The transnational life and letters of the Venegas family, 1920s to 1950s

Abstract

Married in 1919, Miguel and Dolores migrated from Zapotlanejo, Jalisco to Los Angeles, California in 1927, where they raised 10 children: nine boys and one girl. Like Mexican migrant families throughout the US Southwest they experienced leaving Mexico and making a new home, endured the Great Depression, and in many cases, sent their children off to fight in World War II. Throughout this time period, they corresponded with their relatives in Mexico, providing historians with a rare collection of Mexican migrant personal correspondences. By conceptualizing correspondence as a migrant strategy and using these sources as a window into the transnational practices, I make two arguments about the Venegas family. First, I argue that through letter writing the Venegas formed a transnational family. I demonstrate that members of this family replicated their roles despite the distance between them. In the process, they created a transnational space in both Los Angeles and Guadalajara. Second, family members in both Mexico and the United States practiced a form of ‘cultural citizenship’: migrant-defined ideas of belonging and rights that transcend the formal boundaries of both nation-states. The family provided a set of strategies to navigate the Great Depression and World War II. This article contributes to a growing literature on Mexican migration, transnationalism, the ‘Mexican American’ generation, and Mexican migrant letter writing.