(describing how the
Braceros had to accept painfully low wages and
Caption: A reconfigured flotation circuit has been commissioned at the Los
Braceros Mill.
The 1964 termination of the
bracero program, which recruited Mexican guest workers to work on American farms, had "little measurable effect on the labor market for domestic farm workers." That is the conclusion of Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican
Bracero Exclusion (NBER Working Paper No.
For example, while the tomato picking business in California didn't miss the
braceros and was able to adapt within a year by introducing mechanized harvesters for production, other crops such as asparagus and fresh strawberries that didn't have a technological solution couldn't cope and saw a decline in production.
The 'peculiarity of the process of contracting labour', writes a Spanish planter in the 1940s, 'is the age-old custom of giving advances to the
braceros the moment a contract is made'.
the
Bracero Program was enacted in 1942 in no small part because large numbers of the male labor force were engaged in the military, and a large part of those left behind were engaged in industrial support of the military.
Although originally devised to meet World War II shortages, the
Bracero Program continued until 1964 under a variety of legislative authorities, ultimately employing 5 million Mexican laborers.
Entre 1955 y 1960 la migracion anual de
braceros fluctuo entre 400,000 y 450,000 trabajadores.
Bardacke provides a colorful portrayal of how the
braceros -- seasonal Mexican laborers -- and the people who hired them, used dirty, or outright unlawful, tricks to evade legal guarantees ''that the
Bracero program [a U.S.-sponsored way to bring workers across the border for seasonal labor] would not 'adversely affect' domestic labor and decreed that
braceros could not be contracted to a job if there was enough domestic labor to do it.''
Deborah Cohen,
Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Postwar United States and Mexico (Charlotte: University of North Carolina 2011)
