by Juan P. Ochoa, History Major, Class of 2025
In 1930 the Escobar family lived in the Irving Precinct of Lane County, Oregon headed by Antonio Escobar. The household consisted of himself, his wife, Beatrice, and their two young sons, Francisco and Nicolas. Antonio was born in Mexico around the turn of the century, 1902 roughly, his wife Beatrice though, was born a decade before him, about 1892. Their children, Nicolas and Francisco, were born in California in about 1928 and 1927 respectively. The family was supported by Antonio’s work in the railroad industry, an industry that at least in Lane County hosted approximately 140 Latino workers, at the time of the 1930 census in which the family was still living in Oregon. The Escobars were unusual for both their time and location because they owned a car and also lived within the greater Eugene-Springfield area as the Irving precinct was home to the local airport (at the time, just an airfield) that had been established not long before the census in 1919 and received more increasing engagement with the community through the 20th century.
Mexican migration to the United States from the end of the 19th century and into the first few decades of the 20th century was fueled primarily by two large-scale economic factors that were felt at all levels of society. The first was the arduous social and economic issues in Mexico brought on by the decrease in farm wages and expropriation of communal and village lands by the government, and only burdened more by the revolution from 1910-1917. The latter was the expansion of the United States economy into the West, particularly the Southwest, in industries like agriculture, railroad building, and mining; all of which required only relatively unskilled laborers but could pay wages far better than could be found for many Mexican people south of the border. For Antonio, his story would likely look vastly different if he were a single man. With no records outside of his census information and car registration, it is likely that he would have been just one of many “birds of passage” of the time, migrating across the country as did the labor men like him were seeking. Antonio though, met Beatrice in California and in their just four years of marriage, the two had two children and a car.
The Escobars likely owned one of the low-end models of the Chevrolet Superior pictured here in this advertisement. Courtesy of www.flickr.com Licensed under CC-BY
To the naked eye, Beatrice may seem like just the wife of one railroad worker of many, one who worked enough in fact that he was able to afford a car, rent their home, and support the family on his own. And while wages for Mexican Americans were certainly higher in Oregon than many places in the U.S., it is not unlikely that Antonio might have been unable to afford the car registered to him on his own. Beatrice though, was a widow, and we can assume so with great confidence because she was first married at the age of 19 and Antonio would have not been in the country at the time, he also would have been just 9 years old. Marriage at the time, especially those between Mexican people, for a majority of couples were ‘common-law’ marriages. Common law marriages were marriages without any legal documentation, often only being officiated by a Catholic priest without any civil registration or records. The distinction meant something only in the eyes of the U.S. social work system though, Mexican ideals and thoughts on marriage and divorce were centered just as much on common law as they were on the breadwinner liberalism that dominated U.S. socioeconomics at the time.
“Marriage was only desired if the husband’s good financial background was assured.”
The historian Claudia Roesch highlights the issues that this gendered breadwinner liberalism brought to social workers as it relates to divorce within the Mexican American community at the time, “marriage was only desired if the husband’s good financial background was assured.” In fact, social workers referenced by Roesch noted that the family’s finances sometimes even outweighed other issues such as fidelity or even domestic violence. We also know from census records that there were no other children in the household at the time, meaning that there was no one but Beatrice to inherit the estate or wealth of her late husband. After nineteen years of marriage with no other children, in all likelihood, her first husband was able to at least save some amount of money or acquire some kind of valuable asset that Beatrice was able to sell. It was likely that Beatrice’s inheritance was likely the biggest factor in providing economic mobility to her family. Enough economic mobility for the family to purchase a car, something that households across the United States were doing at an increasing rate in the late 1920s. However, it is also possible that wages and Antonio being a particularly skilled worker provided the means for the purchasing of the vehicle which was a 1924 Chevrolet Superior, likely the cheaper touring or roadster model that sold for $450-$495. The registration though, was under Antonio’s name, another reminder that the finances were still strongly under the umbrella of the patriarch like in most households of the time.
This set them apart from other Latino families in Lane County, by a large margin. Of the 144 recorded Mexican people in Lane County, only 33 were members of what is considered a nuclear family household. Those 33 people made up just 9 household families, and of those nine only 4 families lived within the greater Eugene-Springfield area, and only two of those families were supported by men who were working on the railroads. The Escobars were also part of a relatively undiverse neighborhood, contrary to the other Mexican families who lived in the greater Eugene-Springfield area and lived near other immigrants, though most hailed from Europe rather than Mexico or South America.
The Escobars are exceptional in the ways in which their settlement in Eugene was extremely rapid and Antonio’s socioeconomic mobility was likely ahead of other Mexican men like him at the time, but it is possible this was thanks to his wife rather than moving up an employment ladder or establishing his own business. The family was able to have two children in California and in the two years after their second was born (1928), the Escobars settled in Lane County and purchased a car. Most historians agree, and it is no mistake to say, that married Mexican women in the early 20th century were primarily homemakers in charge of things like “[teaching] cleanliness, rationalism, thrift, morality…” but through the lens of Beatrice Escobar, we can see that while it was not recorded on paper, some Mexican women were likely crucial financial contributors to their families in a society dominated by breadwinner liberalism. While records are sparse, the Escobars’ story, simply by owning a car and living near such a metropolitan area, is significant in understanding Lane County as a location of settlement and socioeconomic mobility for migrant Latino families like Antonio’s.
The model here in this advertisement was likely what Antonio drove, note the advertisement targeting small families like the Escobars. Courtesy of www.picryl.com Licensed under CC-BY
Bibliography
Alanís Enciso, F. S. They Should Stay There: The Story of Mexican Migration and Repatriation During the Great Depression (R. Davidson, Trans.). The University of North Carolina Press. (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) 2017. 11-12.
Carpio, Genevieve. Collisions at the Crossroads: How Place and Mobility Make Race, 1st ed. University of California Press, 2019.
Oregon State Library; Salem, Oregon; State of Oregon: Numerical List of 1929 Motor Vehicle Licenses – Volume 11, Passenger Cars See also Ancestry.com. Oregon, U.S., Motor Vehicle Registrations, 1911-1946 [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Escobar, Antonio Vehicle Regristration image here.
Roesch, Claudia. Macho Men and Modern Women: Mexican immigration, social experts and the changing family values in the 20th century United States. Berlin ; De Gruyter Oldenbourg. (2015).
Sanchez, George. Go after the Women: Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant Woman, 1915-1929. no. 6. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Center for Chicano Research, Stanford University, 1984. Print.
Weise, Julie. Lecture. April 8, 2024.
Year: 1930; Census Place: Irving, Lane, Oregon; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 0074; FHL microfilm: 2341680 See also Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.