Transcripts For CSPAN3 Latino Labor Movements 20170829

Next on lectures in history, we take you to the university of illinois where professor mireya loza teaches a class on latino labor movements in the 20th century. She discusses the Bracero Program which brought workers mostly in the ago ricultural industry. Were almost towards the end of the semester, and because we are i decided to really talk to you guys today about what i research. So you guys had my piece on the alien braceros. I want us to think about the class today in two parts, one in which were going to cover bracero history. I know we covered bracero history in sort of broad sketches, but this time we will talk about it a little bit more in depth. My gift to you, i cant let you walk out of a class with me without you guys knowing bracero history really well. Second thing were going to do is were actually going to talk about the article. Good . Okay. So im going to tell you guys a little bit about how i started being interested in bracero history. I always tell you guys i was a student like you guys in a class, mexicanAmerican History, and my advisor, my thenmentor well, he was first my teacher. Matt garcia said to me and the rest of the class, find your oldest Family Member and collect an oral history. I thought an oral history was a basic interview and i thought, okay, thats fine. It is a little challenging when you come from immigrant families in which your grandparents are somewhere else, so i looked for my oldest Family Member, and my oldest Family Member was not really that old, right . He was my uncle who had come in as a bracero. I grew up with my uncle. I grew up seeing my uncle every single day and he would talk every once in a while about his work in california, in texas. He would tell me stories and tell my whole family stories about what it was like to work picking cotton in texas, what it was like to pick cabbage in california, and i thought to myself, well, i kind of sort of know this story because i know my uncle. Ive heard this story. I took it back to the class, and my teacher, matt garcia, said, this is extraordinary. I thought, how is my uncle who i see every day extraordinary . Because, sometimes, you know, the people you see the most are not that extraordinary to you. And so i thought, this is pretty interesting. I was really excited about doing oral history more than anything. So i will show you a picture of my uncle. Thats my uncle. He actually was born in a little village. How many of you have Family Members there. It is one of the large sending states and contributes to large wave also of immigrants here in the u. S. So my teacher basically asked me to explore the Bracero Program. What do we know about the Bracero Program . What do you guys know about the Bracero Program . You read a little and we talked about it. Gabbie . I guess it is most traditionally understood as like a Guest Worker Program, where workers from mexico would come to the u. S. Due to like and i think it was like a wartime kind of thing where workers were needed and like a lot of s citizens were at war. So they got a lot of guest workers from mexico. You are exactly right. It started in the war time. It started in 1942. What does guest worker mean . Anybody . Guest worker . Yes, maria. Temporary, so it was just for the moment that that worker was needed, and once the work is done then they will be probably sent back. Yes, thats exactly it. Guest worker means temporary. Theyre on temporary labor contracts, which means they come in and theyre recruited to work maybe a couple of months and then they return. Some of them have options to renew contracts and could stay in the u. S. For multiple years, but guest worker means just that. Why do you guys think that Guest Worker Programs, and in specific the Bracero Program, would be important now . Just a question. Yes, molly . Because of the influx of the immigrants who come to work. Yes. The u. S. Is constantly sort of thought about and enacted agreements for bringing in guest workers, and weve seen guest workers. The Bracero Program didnt bring an end to Guest Worker Programs. It brought an end to the Largest Guest Worker Program. What we also see is that guest worker models are popular globally. So guest worker models are used across europe, across the middle east, and what do we know about the Bracero Program . I will tell you what we know. We know that it is it was the Largest Guest Worker Program in the americas, and it became a model for other places. So when you think about guest workers and mexican guest workers coming in, you can think about the ways in which they shaped other policies around guest workers, right . Okay. Another question. How many of you actually have Family Members that came in through the Bracero Program . One . Really . Usually it is more. I dont i dont know. You see. A couple. So the other thing that we know is that the Guest Worker Program really, really impacted migration histories, right . So if we go back to what is the Bracero Program, the Bracero Program was a bi National Agreement between the u. S. And mexico that allowed mexican male workers to enter the u. S. On temporary work permits. They had a legal permit, they had status, right . Gabbie was very correct with saying it was started due to a perceived labor shortage brought on by world war ii. I use the word perceived because a lot of people argued after the war was terminated, after the war ended guest workers continued to come in. Why did guest workers continue to come in after the war ended . Uhhuh . Because growers took advantage of braceros and they continued that labor because it was cheaper. Yes. Yeah, exactly, marquise. It became a cheaper mode of labor. We know for a fact that there were two components to the first Bracero Program, railroad and agriculture. Why did the railroad component end . Yes. Isnt it because Railroad Unions were really strong and they protected their workers, and like they didnt want to deal with that . And wasnt it also in the agreement that the braceros couldnt have a union . Yes, and Railroad Unions were very strong and railroad jobs were very good jobs. So, yes, exactly. Okay. So the other thing we know is that 4. 5 million contracts were issued. 4. 5 million. Thats a whole lot, right . It is not five, it is not ten, it is not 20, it is not 1,000 or 2,000. 4. 5 million. So were talking about a gigantic wave of workers coming in. Just to give you an idea of where the workers came from, the workers came from almost everywhere state in mexico. What you see in dark blue is every state that received mexican guest workers in the u. S. Those are a lot of states, right . There are only a couple that didnt. Why do you guys think that there are a couple on this side that did not receive mexican guest workers . Any guesses . You guys didnt have it in your reading. Guesses . Why wouldnt they . Is it possibly because they had enough labor in their in the states already that they didnt need to hire braceros . Thats a good guess. Yes . They had enough cheap labor . Thats a good guess. Next guess. Is it like the kind of industry like they werent so previous ah le prevalent in those states. Another good guess. Were getting closer. Gabbie. I dont know yeah, i dont know. Kind of going off what marquise has been saying, but also just like i feel like the cheap labor would have been africanamericans in that area because it is like the south. So like after, like, slavery was abolished, quote, unquote, they were still like there. So i feel like that would have been the cheap labor so they wouldnt have needed braceros in those areas because they already had a cheap labor force. You are all getting very, very close. The other thing that you guys have not read, which is why i ask you these questions while you havent read it, these other states also brought in guest workers. Some of the guest workers that were brought in in those states were from jamaica and the british west indys. So there was another Guest Worker Program that existed alongside the Bracero Program. The other thing that happened during the same period is that puerto rican Agricultural Workers were also recruited. Some of them went to those states, and some of them went to the states that braceros also went into. States lying michigan, braceros could find themselves working alongside puerto rican temporary workers. Now, would Puerto Ricans be considered guest workers . No, no. They were specifically recruited to come in and work temporary contracts as well, but because of their status, the colonial status, they could come in freely, and in some ways, you know, work some areas and avoid some of the red tape that the Bracero Program brought about, but also endured heavy exploitation. Okay. So how do we imagine that the Bracero Program impacted mexican migration . What are your guesses as to why . How does it impact mexican migration . I recall from the reading it said they also brought contracts from Bracero Programs and they migrated to certain areas in the u. S. It also brought like an influx of undocumented immigrants. I believe it said for every like two million that came in, it would double that for undocumented and thats why there was such a competition between them. Yes. What happens with the Bracero Program is that you see a rise of undocumented labor alongside documented labor of the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program literally creates another wave. So when people start to talk about temporary Guest Worker Programs and talk about the reality of guest workers right now, and when guest workers are used as a potential solution to immigration policy and immigration reform, you all need to remember that the Bracero Program didnt solve undocumented immigration. It actually augmented undocumented immigration. So that is one reese aality. What do we know about the period right before the Bracero Program, the 1930s . That was the period mexican repatriation. Yes, repatriation. Which is when the u. S. Government deported a bunch of mexicans, and a lot were mexicanamericans with citizen status and it is because they were seen as an economic burden. Very good. What it does and what youre pointing out is there is a moment where theres deportation. What 1942 does, in the 1940s is it brings back mexican migration to areas like maybe michigan, illinois, in the midwest where the sort of populations were hit so hard by repatriation. So it reinvigorated mexican migration to states hit hard by repatriation. It also increased mexican migration to traditional areas. So traditional areas in the southwest like texas, california, new mexico were once again reinvigorated because of this wave of migration. What else do we know . What else do we know about those shifts . What else can you guess . It also transform the gender dynamic, right . Because theyre all men coming into these areas. So some men were able to stay, not every man so this is not for you to say every man was able to stay. Some men were able to stay because they actually married mexicanamerican women, they also married american you know, White American women, and they found avenues to stay in the u. S. You know, other men simply went back to their communities. So how do i connect this to my own work, right . Im going to tell you guys a little bit about the stuff i do. During graduate school i spent five years working on bracero history project. So right after i collected my uncles, you know, oral history, i waited years, years, years, years, years. Found myself back in graduate school and my adviser said, you were once very interested in this history, are you still interested . I said, sure, im interested in guest worker history, im interested in some of these topics. What i didnt know is that the National Museum of American History had acquired a huge collection of Leonard Nadel frafls and they decided they would pursue an actual exhibit project and a digital archive. They partnered up with this fancy university, george mason, and they have a center for history and new media. And they decided that this would be a great project to start thinking about digital media, new history and thinking about the way in which we interact with history. So the bracero history project began as i started graduate school at brown, and what did we do . We started collecting oral histories and objects. So i was sent out to places like san bernardino. I was sent out to selenas, i was sent out to cocella to train communities to correct their own oral histories and i carried a heavy backpack with a scanner and a recorder to collect oral histories myself. When the opportunity came to collect oral histories in mexico, i lobbied and decided i really wanted to collect oral histories in states that werent traditional sending states. So that when you think about bracero history, the traditional sending states people talk about are three. I thought what about the other states, what are the stories in these other places . How do we think about these other places and how are these other places shaped by the Bracero Program . So i collected oral histories in the yucatan, in where else . Y yucatan, wahaha, all of these fantastic places, and i took them back with the communities that had been trained to deposit their oral histories in this archive. Students like you in other places decided to collect their own oral histories. Kids from cal state long beach decided they would collect their own oral histories and it was a gigantic wave of collection all over the u. S. And people contributing to this project. We collected a little over 800 oral histories, making it one of the larger repositories of latino history. So that was fantastic, but the second thing we did was we digitized peoples documents, people, students, under grads stood there and scanned ids, photographs, anything people would bring in, they scanned to make sure it was preserved and made its way into the archive. So what you find is that the archive has oral histories and it has digitized documents, but the other fantastic thing that came out of it is that the museum, the National Museum of American History created a traveling exhibit. Bittersweet harvest. Bittersweet harvest was a small and modest exhibit that got a lot of attention and got a lot of attention because many people who came from these communities or were impacted by these communities wanted to host this exhibit. I will show you what the page looks like. You cant see it that well, but in 2010 we won National Public history prize because we were one of the best public history projects out there. If you go on there you can actually type in Something Like juan loza and listen to my uncle. You can type in my name and listen to oral histories. I have the good, the bad and the ugly, the oral histories i carried out when i was just learning methods and you will say, wow, this is terrible, and then i have better ones because i learned how to do my job much better. You can see other students like yourself were 19, 20 years old and were really committed to collecting these oral histories and went out with their backpacks all over their communities and collected oral histories. Thats what they did. So i actually listened to some of the oral histories for theory and methods and we had to analyze your interview style. Oh. Who taught the theory and methods . Professor gaucho. Oh i will tell you the first ones were a bumpy ride. You learn by doing. You learn by doing, and theres times where, you know, i didnt have the best interview style and i got better and, you know, thats all you can do. Trust me, i feel for you. I would i would have given you an a on that assignment just foreign during it. So bittersweet harvest, this is a photograph of bittersweet harvest, you cant see it that clearly. It opened at the National Museum and it was composed of lightweight panels so it could travel all over the u. S. , so it was affordable for other museums and Community Organizations to take on this exhibit. Most of the objects stayed at the National Museum. What the museum asked was that local organizations actually display their own, their own bracero history. So students at cal state, Channel Island with their professor jose alamio, decided to collect their own objects and display them along side. They decided to actually create panels about their own local oral history and displayed it alongside the National Museums, which was fantastic. We were also fortunate enough you cant really see it in the back there, theres bunk beds. Theres bunk beds that we collected from a site, an old site where braceros actually lived, a camp. And when i saw it, i thought, this is fantastic. We had a hat donated by a man who really wanted to honor his dad, and he really wanted to tell his fathers story and he really wanted his fathers hat to be preserved, and we happily took it. You cant see it but it is right there. That original card that you saw, that was my uncles, made its way there too because i thought, how can i ask other people to donate their objects if i dont push my own family to donate their objects. So well talk a little bit now about what the actual process of becoming a bracero looked like. Okay. P imagine, lets think about the classic sending states. You are in a sort of central state. How do you hear, how do you guess that you might hear about the program . Yes, luce . Through communication with people around your village and town. Uhhuh, yeah, thats one way. Thats definitely one way a lot of people heard. Family members, like telling other Family Members, you know, to do it. Yep, thats another way. Yes . I feel like a lot of times it is like like the u. S. Sends like recruiters. I dont know if that would be the case for this, but i feel like that might be a thing. Well, actually there was some recruitment processes that went through the actual city officials of these towns. So, yeah, and pushed that pushed recruitment. Yes, marquise . Like pamphlets and what not, saying, oh, this is the most wonderful thing you can do. Zealosell us your soul. Yes yes, and propaganda was big on both sides. The first years of the Bracero Program, what youre seeing right now, what youre going to see are pictures from the collection at the National Museum, but from these pictures you will see the 1950s. You will see the contracting through the perspective of leonard nidel in the 1950s. But the 1940s was a completely different period. In the 1940s you might walk out in 1942, first braceros who came out didnt know necessarily what they were going to get into. We have the beautiful stories of men who got on a train because they were recruited, because they were told that this would be a fantastic program through propaganda, and they had no idea what they were in for. Men who told me, you know, i was very, very scared when i jumped on that train, when i got on that train, because i didnt know what to expect. I didnt know at all what to expect. What they found in the early 1940s is this period that is argued that it is a patriotic period of the Bracero Program. The country is at war. The braceros are coming in. The braceros that they are arms there to feed the country in a time of war. They take on this patriotic discourse thats is tied to the Good Neighbor policy and theyre excited to do their part, right . To do their part in this time of war. Some of them would get off in places like stockton and theyd actually be greeted by bands. I have wonderful oral histories of men saying, there was a band that greeted us and people that were excited that we got there, and really it was a moment of patriotism, right . After the war, that sense of patriotism quickly dispels, right . It is no longer there. By the 1950s, what we see is a different phase of the Bracero Program, right . What do we know is happening in the 1950s . The recruitment is larger, the recruitment is being augmented in agricultural communities all over the southwest, midwest. We know that, you know, as marquise said that growers become dependent on this labor. So what we see is a very different phase of the program. So ill show you some photographs from the 1950s and ill tell you that the process is similar, but the actual the actual the discourses about their arrival in the u. S. , thats very different. Theyre actually their lived experience in the u. S. Is very different. So this is what a Contracting Center looked like. As you can see, youve now left your town. Youve left what did we say, is it moralia . Youve left moralia. Youre on your way to the border. By the 1950s we know that the centers left the Central States and moved to the northern states. Why do you think they would move from the Central States to the northern states . Closer to the border. Closer to the border, thats exactly it. Why else would growers want it to be closer to the borders . Luce . Like i said before, undocumented came with the Bracero Programs, like it was an easier way for the undocumented workers to come through, which is what most farm workers wanted because they were even cheaper labor. Thats a good one. That is true. What david said is true. Why else . I read growers would hire people to get in cars and drive down to essentially, you know, pay for undocumented work and then take whomever they want back to the states. Yes. So it is true. All of these things are true. Theyre able to pull from undocumented labor when it is closer to the border, but what is also true about the Bracero Program is that growers are paying for their transportation. So what does it mean when they actually moved basically these centers to the border . That means that the actual transportation costs are cheaper, and braceros are enduring in some way theyre subsidizing through their own travel growers profits, right . Theyre making sure that growers are able to profit to a greater degree, but now they have to actually take out loans, they have to borough money from friends so they can make it to contracting stations to the border, at the border. So we know that. We also know that the Contracting Centers are chaotic. Some people tell stories about being there and sleeping on the floor for two weeks. Other people tell stories that they were waiting for months. We also know because of the archival record is that indigenous communities often found it hard and difficult to enter the contracting process. So imagine what it must feel like if you are not necessarily from moralia but maybe from a place not far away and only speak that language, the Contracting Center becomes a site that is chaotic, and it becomes a site in which you will see in a lot of the photographs a lot of folks sort of surviving and waiting their terms. Luce. I recall that they said the workers that were well, the people who actually went to the Contracting Centers would go into debt already present there because they put their life on the line, their whole family because they thought this would be a profit for them. So they would essentially come there with already debt. So i thought that was like shocking. Yes, you are right on the money. Thats exactly what would happen. They would come in in debt. So they would start making money already in debt. Marquise . This is very reminiscent of project 500 where the university had a lot of students of color, they recruited them. They didnt give them housing or resources, so a lot had to live in the community and even in like the armory, dining halls and stuff like that to have a place to live while they were trying to learn. Yep. So what marquise is referencing on campuses, project 500 in 1968 where the university recruited 500 black and some latino students to come on to campus. When you recruit students or you recruit anybody and you dont give them resources and housing, what you cause is chaos, right . You cause a lot of sort of human suffering because people dont have the resources that they need to survive on a daytoday basis. Yes, recruitment without a sort of infrastructure becomes can become very chaotic, right . In this case, the fruinfrastruce that was there in place to exploit, to exploit these guest workers. So we know that. We know that it is chaotic. What happens when you actually get into the actual sites . Finally your name is called. Somebody says, you know, lets give you a name. You know, manuel sanchez, your number is called. You can come on through. Manuel has already gotten in debt. Manuel has already maybe even paid the mordida which is in your reading. What is it . It is a small bribe that people pay to try to get on the list, right . So that they can try to get called. So they might pay a mordida. Theyre paying for their own transportation. Theyre subsidizing. What theyre doing is subsidizing growers, right . This economy, this u. S. Economy based on their cheap labor, right . So they get there. A person might say to them, show me your hands. Why would they look at their hands . Why would the hands be important . Maya . Hands would be important because they can look for calluses, to see if theyre tlly hard workers. So if you had soft, uncalloused hands they might think, okay, you dont have any experience so we dont want to accept you. Exactly. When people came back from the Bracero Program you know, they endured exploitation, although they endured hardship, but they came back with a new pair of blue jeans or boots to their village, their town, it spread like wildfire. Many people wanted to come to the u. S. , right . How would you keep a baker from coming to the u. S. . How could you keep a dentist from coming into the u. S. . The idea was they wanted Agricultural Workers and they wanted people from these rural towns and villages. That was the ideal bracero. The bracero was a person who should have been from an agricultural countryside. The idea that they can perform this work, theyve done this work. So to check their hands is to sort of check their resume, right . To say, can we see that you are really who you say you are and you are a bracero. We also know through the oral histories is that many a tailor beat their hands up against rocks and would rub their hands against rocks to develop calluses. We learned that bakers would often rub their handson a sidewalk to develop calluses as theyre sitting on a curb, because they also understood what people in the contracting stations were looking for and they were going to play the part. They were not going to be duped, they were going to play the part, right . So you finally convince the person that you are an agricultural worker. The next step would be exams. So this is a Processing Center in monterey, and what we see is a doctor walking through. It is kind of cant see it that clearly, but a doctor walking through walking through and looking at braceros bodies. They had to check their xrays. They had to take xrays, i should say, and check their chest to make sure they didnt have tuberculosis they were bringing in, the idea these may be disease carriers, as well. We need to keep u. S. Communities safe. The last and final part was ploebl the hardest part to record because many braceros in the u. S. , older gentlemen would start to sob when they would tell this portion of the story. They would have to strip completely and they were sprayed with ddt. What you see there is an image of a guest worker being sprayed with ddt. I would hear many men say to me, i was treated like an animal. The saddest, saddest oral s history i collected was a man in salinas, california who said to me, ms. And i remember he said, senorita, ms. , do you know if human rights existed then . I didnt know what to answer. What do you answer when someone says, do you know if human rights existed then . I said, im not sure because i wasnt sure what he meant. He said, because they treated me like an animal, so when did i have human rights . And he began to sob and i didnt know exactly what to tell him. What would you tell somebody if they said, did human rights exist then because he felt he had no human rights. As you can tell from the reading that you read today, braceros organizers often thought that they were treated like cattle. So you saw the beginning of the paragraph, even the organization that we will talk about later, the organizers said, we were treated like cattle, we were sent to the slaughter house, we were sacrificed like cattle. I dont know how i didnt connect the dots before, but it is crazy how i feel this connects to what we were talk binge in last class in terms of the hard worker narrative and having to show that youre human enough to be here, and this was like an exact process forhard wg to show that youre human enough to be here, and this was like an exact process fthe hard worker having to show that youre human enough to be here, and this was like an exact process for that. And thats how it exists, maybe not through a program but it is the same idea. What she is referencing, what she is reminding us of is that often immigrant groups not just immigrant groups, but i should say immigrant groups, racialized groups, groups that have to demonstrate, they have to demonstrate that they are worthy for civil rights, right . Demonstrate that they are hard working. Demonstrate that they are respectable so that they can receive rights, civil rights, human rights, and we have our own critiques. But this is how they understood the reality as well. Christian. This is a very good example of the power of dynamics between the state and the people, the majority over the minority, because it basically is viewed through a perspective lens that human rights are something given as opposed to inalienable, as opposed to natural laws. Thats actually how people are exploited in the first place. Yes, people have to demonstrate theyre worthy of this, yes. Im glad that you guys are connecting the dots. I will show you another image. This image is actually an interesting image. It is a young man getting sprayed with ddt. It is actually cropped. The original nidel photograph showed the entire naked body. Yes . What is ddt . Yes. Ddt is a chemical that was sprayed it is a toxic chemical that was sprayed on all of these men so that it would i mean you should hear the narratives. Isnt it like poison . Wasnt it why was that the last part of the process and why was it they . I just dont understand. Because they were thought of as folks that were carrying disease. Was it supposed to kill like what is it originally for . Isnt it used for crops . It is used for all sorts of things. It is a toxic chemical. Didnt it harm them . Many of them. Like their skin or something. Many of them told stories about their eyes burning after the spray, then remembering that, you know, that it was not pleasant. Some men thought it gave them prolonged issues with their eyes, skin. There is nothing that i know thats been conclusively done about how ddt affected them longterm. So these men, this actual moment was very significant for most of these men. Because when we would go out and ask these men to participate in the bracero history project, we would show them some of these images and one man actually said in a in a you know, san jose, raised his hand and said, you know, young lady, you realize that we were naked . I said, yes, i know, the picture has been cropped so we can show it to the general public. He said, i dont know why you need to crop this photo, the reality is we were naked. And i think for him it was important that people know that it was much more alienating than the picture showed, right . For him the true testament was the whole naked body, not just a cropped version of the body. So they finally go through this process, right . And they receive a bracero contract. They might get sent off to different places. Some people yes, maria . It is kind of different but i just have a question. If a bracero was contracted, was he like did he take his family with him or did they stay behind . Thats a very good question. It is a very, very good question. There is a really great scholar who just published her book last year that really looks at how families dealt with the Bracero Program, specifically women. Some women actually stayed and waited for remittances. Other women found that they never received remittances. You guys know what remittances are, right . Money given back to like the wife. Sent back. To support them. Yes, money sent back to mexico. So these remittances were sent back, and some women opted and some families opted to move closer to the border. You have braceros that actually not everyone, but some that decided to move their families to mexicali so they can visit their families during breaks to facilitate family rue unification. Others tried to figure out what to do and it really shifted the gender dynamics in these small, small towns and villages across mexico because some women argued that overnight all of the ablebodied men were gone. So women, some women took that as an opportunity to sort of assert leadership roles that they hadnt before. Some of them, you know, created new leadership roles for themselves, and the dynamics in the countryside towns shifted because of that. Thats a really good question. You think about where the bracero is. He finally gets a contract. There were some places that received larger quantities of braceros like california. California received a tremendous amount of braceros. And the living situation could vary. You could see here, this is a barrack. I say typical in that it is tight, but some of them would have single beds, some of them would have bunk beds, but if you notice theyre pretty much elbow to elbow. This is how they slept. The personal space is super minimal. They dont have very much room for personal possessions. Some men tried to create sort of, you know, their own separate space and demarcate separate space, but it was quite challenging in this situation. And then ill show you a couple of images of folks laboring in some places like salinas, you know, they picked things like lettuce and carried out a tremendous, a tremendous amount of labor. The other thing we know is theyre using what is called a cordito. Does anybody know what a cordito is . Was it that small little hoe that made them bend over, so like the people watching them could make sure they were working from far away . Yes. It is the shorthandle hoe, youre right. Thats exactly what it is. Thats the cordito. What does that translate into . Small, little, short. Little, short handle hoe. What we know is that they got rid of the shorthandle hoe because it was so problematic. Why would mexico agree to this program . Why do you guys think . In the beginning, the very first years, like we said before, they were being so patriotic. When they migrated to the u. S. They wanted to show, oh, were helping you. They even showed patriotism by saying, we fed america. So basically it showed, oh, were giving respect to our mother country because were helping the u. S. Basically. Uhhuh, yeah. Theres a sense of patriotism at the beginning. When worker exploitation rises, why do you think mexico would continue to allow this . Yes. One thing, i guess it is more of a modern example, is still i think a lot of countries in central and south america and mexico still allow these programs and, like, dont do anything as a government because of remittances. So much of their annual i think even my own family is involved in like remittances, just because like in the u. S. We send money to el salvador because my cousin is going to college. Because of that, governments allow like the mexican allows exploitation in the u. S. And doesnt do anything about it, and they know the u. S. Wont do anything about it because they need the labor because they need to eat. It is dollars going into their country. It is dollars going into their country. Remittances become very important to the mexican economy. Remittances become very important, and this period normalizes the Trans National family. So the idea that people can be away from their family for a year, two years, three years working in the u. S. , this is the period where that becomes very, very normal. Where that becomes ordinary. So the other thing is that mexico sees this as a way in which they can modernize folks in the country side, folks that, say, for instance are Agricultural Workers. They feel like this might be an avenue into modernity. This is 1951. It is a critical year because the Bracero Program is also during 1951, it is also renewed. So 1951, hoy magazine prints this on their cover. This sort of tells you a bit about how mention cal middle class, mention cal elite feel about the Bracero Program. How do you think they feel about the program after reading this . Dehumanizing, by making them feel con descended. Condescended to . Yeah. Yes. Theyre critiquing something, but what are they critiquing . It looks like in the middle like a small mexican boy, and like the two grown men on the side with this really lecherous looks on their faces. It is like americans, and it is like theyre taking a small boy and theyre going to raise him up to be what they want him to be. I guess like the critique would be it is like their theyre looking down on us and that were not up to their level so theyre going to, like, try to theyre going to try to bring us up to their level by exploiting these workers. Like that will somehow benefit mexico. So you are on the money with part of your critique in that this does have a lot to do with this indigenous little boy. But the figure on your right side is actually a charo. Yeah, it is a little grainy on there, but it is a charo. Thats sort of, you know, representative of what, you know, the mexican middle class meant to see. On the other side you see a sort of texas cowboy. I think a texas cowboy, but he could be a cowboy from somewhere else. Because of the boots, right . And so what you see is you see the child standing in the middle and the sort of typical rural mexican is depicted as indigenous, right . So the idea here, the critique that the publishers of this magazine are making is that neither the charo nor the cowboy are looking out for the interests of the small child, right . Neither one of them is. Theyre all, like you said, looking to take advantage of this child, right . Exactly what you said. Theyre looking to sort of exploit this child, right . And to perhaps raise him in a vision that would allow for them to exploit him because theyre just sitting there, like you said, lecherously smiling, sort of towering over him. Does anybody else have an idea what the image could mean . Yes, carlos . You said yourself, you said that the Mexican Government when we were talking about why they would agree to it, it was a way to like modernize the people that were working in agriculture, right . So im guessing thats the significance behind have a charo there. I think thats what it is. You know, the fact that theyre looking at this kid and the fact that they portray the little like they portray the braceros as a small kid, like a small, isnt looking kid, and these guys look like very manipulative, it shows that, like, a little bit of the background thats going on. I dont know, i think its like sending a double message. Uhhuh. Arianna . I also feel like the fact they chose a child is really interesting because, you know, these are two grown men looking over a child, and it is kind of like a child you know, children can be smart but theyre usually not on par with adults. So it is like it is a power differential. Exactly. It creates and highlights the unbalance of power. Yep. Jackie . I think this cartoon or whatever you might want to call it kind of reminds me of us as students and how you have, like, White America or like this kind of, like, western forget your culture kind of thing, like the pressure to forget your culture, and then you have, like, the people from your community on the other side, like, okay, were sending you off to college, what are you going to do, and theres just like so much pressure. It is like you kind of have this struggle to, like, choose which side or, you know, like, how youre going to what youre going to make of yourself basically. Youre pointing again to that power differential, right . The child is in the middle. Theres something about the child that you connect to because you feel for him in some way, right . You feel that youre in a similar position, you know, in terms of access to power. The irony there is that, you know, the mexican figure is just as lecherous, you know. So what we also know is that the u. S. Depicted this program very differently, right . This emmaimage comes from agricultural life magazine. It is boots and sandal also. The idea is that there are some you cant read the caption so closely, but there are some braceros that have been here more than once. The caption says Something Like, can you guess whos been to the u. S. . So can you guess who has been to the u. S. . Uhhuh. The ones with the boots. The ones with the boots, because the boot what it means is modernity, right . It means this person is getting modernized, right . Theyre entering a place where theyre learning how to be in the world. Yes . And i also feel like they have enough money to buy boots now. Look, theyre making money. Like these people coming in for the first time are the ones wearing sandals, and from what i can tell they look like they look like sandals made from random stuff around the house, not even actual sandals. It is like theyre coming to the Bracero Program, theyre going to get so much money because theyre going to get money and modern and it will be a whole improvement for everyone. Yes, theyre going to get money, theyre going to be modern, and the idea here is very racialized. Like the little child was indigenous, the idea here is that the sandals almost harken back to being indigenous. It is tied to the figure of the child. Indigeneity is tied to this lack of progress for mexico, right . So mexico is trying to remake itself, and indigeneity is a major problem, the indigenous problem. So what the u. S. Gives mexico is an opportunity also not to just send back remittances but to modernize its population, so that its population could learn how to wear boots, so that they could learn how to work with, you know, equipment, you know, Agricultural Equipment from the u. S. , so they could learn the modes of industrialization, so they can learn to be modern in a different way. Do all braceros accept this . Not really. How do we trace and now this next part of the class i want us to think about the article we read. How do we trace bracero resistance . How do we think about braceros resisting paradigm or resisting exploitation . They werent just passively sitting there. I want to show you guys the figure of the child and the figure of the boots because theyre actually entering it very savvy, right . Some of them are questioning the pro, some of them are pushing back. They definitely in oral histories have narratives of exploitation but also narratives of resistance. I wanted to start off this segment of the class in which were going to move to the article by talking about the organization we read about. So in southern california, again a collecting site. People were coming in, sharing their oral histories. A young man brings in this i. D. It is his dads i. D. And he tells the story of his father. But his dad was part of this organization. The i. D. Says, alliance of National Workers of mexico in the United States of america. At the end of the day i was looking at all of the scans we had collect because it was part of what i did, right, look at scans, make sure we have all of our oral histories, make sure everything is duplicated, make sure we dont lose anything, and i was struck by this i. D. Because i had never heard very much about this organization. Thinking, what does this mean. It says afl, braceros on the side. It has a stamp of a mexican you know, of a mexican union. This is not a typical bracero i. D. This is not something that the u. S. Government issues or the Mexican Government issued. So i looked at it and i thought, what the heck is this. This is a work of historians, right . So i went back and i thought, who the heck writes enough about braceros so that i could figure out what this means. So i pull out a book, steve pities book. Steve pity writes this book, a devil in Silicon Valley and i find a reference to this organization. It is a couple of lines. Then i pull out another book, may nuys book, and there were a couple of lines too. But who were these people, what do we know about these people . I didnt know very much about them. I didnt know what they did, who they were. I figured the work of historians, you go to the ar kiech archive. I started in the mexican archive and i started looking for papers and looking for places where this organization might exist. I found some parts of where i could find information and primary sources on this organization. I found letters that they actually sent to mexican president s, but then i hit the jackpot. In stanford, california, because Ernesto Galarza had a file full of letters with the leadership of this organization. What do we know about this organization . Now that you guys know something about the organization, who are these men, what did they do . It all started because they thought that many of the braceros who were coming into the u. S. Were not doing their job and not representing their mother country well enough. So the person who founded alianza i forgot his name. Ernesto galarza is one of the leaders, and then raoul ramon. They wanted to reassure the braceros, you are coming in to represent us well and if you find a better job, go to that job, you have to fill full your contract. They start off taking on the patriotic discourse. They start off and they believe theyre here as sort of ambassadors in overalls, theyre doing this fantastic work for mexico and the u. S. And theyre doing something in a time of war, theyre feeding the country in a time of war. When do they change their mind . When does it shift . I was going to say it started off at a nationalistic project essentially. This was saying like making it like were mexicans and were, like, the u. S. Is a Good Neighbor and were going to do this right, and then it comes kind of comes to like the criminalization. You called it like the criminalization of alianza because they start to they want to advocate for the bracero worker because they realize theyre living in these horrible conditions. Thats when it becomes a criminalized thing. I thought it was crazy like both i dont know if it was both the mexican and the u. S. Government, but they were, like, arresting the people that work for alianza because they were trying to advocate for their rights. It is the simplest thing, like we just want water, we just want a nice place to live and stuff like that. Uhhuh. This organization is particularly interesting because we know from the record, we know from other books, we know from other things that braceros are resisting all the time, that there are braceros who walk out, that there are braceros who protest, as gabbie said, when they dont have their needs met, when they dont have good quality of food, when they dont get paid. There is bracero resistance all over the place. This is a unique organization in that they dont just resist in the u. S. They believe they can actually organize across, across countries, right . Trans nationally, that they can organize in mexico, they can be organized in the u. S. , they can do the kind of political work that they want and it is just not predicated on their on their life and place in the fields, right . That they can do this for themselves also across the country, right, across these countries. Ernesto galarza is an interesting figure because he really you know, he comes to work for the National Farm labor union, and he thinks to himself, theres so much sort of in the organizing world, antimexican, antiimmigration sentiment. He comes to the u. S. As a young boy during the mexican revolution. You know, he does farm work. He sees himself in the polite of some of these men. He sees himself as a migrant, you know. He thinks of himself this way. Hes really, really you know, hes really an extraordinary person who from the fields go to occidental college, gets his b. A. , moves to get a masters at stanford and gets his doctorate at columbia. It is pretty extraordinary if you think about the 1940s what hes able to accomplish, right . Able to accomplish really extraordinary things. He goes, starts working for the National Farm labor union and he decides that this organization might be the ticket, that this organization might really help him access braceros, and he believes like them that he can organize them from their sending countries, that he can organize them well, and he can do something about it. What happens . Why does he lose his like his commitment to them . Gabbie started talking about how he loses sort of interest in thinking that they are potential allies, that they can be organized well. Doesnt he start losing interest because he realized that alianza doesnt have an influence on the Mexican Government, and so he kind of i dont know how i perceived it was like, oh, it is kind of like he has no hope in this, like nothing is going to go forward if they have no influence with the Mexican Government. He also realizes that theyre being scapegoated in mexico, theyre being red baited in mexico, that theyre being detained in mexico, that theyre attempting to come in as guest workers. These are men who are guest workers so a lot of their livelihood is based on them renewing these contracts. Theyre being black listed at the border so they cannot work as guest workers anymore. He starts to lose home, right . Before he loses hope completely, in the summer of 1951 as hes organizing, you know, workers in the Imperial Valley, right before he loses hope he thinks, this might be the ticket, right . And he organizes them. He tries really, really hard and he sends out, you know, flyers. He works with the leadership of alianza. He tries really hard, and what he finds is that, you know, organizers, locals of the nflu say, what is going on, why are the braceros coming in and saying that they are that they are Union Members . How is this . Theres such a great divide between American Labor and mexican labor and even mexican documented labor, the braceros, that for him this divide becomes really, really challenging. On top of the divide, the actual tensions, the ethnic tensions between mexican americans and mexican migrants, the tensions between american you know, americans and folks, you know, born in mexico, he also finds that the Mexican Government is augmenting their exploitation, right . He finds that the Mexican Government is augmenting their exploitation. Gabbie says it, right . Gabbie clearly tells us theyre being detained. The Mexican Government isnt doing very much for them, right . The Mexican Government isnt working for their interests. The Mexican Government sort of, you know, leaves them out in the cold. And this is not the first time, right . Because there are multiple, you know, moments where workers, you know, try to do more and the Mexican Government did very little for them. Some moments counsels interceded a bit for braceros, but their power is limited, right . So what do we know at the end of this article . What happens to the alianza . So galarza decides after the strikes in the Imperial Valley paul afat th fall apart, that he cant organize these men, it is not possible. We get the head of the alianza actually saying to him where does he say it to him. Right towards the end i think. He says that the distance on page 229, who could read the he wrote, your distance. He is part of the leadership of alianza sends a letter to galarza and says, someone . He wrote, your distance is companero, i dont know if you are thinking of retiring from the fight or you might see that our relationship is too insignificant to help reach your goal. But if it is this im unsure that you will not find another companero that on principle alone will constantly step in the doungeons of a prison. He is detained and he writes galarza and says, your distance is odd. He literally pleads with him and says, i am sure you will not find another companero that on principle alone will constantly step into the dungeons of a prison. He understands a lot of his membership feels red baited, that a lot of his membership is scared, that they cant move forward as a union. Galarza shifts his goals. What we also know in the archive is that the correspondence dwindles and galarza begins to use alianza to carry out research for his book strangers in our field. Strangers in our field is an expose of the exploitation going on in the Bracero Program. Strangers in our field opens up a conversation about the exploitation in agriculture, and literally his Research Becomes the base of congressional hearings that in 1963 literally put an end to the Bracero Program, solely based on exploitive practices, on, you know, human rights. What happens . Do you guys know what happens to alianza . You guys dont know because it is not in this article. What do you guys happens to alianza . Once like the Bracero Program ends theres kind of nothing theres not much for them to do i guess . They pretty much disband. Theres not much their presence is predicated on the fact that they are guest workers, right . Theres no longer a Guest Worker Program. Now, i know it is a sad story, but when we think about this, when we think about the Bracero Program and we think about the legacy of Ernesto Galarza and alianza, what do you guys thing we can take from this or learn . What did you guys learn from galarza, what did you guys learn from alianza in terms of organizing, what did you learn about labor organizing . Working together, knowing that youre not the only organization that exists for a purpose in and of itself, you know, in reaching out to the other organizations like they did with the crn, right . Uhhuh. You know, they combined with that organization in order to work for, you know, the same goal. But in doing that, also ensuring that youre working that youre not leaving out a certain, you know, group of people who are working, and on top of that being very general for purposes, but, you know, on top of that not gaining too Much Negative light from, you know, like with the Mexican Government in this sense, because they lost a lot of resources economically systematically from that and no other organizations wanted to work with them because they had a negative perception about them already. So had they worked earlier with these groups before they gained the negative light, maybe they would have had a better turnout earlier. What do you guys think about the actual writing of an organization that in some ways failed . Do you think that the alianza failed . Is that a failure on the part of galarza, on the part of braceros . Luce, youre nodding. I dont think so. I feel like as much as it didnt work out unfortunately, it did like what they were trying to do and what they were trying, like their main goal of helping out people who are not represented by like a huge mass or by the people in high position, they like exist and show like we us like minorities or people who are underappreciated, we can fight for our own rights regardless if they tell us not to unionize, we cant do this or the other, we can find loopholes or fight back and say, no, we deserve our human rights. We dont have to show you that we are human or we are hard workers, like we were saying before. Like we are born with these human rights and we can fight for them. So resistance is worthy of just writing about even if it doesnt, you know, even if they dont necessarily accomplish their goals . Gabbie. I feel like just the fact that were reading about it is like an answer that or the fact that we can ask the question like what can we learn from like this organization would say that its not a failure, because i feel like we can learn from it and because not necessarily because its been written about because i feel a lot of great things have been written out of history, but the fact we can read about it and say what can we learn from this, and unfortunately does it still very much apply in 2015 in like organizing for really anything. So i would say no, it is not a failure. It is not a failure . Christian . For me, i would definitely agree because they exemplified the resilience and theyre agents of resilience that happen all the time, that we dont hear about because of mass media. I wouldnt use the word failure. I would use the word defeat because they didnt fail at what they were trying to do. They were stopped. We have seen throughout this semester how Government Agencies whenever there is radical thought, whenever there is pushback on the exploitation, these people resist