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Rating: 
Summary: A Great Addition to Mexican-American History
Review: Dr. Balderrama is a great historian. His research into the Mexican repatriation is told magnificently. I also happen to be one of his former students at CSULA. I do remember his class and enjoyed his lectures. Unlike other history professors at CSULA, his style of teaching and lecturing was memorable. His contribution to Mexican American history is invaluable. Great book! *****.
Rating: 
Summary: Politicized Clamor Reeks Havoc on Academia
Review: The book Decade of Betrayal by Francisco Balderrama was an interesting and compelling book. I strongly disagree with the two reviews i read, especially Michael Sturdevant's review, its true that Balderrama was a bit arrogant but he was not preaching but merely putting in his two cents. Mexicans as well as all other immigrants came to this "great" country seeking a better life, true that opportunities were and are still here but they are only achieved through great difficulty. Mexicans have always faced harsh treatment in this competitive country, Balderrama was writing the fact that this country is not perfect and that the rights of the people especially immigrants have been broken in time of chaos. To this day we are facing morality problems in which immigrants are punished and deported because there are just too many people in this country and not enough opportunity. How are you going to say to someone you can come into this country and achieve a better life and tell someone else let your family starve because their are just too many immigrants and the law says to stay out. Balderrrama was sharing with the world the problems society has, he was not stating that the US is terrible but that the "land of opportunity" is not all that everyone dreams it to be.
Rating: 
Summary: Tenditious and Without Perspective
Review: The deportations of the 1930s need to be put into historical perspective and not just labeled as another incident of how bad America is to Mexicans. In 1924, the Immigration Act shut down immigration from Europe; Mexicans were EXEMPTED from such quotas between 1924 and 1965 (unacknowledged by most Chicano polemicists who can't deal with the fact that a policy was biased against white Europeans benefitted non whites). According to historian John Womack, some 900,000 Mexicans entered the US between 1924 and 1930, some 630,000 illegally. So this wave continued unabated into the Depression, and with 25% unemployment, the Federal government decided to crack down on this migration. Europeans were not targeted because the waves of immigartion had already been shut down, and those who did enter did so legally throught the nation's ports; most Mexicans entered through a land border. Abraham Hoffman puts the number involved and deportedat 400,000, not 1 million, with about half leaving voluntarily and half forced. Fifty percent were US citizens, largely the children of illegal immigrants who left with their parents. Of course, there were many cases of discrimination, as Manuel Gonzeles points out, where the methods used, especially in Los Angeles, were heavy handed and even in some cases illegal. These individulas should receive compensation. But it is ridiculous to compare this to the forced migration of Indians or to say that this was a program of complete discrimination ala those which targeted African Americans, even though there were individual cases of such. As for those who took Balderrama as a professor, of course Chicano activists want to portary all of their problems and poverty as simply the result of racist Anglos versus innocent Mexicans. While legal discrimination did exist in many individual areas in the Southwest, particularly South Texas, thsi ignores the fact that more than two-thirds of all Mexican immigrants have no high school diploma (versus only 8% of native whites and 13% of Asian immigrants), that more than 4 out of 5 are not proficient in English, or that Asian immigrants and their children, despite being subject to historically more vicious legal racism, actually do better than whites !!!The vast majority of Mexicans are immigrants or their immediate children who arrived after 1965, whose presence makes the tracking and progress of wages for Mexican Americans very difficult to measure. Between 1920 and 1970, Mexicans were considered legally white by the govt.; they were allowed to intermarry with whites (unlike blacks and Asians); were allowed to get citizenship upon arrival (unlike Asian immigrants); served in all-white units during the SEcond World War (unlike blacks and Japanese); could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas, especially San Antonio (unlike blacks); ran the state politics and elite of New Mexico since colonial times; went to integrated schools in Central Texas and Los Anegeles (unlike Blacks in the south and Asians in Southern California); were not subjected to immigration quotas like Europeans and Asians between 1924 and 1965. According to the PPIC, Hispanics with similar education and occupation as whites make just as much in income; Asians in the similar situation make 10 to 15% MORE!!!! So while racism has been a factor, it is not the determining factor as to why Mexicans do or do not succeed. This is too much for Chicano professors and activists to acknowledge since their world is framed around victimology. Chris
Rating:
Summary: A Triumph of Politics Over Analysis
Review: This is an interesting part of American History. We should never forget the past, so that we may not repeat these awful racist misdeeds. Go figure? imigrants kicking imigrants out of the country.I reccomend this book for some insight in a part of American history that is usually left out of History books.
Rating:
Summary: A Triumph of Politics Over Analysis
Review: While I found the history in this book interesting, I did not think too much of the analysis. I read the other reviewer who said that Dr. Balderrama was a good lecturer, "unlike other history professors at CAl State LA." Unlike other professors? There were good professors at Cal State LA, but I did not think Balderrama to be among them. I don't want to presume, but I wonder if the reader is Hispanic, because I also was a student of Balderrama's and did not think much of him or his lectures. His lecture style is ponderous and moralistic, like his writing. He does not have any real fascination with history; rather, he only "studies" it in order to promote his Chicano politics. His lecures amounted to writing the daily agenda on the board (like in high school), telling what he was going to talk about, why he was going to talk about it, how he was going to teach the material, and, time permitting, he would give a one-sided moralistic sermon on something like how the Indians were exploited by the Spanish. He seems like a tired professor, who is just doing his time until he is old enough to be put out to pasture.
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