people who were counted again each year
they participated. Hundreds of thousands
of braceros ultimately settled in the
United States.The First
Bracero ProgramIn July 1942 the United States had been at
war for eight months and was looking
ahead to an indefinitely long period in
which much of its working population
would be overseas in uniform. Temporary
laborers were needed to fill their places at
home. Therefore, the United States and
Mexico formally agreed to permit
American growers and, later, railroad
owners to recruit Mexican braceros, or
hired hands, on a temporary basis. Each
year the workers harvested beets, cotton,
corn, and other crops, then returned to
Mexico when the harvest was done. At
Mexico’s insistence, safeguards protecting
the braceros’ interests were written into
the agreement. Thus, signed contracts
between laborers and employers were
required, round-trip transportation
between Mexico and the United States
was to be provided by employers, and
minimum guarantees concerning wages
and labor conditions were instituted.
In practice, many of the agreement’s
provisions were routinely violated.Living conditions were often substan-
dard, with employers providing pest-
infested trailers or shacks for housing,
and pigs’ feet and chicken necks for food.
Workers complained of discrimination,
physical abuse, and unjust deductions
from wages resulting in low net earnings.
But considering Mexico’s severe unem-
ployment and low wages, the bracero
program proved irresistible to many poor
Mexicans, some of whom returned year
after year to participate in it. When the
wartime program wound down in 1947,
more than 200,000 Mexicans had been
employed as braceros in 21 states.The MOJADOS
Although growers often circumvented the
protections that the bracero program was
meant to secure, braceros generally fared
better than Mexican laborers who entered
the United States illegally. Many of the
illegals (who were also known as mojados,
or “wetbacks,” because they often entered
the United States by swimming across
the Rio Grande) wound up in Texas,
where anti-Mexican prejudice was so
strong and incidence of mistreatment so
common that the Mexican governement
forbid braceros from working in the state.
This ban gave an opportunity to
undocumented laborers. However,168 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Mexican braceros on their way to the Midwest to farm beets (National Archives)“[T]hey’d send us into a
huge bunk house, where the
contractors would come from
the growers associations in
counties like San Joaquin
County, Yolo , Sacramento,
Fresno and so on. The heads
of the associations would line
us up. When they saw some-
one they didn’t like, they’d
say, “You, no.” Others,
they’d say, “You, stay.”
— Rigoberto Garcia Perez,
former bracero worker, in a
2001 interview with journalist
David Bacon