farm laborers had long been working on American farms, the
BraceroAgriculture has been at farm labor crossroads many times, asking who will pick the crops after the exclusion of the Chinese in the 1880s and the termination of the
Bracero program in the 1960s.
Henry Pope Anderson's account of the
Bracero Program in California says that workers often could not eat their bologna sandwiches, since they were such a departure from the Mexican diet: "To most
braceros there are at least four things wrong with bologna sandwiches.
By bilateral agreement, the
bracero (a Spanish term for manual laborer) program allowed Mexicans to work seasonally on American farms, starting in 1942.
This was a small sum--about the price of fifteen bottles of olive oil or ten dozen eggs or 25 metres of cloth in Santa Isabel's markets but it almost exceeded one year's worth of official
bracero wages.
Farm workers had been excluded from the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 and, despite many union efforts to organize farm workers without NLRA protections, it was only in 1962 that Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta founded the National Farm Workers Association, the union that became the United Farm Workers (UFW) and won 40% wage increases in table grape contracts in 1966, largely because
Bracero workers were not available (Martin, 2003).
the
Bracero Program was enacted in 1942 in no small part because large numbers of the male labor force were engaged in the military, and a large part of those left behind were engaged in industrial support of the military.
A series of laws and diplomatic agreements between the United States and Mexico initiated during World War II created the
Bracero Program, which brought in guest workers, or
braceros, by the thousands, and finally, the millions, to shore up a labor force depleted by war.
In contrast, racialized labour has been organized through racial logics, justifying chattel slavery up until the mid-19th century, then Jim Crow laws across the American south, and the influx of Mexican labourers through the
Bracero program, through which Mexicans were permitted to work seasonally but were unable to become permanent residents of the United States.
The situation led to an extended series of guest worker contracts popularly known as the
Bracero period (1942-1964).
and his wife Inez Mathieu of Spencer, and 7 grandchildren, Elizabeth Lamica, Kristin Mathieu, Jonathan Mathieu, Callie Rae Mathieu, Brett Lamica, Ryan Mathieu, and Logan Mathieu and a great-grandson Justin David
Bracero. Jerry was born in Southbridge, son of the late Eugene L.
Readers interested in a closer examination of William's attitudes in the period of April 1946 to December 1952--with special reference to his notes on Westbrook Pegler, FDR's "court-packing," the
bracero workers' program, and his self-image as an hard-drinking gentleman farmer in east Texas and the Rio Grande Valley--should have a look at my good friend Rob Johnson's The Lost Years of William S.
The two countries signed the
Bracero Agreement in 1943, which began the importation of laborers or "
braceros" from Mexico to work in the United States.
