QUESTION: deportation

question / pregunta: 

looking to find deportation records of activists that came here cuba in the early 1900's.. joined mexican group in los angeles in 1913 .. i am not sure if they stayed here or were deported. would like to find out what happened.. maybe they have children.. is it possible to find them as well??
the name of family is:

Blanca de Moncaleano, her husband is Juan Francisco de Moncaleano

thanks very much

lina devito

Answers


Answer posted by:
tripmastermonkey

Blanca Moncaleano was the editor of a Los Angeles newspaper "Pluma Roja" [Red Pen] from 1913-1915. "Pluma Roja" was an anarchist periodical that did not believe in national borders, and advocated women's liberation from the state, religion, and capital. Juan Francisco Moncaleano was Colombian by background, and had travelled to Habana and Mexico City before going to Los Angeles. Where the Moncaleanos met, i'm not sure.

This information comes from the article "Transborder Discourse: The Articulation of Gender in the Borderlands in the Early Twentieth Century" [Frontiers, vol.24nos.2&3,2003][I found the article through the online database Project Muse which is an academic article database], . It is the only article I have found that pinpoints the Moncaleanos in time and space past 1912. Since all the article says is that Blanca edited the paper from 1913-1915, it is unclear what happened to her afterwards. Was she deported? Where did they die?

I have searched through the Los Angeles Times (1881-1886) database for references to the Moncaleanos and found none, unfortunately. The newspaper was not ignoring anarchists or other Mexican revolutionaries- the Magon brothers get a number of hits in the database.

It may be more fruitful to search in publications in Spanish. Spanish language newspapers from Los Angeles which may be harder to find are: La Prensa (founded in 1912) [be careful about searching for this publication- La Prensa is a common title for Spanish language publications- make sure about the date and that Los Angeles is where it was published], El Heraldo de Mexico (1916-1920), and Regeneracion (published in Los Angeles by the Magon brothers between 1910-1918)[Regeneracion was also published in San Antonio, Texas; St Louis, Missouri; and elsewhere at different times].

Since it has been so difficult to find information on the Moncaleanos, it may be worth contacting the author of the article to ask her about her research on the couple. Her name is Clara Lomas and her contact information can be found at the Colorado College webpage on their Romance Language professors.

If you end up pinpointing the date of Blanca and/or Juan Francisco's deportation, you can then contact the National Archives for the deportation records. The National Archives has a number of local sites around the country. You will be interested in the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) records for Los Angeles from the time they were deported. Contact one of the California offices to find out where the records will be.

From what I've seen, my fellow radreffies have had trouble finding the Moncaleanos in genealogical sources. A major problem for this is that you need government records on these individuals. The Moncaleanos were anarchists who it seems came to this country (and other countries) "illegally".

To end, it seems that general web searches on the Moncaleanos yield more on Juan Francisco (yay, patriarchy), and his relationship to the Magons.