1940-1950

The basic agreement negotiated by US and Mexican governments was the controlled selection and employment of campesinos for temporary work in the US, and in the initial period the railroads. Mexico set up recruitment centers in several rural states.  The growers wanted them closer to the border. When the word went out, at first Mexico City was overwhelmed.  It was up to the Mexican government to recruit, select and certify the braceros.  They had to be Mexican citizens, fulfilled military obligation, campesinos without land, young (and preferred single).  They passed a physical exam in Mexico with Mexican doctors paid by US funds. Most of them paid a mordida in Mexico for the privilege.

The U.S. set up receiving stations.  The incoming braceros were sprayed with DDT and assigned to employers.  These were the growers who had completed a process of certifying that there were no domestic workers available, that they agreed to provide transportation from the border and back for periods of 6 weeks or so, would give “prevailing wage,” and housing.  Food costs and 10% of their wages were deducted, to be deposited in a Mexican bank for the purpose of purchasing farming instruments and supporting the returning braceros.

The bracero program matured in phases, first the looser experiment, then more institutionalized with PL 78, and finally dying for lack of US support. It always competed with domestic farm labor interests and was an impediment to local organizing efforts. 

The agreement became increasingly controlled after 1944 and manipulated by the growers and their associations, acting almost as a union would, with the Mexican government at first the representative of their citizens and protector of their rights and treatment.  Complaints from the braceros were centered on the food they were provided, the records kept, the housing, and the dangerous transportation, resulting in accidents.  And as far as the formal complaints made, they were officially small and those were centered mostly on the number of work hours they were provided, as little as 2-3 hours a day. 

The negotiations reached congressional level by the time of President John F. Kennedy and the Democrats ideas of the New Frontier and War on Poverty, which swung farther to the side of the domestic farmworkers and ended the program in 1964. The farmers had to deal now with growing unionization and strikes as the domestic workers began to demand even the basic advantages the braceros had received—housing, transportation, health care, insurance (though still inadequate). It set the stage immediately for the organization of the fields against the associations of the growers.  

At the same time farm work had changed, mechanized.  The greatest need for braceros in the southwest and our valley was for cotton and fruit. Cotton was 90% hand-picked when the program began and only 5% not by machine when it ended. Family farms also declined especially from 1950-1957, as large growers and agribusiness grew.

For those 22 years, the nascent organizing of farmworkers was almost impossible. With growers able to get a supply of legal workers, domestic ones had no leverage.  And when the legal supply was not enough, there was always the illegal ones, in this period termed “wetbacks,” with very little risk at lower cost and deportations if needed.  Growers had argued that Mexican workers were better, more dependable, suited to stoop labor, and that the money they sent to Mexico was a form of foreign aid.  Labor argued that the reason domestic workers were not as desirable was the wages paid.

When in the mid-50s the “wetback” workers outnumbered the braceros and were collecting at the border in great numbers to cross, in 1954 a rush across the border overwhelmed the system. For a short period that was solved by arranging for those apprehended to return to Calexico, pay $25 fee (grower), step one foot in Mexico and then reclaim entry as a returning laborer. It didn’t last long. The growing problem had to be solved by another wave of mass deportations. “Operation Wetback of 1954 “ is one of the incidents in history that has resonance today

One of the problems both governments wished to solve with the controlled legal immigration of the bracero program was that of the ebb and flow of the uncontrolled border crossing of those more destitute or unable to get in the bracero program, the “illegals” or “wetbacks,” as the term used in this period.  Even Mexico had advocated for more strict penalties for hiring these persons who migrated and assembled at the border, to cross a river or a desert.  But the growers saw them as an extra resource of labor, cheaper and deportable when not needed and contributed to the attraction.  Thus, there were three pools of workers for agricultural needs.  By 1954 there were 309,033 braceros legally in the U.S. and over 1 million estimated “wetbacks.”  The wave of anti Mexican hysteria that was triggered by an economic downturn, resulted in an almost military approach to mass deportation, separating families, stranding deportees across the border, and damaging U.S. reputation.

Deportees taken by plane and crashing in Coalinga on January 28, 1948, became known through versions of the song by Arlo Guthrie and sung by Joan Baez and valley musicians. Local author Tim Hernandez researched and wrote a book about the incident, “Know you by your Names,” and led a broad effort to identify those who died in the incident and honor their memories.

In 1963 there was a showdown in Congress that ended the Bracero program.  Labor had finally found a favorable administration.  Highlighting the problem, in September thirty two braceros were killed and injured in a bus collision with a train in the Salinas Valley. The CBS Documentary “Harvest of Shame” in 1960 had also brought the situation of poverty into the open, and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath was also used to highlight the plight of farmworkers. Mexico still wanted the last extension, which Kennedy granted 1962-1963 to allow them to adjust to the consequences. By 1960 only 2% of the farm labor were braceros.

In 1964, with the end of the bracero program, the Department of Labor proposed to use high school students during the peak summer harvest season. It would address the need for student summer jobs and select top athletic students.  They needed 20,000 students, but the program failed from the start, when only about 3,000 showed up. Students could not endure the conditions that the Braceros experienced—start before dawn, sometimes 110 degrees, rain, and bologna sandwiches.  

About 10% of the Bracero’s wages were withheld between 1942 and 1949, sent from U.S. banks to Mexican banks. The Mexican government had no records of the savings.  After lawsuits, the Mexican government created a fund to compensate survivors and their families up to $3,500 if they could prove their claim with documentation. The controversy is still being resolved. 

I am one of those old men of fifty years who, with my eleven children, has formed part of that flock of field hands who are dazed and brutalized by misery. I have seen my little children seek sleep’s refuge in order to quiet their hungry stomachs; I have heard them talk in their sleep and their words make it clear that they are dreaming of bread; I have been driven crazy by a desperation that has made me unjust, cruel, and coarse to my self-sacrificing companion; I have cheated, tricked, and deceived the shopkeepers; I have tried to find the solution to my problems in gambling, with counterproductive results, and I have sought befuddlement in liquor. I have felt the temptation of suicide, murder, ad theft; and I have dreamed of money, of lots of money—money to buy bread, housing, health, and education for my family. The life of field workers in the U.S. is disgraceful!  When they work, they live in agony, and when they don’t work they agonize and die, or watch their families die without knowing how to avoid it!

When someone wanted to stretch their back, the crew boss would yell, “Hey, bend over, I don’t want to see any posts!

Daniel Caudillo, Lindsay, California 

I rubbed my hands with a dried-up corn cob until they bled so that I could get calluses.

Joe Ruiz, Porterville California