The International Financial Crisis and the Return Migration of Mexicans from the United States (1907-1908)

This article analyzes the duration and scope of the first large-scale return migration of Mexican labor migrants from the United States in the twentieth century, fueled by the financial crisis of 1907-8. The central argument is that this return migration lasted a little longer than two months-from November 1907 to mid-February 1908-and involved between eighteen thousand and twenty thousand people, especially workers who worked on the railroads and in mining in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, as well as in Clifton, Morenci, and Tucson, Arizona. It also shows that this return migration occurred in a context characterized by the growing wave of immigration of Mexican labor to the United States.