Muñoz Ryan also uses her novel to call attention to lesser-known historical events from the time period: the rise of strikes in the California agricultural fields during the 1930s, as well as the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s and 40s. When Esperanza and her family flee to California for a better life, they find themselves smack in the middle of the Great Depression, a staggering financial crisis that affected the entire globe, and whose effects in America resulted in the displacement of countless individuals as they fought one another for opportunities at farms and work camps across the nation. Esperanza’s wealthy rancher father’s death in an attack by “bandits,” then, is alluded to as a politically-motivated attack symbolically suggesting the hatred, jealousy, and anger that was directed at landowners at the time. The events of Esperanza Rising straddle two major historical moments of the 20th century, the first being the late years and fallout of the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910 and introduced a period of rebellion, civil war, and struggle between the wealthy landowners and the impoverished masses of Mexico.
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