Bracero

The Mexican railways constructed by Porfirio Diaz, Mexican President. The rail paved the may to transport Mexican laborers to the United States during the 1940s to the 1960s, and modern pathways of La Bestia. Their crossing of the Rio Grande, Texas, created the racist word and stereotype of Mexican Americans as Wetbacks, Mojado (racist to say).

The first stage of the “Bracero” program lasted between 1942 and 1951. Workers were described as loyal, and had a reputation for hard work. The second stage followed by Public Law 78, July 1951. It became a major economic element in California, and other border states, and some of the American South. In 1957, 100,000 Braceros were in California. The Bracero program and Public Law 78 was not carried further than 1963, on the eave of the Civil Rights Acts, and height of the long Civil Rights Movements, and later the Chicano, Brown Pride, movement of the 1970s.

Between 1900 and 1940 over 1,000,000 Mexicans crossed into Texas, Arizona, and California. Wages remained low for immigrants, and were at the mercy of the land owners for housing and wage. Undocumented workers included agricultural laborers, skilled trade workers, and educated individuals, who later obtained critical skills during their labor in America. Many also found labor in restaurants, hotels, laundries, garages, building construction, domestic service, mills, bricklayers, factories, and railways. City migrants settled in colonies, and agriculture workers were on farm company housing.

California Colonia’s (neighborhoods) were subject to racial segregation and urban systems of redlining and inequality. Violence against workers, and worker strikes led directly to the first Bracero diaspora of visa labor, and eventually Public Law 78. This was an institutional effort to quell civil rights conversations, limit citizenship, and foster a greater segregation and economic outcomes of race and labor.

 

The Bracero agreement was supposed to be: travel cost covered, exempt of military service, no discrimination, and living expenses covered. On the books, Braceros were free to buy any merchandise they wanted, housing and sanitary facilities adequate, deductions of 10% for take home wages when service was completed, guaranteed contract work for ¾ of contracted time, wages to be prevailing and equal to American labor, and not less than 30 cents an hour. The Mexican labor agreement was established through yearly pubic laws: 1943 (PL 45), ,1944 (PL 229), and 1945 (PL 529). After 1946, the Department of State had notified Mexico the ending of the program, but was extended to 1949 because of employers wanting to continue the program. In 1948, prevailing wages became a point of disagreement between Mexico and the US employers that led to PL 78 of 1951, with a more centralized Department of Labor oversight and agreements. Laborers were hired by contractor associations, never directly by the farm. This method is still used as a subcontractor and in the past agriculture association companies. The subcontracted model allowed for more economic abuses and distance from labor to contract.

DiGiorgio Fruit Company was the first to employ bracero labor in Bakersfield, and Kern County. In 1948, Border Patrol raided DiGiorgio Farms in Arvin arresting 315 in 1949, and was often the site of “surveys” or raids on the ranch. Growers often spoke about their absent knowledge of undocumented labor. In 1954, Operation “Wetback,” a racist deportation strategy campaign that started in June 1954, by the Department of Labor focusing on California and Texas. This about 10 years after the Zoot Suit civil rights demonstrations in California. Deportations were up to 2,000 a day and drastically reduced Bracero Labor. Public Law 78 forbade employers from hiring undocumented workers and reserved labor to the least desirable and most physically demanding jobs for Braceros (Visa Workers). Upon completion of satisfactory labor, they were given a mica, worker identification card, which they could later present to gain more employment access through this “recommendation.” The mica was later used, by later generations, to refer to any residency status, green card, or visa. Some Bracero’s left the program and later gained permanent residency and naturalization in the United States.

Thomas H. Werdel, a law partner of the family of the DiGiorgio, long with Bruce Sandborn Jr, the VP of the DiGiorgio Fruit Company headed the conversation of the Public Law 78 and changes. Thomas H. Werdel was a Republican politician and later ran as the Vice President pick for the States Rights Party in 1956.

Prevailing wage was supposed to keep American labor unaffected or not in competition with Visa workers. It was argued that braceros did not compete with domestic labor or lowered their wages. Prevailing wages were always a cap on wages, and never rose between those who accepted the employment. The wage was both a ceiling and floor, often used to keep domestic and visa wages capped.

While braceros were always described as suppletory, their data showed that they dominated labor sectors. Braceros made up to 75% of the labor force in 1956 and held primary numbers of the labor force demographic until 1960. The prevailing wage decimated domestic labor, and created a pre-negotiated economic expectation, with the intent of boxing in the worker as temporary, low paid, and not included in American naturalization, citizenship rights, and expectations of equality and organizing.

Domestic workers formed unions to counter the use of bracero labor. The National Farm Labor Union was brought into the Central Valley in 1947 in Kern County and other major production centers. A strike was called on DiGiorgio company on October 1947. The Bracero was often used to break union strikes and was very effective. In Arvin, there were 130 braceros and 200 undocumented workers. The undocumented workers started the strike, the Braceros stood in solidarity the first day, but the Kern County Sherieff Loustalot, called the U.S. Department of Agriculture to “speak” or threaten the braceros into working again. The braceros were used to break the strike for six weeks until the Federal Government gave in to the union. Shortly after, the Border Patrol was called to take in the undocumented union workers. Domestic, unionized and not unionized workers saw the braceros as a reserve and force of economic action against their labor movement.

Read the works of Ernesto Galarza for more information:

The braceros were recognized in having the power to Unionize (Article 21 of their contract), but they never created a syndicate of countervailing power. Bracero contracts did not set up meeting with representatives, and the Department of Labor systemically refused to meet with union officials to discuss bracero gradiences. Workers were constantly moved and had communication and settlement challenges. Protest, rather than represented strikes were organized, their temporary status was always leveraged against them. Leaders were often found within deportable means and removed.

Public Law 78 found its challenges due to government and oversight of neutrality, even if the Bracero program was not truly equal it did represented employee interests. The agribusiness had no interest in government neutrality. Owners and managers feared that the regulate of control of wages hours, working conditions, and collective bargaining, much like the Bracero agreement would find its way into American labor conditions. Braceros were seen as a challenge by domestic workers, but too progressive in labor rights for owners. At the start of the program, farm owners and labor contractors saw the labor force under their control: systemic low wages, control of complaint process, repatriation, employment at will, housing, medical services, and limited accountability.

The bracero had a short contract, was renewable on the terms of the employer. They protested little, did not ask for lots of pay, was not familiar with customs or historic patterns of labor performance or labor conditions, and avoided stigmas as an agitator for those reasons. Braceros often worked many positions without knowing their financial value, from trimmer to loader, anything for the same wage. At times, braceros worked themselves to death.

In 1950, the House of Representatives held a hearing on Arvin California. It was headed by Thomas H. Werdel, a House of Representative, which his district included Bakersfield. The strike was in Arvin, located on the DiGiorgio farms. Hearings and subcommittees had been gathering since late 1949. In the hearing room, was big farm owners, and various unions. The controversy was housing and living conditions at the DiGiorgio farm, and the film, “Poverty in the Valley of Plenty,” Produced by Hollywood Film Council, on behalf of the A.F. of L. Union.

There was also a strike from workers regarding the conditions of labor. The DiGiorgio company sued the National Farm Labor Union and the producers for the film, following a 2-million-dollar settlement and the end of the strike. The film was also banned from showing. The film showed the poverty conditions of workers, and how they used braceros and undocumented workers as strike breakers. The film was also anti-Mexican and had xenophobic language. The lawsuit and banning was a careful orchestration of politics, lawsuits, and biased reporting against farmworkers.

 

7. Specify Mexican, Japanese, Negro, Etc. As the Case may be.

5. Race: American White, Portuguese, American Negro, Japanese, Mexican, Chinese, Other

In the 1940s, DiGiorgio was the second largest producer of wine in the United States. In 1942, Joseph DiGiorgio and his corporation were indited by federal grand jury for wrongful and attempting to fix and monopolize methods of distribution.

In 1946, Walter P. Koetitz, Chief of the Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Housing, wrote to the Director Paul Scharrenberg, that the State of California had received 299 requests from the Office of Labor to inspect labor camps for Mexican nationals. A study was made, regarding dilapidated farm housing conditions, with volumes of photographic evidence. Legislators had passed Assembly Bill 2089, and a voluntary redevelopment act to furnish and bring the housing up to modern living standards. Housing had already been monitored by the State of California.

DiGiorgio kept working camps segregated, and did not hire African Americans. As workers started to unionize past race, the company brought price negotiated braceros. When first strike began in 1947, the camp had 130 bracero workers, and Border patrol took undocumented workers who were organizing. Local 218 was organized in September 1947, and had 858 contracted to work with wage increases, seniority rights, grievance procedures, and collective bargaining, DiGiorgio did not reply. As the workers were told of DiGiorgio’s silence at the Weedpatch Grange Hall on September 30, 1947, they voted to strike the next day. The union asked for the removal of Braceros, who had laid down their tools that day too. The braceros went back to work, since they had a “collective” bargaining agreement and the convincing of Sheriff Loustalot. On November 17, the Braceros were removed. Border patrol was alerted again and again to raid the farms by the farmers and the unions.

Ernest Galarza wrote to Governor Earl Warren regarding Local 218, Arvin, which was strike bound at the DiGiorgio farm. Galarza wrote that the housing conditions were neglected, even after asking for improvements. He explained that Business Week had ran a propaganda story, showing that housing was good. The letter states that Galarza sent photographs of the very poor housing conditions, and that the article willfully misrepresented housing conditions.

That same year, unions in the Central Valley had published and approved resolution on Agriculture Housing Conditions in San Joaquin Valley in 1948. The resolution sated that there had been deplorable housing conditions and was one of the main causes for the strike. They found the conditions intolerable with the unhealthy living conditions in the kitchen, crowded living quarters, and feudal baths, toilets, and no fresh drinking water.

Koertitz wrote to Ernest Galarza in 1948, who had raised concern regarding farm housing in Kern County, DiGiorgio Farms. Koertitz wrote that there were Americans (White), Mexican and Filipino farmers. That housing was provided for 1.25 a day for board, for single men, that there was sanitary facilities, after installing flush toilets. The American Camps were reported in good conditions. The Mexican homes were substandard, had pit toilets, and that cleanliness and sanitation was neglected. They also had hog pens near the camps. In august 1948, DiGiorgio was ordered to repair or replace sanitary facilities, garbage disposal, and pit toilets to be removed.

By June 1949, a two years later, housing conditions had been improved with the strike and resolutions. DiGiorgio farms had fixed the sewage system and passed state inspection. The Mexican camp now had three septic tanks, and modern leach lines. “Poverty in the Valley of Plenty,” had effectively started an effort to revitalize farmworker housing, which would help DiGiogrio win his lawsuit against the film’s producers. DiGiorgio spend between $5,000 to $8,000 to raise housing and sanitation standards, and had 17 men contracted. They installed new utility buildings, camp showers, and were gradually dispensing substandard dwellings. In 1950 there was 215 farm labor housing inspected by the State of California. The 1940s and 1950s saw the creation of modern housing codes and zoning in California. This time would also influence the start of the redevelopment of cities and destruction of homes to supplement suburbanization and post-war modern architecture.

Braceros were often used at sites with the greatest labor complaints and unionizing. Unions would cite braceros and undocumented workers as their greatest threat, based on how employers used them to diminish organizing power. When the undocumented workers were no longer needed, they were deported and when the bracero was the last left, they too were no longer contracted again. The farmer held all the cards against each other documented and undocumented workers, what Ernesto Galarza calls, spider in the house, workers in the field. Most of the research and history remains unsympathetic to undocumented workers and braceros for their effects on unions. This should be critical of organized labor, that they themselves draw their own lines at citizenship and visa labor.

Operation Wetback (racist terminology) was initiated in 1954. The undocumented person was blamed for the social problems and civil rights upheavals. 1954 was right in the middle of the Bracero height of employment, Braceros made up to 75% of the labor force in 1956 and held primary demographics until 1960. 1940 to 1950 was also when many cities were undergoing housing civil rights, desegregation of education, and employment civil rights. Bakersfield had asked for fair housing and minority neighborhoods were incorporated into city boundaries, and Bakersfield elected its first Black city council member, and had undergone a labor rights strike movement at DiGiorgio Farms. Los Angels had also elected its first Mexican American City Council Member. The same year, 1954, saw Brown vs. Board of Education. The decade was also marked by Citizens Councils, housing race restrictions, unequal education, and the start of political names like Richard Nixon, Thomas H. Werdel, and William Knowland. Ten years prior, the late 1940s, saw the use of political offices to defend farm agribusiness against civil rights complaints for adequate housing.

Braceros and undocumented workers offer earned more in the United States, but as they there located in the United State for their labor, it is often overlooked by historians that their own cost of living rose during their migration north, not all could be sent as a renitence, but what could be sent did offset the inflation in Mexico.

American unions were consolidated and gather their collective power in the 1930s, as dust bowlers moved to organize after transiting as small farmers to laborers of agribusiness, and gather racial sympathy. When Mexico declared war against the Axis Powers, that next month, July 23 1942, they signed an agreement to send Mexican workers to the United States. The Farm Security Administration was assigned as the administrative agency during the war. That next year was followed by the Zoot Suit Civil Rights movement and action in Los Angeles. Mexican Americans were beat, attacked, and jailed in 1943. Research often prioritizes Bracero numbers from the northern states in Mexico, but Braceros from Oaxaca (126,453) and Puebla (63,381) also came to the United States. Employers understood that Braceros were only good if they didn’t become American, “understood their labor rights.”

The same year that Public Law 78 was amended to stop employers from contracting undocumented workers and reauthorized to bring Braceros, Operation W was initiated. Prior to 1954, Border Patrol was divided into 13 sectors. Joseph Swing became the Commissioner of Immigration. In June of 1950 William F. Kelley, Assistant Commissioner of Immigration admitted that the Border Patrol cooperated with local growers on raids after harvest seasons. During the 1950s, there was a rise of anti-undocumented groups, including civil rights organizations like the NAACP and farm labor unions. Peoples of Chicana/o/x ancestry also drew the line at citizenship, even those who became naturalized later after immigrating to the United States. Undocumented individuals were pathologized into a “wetbackism,” racist depictions and associations of increased disease rates, crime rates, narcotics, welfare cost, and exploitation. Undocumented workers were exploited by growers, professional smugglers, and their own, who spoke Spanish. In 1954, United States Attorney General Herbert Brownell (Republican Party) spent the early part of the year in California investigating claims against undocumented communities as he planned a massive action against the communities. June 9th, 1954 was the start of the mass deportation in California. Brownell was an anti-Mexican extremist and had been quoted to scare Mexican migrants by shooting a couple of them, and had theoretically planned “Operation Cloudburst,” to send California’s Sixth Army to the Border to stop the “Illegal Invasion.” Burnell helped get Joseph Swing, with a reputation as a professional “Mexican Hater.”

1954 would represent the collective efforts of Border Patrol. On June 10, 1954, all boarder chiefs met in California. They created a mobile task force of 12 men patrol teams, jeeps, radios, buses planes, positive propaganda and squads to resemble special forces. June 17 Operation W would begin formally. Much of the xenophobia was based on undocumented labor, Public Law 78, and civil rights gains during the 1940s and 1950s. Deported estimates for June 17 to July 15 were about 50,000 people. Films like “Poverty in the Valley of Plenty,” and other publications often positioned citizens as not receiving benefits entitle to citizens, or that Braceros and undocumented workers got better treatment. While the bracero was taken advantage of, and had limited agency in their working conditions, their overall labor contract resembled collective bargaining. United State labor groups: White American, Mexican American, and Black American, wanted some of the Bracero negotiated provisions, that were often denied by farmers who used Braceros and undocumented labor to break their efforts. The problem was the farm owner and the United States Representatives, and Government, who had their hand in creating and sustaining the labor animosities and inequalities. Deportation of undocumented, and repatriation of Braceros did not solve labor disputes.

The next year, President Eisenhower State of the Union Address in 1955, proclaimed that immigration detention had ended. But the year before 1954, the United States and Border Patrol had just deported and detained many Mexican Americans, proclaiming up to 1 million deported.

“Two years ago I advised the Congress of injustices under existing immigration laws. Through humane administration, the Department of Justice is doing what it legally can to alleviate hardships. Clearance of aliens before arrival has been initiated, and except for criminal offenders, the imprisonment of aliens awaiting admission or deportation has been stopped. Certain provisions of law, however, have the effect of compelling action in respect to aliens which are inequitable in some instances and discriminatory in others. These provisions should be corrected in this session of the Congress” President Eisenhower State of the Union Address, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union.” Eisenhower Presidential Library, January 6, 1955 https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/file/1955_state_of_the_union.pdf

At the end of 1954, undocumented apprehensions taper after 1954, 1955, 1956 dropped to an average of 30-40 thousand each year until 1964. Those same year Bracero’s increased from 1954 (309,033), up to 400,000 contracted laborers for 1955 to 1959, and tapering to 300,000 for 1960 and 1961, and less than 200,000 from 1962 to 1964 (the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and passage of the first Civil Rights Acts.)