Raymond Rodriguez, co-author of book about forced US deportations to Mexico, dies at 87
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Raymond Rodriguez, who wrote about 1 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who were forced out of the United States in the 1930s, has died. He was 87.
His daughter, C. J. Crockett, tells the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/15n9NmE ) that Rodriguez died June 24 at his Long Beach home.
In 1995, he and Francisco Balderrama wrote "Decade of Betrayal," a social history about forced deportations during America's Great Depression. They found that 60 percent of those expelled were U.S. citizens and concluded the deportees were scapegoats for U.S. economic woes.
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The book sparked legislative hearings and formal apologies from the Los Angeles County officials and the state of California.
Rodriguez also was a former Long Beach City College administrator and a columnist for the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
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Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com