Americans were specifically targeted for exclusion from welfare programs. Mexicans were left to fill pre-existing gaps in the American labor market, and colonias, or Mexican-majority neighborhoods, were established in Chicago, Kansas City, and Salt Lake City, as railroad companies were one of the main sources of employment. The steel and automobile sectors drew Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Detroit, San Francisco, and Minneapolis, as well as farming in Oregon, Texas, and Southern California. In order to provide middle-class Mexicans with a sense of grounding in their new communities, consulates of the Mexican government in major cities organized a network of juntas patrioticas (patriotic councils) and comisiónes honoríficos (honorary committees) to celebrate Mexican national holidays and to express support for the Revolution. The juntas patrioticas proved incredibly popular, and were an early form of community organizing for the Mexican community in the United States. Mexican Americans also faced a darker form of discrimination during the Progressive Era. In this period, several dozen states passed eugenics laws, outlining legal criteria for compulsory sterilization. In California, eugenicists at public institutions like Sonoma State Hospital and Whittier State School began their sterilization programs in the 1910s. These doctors believed that "dispositions" for poverty, crime, mental illness, disability, and violence were inheritable, and thus, anyone diagnosed as "insane", "feebleminded", or "epileptic" was unfit for "breeding". They would thus be permanently sterilized in order to solve the nation's social ills. Recommendations for surgical sterilization were heavily influenced by eugenic prejudices regarding the biological inadequacy of poor and non-white people. As a result, Mexican American men, women, and children were disproportionately sterilized in California. Many Mexicans immigrating to the United States struggled through their journey crossing borders because they hoped to find stability and better opportunities in this new environment. Although, this history portrays the beginning of Mexican immigration and how new events have continued to reoccur, whether being influenced by government issues or not. By some estimates, Mexican Americans were between 40 and 60% more likely to be permanently sterilized than their white counterparts. Progressive-era elites also passed severe Anti-miscegenation laws, as well as laws prohibiting "normal" individuals from marrying people with low-IQs, in order to "breed" a more healthy nation. California's eugenic laws were the basis for Nazi eugenics. La Matanza de Texas The mid-1910s proved to be one of the most violent periods for Mexican Americans in Texan history. In the summer of 1915,