A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF BRACERO "GUEST WORKER' PROGRAM

(Ed’s. Note: In the account below, the author recounts the experience of the Bracero Program from 1942 to 1964. As political correctness did not exist then, the authors of some of the publications quoted here openly used the term "wetback". Despite our objection to the use of the term to refer to human beings, we use it sparingly in an effort remain accurate to the work.)

By Juan Montoya

BROWNSVILLE – In a book published in 1953, Ed Idar, Jr., the executive director of the G.I. Forum and Andrew C. McLellan, a Starr County businessman and investigative reporter, researched the effect of the Bracero Agreement on Texas border communities.

Their report titled "What Price Wetbacks?" was supported by Idar’s G.I. Forum and the Texas State Federation of Labor (AFL) and was an indictment against the results of the program.

In a nutshell, the report outlines the reason for the program’s implementation, the results the importation of laborers on domestic workers, and the human and social conditions that braceros and illegal workers faced in South Texas.

Their report focused on the Bracero Program that was in place from 1942 to 1964. Yet, the relationship between U.S. capital and Mexican labor goes much further back.

Although Mexican migratory labor to the Southwest has existed since the 1850s, it was first Chinese labor that filled the labor hole in agriculture in the mid 19th century. Nearly 200,000 Chinese were legally contracted to cultivate California fields. The need of U.S. employees to import foreign manual labor was heightened first by the expansion of cattle ranches in the region, and then by the increase of fruit production in California in 1850 and 1880.

After the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese labor replaced the Chinese in the fields.
Conditions for these workers were generally very poor.
Between 1850 and 1880, about 55,000 Mexican workers immigrated to the United States to become field hands in regions that until 1848 belonged to Mexico. Commercial agriculture, mining, light industry, and of course, the railroad, all worked to lure labor to the southwest.
Events in Mexico – including the Mexican Revolution in 1910 and a ravaged agricultural base – all worked to fuel the migration north.
When World War I broke out, that stream turned into a torrent as the demand for able-bodied workers peaked in agriculture as well as the industry and service fields, the trades (machinists, mechanics, painters, and plumbers), and diverse sectors of the labor market in the United States. Agencies in Mexico recruited for the railway and agriculture industries in this country.
Partly as a result of the workers’ complaints about the bad treatment they received in the United States, the government of Venustiano Carranza in 1920 composed a contract that guaranteed the workers some basic rights framed along the lines of the Mexican Constitution.
This was the first de facto Bracero Program between the two countries.
Not long afterward – in 1924 – the U.S. Border patrol was created and dignified a qualitatively different view of this relationship by the U.S. government. The law now stated that undocumented workers were fugitives from the law. With the advent of this definition, the term "illegal alien" was born.
During the Depression – as today – the doors started closing on Mexican workers as unemployment rose and native-born U.S. citizens eyed the immigrants with suspicion and accused them of lowering wages. During this period, visas were denied to Mexican workers who failed to prove they had secure employment in the United States. Once deported, they were subject to criminal prosecution if they returned and were apprehended.
But just as WWI and its labor shortages led to the importation of Mexican workers, WWII fueled another large migration as American industries and agriculture demanded workers to make up the labor force left wanting because of the entry of U.S. workers entering the military forces.
In 1942, as industry and manufacturers screamed for labor, the U.S. and Mexico entered into the Bracero Program. Millions of Mexican workers were imported into the U.S. as "braceros" to work temporarily on contract to United States growers and ranchers.
Under the program, more than four million workers came to work in the fields leaving their impoverished ranches and rural communities to chasing the rumor of economic boon in the United States.
The program fueled a migration north that changed the social and altered the economic environments of border cities. From Brownsville to El Paso, Mexican workers – those with a bracero contract and those without – crowded these communities seeking a way across the Rio Grande.
Even with a contract, these workers had precious little protection from abuses by U.S. growers. Typical contracts were controlled by independent farmer associations and were written in English, and braceros signed them without realizing the rights they were giving away or the terms of employment. The workers were allowed to return to their native lands only in case of emergency, and required written permission from the employer.
Additionally, when the contracts expired, the braceros were mandated to hand over their permits and return to Mexico.
Whether it was thinning sugar beets, picking cucumbers or weeding and picking cotton, bracero labor turned the Southwest into a lush agricultural center.
However, abuse of these workers and of non-bracero programs was rampant, as demonstrated by the report written by Idar and McLellan.
The men interviewed workers – both illegal and braceros – as well as Border Patrol and compliance officers with the United States employment Service (the precursor of the U.S. Dept. Of Labor).
They reported that while some growers and farmers tried to live by the Bracero Program guidelines (especially in the El Paso and west Texas areas where compliance was more rigid), the growers downriver preferred to hire the "wetback" who was afforded no such protection.
In South Texas, especially from Eagle Pass to Brownsville – they found that growers were paying well below the 50-cent per hour bracero rate to illegal workers, prompting others upriver to stop using braceros and turn to "wetbacks" instead.

These workers were averaging between 20 and 30 cents per hour for 10- to 12-hour days of work in the fields.

"The Lower Valley (Hidalgo, Cameron, Willacy, and Starr counties) is the worst wetback area on the border," they wrote. "Very few farmers bother to use the braceros, preferring to employ the more convenient and cheaper wetback. The general wage is about 25 cents per hour, with the worker, except for one or two camps, living in the brush. Most farmers show little interest in any labor other than wetbacks, and are indignant over any move to deprive them of this labor."

The authors attributed this widespread use of illegal workers for the heavy migration out of the sate by local workers.

"The records show that most of the 100,000 or more Texas citizens who migrate each year for agricultural work return year after year to the same jobs for the same employers," they wrote. "They are searching for a form of temporary seasonal security, and the relatively higher wages to be found in the other areas justify their departure from the 25-cent wage area along the border."

As analysts and labor activists contemplate implementation of new "guest worker " programs, it may serve them well to study the effects of such programs upon U.S. workers who may be affected by these new arrivals on the U.S. labor force.

"The simple fact is that these U.S. migrant citizens of Mexican descent are in the fullest sense of the word "displaced persons" – displaced by hordes of illegal aliens pouring across the Rio Grande to work at starvation wages."