Migration to the United States, which had largely ceased during the Depression, once again surged due to the Second World War labor demands. In the United States, the anti-Mexican feelings of the 1930s were replaced by the perception that Mexicans were a “hard working people.”
The flow of workers out of rural Mexico to the United States formed part of the much larger migration that departed for Mexico City and other Mexican urban areas. Although by U. S. standards Mexicans working in the United States were exploited, for many Mexicans, crossing the border provided a unique opportunity to earn money to support a family, buy land, start a small business, or make an ejido plot more productive.26
The U. S. government, facing a war-induced labor shortage, formally requested a program to bring Mexican labor into the United States. Under the program agreed to by the two nations, Mexican workers known as braceros (from the Spanish word brazo, meaning “arm”) would be contracted to work in the United States for periods of up to six months. The U. S. Department of Agriculture administered the program, contracting workers at recruitment centers in central Mexico and placing them with private U. S. employers, guaranteeing, in theory, adequate wages and working conditions.27
In September 1942, the first braceros began work, harvesting California sugar beets. By July 1945, there were 58,000 braceros working in agriculture and another 62,000 maintaining U. S. railroads. More than 300,000 braceros came north to work during the war. The bracero program benefited the United States by providing low-cost labor. It also benefited growers by lowering U. S. agricultural wages. Mexico gained by exporting surplus labor and receiving remittances. Individual Mexicans, despite their housing, food, and wages often falling below agreed-upon standards, earned far more than they could have had they remained in Mexico.28
After the war, lobbyists for U. S. agricultural interests declared that braceros would still be needed since U. S. citizens would not perform stoop labor. They failed to mention that California’s crops had been harvested by U. S. citizens during the 1930s. In response to the lobbyists’ pleading, Congress extended the bracero program, thus allowing growers to pay wages so low that jobs on their farms would not be attractive to U. S. workers.29
The number of braceros continued to increase until 1959, when it reached a peak of 447,000. After that date, the number of braceros declined due to the mechanization of U. S. agriculture.30
After the Second World War, the bracero program and the presence of undocumented Mexican farm workers came under increased political attack in the United States. The U. S. labor movement viewed braceros and undocumented immigrants as an unmitigated evil—a flooding of the domestic labor market with low-wage workers. The National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), a member of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) called on the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to round up and deport all illegal aliens and declared that braceros and undocumented workers “doomed in advance” any effort to organize farm workers. It therefore lobbied to end the bracero program.31
Civil rights, religious, social-activist, and Mexican—American groups such as the G. I. Forum (a veterans’ group) and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) joined in the chorus demanding an end to bracero labor. Mexican—Americans invoked their citizenship to distinguish themselves from undocumented workers and braceros. They particularly resented braceros enjoying certain privileges that eluded domestic workers. LULAC criticized the INS for “allowing an avalanche of illegal Mexican labor.” In 1948 it sent telegrams to President Truman alleging that the illegal entry of laborers from Mexico constituted “a direct danger to our own citizens” and called for law enforcement to deport them.32
In 1956, NAWU organizer Ernesto Galarza published an influential critique of the bracero program entitled Strangers in our Fields. It was so critical of conditions in the Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation’s grape fields that the company sued Galarza for libel, thus further publicizing the
Figure 23.1 Braceros
Source: University of Texas at El Paso Library, Special Collections Department, Julian Strauss "The Bracero" (M. A. Thesis, UTEP, 44)
Study. Public support for the bracero program was further eroded by the 1960 airing of Edward R. Murrow’s CBS-TV show entitled “Harvest of Shame.” The documentary depicted the physical toil of stoop labor and exposed abuses by growers, including unpaid wages and poor housing.33
U. S. agribusiness, which sought to maintain its access to cheap labor, favored the program’s extension. The other principal advocate of extending the program was the Mexican government. In 1964, Mexico’s Ambassador to the United States Antonio Carrillo Flores accurately predicted that the absence of a bracero agreement
Would not end the problem but rather would give rise to a de facto situation: the illegal introduction of Mexican workers into the United States, which would be extremely prejudicial to the illegal workers and, as experience has shown, would also unfavorably affect American workers, which is precisely what the legislators of the United States are tying to prevent.34
After 1961, with a Democrat in the White House, opponents of the bracero program received a more sympathetic hearing. American liberals, in a time of postwar prosperity, associated Mexican farm laborers with the impoverishment of migratory U. S.-born farm workers and therefore opposed their presence. Given mounting criticism, the U. S. Congress voted not to extend the program beyond December 1964.35
During its twenty-two-year-long history, roughly 4.6 million bracero contracts were signed. This figure overstates the number of individuals involved since many individuals signed on as braceros more than once. In part, the end of the program represented a victory for progressive forces in the United States. However, it also indicated the impact of mechanization on U. S. agriculture. Due to decreased labor demands, agribusiness interests were unwilling to spend their political capital on maintaining the program. Many braceros returned to the same employer as undocumented workers after the program ended. In other cases, employers arranged legal permanent residence for some of their former bracero employees.36
Between 1942 and 1964, even though the bracero program provided legal access to the United States, many Mexicans came to the United States to work illegally. They chose to come illegally so that they could avoid passing through a recruitment center and perhaps having to bribe a Mexican official to be considered for hiring. Undocumented workers could also work outside agriculture and railroads, the areas of employment to which braceros were legally restricted. Many U. S. employers preferred undocumented workers since they did not have to pay transportation costs to the job site, which they had to pay if they hired braceros. There was less monitoring of wages and working conditions if workers worked illegally. Finally, the hiring of undocumented workers could exceed the numerical limits set by the bracero treaty.37
Well before the end of the bracero program, undocumented labor had become a vital part of U. S. agriculture. As Ernesto Galarza observed in Merchants of Labor, his classic book on Mexican agricultural workers in the United States, “In 1952, had every Wetback been suddenly removed from California, commercial agriculture would have been in a serious predicament.” During the twenty-two years the bracero program was in effect, there were 5.3 million apprehensions of undocumented Mexican workers. Since it is generally assumed that less than half of the undocumented workers were apprehended, the number of illegal workers presumably exceeded the number of legally admitted braceros.38
As Ambassador Carrillo Flores had predicted, the expiration of a formal bracero treaty did not halt the flow of Mexican workers into the United States. It simply drove the flow into illegality. Between 1961 and 1965, 222,827 undocumented Mexicans were apprehended and deported. Between 1966 and 1970, after the end of the bracero agreement, 794,964 were deported. During the following five-year period, deportations totaled 2,865,173. Even though the number of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States increased rapidly after the expiration of the bracero agreement, their presence received limited attention since most who came illegally were concentrated in the rural southwest and only stayed a short while before returning to Mexico. Their numbers peaked seasonally when the need for agricultural labor was at a maximum and then decreased in winter when the demand for agricultural labor declined and many returned to celebrate Christmas with their families.39
Braceros and those who entered the United States illegally formed the two main streams of Mexicans coming to work in the United States. Legal immigrants, who numbered 61,000 during the 1940s, formed a third group. During the 1950s, the number of legal immigrants swelled to
300.000. In that decade, Mexico became the third largest source of legal immigrants to the United States, after Canada and Germany. During the 1960s, legal immigrants from Mexico totaled
454.000. Between 1940 and 1970 the number of U. S. residents who were born in Mexico increased from 377,433 to 759,711. This number includes braceros and undocumented workers who had simply remained in the United States, as well as legal immigrants.40
During the Second World War, there was a broad consensus favoring the bracero program. Mexican Foreign Secretary Padilla commented that the program provided Mexicans with “an opportunity to earn high wages, a noble adventure for our youth and above all, proof of our cooperation in the victory of our cause.”41
After the Second World War, Mexican attitudes toward labor migration were mixed. Many Mexicans were embarrassed that their fellow countrymen had to go north to support their families. Mexican trade unions, industrialists, and agricultural interests lamented the loss of labor needed to develop Mexico. The Catholic Church in Mexico opposed the bracero program due to its negative impact on the morals and family life of those who left their families for months at a time. Most
Mexican government officials considered short-term employment in the United States as an “escape valve” that provided Mexico with badly needed foreign exchange. In his 1954 state of the nation address, President Ruiz Cortines optimistically declared, “The difficult problem presented by the departure of Mexican workers to the United States will improve as U. S. authorities adopt more efficient methods of preventing the attraction and hiring of illegal workers.”42
Due to the variety of interests affected and the ups and downs of the economic cycle, the United States had difficulty formulating a coherent policy concerning labor migration from Mexico. Illustrating this cloud of confusion, Roy Rubottom, who occupied the Mexico desk of the State Department in 1950, declared:
Legalization of wetbacks is the most practical method of extricating ourselves from this situation. This approach will make no difference in the Lower Valley [of Texas] . . . since the wetbacks are already there by the thousands and are still flooding in. . . INS has insufficient personnel to carry out its program of rounding up wetbacks. . .43
Due to the recession that followed the end of the Korean War in 1953, the live-and-let-live attitude toward Mexican laborers turned to hostility. Mexican workers were widely proclaimed to be the cause of economic problems, just as Irish and Japanese immigrants had been scapegoated during previous recessions. To remove what was widely felt to be the cause of the recession, Immigration and Naturalization Commissioner Joseph Swing, a retired army general, oversaw the massive deportation of undocumented Mexicans—an undertaking officially known as “Operation Wetback.” The U. S. Border Patrol, assisted by the FBI, the Army, the Navy, customs officials, and federal, state, and county authorities, established roadblocks, boarded trains, deployed spotter aircraft, and cordoned off neighborhoods to detain undocumented workers. Although most apprehensions occurred near the border, workers as far north as Spokane and Chicago were apprehended. General Swing commented, “Operation Wetback was pursued with military efficiency and the result was that over a million wetbacks were expelled from the country in 1954.” Most of those who were included in the “million” were Mexicans who departed voluntarily to avoid detention during the well-publicized operation. The number of voluntary departures was only estimated and likely was inflated to justify increased appropriations for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Operation Wetback transferred to the Mexican side of the border the social dislocations caused by the economic slowdown in U. S. agriculture after the end of the Korean War.44
Once the recession passed, public concern about Mexican labor declined, and the Border Patrol once again relaxed enforcement so that the needs of southwest agribusiness could be met. Those hiring undocumented workers did not face legal sanction thanks to the so-called “Texas clause.” This legislative provision, passed at the urging of the Texas congressional delegation, allowed employers to legally hire workers who had entered the country illegally. During the 1950s, with the exception of the 1953 recession, few even thought about limiting the number of Mexican workers. As U. S. historian Lesley Byrd Simpson commented: “So long as the present factors continue to operate, I don’t think the wetbacks can be stopped. In one way or another the labor vacuum will be filled.”45
The communities in Mexico whose residents worked in the United States benefited from the earnings these workers sent home. In 1957, bracero remittances ranked third, after tourism and cotton, as a foreign exchange earner. Money sent home paid for fertilizer, tractors, plow rental, and family consumption. Returning workers brought new skills and values.
There were also negative aspects to labor migration, such as the tendency of workers with above average educational levels to leave. The loss of workers to the United States produced widespread complaints of labor shortages. In 1944, the governor of Durango lamented that half the schools could not open since teachers had departed to work in the United States. By the 1950s, half the population of ejidos near Ciudad Juarez had crossed the border to work.46
The impact Mexican workers had on U. S. communities where they worked was minimized since most of them stayed in the United States for less than a year and then returned to Mexico. Since many such workers were young and unmarried, they placed few demands for services on the communities in which they worked. Employers grew wealthy as they paid as little as $2.50 for a twelve-hour day in 1950. After factoring in inflation, there had been no increase in agricultural wages in a quarter century. As Julian Samora noted in Los Mojados, his ground-breaking study of undocumented workers, “It goes without saying that growers set the wages, managed the labor supply, encouraged an oversupply of labor, and, with the help of law-enforcement officers, suppressed any attempts at strikes.” In some cases, at the end of the harvest growers would notify the Border Patrol that there were undocumented workers on their land and thus avoid having to pay wages to their labor force.47
The reliance on Mexican workers produced other losers. The presence of Mexican agricultural workers in the United States helped defeat the effort of Mexican—American farm workers to unionize and improve their working conditions. In the border region, both Mexican—Americans and legal resident alien Mexicans often had to compete with undocumented workers for the unskilled employment available. During the debate on whether the bracero program should be extended, Dr. Paul O’Rourke, the director of California’s anti-poverty program, commented that any antipoverty program in his state was meaningless unless bracero labor was ended. In 1965, after the bracero program was ended, United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez commented on growers’ efforts to reinstate the bracero program, “For the 500,000 farm workers in California, this would be a catastrophe.”48
World History
