Interviews with other participants in the program assess its effectiveness and lasting impact. These discussions mirror and inform current debates about immigration and the role of imported labor in our economic development. Some of the images show the arrival of the first braceros by train, and some of these photographs were taken by photographer Dorothea Lange as part of a government assignment to document this event.
President Franklin Roosevelt asked the Department of State to negotiate an agreement with Mexico on the importation of foreign labor. Providing the U.
The Bracero Program was established by an executive order issued by President Roosevelt in July and formally initiated on August 4, , when representatives of the United States and Mexico signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement. While intended to last only until the end of the war, the program was extended by the Migrant Labor Agreement in and was not terminated until the end of Under the basic terms of the agreement, temporary Mexican farm workers were to be paid a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour and guaranteed decent living conditions, including sanitation, housing, and food.
While the Bracero Program did assist the United States war effort and forever advanced the productivity of American agriculture, it suffered from significant political and social problems.
From to , only about , Mexican braceros were hired, amounting to less than 10 percent of the total number of workers hired in the U. By the time the program ended in , the number of undocumented Mexican workers who had entered the U.
However, by , the rapidly growing number of undocumented migrants drove the United States to launch " Operation Wetback "—still the largest deportation sweep in American history. Over the two years of the operation, over 1. Between and , over a dozen strikes and work stoppages were staged, mainly in the Pacific Northwest, by braceros protesting racial discrimination, low wages, and poor working and living conditions. The most notable of these was the strike at the Blue Mountain Cannery in Dayton, Washington, during which Mexican braceros and Japanese American workers joined forces.
The U. Calling the order a case of racial discrimination, some Mexican braceros and Japanese American farm workers went on strike just as the pea harvest was about to begin. Concerned for the success of the critical harvest, local officials called for the U. Two days later, the strike ended as the workers returned to the fields to complete a record pea harvest. Employers in the states adjoining the border from California to Texas found it easier to threaten braceros with deportation.
Knowing they could be easily and quickly replaced, braceros in the Southwest were more likely to grudgingly accept lower wages and worse living and working conditions than those in the Northwest. Throughout its year existence, the Bracero Program was besieged by accusations from civil rights and farm labor activists like Cesar Chavez that many braceros suffered gross mistreatment—sometimes bordering on enslavement—at the hands of their U.
Braceros complained of unsafe housing, overt racial discrimination, repeated disputes over unpaid wages, the absence of health care, and lack of representation.
In some cases, workers were housed in converted barns or tents without running water or sanitary facilities. They were often herded on poorly maintained and unsafely driven buses and trucks to be taken to and from the fields.
In Mexico, the Catholic Church objected to the Bracero program because it disrupted of family life by separating husbands and wives; tempted the migrants to drink, gamble, and visit prostitutes; and exposed them to Protestant missionaries in the United States. Starting in , the American Catholic Church assigned priests to some bracero communities and engaged in outreach programs specifically for the migrant braceros.
When the Bracero Program ended in , American farmers complained to the government that the Mexican workers had done jobs that Americans refused to do and that their crops would rot in the fields without them. In response, U.
Secretary of Labor W. Matt: Totally, totally. It was sometime after we started collecting and some accepted because of the, their age, they were very old. They might as well take something. Some took it because they were dubious of the government ever improving on their offer, but many actually resisted.
You know, the other thing that I found so fascinating, so initially, right, Roosevelt talked about, you know, the, the Mexican labor coming to United States as kind of part of the war effort, right? Like an act of support for the United States. And really speaking in such positive terms about this labor force, really what he was talking about was ultimately a very, you know, in , a really small part of the program overall because it was tens of thousands of workers, but then became hundreds of thousands of workers after the war.
And then there was this Operation Wetback I suppose, which was this, you know, also agreement between the U. Initially, this immigration was sort of celebrated, at least, you know, in words, not certainly by actions and certainly how these, these workers are received and treated on the ground. But then, you know, this also became the beginning of a really permanent border presence at the U.
And it seems like this whole sort of trajectory of the Bracero program really came to define so much of our current border situation and guest worker programs, and the immigration system, overall. Can you sort of speak to what you make of all of this and also, you know, this deportation program and in the 50s, why was, why was that initiated?
They saved the crop. So this premise that they were needed to save the crops that they were needed because the workforce was going to the front lines was frankly just B. Matt: No, I think it was an excuse to get access to labor that was exploitable. That was, was knowledgeable actually, you know, as an agricultural state, Mexico, there were people that had been traveling to the United States as early as right after the U.
And this was just a way to kind of create a regulatory system by which they can bring Mexican workers in that they can control, they can keep the cost of labor down, and then to expel those that proved themselves to be radical and a problem in the fields. The other thing that they did, which is I think noteworthy, is that they increasingly saw undocumented immigrants coming in because, you know, because Mexico was willing so many Mexicans into, indiscriminately into the program, and there was never enough contracts to meet the demand that farm owners just began to see the benefits of circumventing the program and the government and just employing undocumented workers for less money than the Braceros.
But because of the demand for labor on the northern side of the border, the United States, because of the struggles in Mexico and the grinding poverty, and the Mexican can state trying to create a kind of safety valve for that potentially revolutionary population, there was always more people needing the work not enough contracts for a system that could keep up with that demand.
And so ultimately, undocumented workers kind of overwhelmed the Bracero program. Lindsey: And I guess, you know, the, the root of this relationship between the U. I wondered if you could just speak to that a bit, like the root cause of why workers from Mexico want to come to the United States? Matt: Oh Gosh. I goes so deep, right? The standard living wage in Mexico is far lower than the United States.
But if you go further back in time, I mean, part of this is a kind of semi colonial relationship. Lindsey: What are the threads between this population of Braceros coming into the U. This was a period in which the last great attempt to build a comprehensive immigration reform act was in process. And what was so interesting and kind of surreal about that, that process is that they were, they were proposing a new guest worker program.
I think they called it an an H5 or something like that, without citing or even acknowledging that there was exploitation in the original Bracero program.
It was just presumed to be the best path. But of course it did happen from to Lindsey: Well, the program has improved considerably. I mean, there are problems with the program, certainly. There was incidents of people having their visas or their passports taken away and held hostage until they served a certain amount of time without pay in fields across the United States.
So that would be the first and most important thing. What I think is important though is recognize that we live in a world where people are on the move. And there are mostly undocumented. What you need is pathways to citizenship. You need security for those people. Lindsey: You know, the undocumented workers that are currently in a country, you know, they have quite a harrowing journey to get to get to those farms.
And you know, so much of the national conversation these days is specifically about the border. And we have, how do we manage the border and who comes across? Do you have thoughts on just immigration in general? Like should there, I, would you advocate for just a more free flow of, of workers across, across the border?
What is the thinking on that? Like what would be a more just system outside of a guest worker program? But what I would say is, is that those border crossings and border management be there to facilitate a peaceful, just, mobility that is actually serving, if done right, both sending country and receiving country. You know, because today the United States is so dependent on sectors of their economy, of our economy is so dependent on immigrant labor.
Lindsey: So, you know for me, this brings up another question.
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