Historian Sergio Gonzalez said Latinos have lived in Wisconsin almost since the state’s founding, but the Latino community is often seen as eternal outsiders. Gonzalez is the author of “Mexicans in Wisconsin” and “Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth Century Wisconsin.”
Latin Americans began coming to the state in the mid-1800s, and larger groups arrived in the early 20th century. Their story was well known in Wisconsin.
“[Latinos]went out looking for the same opportunities that European immigrants were looking for before them: better economic opportunities in agriculture,” he explains.
Cooperation between the Wisconsin Cherry Commission and the Wisconsin Department of Employment
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Wikimedia Commons
In 1950, a group of Texan-Mexican families work in a cherry orchard in Door County.
In the 1920s, as European immigration to the United States began to decline, the agricultural industry began turning to migrant workers from Central and South America, Gonzalez said. During World War II, the Bracero Program brought in Mexican nationals to fill the labor shortage created by the war.
“Wisconsin relied on workers for jobs like the cherry industry, the cucumber industry, the sugar beet industry, and it needed workers to fill those roles, and they found them in places like Mexico and the Caribbean. We also found them in the ocean,” explains Gonzalez.
But while Latino workers flocked to rural areas in Wisconsin and other states where these agricultural jobs were available, they were not always properly documented. As the country faced recession in the 1950s, the federal government launched Operation Wetback, the largest deportation operation ever.
US Border Patrol Museum
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Wikimedia Commons
U.S. Border Patrol packs Mexican migrants into trucks as they transport them to the border for deportation.
Gonzalez explains: “The goal is basically to round up all the people who came to this country, who were recruited into this country to do this job. (The deportation plan) destabilizes and destabilizes communities. It’s quite destructive.”
“Unfortunately, that is also the pattern that future presidential administrations will follow. Every time there is an economic downturn, they will turn to similar tactics to round up these people who are now considered surplus labor.” he continues.
This pattern continues to this day. Former President Donald Trump has promised to deport up to 20 million people from the United States, even though the estimated number of illegal immigrants is about 11 million.
“I don’t think anyone can really imagine what that would look like physically and the resource allocation that would go with it.”
Gonzalez said it’s unclear what the mass deportation plan would actually mean for Wisconsin, but he acknowledged the impact could be devastating.
“I don’t think anyone can really imagine what that would look like physically, and also the resource allocation that goes along with that. Police and law enforcement resources to do this kind of work.” What does it mean for the community to have to reallocate? And even more important is the reality of what this means for the economy across the state,” he explains.
Undocumented immigrants are essential to Wisconsin’s industry, making up 70% to 80% of dairy farm workers. There are also concerns that U.S. citizens could be deported, similar to previous deportation plans. These concerns are indicative of a larger cultural reality. Even though the Latino community has been part of the state for more than a century, it is still considered an outsider.
“We talk about Latino immigrants as newcomers, exotics, outsiders in our communities, but it’s hard to think of them as a chapter in Wisconsin’s long history of immigrant belonging, of immigrants entering this space. It’s a contrast,” Gonzalez says.
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