This is were almost towards the end of the semester and because were almost towards the end of the semester i decided to talk to you guys today about what i researched. You guys had my piece on braceros. To start with i want us to think about the class today in two parts. One in which were going to bracero history and i know we covered brassero history in sort of broad sketches. This time well talk about brassero history a little more indepth. Cero history a little indepth. Second thing were going to do is tuck about the article. Good . Okay. 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. Mexican American History. My adviser, my thenmentor was first my teacher. Matt garcia said to me, and to the rest of the class, find your oldest Family Member and collect an oral history. I thought an oral history was a basic interview i thought okay, thats fine. Its a little challenging when you come from immigrant families in which your grandparents are somewhere else. Soy 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. 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 cotten in texas. What it was like to pick cabbage in california. I thought to myself well i kind of sort of know this story. Because i know my uncle, ive heard this story and i took it back to the class and my teacher, matt garcia said this is extraordinary and 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. Ill show awe picture of my uncle. Thats my uncle. He actually was born in a little, Little Village called mara vias in guanojuato. My teacher 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. Gabby . I guess its most traditionally understood like a Guest Worker Program, workers from mexico would come to the u. S. Due to a wartime kind of thing. Workers were needed and a lot of citizens were at war, so they got a lot of guest workers from mexico. Are you exactly right. It started as a war time in the war time it started in 1942. And what does guest worker mean . Anybody . Guest . Worker . Yes, maria . The moment that workers [ inaudible ] 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 return and can stay for multiple years, but guest worker means just that. Why do you guys think that Guest Workers Program and in specific the Bracero Program would be important now . Just a question. Yes, molly . [ inaudible ] the u. S. Is constantly sort of thought about, enacted agreements for bringing in guest workers and weve seen guest workers. The Bracero Program didnt put an end to the Guest Worker Program. We see 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. 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 shape other policies around guest workers, right . Another question. How many of you actually have Family Members that came in through the Bracero Program . One . Really . Usually its more. I dont know. You see . A couple. So the other thing that we know is that the Guest Worker Program really impacted migration histories, right . If we go back to what is the Bracero Program, the Bracero Program was a binational agreement between mexico and the u. S. That allowed mexican male laborers to enter the u. S. On temporary work permits. That means they entered the u. S. Quoteunquote legally. They had a legal permit. Had the status, right . Gabby 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 have argued after the war ended, guest workers continue to come in. Why did guest workers continue to come in after the war ended . Took advantage. [ inaudible ] yes, yeah. Exactly it became a cheaper mode of labor. And we know for a fact that there were two components to the first Bracero Program. Railroad and agricultural. Why did the railroad component end . Yes. Because railroads were real strong. [ inaudible ] 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 . Its not five, its not ten. Its not 20, its 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 every state in mexico. And 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 . Theyre 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 states already that they didnt need to hire thats a good guess. Its a good guess. Next guess . Another good guess. Were getting closer. Gabby . I dont know. Kind of going off of like what marquis has been saying. Also just like i feel like the cheap labor would have been like africanamericans in that area because its like the south and so like after like slavery was abolished quoteunquote, they would 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 workforce. Youre all getting very, very close. The other thing you guys have not read. Which is why i ask you these questions. These other states actually also brought in guest workers, some of the guest workers that were brought in in those states were from jamaica and the british west indies. So there was another Guest Worker Program that existed alongside the Bracero Program. Another thing that happened along 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 went to. States like michigan, braceros could find themselves working along side puerto rican temporary workers. Would they be considered guest workers . 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. How do we imagine that the Bracero Program impacted mexican migrations what are your guess is to how it would impact mexican migration. Luis . They also brought like contracts they migrated to areas of the u. S. I believe for every like two million that came in it was double that for undocumented. The competition between them. With happens with the Bracero Program is that you see a rise of undocumented labor alongside documented labor program. The Bracero Program literally creates another wave. So when people start to talk about temporary Guest Worker Program and talk about the reality of guest workers right now and when the 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 augmented undocumented immigration. That is one reality. What do we know about the period right before the Guest Worker Program . The 1930s . [ inaudible ] [ inaudible ] repatriation. Which is when the [ inaudible ] what what it does and what youre pointing out is there is a moment that when theres deportation what 1942 does in the 1940s is bring back mexican migration to areas like maybe michigan, illinois, in the midwest. Where these sort of populations were hit so hard by repatriation, so it reinvigorated mexican migration to states that been hit hard by immigration. Traditional areas like texas, california, new mexico were once again reinvigorated because of the wave of migration and what else do we know about those ships . What else can you guess . It also transformed the gender dynamic, right . Because theyre all men coming into these areas. So some men were able to stay. Not every man. This is not for to you stay some men were able to stay because they married mexicanamerican women. They also married White American women and they found avenues to stay in the u. S. And you know, other men simply went back to their communities. Okay. So how do i connect this to my own work, right . Im going to tell you guys a little about the stuff i do. During graduate school i spent five years working on the bracero history project. Right after i collected my uncles oral history. I waited 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. And i said sure. You know im interested in guest worker history. Im interested in some of these topics. And what i didnt know is that the National Museum of American History had quite a huge collection of Leonard Nadal photographs, they had decided they were going to pursue an actual exhibit projectnd a digital archive. 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 start thinking about the way in which we interact with history. So the bracero history project began as i started graduate school at brown. 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 salinas. I was sent out to coachella to train communities to collect their own oral histories and i carried my 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 wanted to collect oral histories in states that werent traditional sending states. When you think about the bracero history, the traditional sending states were michuocan. Jalisco and juanowuato. The yucatan in quintinaroo. I took them back to every other community that hen had been trained to deposit histories in oral archives, undergraduates in places like the Channel Islands decide ed decided to collect their own oral histories. 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 la n Latino History. The second thing we did is digitized peoples documents, people, students, undergraduates stood there and scanned i. D. S, photographs, anything people would bring in was scanned and made sure it was preserved. 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 the National Museum of American History created a traveling exhibit, bittersweet harvest. And that was a small modest exhibit that got a lot of attention and got a lot of attention because many people who came from these communities, were ill pacted by these communities wanted to host this exhibit. Ill show you what the page looked like. Cant see it that well. But in 2010 we won a 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 you can listen to my uncle. You can type in my name and listen to oral histories and i have the good, the bad and the ugly. The oral histories that i carried out when i was just learning methods and you will say wow this is terrible and 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 bpy ride. You learn by doing and theres times where you know i an a that assignment, just for enduring it. So bittersweet harvest this is a photograph of bittersweet harvest. You cant see it that clearly. It opened up at the National Museum. It was composed of these lightweight panels, so they could travel all over the u. S. Them alongside. Displayed alongside National Museums. Which is fantastic. We were also fortunate enough. You cant really see it in the back there. Theres bunkbeds. Theres bunkbeds 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 have 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. So you cant see it, but its right there. The original car that you saw, was my uncles, made its way there, too. I thought how can i ask other people to donate their objects, if i dont push my own family to donate their objects . You are in michuocan, sort of a central state. How do you guess you might hear about the program . Yes. Luis . Yeah, thats one way. Thats definitely one way a lot of people heard. [ inaudible ] thats another way. I feel like a lot of times its like the u. S. Sends like recruiters, i dont know if that would be the case, but i feel like that might be a thing. Well, actually there was recruitment processes that went through the actual, actual city officials of these towns. That pushed recruitment. Yes . Marquis . [ inaudible ] propaganda was big on both sides. The first years of the Bracero Program which youre seeing now, what youre going to see is pictures from the Leonard Nadal collection at the National Museum. From these pictures you will see the 1950s, sort of youll see the contracting through the prospective of Leonard Nadal in the 1950s, but the 1940s, the 1940s was a completely different period. In the 1940s you might walk out 1942, the first bracero who came out didnt necessarily know 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. He had had no idea what they were in for. Men who told me i was 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 1940s was this patriotic period of the Bracero Program. The country is at war, the braceros are coming in. People are telling the braceros that they are arms to there to feed the country in the time of war. They take on the patriotic discourse thats tied to the Good Neighbor policy and theyre very, very excited to do their part, to do their part in this time of war. Some of them would get off in places like stockton and they would 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 sends of patriotism quickly dispels, right . Its 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, is being augmented in agricultural communities all over the southwest. Midwest. We know that you know, as marquis said, growers become dependant on this labor. What we see is a very different phase of the program. Ill show you some photographs from the 1950s and ill tell you that the process is similar. But the actual, the actual discourse is 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 contacting center looked like. As you can see, youve now left your ton. Youve left, is it morellia. Youre on your way to the border. By the 150s, we know that the centers left the Central States and moved to the northern states. Why do you think that they would move from the Central States to the northern states . Closer to the border. Thats exactly it. Why else would growers want to be closer to the border . Luz . [ inaudible ] most farm workers wanted. Uhhuh. Its a good one. That is true. What david said is true. Why else . Yes . I read that [ inaudible ] pay for its true, all of these things are true. Theyre able to pull from undocumented labor when its closer to the border. But what is also true about the Bracero Program is that growers are paying for their transportation. 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. Now they have to take out loans. They have to borrow money from sfrends so they can make it to contracting stations to the border, at the border. 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 what we 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 morelia, but from another town not that far away and only speak a dialect. The Contracting Center becomes a site thats chaotic and it becomes a site that in which youll see in the photographs a lot of folks just surviving and waiting their turn. Luz . They said that workers who people who went to the Contracting Center was go into debt because they put their life on the line. Because they honestly thought it would be like a profit for them. They would separatiessentially there with already debt. Thats exactly what would happen. They would come in and they would come in in debt. They would start making money already in debt. Marquis . [ inaudible ] to even have a place to live while they were trying what marquis is referencing on campus is project 500 in 1968 where the university recruited 500 black and some latino students to come out to campus. You recruit students or recruit anybody and you dont give them resources and you dont give them housing, what would you cause is chaos, right . You cause a lot of sort of human suffering. Because people dont have the resources they need to survive on a daytoday basis. Yes, recruitment without a sort of infrastructure can become very kchaotic, right. In this case the infrastructure that was there was in place to exploit to exploit these guest workers. So we know that, we know that its chaotic. What happens when you actually get into the actual sites . Your name is called. Somebody says you know, lets give awe name. Manuel sanchez, your number is called, you can come on through. Manuel has already gotten in debt. Manuel may even have paid a mordita. What is that . Its in your reading. Its a small bribe that people pay to try to get on the list, so they can try to get called. They may might pay a mordita. Theyre paying for their own transportation. Theyre subsidizing growers, right . The 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 . Because they can look for callouses to see if theyre hard workers. If you had soft hands, they might think you dont have any experience. So you cant work here. Exactly. When people came back from the Bracero Program and they endured exploitation and hardship. They came back with a new pair of blue jeans or a new pair of boots to their village, their town it spread like wildfire, many people wanted to come to the u. S. 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 that 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 country side. The idea is they can perform this work, theyve done this work. To check their hands is to sort of check their resume, right . To see can we see that you are who you say you are. Many a tailor beat their hands up against rocks, and would rub their hands against rocks so they can develop callouses, what we learned is that bakers would often rub their hands on the sidewalks so that they could develop callouses as theyre sitting on a curb. Because they understood what people in the contracting stations were looking for. And they were going to play the part. 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 the Processing Center in monterrey what we see is a doctor. Walking through. You cant see it that clearly. A doctor walking through. Walking through and looking at braceros bodies. They have to check their xrays. They have to take xrays i should say and check their chest to make sure they didnt have tuberculosis. The ideas is that these might be potential disease carriers as well. We need to keep u. S. Communities safe. They wanted to make sure that these men werent carriers of any illnesses. The final part was probably 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 had to strip completely and they were sprayed with ddt. What you see is an image of a guest worker being sprayed with ddt. And i would hear many men say to me i was treated like an animal. The saddest oral history i collected was a man in in salinas, california. Who said to me, ms. He said senorita, senorita, miss, 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 . And i said, im not sure. Because i wasnt sure what he meant. And he said, because they treated me like an animal. So when did i have human rights . 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. A you can tell from the reading that you read today, braceros organizers often thought that they were treated like cattle. You saw the beginning of the paragraph, even the organization that well talk about later. The organizer said we were treated like cattle. We were sent to the slaughterhouse, we were sacrificed like cattle. I dont know how i didnt connect these dots before, its crazy how much this connects to what we were talking about last class this idea of the hard worker narrative, having to show youre human enough to be here. This is like the exact process. Where now its like thats how it exists. For people. Maybe not necessarily through a program. But still very much the same idea. What shes reminding us of is often immigrant groups, not just immigrant groups, but i should say immigrant groups, racialized groups, other groups had to demonstrate that they are worthy for civil rights, right . Demonstrate that they are hard working, demonstrate that they are respectable so they can receive rights, civil rights, human rights. We have our own critiques. This is how they understood their reality as well. Christian . I think it relates to how this is a very good example of the the state and the majority over the minority. Because it basically is from a perspective human rights is something that is given as opposed to natural laws and thats how people were exploited in the first place. Yeah, people have to demonstrate that theyre worthy of this, right . Im glad that youre connecting the dots. Ill show you another image. This image is a really interesting image. A young man getting sprayed with ddt. The original nadal photograph showed the entire naked body. Yes. Ddt is a chemical that was sprayed, its a toxic chemical that was sprayed on all of these men. So that it would, you should hear the narratives. Is it like poison . Why is that the last part of the process . Why was it necessary . I dont understand. They were thought of as folks carrying disease. What was it originally used for in. Its used for all sorts of things, its a toxic chemical. Many of them told stories of their eyes burning. After the spray, then remembering that it was not pleasant. It gave them prolonged issues with their eyes, skin. Theres nothing thats been conclusively done about how ddt affected them longterm. These men, this actual moment was very significant for most of these men. Because when we would go out and asked these men to participate in the bracero history project, we would show them some of these images. One man said in a san jose, raised his hand and said, young lady you realize that we were naked. And i said yes, i know, the picture has been cropped so we can show it to the general public. And 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 it was much more alienating than picture showed, right . For him the true testament was the whole naked body. Not just a cropped version of the naked body. They finally go through this process, right. They receive a bracero contract. They might get sent off to different places. Its kind of different, i have a question [ inaudible ] its a very good question. Theres a great scholar who just published her book last year, that really looks at how families dealt with the Bracero Program. Specifically women. Some women stayed and waited for remittances, other women found they never received remittances. Money sent back. Money sent back to mexico. 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 could visit with their families, to juarez, so they could see their families. It would facilitate family reunification. It shifted the gender dynamics in these small, small towns and villages across mexico. Because some women argued that overnight all the and so women some women took that as an opportunity to sort of assert leadership roles that they had before, and some of them, you know, created new leadership roles for themselves, and the dynamics in these countryside tow towns in the cities shifteded and its a really good question. So you think about where the bracero is. He finally gets a contract, there are 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, and i say typical in that its tight, but some of them would have single bets and some of them have bunk bed, but if you notice theyre pretty much elbow to elbow and this is how they slept. The personal space is super minimal. They dont have very much room for personal possession says. Some men tried to create sort of, you know, their own separate space and demarkate separate space and it was quite challenging in this situation and ill show you a couple of images of folks laboring. In places like salinas, they picked lettuce and they carried out a trem end us, tremendous amount of labor. The other thing is theyre used whats called a cortito. Whats a cortito . Is it the small hole to make sure that people were watching them to make sure they were working from far away. Thats exactly what it is. Thats the cortito. What does that translate to . Little short yes. Little short, handle hole. Chavez successfully got rid of the shorthandel hole because it was so problematic. Okay. So why would mexico even agree to this program . Why do you guys think . From the beginning in the very first years, they seemed so patriotic and when they brought their when they migrated toward the u. S. They wanted to show oh, we are helping you and and theyre showing patriotism by saying we fed america, and it basically showed oh, were giving respect to the mother country because were helping the u. S. , basically. 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 this is more of a modern example still. I think of 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 ribbons. So much of their annual, i think of even my own family is involved with remittances because in the u. S. We send money to el salvador because my cousin is going to college. Because of that, the governments allow like, the Mexican Government 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 and they need to eat. Dollars going into their country. Its dollars going into their country. Remittances become very important to the mexicanamerican economy. This period normalizes the transnational family. So the idea that people can be away from their family for a year, two years, three years, work other 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 in a way in which they can modernize folks in the countryside. Folks that, for instance, are Agricultural Workers. How would you read this image if you look at this . This is 1951. 1951 is a critical year because the Bracero Program is also during 1951 its also renewed. So 1951, hoy magazine prints this on their cover and this tells you a bit about how sort of mexican middle class and the mexican elite feels about the Bracero Program. How do you think they feel about the program from reading this, becka . [ inaudible ] yeah. Theyre seeing something. Theyre critiquing it, right . Theyre critiquing something, right . What are they critiquing . Yes. It looks like in the middle like a small mexican boy and the two grown men on the side have the look on their faces and i would say americans, and it looks like theyre taking the small boy and theyll raise him up to be what they want him to be and i guess the critique would be theyre looking down on us and were not up to their level so theyll, like, try to theyll 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 charro. Its a little grainy on there, but its a charro, and thats sort of representative of what the mexican middleclass fantasy is, right . Thats a charro and on the other side you see a texas cowboy. I think of 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 rural mexican is depicted as indigenous, right . And so the idea here and the critique that the publishers of this magazine are making is that neither the charro 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 . Theyre looking to sort of exploit this child, right . And to perhaps raise them in a vision that would allow for them to exploit them because theyre sitting there, sort of smiling and cowering over him. Does anybody else have any ideas of what this image could mean . No . Yes, carlos. You said it yourself. You said that the Mexican Government about why they would agree with it, it was a way to modernize the people while working in agriculture, right . Im guessing thats the significance behind having a charro there and i think thats what it is. The fact that theyre looking at this at this kid and the fact that they portray the little, like, they portray the bracero as a small, innocentlooking kid and these guys look, like, very manipulative and it shows a little bit of the background thats going on. I dont know. The story of his father, right . 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 that we collected because that was part of what i did, right . The scans, make sure that we have all our oral histories and make sure everything is duplicated and make sure we dont lose anything, and i was struck by this i. D. Because id never heard very much about this organization thinking what does this mean . It says afl, alianza de braceros on the side. Its got the stamp of a mexican union. This is not a typical bracero i. D. This is not something that the u. S. Government issued or the Mexican Government issued. And so i looked at it, and i thought what the heck is this . Work this is the work of historian, right . So i went back and i thought who the heck writes enough about braceros so i can read about what this means and i pull out a book, its steve pitys book, a devil in Silicon Valley and i find a reference to this organization. Just a couple of lines, and then i pull out another book, and theres 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, and i figured, the work of historian, you go to the archive. Marquise knows. Ape lot of you know. A lot of you have recently been into the archive. So i went to the archive. I started a mexican archive, and i started looking for papers and looking for places where this organization might exist and i found some parts of where i can find information and primary sources on the organization, and i found letters that i can send to mexican president s and then i hit the jackpot, in stanford, california, because ernesto had correspondence with this organization. Ernesto galarza with the letters from this organization. What do we know about this organization . Now that you know something about this organization, who are these men . What do they do . It all started because they thought 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 forget his name, was derecho . Jose Hernandez Serrano and then theres lara jimenez. Well, they basically started this because they wanted to reinsure to all of the braceros that youre coming in here to represent our country well, and you have to do your job well, and that starts slacking off and if you find a better job go to that job. You have to fulfill your contract. They start off and really take on that patriotic discourse, right . They start off and they really believe that theyre here, and theyre sort of ambassadors in overalls and theyre doing this fantastic work for mexico and the u. S. And theyre doing something in a time of war and they are feeding the country at a time of war, right . When do they change their mind . When does it shift . I was just going to say that it started off as this nationalistic project essentially of kind of like who they were siing were, like, mexicans and the u. S. Is, like, Good Neighbor and were going to do this right and then it comes it kind of comes to, like, the criminalization. You called it the criminalization of alianza because they start to, like, they want to advocate for the bracero worker because they realize that theyre living in these horrible conditions and thats when it becomes, like, a criminalized thing, and i first thought it was crazy that, like, both i dont know if it was both the mexican and the u. S. Government, but, like, they were they were, like, arresting the people who worked for alianza because they were trying to advocate for their rights. Its always, like, the simplest thing. We just want, like, water, or just, like, a nice place to live and stuff like that. This organization is particularly interesting because we know from the record, we know from other books and we know from other things that braceros are resisting all the time. That there are braceros who walk out and theyre braceros who protest as gabby said when they dont have their needs met and they dont have good quality of food and when they arent getting paid and there is bracero resistance all over the place and this is a unique, unique organization in that. They dont just resist in the u. S. They believe that they can actually organize across across countries, right . Transnationally, that they can organize mexico and they can organize in the u. S. And they can do the political work that they want and its just not predicated on their on their life and place in the fields, right . That they can do this for themselves across the country, right . Across these countries. Ernesto galarza is an interesting figure because Ernesto Galarza, he really comes to work for the National Farm labor union, and he thinks to himself, theres so much sort of in the organizing world antimexican, antiimmigrant sentiment. Galarza comes in as a young boy through the mexican revolution and does farm work. He sees himself in the plight 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 goes to Occidental College and gets a masters at stanford and gets his doctorate to columbia. Its pretty extraordinary if you think in the 1940s what hes able to accomplish. Able to accomplish really, troerd near things and he goes to start working for the National Farm labor union and he decideses this might be the techet and this organization might help him access braceros, and he believes like them that he can organize them from the sending countries and he can organize them well and he with do something about it . What happens, why did he lose his commitment to them. Gabby starts talking about how they lose interest in that theyre potential allies and they can be organized well. Doesnt he start losing interest because he realizes that alianza doesnt have an influence on the Mexican Government and so he kind of, like, i dont know how i perceived oh, its kind of like, he has no hope in this. Nothings going to go forward if they dont have influence with the Mexican Government. He also realizes that theyre being scapegoated in mexico. Theyre being redbaited in mexico and theyre being detained in mexico and theyre also attempting to come in as guest workers and these are men who are guest workers. So a lot of their lively hood is predicated on them renewing these contracts and theyre being blacklisted at the border so they cant enter and some of them as guest workers anymore and he starts to lose hope, 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 flyers and he works with the leadership of alianza. He tries really hard and what he finds is organizers and locals of the nflu and why are these braceros coming in saying theyre 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 this, this divide becomes challenging and the actual tensions and the ethnic tensions between mexican americans and mexican migrants. The tensions between, you know, americans and folks 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. Gabby says it, right . Gabby clearly tells us theyre being detained. The Mexican Government isnt doing very much for them, right . Ed Mexican Government leaves them out in the cold, and this is not the first time, right . Because there are multiple moments where workers, you know, try to do more and the Mexican Government did very little for them and some moments, consuls interceded a bit for braceros, but their power is limited, right . And so what do we know at the end of this article . What happens to the alianza . So galarza decides that after the strikes in the Imperial Valley fall apart that he cant organize these men, that its not possible, you know . We gett Ernesto Serrano saying o them where does he it . He says that the distance on page 229, who can read the your distance, Hernandez Serrano who is part of the leadership of alianza, sends a letter to galarza and says someone . He wrote, your distance is odd companero galarza. I dont know if you are retiring from the fight or you see our relationship is too insignificant to help reach your goal, but if it is this i am unsure if you will find another companero, that on principle alone will constantly step into the dungeons of a prison. Hernandez serrano is detained and he writes galarza and he says that. He says your distance is odd companero and he literally pleads with him and says i am sure that you will not find another companero that will principle alone will step into the dufrnlonngeons of a prison. He feels that his membership is scared that they cant move forward as a union and galarza shifts his goals and what we also know in the archive is that the correspondence dwindles and he actually carries out research for his book, strangers in our field. Strangers in our field does something extraordinary. Strangers in our field is an expose of all of the exploitation going on in the Bracero Program, and 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 practices and human rights. What happens . Do you guys know what happens to the alianza . You dont know what happens in this art beingel. What do you think happens in the alianza . Once the Bracero Program ends theres not much for them to do, i guess. They pretty much disband and their presence is predicated on the fact that theyre guest workers, right . Theres no longer Guest Worker Program. I know its 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 the alianza. What do we learn . What did you learn from galarza and learn from alanza, and what do you know about labor organizing . Working together and knowing youre not the only organization in of itself and reaching out to the other organizations like they did with the crn. They, you know, combined with that organization in order to work for, you know, the same goal, but in doing that also ensuring that you are working that youre not leaving out a Certain Group of people while youre working and on top of that im being very general here for purposes, but you know, and then on top of that not gaining too Much Negative light for the Mexican Government in a sense because they lost a lot of resources economically and systematically from that, and no other organizations really wanted to work with them because they have this negative perception about them already. So had they worked earlier then 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. Is that a failure on the part of galarza, on the part of those braceros . Is it a failure . Luz, youre nodding. I dont think so. I feel as much as it didnt work out, unfortunately, it did, like what they were trying to do any what they were trying their main goal of helping out people who are not represented by, like, a huge mess or by, like the high people in high position. Their existence showed that we, i guess minorities or people who are underappreciated we can fight for our own rights and regardless of whether they tell us we cant unionize, we can find loopholes or we can fight back and say no, we deserve our human rights. We dont have to show you that we are human or hard workers like we were saying before. We are born with these human rights and we can fight for them. So resistance is worthy about writing about even if they dont necessarily accomplish their goals . Gabby . I feel like just the fact that were reading about it is, like, an answer that or the fact that we can ask the fact that what can we learn from, like, this organization would say its not a failure because i feel like because we can learn from it and because not necessarily because its been written about because there are a lot of things written about history that have been written out of history, but the fact that we can read about it and say what can we learn from this . And how it very unfortunately, does very much apply in 2015 in organizing for anything. So i would say no, its not a failure. Its not a failure. Christian . For me, i would definitely agree with lucero because they exemplify the 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. They didnt fail at what they did. They were stopped, and we have seen throughout this semester how Government Agencies whenever there is radical thought and whenever there is pushback on the exploitation and marginalization of a people, these people do resist and they do try to make their lives better and to help each other and this is a story and a narrative that doesnt really get explored and it doesnt get a lot of attention and it should. I dont think they were failures and a lot of other organization, unfortunately. What do you guys take for your own organizing strategies and i know a lot of you guys are organizing all sorts of things on employ qcampus, around black matter and recruitment. How we talked about before how the groups on campus are having trouble, like, coming up with a middle ground. Like, theyre having trouble relating to each other and it kind of applies to this because they were talking about how alianza couldnt get support from anyone else and it was just kind of them and they werent able to bend with it to relate to other people and here on campus, we have to, like, learn from this and do something different. Like, we all have to find Middle Grounds and we all have to Work Together and we all have a common goal so why are we fighting each other, you know . Gabby . What christian said struck me about the idea of defeat and how sometimes how you feel as a student and just seeing, for me specifically seeing whats, like, happened to the americans is not that there isnt, like, a pushback or that they are arent strong or that all these things, and there is, like, so much institutional power that has completely defeated what that is and, like, what they want to be, and then i think of how that applies to my own life, so i really like this concept of being defeated and, like, how i can see that just play out in, like, the lives of marginalized people and then within, like, academia and marginalized apartments and the authority that theyre supposed to have, but dont have. Very good. Does anybody want to give us last words before the bell rings . Marquise . I have the people behind me, and the only way that you can get past a lot of these issues and the ways that alianza decided to take part in that was through solidarity with organizations, solidarity with the people in order to bring down that system of power that was brought against them. So remember that there are strength in numbers, that working together is one of the most important ways to bring down the oppression. Thank you very much. You guys, this is a wonderful class. You guys did wonderfully. You all are winners. The best. With the house and senate back in session on tuesday, september 5th, were taking a look at the work the members of congress are handling. The federal budget, tax reform, the debt ceiling and health care. Join us for a review of whats ahead for Congress Thursday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan and cspan. Org and listen on the free cspan radio app. Today on American History tv, we take you into College Classrooms across the country in our original series, lectures in history with the college and University Classrooms around the country. Next, a look at Latino History and the civil rights movement. We start with the university of california san diego luis
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.