Half a Century Later, Mexican Bracero Guestworkers to US Remain Unpaid Adam Goodman & Veronica Zapata Rivera - Jacobin Magazine
go to original December 2, 2013

Every Tuesday, 76-year-old Miguel Díaz spends the better part of the day outside the House of Representatives in Mexico City. Díaz went to the United States in 1960s as a bracero, a contracted guestworker. Upon returning to Mexico, he and millions of other braceros were never paid the 10 percent of their earnings that had been withheld and sent to the Mexican government in an attempt to ensure braceros’ temporary status.

Each week, Díaz is joined outside the House of Representatives by around 100 other braceros, as well as widows and children of braceros. The vast majority are in their 70s or 80s. Some live in Mexico City, but others travel hours from other states to get there. Wearing sombreros to protect themselves from the sun, the braceros hang a large banner on the fence in front of the House that reads, “EPN [Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto] Pay Us or Kill Us!” According to their organization, the Binational Bracero Proa Alliance, an average of 14 braceros die each day. Their cause is urgent.

The braceros’ struggle to recoup decades-old back pay sheds light on the unjust treatment and unexpected consequences of guestworker programs.

On September 29, 1942, 71 years ago last month, the first braceros were contracted in Mexico City to work in the fields of Stockton, California. The Bracero Program, the largest and best-known guestworker program in U.S. history, brought 4.5 million Mexican laborers to the U.S. between 1942 and 1964. The program emerged in part due to wartime labor organizing among American farmworkers and economic need in Mexico. “I went to work [in the U.S.] in order to eat,” said 84-year-old Ezequiel Osorio.

Like subsequent guestworker programs, the Bracero Program was designed by the U.S. and Mexico to create a steady, regulated flow of male laborers. Braceros labored mainly in agriculture, but some were hired to work on railroads.

While some braceros financially benefitted from working in the US, they did so at a cost. The U.S. and Mexican governments subjected them to physical scrutiny and humiliation. When crossing the border, immigration officials forced them to strip and fumigated their naked bodies from head to toe with DDT, a dangerous insecticide. Those who cleared the medical and immigration screenings worked long hours doing strenuous labor, often living in poor, cramped conditions on the employer’s property. Those who faced abuses could not quit without facing deportation.

Despite all of this, many braceros simply want the money they are due – the 10 percent of their earnings the Mexican government never paid them.

Read the rest at Jacobin Magazine

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