Takaki chapter 12

In Takaki’s chapter 12 entitled El Notre: The Borderland of Chicano America he tackles the migration to America from yet another ethnicity, Mexicans. Crossing the Mexican-American border was extremely easy, border officials only requested your name, place of birth, and where you were headed. Not to mention the many people who skipped the officials and crossed the Rio Grande. In Mexico workers were streaming into urban areas seeking work but so many did so that unemployment became huge. Workers were forced to become tenant farmers or sharecroppers which left them without money or food. The owners of these farms took the entire crop creating starvation through much of Mexico.
This starvation created hostility and lead to The Mexican Revolution, in which Francisco Madero took control in 1911. Soon after however he was over thrown by General Victoriano Huerta until he was pushed into exile. This left the Mexican government in chaos and left many citizens dead. Many Mexicans decided to wait out the brutal revolution in America, but it went on for an extremely long time. Though these citizens wished to eventually return to their homeland but to return would mean to chance being able to find land and the factories and mines in Mexico where shut down.
Like the Irish, many Mexicans came to America to escape starvation. However, unlike the Irish potatoes famine, the starvation in Mexico came from tenant farmers working for nothing and the revolution that came from it. Mexicans were forced to escape the war in order to ensure their safety, and what better place than the melting pot just north. The close proximity and the ease of entry to the United States resulted in large numbers of immigration to the US from Mexico. Since America is so close to Mexico and so easy to enter that Mexicans would come to America temporarily but became trapped when their land as no longer available.
So why didn’t citizens focus on changing their own government instead of escaping to the north? The answer is that the citizens did try to change the country, which is why the revolution started. The oppressed Mexican citizens rose up and took power attempting to change the starvation that hit the nation. However, their leader Francisco Madero was quickly over thrown unable to make changes. What happened actually created more problems adding the blood shed of war to the negative aspects of living in Mexico on top of the starvation and unemployment already occurring.