Migrant Workers from Mexico March Across US for Back Pay Ends in Washingtom DC Andres Rodriguez - infoZine/Scripps Howard Foundation
go to original September 21, 2013

Rosa Martha Zárate Macías, coordinator of the group of activists and former migrant laborers. The group ended their U.S stay in front of the White House. (SHFWire/Andrés Rodriguez)

A group of elderly migrant laborers ended a cross-country protest this week outside the White House, hoping the U.S. would prod Mexico to pay money owed to them for work they did decades ago.
 
“We want Washington and the whole world to know that the Mexican government stole our money,” the group of 20 “ex braceros,” or migrant laborers, and activists sang. They ended their 22-day cross-country trip, demanding the U.S. government open the Bracero Program files and aid them in obtaining the 10 percent of their wages in savings accounts they claim the Mexican government never paid them.

The U.S. established the Bracero Program in 1942 to give visas to guest laborers who replaced domestic workers who were fighting in World War II. It employed several thousand Mexican agricultural and railroad workers until the program ended in 1967.

The U.S. and Mexican governments made an arrangement to establish a savings account with 10 percent of the farmworkers’ earnings, Rosa Martha Zárate Macías, the group’s organizer, said. However, after the U.S gave Mexico the money to distribute to the workers, the Mexican government withheld it.

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