reaching effects across the U.S.

    VII. Significance

Analyzing these events closely and successively provides substance to the terms immigrant oppression and marginalized people. The stories and historical events reveal a pattern of systemic control and victimization not fully acknowledged until a more holistic view is created. The Mexican Repatriation, for instance, was an early signifier of the perceptions of expendability and replaceability of Latino lives held by the white American public, which re-emerged in every other major event covered in this paper. By uncovering grassroots stories from the Mexican Repatriation to the Bracero Program, there are multiple instances of deceit, exploitation, and broken promises. Comparing those with the stories and biased perspectives told by the mass media reveals a deliberate avoidance of mentioning the systems of control, violence, and racial discrimination, despite concrete evidence such as that of the Zoot Suit Riots and East L.A. Walkouts. Ultimately, what is most clear from this analysis is that Los Angeles and the broader U.S. were shaped by these immigrant experiences. 

    VIII. Conclusion

The argument that mass media’s perspectives were often diminished and biased, reframing and dismissing real injustice, was proven throughout this paper.  This was validated by delineating multiple events that highlighted injustices of the immigrant experience, and comparing the stories and opinions the media gave against the lived experiences and grassroots accounts of the real victims. Los Angeles was chosen as the case study for this analysis, but not because of the events themselves. In reality, many other cities along the American Southwest and even in the Northeast had similar experiences. It was a matter of choosing which was the most intense, farthest reaching, and even relatable to the reader.

      With the more holistic view, the paper was able to uncover immigrant stories of hardships, physical labor, family separation, exploitation, and violence that were covered up or minimized by the public and mass media. Perhaps more importantly, this analysis revealed patterns that still exist today, not just of oppression, but also systematic racism, generalization, stereotyping, and dismissiveness. Hopefully, by identifying these issues, one could go beyond just knowing them for the sake of exposing the bias and deception, to actually making a change and ensuring they are not repeated.

Endnotes

[1] “New Hoodlum Attack.” [Clipping] N.P., N.D.

[2] James Gregory, “Mapping the Latinx Great Migrations – Latinx American Population by State and Decade 1850-2022,” America’s Great Migrations Project, 2022, https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/map_latinx_migration.shtml.

[3] “Mexican–American War,” Wikipedia, May 5, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War.

[4] Gómez, Laura E.. Manifest Destinies, Second Edition : The Making of the Mexican American Race. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Accessed May 9, 2026. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Gratton, Brian, and Emily Merchant. “Immigration, Repatriation, and Deportation: The Mexican-Origin Population in the United States, 1920–1950.” The International Migration Review 47, no. 4 (2013): 944–75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24542812.

[5] “Immigration Act of 1917,” Wikipedia, May 8, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1917.

[6] “Mexican Repatriation,” Wikipedia, April 28, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation.

[7] Sánchez, George J. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945.

[8] Hoffman, Abraham. “Mexican Repatriation Statistics: Some Suggested Alternatives to Carey McWilliams.” The Western Historical Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1972): 391–404. https://doi.org/10.2307/966864.

Hoffman, Abraham. Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929–1939. University of Arizona Press, 1974. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvss3z6k.

[9] Darin Larimore, “By the Train Loads: Mexican Repatriation Movement in the Midwest, Part I,” Indiana Historical Society, August 4, 2022, https://indianahistory.org/blog/by-the-train-loads-mexican-repatriation-movement-in-the-midwest-part-i/#:~:text=Repatriation%20methods%20looked%20different%20from,and%20deportation%20on%20insufficient%20evidence.%E2%80%9D

[10] Molina, Natalia. How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts.

[11] Valenciana, Christine. . 2006. “UNCONSTITUTIONAL DEPORTATION OF MEXICAN AMERICANS DURING THE 1930s: A Family History & Oral History,” Multicultural Education 13 (3): 4-9. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/unconstitutional-deportation-mexican-americans/docview/216509195/se-2.

[12] “The Great Depression; Interview with Roberto Munoz. Part 2,” 1992-05-21, Film and Media Archive, Washington University in St. Louis, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 10, 2026, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-gm81j97t3j.

[13] Nyki Duda , “My Family Was Almost ‘Repatriated’ to Mexico in the 1930s. I See It Happening Again.,” In These Times, February 28, 2025, https://inthesetimes.com/article/repatriation-1930s-self-deportation-trump

[14] 1. Vicki Ruíz, From out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008).

[15] 1. “Mexican Repatriation,” Wikipedia, April 9, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation#:~:text=Immigration%20from%20Mexico%20was%20not,contributed%20to%20anti%20immigrant%20policies.

[16] Coroian, G. “Zoot Suit Riots.” Encyclopedia Britannica, April 4, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Zoot-Suit-Riots.

[17] Coroian, G. “Zoot Suit Riots.” Encyclopedia Britannica, April 4, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Zoot-Suit-Riots.

Stephanie Hinnershitz, PhD. “The Zoot Suit Riots and Wartime Los Angeles” Published June 1, 2023. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/zoot-suit-riots-and-wartime-los-angeles.

[18] “New Hoodlum Attack.” [Clipping] N.P., N.D.

This source is a newspaper clipping, which didn’t have the full paper title, author, and publisher available, but it was most likely the L.A. Evening Herald Express. There were other such clippings in this collection. They were found at the following site: https://www.huntington.org/sites/default/files/documents/Sourcebook%201_Biased%20Reporting%20on%20the%20Zoot%20Suits.pdf

[19] Stephanie Hinnershitz, PhD. “The Zoot Suit Riots and Wartime Los Angeles” Published June 1, 2023. Accessed May 8, 2026. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/zoot-suit-riots-and-wartime-los-angeles.

[20] “Not a Race Issue, Mayor Says (Published 1943),” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1943/06/10/archives/not-a-race-issue-mayor-says.html.

This is a digitized copy of the original 1943 article from the New York Times Archive.

[21] Coroian, G. “Zoot Suit Riots.” Encyclopedia Britannica, April 4, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Zoot-Suit-Riots.

[22] “A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States; 1942: Bracero Program,” Research Guides at Library of Congress, https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program.

Malea Walker and Victoria Giron, “Good Neighbors: Stories from Latin America in World War II,” The Library of Congress: Headlines & Heroes Newspapers, Comics & More Fine Print, August 28, 2018, blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2018/08/good-neighbors-stories-from-latin-america-in-world-war-ii/.

[23] “Bracero Agreement (1942-1964),” Immigration History, August 26, 2019, https://immigrationhistory.org/item/bracero-agreement/.

[24] “About · Bracero History Archive,” Bracero History Archive, accessed May 9, 2026, https://braceroarchive.org/about.

[25]  “The Immigrant Experience through Public Broadcasting,” American Archive of Public Broadcasting, americanarchive.org/exhibits/latino-empowerment/4-the-immigrant-experience-through-broadcasting.

The word “Wetback,” or “Mojado” in Spanish, is a derogatory term meant to refer to a Mexican national who would swim the Rio Grande to cross the border to the U.S.

[26] Victor Salandini, “The Political-Economic Dynamics of California’s Farm Labor Market-a Highly Specific Model of International Factor Flows,” Journal of Behavioral Economics 2 (January 1973): 144–246, https://doi.org/10.1016/0090-5720(73)90004-1.

[27] “Bracero ,” Historical Research Center | CSU Bakersfield, March 23, 2026, https://hrc.csub.edu/housing-history/bracero/.

[28] “Bracero Program Legislative Report and Recommendations”, Oregon Legislative Information System (.gov), April 2023, https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/PublicTestimonyDocument/90329

The above source also cites another source:

Gonzalez, Gilbert, Harvest of Loneliness, Film, directed by: Vivan Price & Adrian Salinas (2010, New York, NY: Films Media Group), DVD.

[29] Arellano, Gustavo. “Former bracero doesn’t want the program to return. ‘People will be treated like slaves,’” Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2025.

[30] “Bracero Program Legislative Report and Recommendations”, Oregon Legislative Information System (.gov), April 2023, https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/PublicTestimonyDocument/90329

[31] “The Immigrant Experience through Public Broadcasting,” American Archive of Public Broadcasting, americanarchive.org/exhibits/latino-empowerment/4-the-immigrant-experience-through-broadcasting.

[32] Michelle Vanegas, YouTube, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), October 20, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z96u3R8dbUQ&time_continue=200&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fnhm.org%2F&themeRefresh=1.

[33] “A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States; 1968: East Los Angeles Walkouts,” Research Guides at Library of Congress, https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/east-la-walkouts.

[34] “East L.A. Walkouts,” Wikipedia, March 31, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_L.A._walkouts.

[35] Torgerson, Dial. “Brown Power’ Unity Seen Behind School Disorders.” Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1968.

[36] “1968 East L.A. Chicano Student Walkouts (Blowouts),” LA Conservancy, July 13, 2023, https://www.laconservancy.org/save-places/issues/1968-east-l-a-chicano-student-walkouts-blowouts/.

Sahagun, Louis. “‘Walkout!’ A day students helped spark revolución: When ‘kids kicked the doors open’.” Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1968. https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7178a92a-f20b-40cf-bb93-bbed65c5c28f

[37] YouTube, Retro Report, June 7, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWWWPW7I0iU.

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