Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

1/28/03 News Report -- El Paso Times

When Jose Gonzalez came to the United States in the early 1950s, he was one of thousands of faceless men who worked the cotton fields of West Texas and were never recognized for their work and contribution. Not even a pat on the back.

"That is still our struggle," Gonzalez said. "We did not go to war, but we contributed to this nation with our sweat."

Now, Gonzalez, 72, and others like him are the object of a national search by University of Texas at El Paso students who want to document the travels, adventures and hardships of braceros, farm workers from Mexico who filled the void while the United States fought in World War II and then other conflicts.

Working with the Oral History Institute at UTEP, students with digital tape recorders have covered significant territory, from the United States-Mexico border to as far north as Chicago, interviewing braceros, former U.S. Border Patrol agents and the farmers and ranchers who hired the workers.

Braceros, like the soldiers who served in World War II, are quickly dying, and there is a sense of urgency among scholars and immigration advocates to document their stories in the United States.

"We decided that these stories needed to be captured before the men were lost," said Kristine Navarro, director of UTEP's Oral History Institute.

Navarro is working with the Ford Foundation, UTEP's Paso al Norte Immigration History Museum and other universities across the United States to recover at least a fraction of the stories behind the almost 5 million Mexican immigrants who kept the U.S. agricultural economy afloat from 1942 to 1964.

During the 1950s and 1960s, thousands crossed through El Paso and Juárez, most of them routed to Rio Vista Farm in Socorro, one of five reception centers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Laureano Martinez, 33, a UTEP graduate student, is involved in the project. His grandfather, Consolacion Herrera, 96, of Downey, Calif., was a bracero in the 1940s.

"This project is fascinating. It's a part of the history of the region, the United States and Mexico," Martinez said.

Known as braceros because they worked with their brazos, or arms, they were supposed to return to Mexico after their contracts expired. But many braceros eventually settled in El Paso and other U.S. cities. They became the grandparents, parents, tios and neighbors of current generations.

Sixty years after the bracero program began, the term bracero still ignites political wildfires every time politicians argue about reintroducing a Mexican guest worker program. Activists still struggle to help braceros recover promised wages and benefits.

The bracero program was established by bilateral agreements between the United States and Mexico as an emergency measure to satisfy World War II labor shortages. They were hired across the United States but mostly concentrated in the Northwest and Southwest, according to U.S. Labor Department reports.

Civil rights groups later complained that braceros were exploited or cheated out of wages or benefits. Others were subjected to discrimination from racial extremists and average Americans.

Gonzalez -- who picked cotton and other crops in West Texas, the Texas Panhandle, Montana and Wyoming for 15 years starting in the early 1950s -- is the kind of candidate that UTEP is seeking.

Gonzalez, now a volunteer at the Center for Border Agricultural Workers in South El Paso, became a bracero in Chihuahua. He eventually became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

"I was always treated well, but some farmers were not always honest," Gonzalez said. "Some would not fulfill the contracts."

Gonzalez earned 50 cents an hour in Texas, 60 cents an hour in New Mexico and $10 to $12 per acre up north.

Braceros picked strawberries and harvested lettuce in California. They dug potatoes in Idaho and picked cotton in Texas and New Mexico. Others chopped weeds in Illinois cornfields, pulled sugar beets from the ground in Oregon, branded cattle on ranches or shoveled gravel onto railroad roadbeds.

Dr. Jose Roman treated braceros in Pecos, Texas, where the workers lived in barracks.

"They came over with one change of clothes, one pair of shoes, a light jacket and a straw hat," he said in an interview taped in the 1970s. "The farmers ... would see to it that they had housing, bedding, medical care and food. But anything else, the braceros had to provide for it."

The oral history project has collected stories, photos and documents in Albuquerque, Mexico City, Las Cruces, Chicago and California. Testimonials will be posted on a Web site.

The project is receiving positive marks. "It's very important, especially considering that a new guest worker program is being considered," said Sara Campos, a staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center in Oakland, Calif.

Howard Campbell, associate professor of anthropology at UTEP, is researching Mexican farm workers for a book. He describes the oral history project as timely for people whose stories might not otherwise be told.

"These are mostly poor people who have done the work for our country growing food and harvesting it, but historically have had little voice," Campbell said.

Carlos Marentes, director of the Center for Border Agricultural Workers in South El Paso, applauded the project.

"Of all the movements on the frontier, the bracero program was perhaps the most important. Braceros had a significant economic and social impact," Marentes said. "It is important that we rescue the bracero story. That would be a just homage."

Bracero time line