Bracero Program
The Bracero Program (from the Spanish term bracero [bɾaˈse.ɾo], meaning "manual laborer" or "one who works using his arms") was a U.S. Government-sponsored program that imported Mexican farm and railroad workers into the United States between the years 1942 and 1964.
The program, which was designed to fill agriculture shortages during World War II, offered employment contracts to 5 million braceros in 24 U.S. states. It was the largest foreign worker program in U.S. history.[1]
The program was the result of a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico.[2] For these farmworkers, the agreement guaranteed decent living conditions (sanitation, adequate shelter, and food) and a minimum wage of 30 cents an hour, as well as protections from forced military service, and guaranteed that a part of wages was to be put into a private savings account in Mexico. The program also allowed the importation of contract laborers from Guam as a temporary measure during the early phases of World War II.[3]
The agreement was extended with the Migrant Labor Agreement of 1951 (Pub. L. 82–78), enacted as an amendment to the Agricultural Act of 1949 by the United States Congress,[4] which set the official parameters for the Bracero Program until its termination in 1964.[1]
In studies published in 2018 and 2023, it was found that the Bracero Program did not have an adverse effect on the wages or employment for American-born farm workers, [5] and that termination of the program had adverse impact on American-born farmers and resulted in increased farm mechanization.[6]
Since abolition of the Bracero Program, temporary agricultural workers have been admitted with H-2 and H-2A visas.
1951 negotiations to termination[edit]
American growers longed for a system that would admit Mexican workers and guarantee them an opportunity to grow and harvest their crops, and place them on the American market. Thus, during negotiations in 1948 over a new bracero program, Mexico sought to have the United States impose sanctions on American employers of undocumented workers.
President Truman signed Public Law 78 (which did not include employer sanctions) in July 1951.[12][13] Soon after it was signed, United States negotiators met with Mexican officials to prepare a new bilateral agreement. This agreement made it so that the U.S. government were the guarantors of the contract, not U.S. employers. The braceros could not be used as replacement workers for U.S. workers on strike; however, the braceros were not allowed to go on strike or renegotiate wages. The agreement set forth that all negotiations would be between the two governments.[1]
A year later, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was passed by the 82nd United States Congress whereas President Truman vetoed the U.S. House immigration and nationality legislation on June 25, 1952.[14] The H.R. 5678 bill conceded a federal felony for knowingly concealing, harboring, or shielding a foreign national or illegal immigrant.[15] However the Texas Proviso stated that employing unauthorized workers would not constitute as "harboring or concealing" them. This also led to the establishment of the H-2A visa program,[16] which enabled laborers to enter the U.S. for temporary work. There were a number of hearings about the United States–Mexico migration, which overheard complaints about Public Law 78 and how it did not adequately provide them with a reliable supply of workers. Simultaneously, unions complained that the braceros' presence was harmful to U.S. workers.[9]
The outcome of this meeting was that the United States ultimately got to decide how the workers would enter the country by way of reception centers set up in various Mexican states and at the United States border. At these reception centers, potential braceros had to pass a series of examinations. The first step in this process required that the workers pass a local level selection before moving onto a regional migratory station where the laborers had to pass a number of physical examinations.
Lastly, at the U.S. reception centers, workers were inspected by health departments, stripped & sprayed with DDT a dangerous pesticide.[9][17]
They were then sent to contractors that were looking for workers.[9] Operations were primarily run by the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) along with other military personnel. Braceros frequently dealt with harassment from these officials and could be kept for extended periods of time in the examination rooms.[18] These rooms held as many as 40 men at a time, and migrants would have to wait 6 or more hours to be examined.[18] According to first hand accounts, personnel would often process 800 to 1600 braceros at a time and, on occasion, upwards of 3100.[18] The invasive health procedures and overcrowded processing centers would continue to persist throughout the program's 22-year tenure.[18]
To address the overwhelming amount of undocumented migrants in the United States, the Immigration and Naturalization Service launched Operation Wetback in June 1954, as a way to repatriate illegal laborers back to Mexico. The illegal workers who came over to the states at the initial start of the program were not the only ones affected by this operation, there were also massive groups of workers who felt the need to extend their stay in the U.S. well after their labor contracts were terminated.[9]
In the first year, over a million Mexicans were sent back to Mexico; 3.8 million were repatriated when the operation was finished. The criticisms of unions and churches made their way to the U.S. Department of Labor, as they lamented that the braceros were negatively affecting the U.S. farmworkers in the 1950s. In 1955, the AFL and CIO spokesman testified before a Congressional committee against the program, citing lack of enforcement of pay standards by the Labor Department.[19] The Department of Labor eventually acted upon these criticisms and began closing numerous bracero camps in 1957–1958, they also imposed new minimum wage standards and in 1959 they demanded that American workers recruited through the Employment Service be entitled to the same wages and benefits as the braceros.[20]
The Department of Labor continued to try to get more pro-worker regulations passed, however the only one that was written into law was the one guaranteeing U.S. workers the same benefits as the braceros, which was signed in 1961 by President Kennedy as an extension of Public Law 78. After signing, Kennedy said, "I am aware ... of the serious impact in Mexico if many thousands of workers employed in this country were summarily deprived of this much-needed employment." Thereupon, bracero employment plummeted; going from 437,000 workers in 1959 to 186,000 in 1963.[9]
During a 1963 debate over extension, the House of Representatives rejected an extension of the program. However, the Senate approved an extension that required U.S. workers to receive the same non-wage benefits as braceros. The House responded with a final one-year extension of the program without the non-wage benefits, and the Bracero Program saw its demise in 1964.[9]
Aftermath[edit]
After the 1964 termination of the Bracero Program, the A-TEAM, or Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower, program of 1965 was meant to simultaneously deal with the resulting shortage of farmworkers and a shortage of summer jobs for teenagers.[64] More than 18,000 17-year-old high school students were recruited to work on farms in Texas and California. Only 3,300 ever worked in the fields, and many of them quickly quit or staged strikes because of the poor working conditions, including oppressive heat and decrepit housing.[64] The program was cancelled after the first summer.
Significance and effects[edit]
The Catholic Church in Mexico was opposed to the Bracero Program, objecting to the separation of husbands and wives and the resulting disruption of family life; to the supposed exposure of migrants to vices such as prostitution, alcohol, and gambling in the United States; and to migrants' exposure to Protestant missionary activity while in the United States.[65][66] Starting in 1953, Catholic priests were assigned to some bracero communities,[65] and the Catholic Church engaged in other efforts specifically targeted at braceros.[66]
Labor unions that tried to organize agricultural workers after World War II targeted the Bracero Program as a key impediment to improving the wages of domestic farm workers.[67] 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 received a grant from 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.[67] In January 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.[68]
Prior to the end of the Bracero Program in 1964, The Chualar Bus Crash in Salinas, California made headlines illustrating just how harsh braceros situations were in California. In the accident 31 braceros lost their lives in a collision with a train and a bracero transportation truck. This particular accident led activist groups from agriculture and the cities to come together and strongly oppose the Bracero Program.[69] According to Manuel Garcia y Griego, a political scientist and author of The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States 1942–1964, 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. In addition to the surge of activism in American migrant labor the Chicano Movement was now in the forefront creating a united image on behalf of the fight against the Bracero Program.
The end of the Bracero Program in 1964 was followed by the rise to prominence of the United Farm Workers (UFW) and the subsequent transformation of American migrant labor under the leadership of César Chávez, Gilbert Padilla, and Dolores Huerta. Newly formed labor unions (sponsored by Chávez and Huerta), namely the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, were responsible for series of public demonstrations including the Delano grape strike. These efforts demanded change for labor rights, wages and the general mistreatment of workers that had gained national attention with the Bracero Program. Change ensued with the UFW championing a 40% wage increase for grape farm laborers nationwide.[70] While the federal minimum wage remained at $1.25 per hour, laborers operating under the grape contract made $1.50.[70] In order to avoid increased wages, farmers who formerly employed braceros would later turn to the mechanization of labor-intensive tasks.
Recent scholarship illustrates that the program generated controversy in Mexico from the outset. Mexican employers and local officials feared labor shortages, especially in the states of west-central Mexico that traditionally sent the majority of migrants north (Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacan, Zacatecas). The Catholic Church warned that emigration would break families apart and expose braceros to Protestant missionaries and to labor camps where drinking, gambling, and prostitution flourished. Others deplored the negative image that the braceros' departure produced for the Mexican nation. The political opposition even used the exodus of braceros as evidence of the failure of government policies, especially the agrarian reform program implemented by the post-revolutionary government in the 1930s.[71] On the other hand, historians like Michael Snodgrass and Deborah Cohen demonstrate why the program proved popular among so many migrants, for whom seasonal work in the US offered great opportunities, despite the poor conditions they often faced in the fields and housing camps. They saved money, purchased new tools or used trucks, and returned home with new outlooks and with a greater sense of dignity. Social scientists doing field work in rural Mexico at the time observed these positive economic and cultural effects of bracero migration.[72] The bracero program looked different from the perspective of the participants rather than from the perspective of its many critics in the U.S. and Mexico.
A 1980 Congressional Research Service report found that the Bracero Program was "instrumental" in significantly reducing illegal immigration by the mid-1950s.[73] The end of the program saw a rise in Mexican legal immigration between 1963 and 1972, as many Mexican men who had already lived in the United States chose to return, bringing along their families.[74] The dissolution of the Bracero program also saw a rise in undocumented immigration, despite the efforts of Operation Wetback, and American growers hired increasing numbers of undocumented migrants.[75]
The aftermath of the Bracero Program's effect on labor conditions for agricultural workers continues to be debated. On one hand, the end of the program allowed workers to unionize and facilitated victories made by labor organizations and other individuals. A key victory for these former braceros was the abolition of the short-handed hoe, el cortito, spurred by the efforts of American lawyer Maurice Jordan. Jordan was successfully able to win a case against California growers, claiming that the tool did not increase crop yield and caused several health issues for workers.[76]
However, the unionization efforts of the United Farm Workers, as popular as they were, were increasingly challenged by farm owners in the 1970s. Employers would pit unions against one another as they increasingly hired workers from the Teamster union, for example, that challenged the earlier work done by the UFW to achieve favorable contracts.[77] Furthermore, union participation has decreased among many farmworkers, reaching a 90% decline from 1975 to 2000, consequently lowering the bargaining power of these organizations.[78]
Some consider the H-2A visa program to be a repeat of the abuses of the Bracero Program where workers report dangerous conditions. For example, a blueberry farm worker in Washington died in August 2017 for reported 12-hour shifts under hot conditions to meet production quotas.[79]
A 2018 study published in the American Economic Review found that the Bracero program did not have any adverse impact on the labor market outcomes of American-born farm workers. The study found that ending the Bracero program did not raise wages or employment for American-born farm workers.[5] A 2023 study in the American Economic Journal found that the termination of the program had adverse economic effects on American farmers and prompted greater farm mechanization.[6]
Exhibitions and collections[edit]
In October 2009, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History opened a bilingual exhibition titled, "Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942–1964." Through photographs and audio excerpts from oral histories, this exhibition examined the experiences of bracero workers and their families while providing insight into the history of Mexican Americans and historical context to today's debates on guest worker programs. The exhibition included a collection of photographs taken by photojournalist Leonard Nadel in 1956, as well as documents, objects, and an audio station featuring oral histories collected by the Bracero Oral History Project. The exhibition closed on January 3, 2010. The exhibition was converted to a traveling exhibition in February 2010 and traveled to Arizona, California, Idaho, Michigan, Nevada, and Texas under the auspices of Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.[82]
