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UPDATER 10 December 1998 New Movement Demands Justice for Mexican
Farmworkers
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New Movement Demands Justice for Mexican Farmworkers
They are perhaps the last unrecognized veterans of America's wars. First called into action during World War II when labor shortages visited the nation, Mexican braceros were vital in making sure U.S. food crops were harvested and that the country’s railroads were kept in repair. From 1942 to 1964--through the Korean War and into the early years of the Vietnam War--more than three million Mexican men legally worked as contract braceros in northern fields and orchards. Without their participation, U.S. agriculture would have been handicapped by labor shortages and national growth fettered by limited agricultural output.
But unlike the combat vets honored with parades and monuments and awarded handsome state benefits, Mexican braceros were sent home without so much as an official ‘thank you.’ Many of these once-legal workers later spent years dodging immigration officers and enduring forced deportations as, out of economic necessity, they slipped back across the border to labor as undocumented workers. Forgotten in the United States, neglected in Mexico, and glossed over in the annals of labor stories, Mexico’s bracero generation was consigned to a minor footnote of history.
Bracero Movement Seeks
Recognition, Unpaid Benefits for Forgotten Bracero Workers
But if thousands of aging braceros have their way, all this will change. Almost 35 years after the Bracero Program ended, a growing number of voices in both Mexico and the U.S. are demanding that the veteran farmworkers--many of whom today lead impoverished lives--finally be given their due. In recent months, thousands of former braceros have attended meetings in several Mexican border states and in El Paso, Texas, to hear about the new Bracero Project, a movement that seeks to gain official U.S. recognition of the braceros' contributions as well as possible financial compensation for social security and other deductions that were made from worker’s paychecks and never returned as benefits.
On the U.S. side, the campaign is being coordinated by the non-profit Border Agricultural Workers Center (CTAF) in El Paso. "We don't know what we'll achieve," CTAF Director Carlos Marentes recently told several hundred former braceros and their supporters who gathered outside the building for the group's annual Bracero Day celebration. "We know we're going to dignify the braceros and recuperate this important history of yours and we know that we're going to be able to use this history, this experience of yours, to counter the anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican policy in this country."
Enrique Campoya is a onetime bracero who supports the call for recognition and compensation. A 50-year veteran of the fields, Campoya has worked in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming, among other places. Now 67 years old, he's discovered that his documented work record still doesn't qualify him for social security benefits. To make ends meet, he picks chile. "They're paying the same as five years ago," griped Campoya. "In five years, rent has gone up a lot...merchandise and food are going up." Campoya added that his 76-year-old brother, who began working as a bracero before his younger sibling, is in even worse shape. Retired in Ciudad Juárez, the elder Campoya has no pension, cannot work, and must depend on his two children to help him out with food. "Like my brother, there are many braceros who are in ruin right now and who worked many years here without benefits."
Farmworker activist Marentes said the idea for the Bracero Project was hatched several years ago when an elderly farmworker walked into his office carrying a sackful of work receipts. The man was having trouble getting social security officials to acknowledge his entire work history. "They were stealing six years of work from him as a bracero and six years as an undocumented worker," contended Marentes. "We proposed at this moment to do a project with the goal of recuperating the work that (braceros) did and that they're stealing away and not recognizing."
Marentes also tapped into his own family roots for inspiration. Both his father and late grandfather were braceros. The older man, said Marentes, always asked him: "Grandson, why does the U.S. treat us the way it does? Why does the U.S. treat us as enemies if the only thing we've done to this country is for its good, to produce and feed this country?"
Following the death of prominent Juárez activist and Bracero Project co-coordinator Enrique Lomas earlier this year, Marentes--who also runs Sin Fronteras, an El Paso-based farmworker justice program--took on responsibility for the initiative, assuming a double work load and traveling deep into Mexico to meet with former braceros. He was amazed at the turnout for meetings in places like the La Laguna region of Coahuila state, where so many one-time braceros showed up in one town that they could not all fit in the municipal auditorium.
Bracero Project Gains Momentum in Mexico
In Mexico, the new movement is gaining momentum across a broad swath of the political spectrum. Officials and groups associated with the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are endorsing the campaign, as are independent forces such as El Barzon, the Democratic Peasant Front of Chihuahua, and the Chihuahua Commission in Solidarity and Defense of Human Rights. Close to 6,000 former braceros have turned over their work records to the Bracero Project so the group can document their contributions and work history.
Also supporting the justice-for-braceros campaign are family members who suffered separations and sacrifices of their own. Antonia Leyvas de Rivera of Coahuila charged that her husband lost his land because of his absences from home. Ailing and without a passport, Leyvas' husband was unable to attend the Bracero Day celebration in El Paso. The bracero's wife remembered the old days with a tinge of bitterness. "One time when my husband came, I was three days in recovering from the birth of my second son," said Leyvas. "I was in bed when they called him (to work) and he left us without anything. The only hope we had was that the relatives would help us a little bit."
Ironically, the U.S. Congress is laying the groundwork for a new bracero program when the effects of the previous one have still not been taken into account; last summer, the U.S. Senate passed a measure that would allow growers to legally contract large numbers of Mexican laborers for work north of the border as ‘temporary guestworkers.’ "We are attempting to convey the message to the members of Congress that before they do that, they have to review what happened to the old braceros, whether there're some debts pending," explained Marentes. "So it’s very important that the U.S. Congress really review and look at the history so they don't repeat the same problems that happened--the exploitation, abuses, and suffering by the braceros, in a lot of instances."
According to Marentes, the Bracero Project will continue to build public awareness and register ex-guestworkers. The group is also seeking out members of Congress who would be willing to sponsor an official resolution that commends the role of the braceros in making U.S. agriculture the world's powerhouse. "We believe that as a result of the recognition, the government must look closely at what happened during the Bracero Program," continued Marentes. "Whether there's any debts owed to the braceros, whether that period of time should be credited to the farmworkers. A lot of the farmworkers worked for many years, but now they cannot prove that they have worked in this country to get social security benefits."
* Kent Paterson is a free-lance writer based in Albuquerque.
Resources and Contacts for Additional Information
Resources
Bracero Project Homepage
English: http://www.farmworkers.org/benglish.html
Español: http://www.farmworkers.org/bespanol.html
borderlines Farmworker Issue
http://www.irc-online.org/bordline/1998/bl49/bl49.html
"Borderviews 2000/Acala Gold: The Rio Grande Cotton Kingdom"
http://www.cottonhistory.com
New web site and public radio series available on cassette that discusses the history of
Mexican workers in the U.S. cotton industry.
For more information, call: (505) 277-3779
INCITRA Action Kit: Farmworkers (List of resources related to farmworker
issues)
http://www.irc-online.org/bordline/1998/bl49/bl49inci.html
Key Contacts
Carlos Marentes
Centro de Trabajadores Agricolas Fronterizos (CTAF) / Sin Fronteras Organizing Project
Voice: (915) 532-0921
Email: sinfront@htg.net
Mario Vazquez Robles
Coordinator, Frente Democratico Campesino de Chihuahua/Democratic Peasant Front of
Chihuahua
Voice: 011-52-14-26-59-79
Disclaimer
This story is not a press release but an original article authored by the Interhemispheric Resource Center. Please feel free to repost or reprint it as long as proper credit is given the IRC/borderlines. Thank you.
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The Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) is a nonprofit policy research institute dedicated to providing information and progressive analysis to citizens, activists, and policymakers regarding U.S. foreign policy, environmental and economic justice, and sustainable development.
The IRC's U.S.-Mexico Border Project seeks to provide information and analysis regarding the way these issues play out in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. borderlines and INCITRA (Information for Citizen Transboundary Action) are the two major components of the Border Project. borderlines is our primary publication, consisting of a monthly print edition focusing on one specific border topic, and occasional electronic updates.
INCITRA's mission is to function as a clearinghouse of information and resources related to sustainable development issues in the U.S.-Mexico border region and to respond to the needs of border citizens with appropriate and useful information related to the struggle for environmental, social, and economic justice on the border. Funding for the IRC's Borderlands Project is provided by The Ford Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the Kellogg Foundation.
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