Case:                          Bracero program and Mexican immigration in WWII

 

Theme:                       Cultural Contact & Conflict

 

Time Period:              World War II  (1942-1964)

 

I.          Overview of Case Topic:

 

Originally an emergency program to address agricultural labor shortages in World War II, the Bracero program brought 4.8 million Mexican workers to the United States between 1943 and 1964.  Mexicans admitted under this program were classified as foreign laborers, not as immigrants.  The United States and Mexican governments negotiated a series of bilateral implementation agreements, including the Official Bracero Agreement (August 4, 1942) and Public Law 78 (1951).  Agreements reflected Mexican government attempts to protect Mexican laborers from discrimination and assure adequate transportation, salary and living conditions, and U.S. government efforts to ensure a regular supply of farm labor in a program that would not displace American workers.  Eventually, the agreement was allowed to expire because the government and general public believed Braceros displaced American workers and unfairly dampened U.S. wages. 

 

The Bracero program greatly impacted Mexican immigration to the United States in the postwar period by creating enduring migration and settlement patterns between communities in Mexico and job sites in the U.S.  Furthermore, farm labor conditions exacerbated by the Bracero program led directly to the farm labor movement led by Cesar Chavez of the 1960s and 1970s. 

 

 

II.  Connection to Theme/Time Matrix: 

 

As a Cultural Contact and Conflict case study, this case focuses on the intended and unintended social consequences of the Bracero program in the World War II period and beyond.  During the World War II and early Cold War era (1942 – 1960), social change lagged behind economic expansion.  In a society opposed to the immigration of people of color, whether Asians, Africans, or Latinos, a temporary agricultural program to address labor shortages seemed to be a perfect solution.  Instead the Bracero program set in place the permanent settlement of millions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S.  It would be possible to consider Braceros as an American Dream case with some of the same resources cited below by shifting the focus from the federal program to the Mexican laborers who participated in the program.

III.  Historical Questions:

 

Why was there a labor shortage in the United States in 1942?

 

Did Mexicans have a history of providing labor in the United States prior to this period?

 

What members of the U.S. and Mexican federal governments negotiated and signed the Official Bracero Agreement?

 

What provisions in the Official Bracero Agreement applied to children? 

 

To how many different states did laborers go?  Which states took the largest number of Braceros? 

 

How were Mexicans recruited for the Bracero program? 

 

From the photographs of laborers in Oregon, what kind of jobs did Braceros fill?

 

Looking at the reports of abuses, what were some ways growers took advantage of Mexican laborers?

 

Why might workers have continued in their jobs in spite of abuses?

 

Why did the U.S. Department of Labor advocate to end the program?

 

How did the Bracero program have the unintended consequence of increasing permanent migration from Mexico? 

 

In what ways are recent efforts by the Fox and Bush administrations to implement a temporary agricultural worker program reminiscent of the Bracero program? 

 

 

IV.  Resources:

 

A.  Secondary:  Monograph Books

 

Calavita, Kitty.  Inside the State : The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S.  New York : Routledge, 1992.

 

Gamboa, Erasmo.  Mexican Labor & World War II : Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1942-1947.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

 

Gutierrez, David.  Walls and Mirrors:  Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity.  Berkeley, CA, 1995.

 

Velez-Ibanez, Carlos.  Border Visions:  Mexican Cultures of the Southwest United States.  Tucson, AZ, 1996.

 

 

B.  Secondary:  Edited Compilations and Articles

 

Gamboa, Erasmo. "Braceros in the Pacific Northwest:  Laborers on the Domestic Front, 1942-1947."  Pacific Historical Review 1987 56(3): 378-398.

 

Gamboa, Erasmo and Carolyn M. Buan, editors.  Nosotros : the Hispanic People

of Oregon : Essays and Recollections.  Portland, OR: Oregon Council for the

Humanities, 1995.

 

C.  Primary:  Archival (Available locally and through the TAH Website)

 

RG 111, Extension Service Records.  Oregon State University Archives.  The county extension office annual reports for the counties, including Douglas, in which Braceros worked often include a section on how many Braceros worked in the county and what type of work they did.  Some of the reports also discuss problems faced by workers.  The reports are on microfilm.  For the archival finding aid, see osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/archives/archive/rg/rg111des.html.

 

Oregon State College Extension Circular 492, January 1947.  “Fighters on the Farm-Front:  A Story of the 1943-1946 Oregon Emergency Farm Labor Program.”  This publication provides an overview of the groups, including the Braceros, that helped cultivate and harvest Oregon’s crops during WWII.  It has statewide statistical information. 

 

 

 

D.  Primary:  Websites

 

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).  Arc search:  Enter the word “bracero” in the search form at the following site to get links to 22 original documents between 1950 and 1963:   http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/basic_search.jsp.   Documents include press release from U.S. Department of Labor, "Federal Stop-Order on Indio Farmer" (USDL-IX-59S56), San Francisco, August 3, 1959, a list of employers of Bracero workers, Bureau of Employment Security Region X (San Francisco), 02/12/1964, and a transcribed news story "U.S. Charges Falsifying of Bracero Pay Books" from Los Angeles Times, 12/07/1962.

 

Braceros in Oregon photograph collection, Photographic images taken between 1942 and 1949 of Bracero program in Oregon, stored at Oregon State University.  The 102 photographs in this collection document the activities of Oregon's Bracero workers - their cultivation and harvesting work in the fields and orchards as well as the farm labor camps in which they lived.

 

The Official Bracero Agreement, August 4, 1942.  Available from University of

California at http://are.berkeley.edu/APMP/pubs/agworkvisa/braceroagreemt42.html

 

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=356&invol=44  Perez v. Brownell, 1958 Supreme Court case revoking citizenship of Clemente Martinez Perez, born in El Paso, Texas.

 

American University Case Study:  Los Braceros.  http://www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/bracero.htm

 

Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies film project:  Finding Matias, about an undocumented agricultural worker who died of thirst crossing the U.S. Mexico border in 2003.  The village in southern Mexico began sending agricultural farm workers to California as part of the Bracero Program in the 1950s.  http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7001/Events/fall2004/10-20-04-lomonaco/index.html.