A history paper on the Great Depression, undertaken by Tamara Gisiger ’28 when she was still in high school, is having an impact way beyond the classroom.
"If we learn about our past we can make sure it never happens again." Gisiger on
Gisiger, who is of Latin American heritage, said she decided to write it with a Latino angle because she didn't feel represented enough in her school. “I didn't see myself in the curriculum,” she told .
As she explored the subject, Gisiger learned about the plight of the one million Mexicans and Mexican Americans deported by President Hoover in the 1930s.
The measure was taken amid the lean times of the Depression, when many Americans blamed Mexican immigrants for taking jobs from US job workers. Gisiger was shocked to learn that 60 percent of those deported during the so-called Mexican Repatriation were US citizens.
She said her research, going through letters and documents of the time, gave her an insight into the suffering caused by this policy, with many families being separated. “Anyone who didn't have proof of citizenship was taken,” she told NBC.
Gisiger's effort to shine a light on this little-known historical episode has prompted two California state senators to get behind a bill to commemorate the repatriation with a monument in Los Angeles, where many of those who were deported came from.
