We’ve been hearing a lot of searingly anti-immigrant statements in the news lately. It’s hard to imagine, but Mexican immigrants who came to work in California’s farm fields weren’t always treated as criminals. In fact, Braceros were guestworkers sent to the US by the Mexican government during WWII as part of the war effort. They were young men, sent to save the crops left in the fields as American men enlisted. And they were seen at the time as heroes pitching in– a forgotten part of the “greatest generation.”
Of course, as well-intentioned as the program might have been, things were never easy for immigrant workers here. This is the story of how the Bracero program became abusive over the course of decades, eventually crumbling under organizing pressure from farm workers. And it’s also the surprising story of what that farm worker movement missed in bringing down the Bracero program– told here by people with personal connections to the work.
This story was produced in collaboration with Ignacio Ornelas, History PhD Candidate at UCSC and Archivist at Stanford University, Mario Sifuentez, Assistant Professor of History at UC Merced and Frank Bardacke, independent scholar. Special thanks to Ignacio Ornelas for sharing audio from his extensive oral histories with braceros. Aubrey White served as audio produced for this story.