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*A minor character in the classic 1948 Mexican film ''[[Nosotros los pobres]]'' wants to become a ''bracero''.
*A minor character in the classic 1948 Mexican film ''[[Nosotros los pobres]]'' wants to become a ''bracero''.
*The 1949 film ''[[Border Incident]]'' looks at the problem.
*The 1949 film ''[[Border Incident]]'' looks at the problem.
*Tom Lehrer's song [[George Murphy]]


== See also ==
== See also ==

Revision as of 02:22, 5 July 2009

"Bracero" redirects here. For the sportscaster, see Rafael Bracero.
The first Braceros arrive in Los Angeles by train in 1942. Photograph by Dorothea Lange

The Bracero Program (from the Spanish word brazo, meaning arm) was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated by an August 1942 exchange of diplomatic notes between the United States and Mexico, for the importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States. After the expiration of the initial agreement in 1947, the program was continued in agriculture under a variety of laws and administrative agreements until its formal end in 1964.

History

"Mexican workers await legal employment in the United States", Mexicali, 1954

The program was initially prompted by a demand for manual labor during World War II, and begun with the U.S. government bringing in a few hundred experienced Mexican agricultural laborers to harvest sugar beets in the Stockton, California area. The program soon spread to cover most of the United States and provided workers for the agriculture labor market (with the notable exception was Texas, who initially opted out of the program in preference of an "open border" policy, and were denied braceros by the Mexican government until 1947 due to perceived mistreatment of Mexican laborers[1]). As an important corollary, the railroad bracero program was independently negotiated to supply U.S. railroads initially with unskilled workers for track maintenance but eventually to cover other unskilled and skilled labor. By 1945, the quota for the agricultural program was more than 75,000 braceros working in the U.S. railroad system and 50,000 braceros working in U.S. agriculture at any one time.

The railroad program ended with the conclusion of World War II, in 1945.

At the behest of U.S. growers, who claimed ongoing labor shortages, the program was extended under a number of acts of congress until 1948. Between 1948 and 1951, the importation of Mexican agricultural labors continued under negotiated administrative agreements between growers and the Mexican Government. On July 13, 1951, President Truman signed Public Law 78, a two-year program which embodied formalized protections for Mexican laborers. The program was renewed every two years until 1963, when, under heavy criticism, it was extended for a single year with the understanding it would not be renewed. After the formal end of the agricultural program lasted until 1964, there were agreements covering a much smaller number of contracts until 1967, after which no more braceros were granted.[2]

Year Number of Braceros Applicable US Law
1942 4,203 (wartime)
1943 (44,600)[3] (wartime)
1944 62,170 (wartime)
1945 (44,600) (wartime)
1946 (44,600) Public Law 45
1947 (30,000)[4] PL 45, PL 40
1948 (30,000) Public Law 893
1948-50 (79,000/yr)[5] Period of administrative agreements
1951 192,000[6] AA/Public Law 78
1952 197,100 Public Law 78
1953 201,380 Public Law 78
1954 309,033 Public Law 78
1955 398,650 Public Law 78
1956 445,197 Public Law 78
1957 436,049 Public Law 78
1958 432,491 Public Law 78
1959 444,408 Public Law 78
1960 319,412 Public Law 78
1961 296,464 Public Law 78
1962 198,322 Public Law 78
1963 189,528 Public Law 78
1964 179,298 Public Law 78
1965 20,286 (after formal end of program)
1966 8,647
1967 7,703

The program in agriculture was justified in the U.S. largely as an alternative to undocumented immigration, and seen as a complement to efforts to deport undocumented immigrants such as Operation "Wetback", under which 1,075,168 Mexicans were deported in 1954.[7] Scholars who have closely studied Mexican migration in this period have questioned this interpretation[8], emphasizing instead the complementary nature of legal and illegal migration.[9]. Scholars of this school suggest that the decision to hire Mexicans through the Bracero Program or via extra-legal contractors depended mostly on which seemed more suitable to needs of agribusiness employers, attributing the expansion of the Bracero Program in the late 50s to the relaxation of enforcement of regulations on Bracero wages, housing, and food charges[10].

The workers who participated in the Bracero Program have generated significant local and international struggles challenging the US government and Mexican government to identify and return deductions taken from their pay, from 1942 to 1948, for savings accounts which they were legally guaranteed to receive upon their return to Mexico at the conclusion of their contracts. Many never received their savings. Lawsuits presented in federal courts in California, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, highlighted the substandard conditions and documented the ultimate destiny of the savings accounts deductions, but the suit was thrown out because the Mexican banks in question never operated in the United States.

Importance

Even though the United States had made use of migrant Mexican labor in its agricultural sector since the early 1900s, such labor tended to be both migratory and seasonal with many workers returning back to Mexico in the winter. The situation changed with the involvement of the United States in WWII that created a massive labor shortage in all sectors of the economy with the withdrawal of much of the nations active labor force into the various armed services. The extreme labor shortage forced a change in immigration policy for the United States that resulted in development of the Bracero Program in conjunction with Mexico. The Bracero Program was a guest worker program that ran between the years of 1942 and 1964. Over the twenty-two year period, The Mexican Farm Labor Program, informally known as the Bracero Program, sponsored some 4.5 million border crossings of guest workers from Mexico (some among these representing repeat visits by returned braceros).

The growing realization among businesses was that provisions within the program ensured an increase of costs for the imported labor. The program mandated a certain level of wages, housing, food and medical care for the workers (to be paid for by the employers) that kept the standard of living above what many had in Mexico. Not only did this enable many to send funds home to their families, but it also had the unintended effect of encouraging illegal immigration when the USA's workers quotas were met. These new illegal workers could not be employed "above the table" as part of the program leaving them open for exploitation. This resulted in the lowering of wages and not receiving the benefits that the Mexican government had negotiated to insure their legal workers well being under the bracero program. This in turn, had the effect of eroding support for the program in the agricultural sector for the legal importation of workers from Mexico in favor of hiring Illegal immigrants to reduce overhead costs. The advantages of hiring illegal workers were that they were willing to work for lower wages, without support, health coverage or in many cases legal means to address abuses by the employers for fear of deportation. Nevertheless, conditions for the poor and unemployed within Mexico were such that illegal employment was attractive enough to motivate many to leave in search of work within the United States illegally, even if that directly competed with the legal workers within the bracero program leading to its discontinuation.

Labor unions which tried to organize agricultural workers after WWII targeted the Bracero program as a key impediment to improving the wages of domestic farm workers[11]. These unions included the National Farm Laborers Union (NFLU), later called the National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), headed by Ernesto Galarza, and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), AFL-CIO. During his tenure with the Community Service Organization, César Chávez was given a grant by the AWOC to organize in Oxnard, California which culminated in a protest of domestic U.S. agricultural workers of the U.S. Department of Labor's administration of the program.[12] In January of 1961, in an effort to publicize the effects of bracero labor on labor standards, the AWOC led a strike of lettuce workers at 18 farms in the Imperial Valley, an agricultural region on the California-Mexico border and a major destination for braceros.[13]

The end of the Bracero program in 1964 was followed by the rise to prominence of the United Farm Workers, and the subsequent transformation of American migrant labor under the leadership of César Chávez. Dolores Huerta was also a leader and early organizer of the United Farm Workers. According to Manuel Garcia y Griego, a political scientist and author of The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States 1942-1964, [14] the Contract-Labor Program

“left an important legacy for the economies, migration patterns, and politics of the United States and Mexico.”

Griego’s article discusses the bargaining position of both countries, arguing that the Mexican government lost all real bargaining power after 1950.

The guest worker program continued until 1964. [15]

Cultural References

  • Woody Guthrie's poem "Plane Wreck At Los Gatos Canyon," set to music by Martin Hoffman and commonly known as Deportee, commemorates the deaths of 28 braceros being repatriated to Mexico in January 1948. The song has been recorded by dozens of prominent folk artists.
  • Protest singer Phil Ochs's song, "Bracero", focuses on the exploitation of the Mexican workers in the program.
  • A minor character in the classic 1948 Mexican film Nosotros los pobres wants to become a bracero.
  • The 1949 film Border Incident looks at the problem.
  • Tom Lehrer's song George Murphy

See also

Sources

  1. ^ Navarro, Armando, Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlán (2005)
  2. ^ Navarro, Armando, Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlán (2005)
  3. ^ average for '43,'45,'46 calculated from total of 220,000 braceros contracted '42-'47, cited in Navarro, Armando, Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlán (2005)
  4. ^ average for '47,'48 calculated from total of 74,600 braceros contracted '47-49, cited in Navarro, Armando, Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlán (2005)
  5. ^ average calculated from total of 401,845 braceros under the period of negotiated administrative agreements, cited in Navarro, Armando, Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlán (2005)
  6. ^ Data 1951-1967 cited in Gutiérrez, David Gregory, Between two worlds (1996)
  7. ^ Navarro, Armando, Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlán (2005)
  8. ^ Navarro, Armando, Mexicano political experience in occupied Aztlán (2005)
  9. ^ Galarza, Ernesto Farmworkers and Agri-business in California, 1947-1960 (1976)
  10. ^ Martin, Philip "The Bracero Program: Was It a Failure?" 7/3/2006 [1]
  11. ^ Ferris, Susan, and Sandoval, Ricardo, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement (1997)
  12. ^ Ferris, Susan, and Sandoval, Ricardo, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement (1997)
  13. ^ Los Angeles Times, 1/23/1961 "Lettuce Farm Strike Part of Deliberate Union Plan"
  14. ^ Manuel García y Griego, “The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States, 1942-1964,” in David G. Gutiérrez, ed. Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources,1996), 45-85
  15. ^ Braceroarchive[2]
2. Handbook of Texas Online[3]

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bracero_Program&oldid=300338137"