Mexico’s Unauthorized Exits: National Ideology and The Politization of Migration in Mid-Twentieth-Century Jalisco

Abstract In the mid-twentieth century, terms such as avalanche , grave problem , and invasion were being used on both sides of the Mexico-US border to describe the labor-related migration of Mexicans. In postrevolutionary Mexico, intellectuals, artists, and politicians were discussing which path the nation should take and what it meant to be Mexican, and the growing flow of Mexican migrants seeking temporary agricultural jobs in the United States presented a political and ideological “problem.” This article examines the conservative discourses on this issue in Jalisco’s newspaper El Informador , with a special focus on the “exclusive contributions” of two ultraconservative, Catholic intellectuals: Jesús Guisa y Azevedo and Nemesio García Naranjo. In the context of postrevolutionary nation building in Mexico, conservative critiques and the vilification of migration to the United States were attempts to attack the revolutionary project that was trying to dismantle the power structures that had prevailed since Porfirian times, threatening conservatives’ privilege and, as a result, politicizing migration. This approach shows migration not merely as an economic adaptive strategy but also a political issue that continues to be deployed in discourses surrounding national integrity of both countries.