From peasant to worker: Migration, masculinity, and the making of mexican workers in the US

International Labor and Working-Class History

Volumn 69, Issue , 2006, Pages 81-103

  Cohen, Deborah ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI ST LOUIS   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749413454     PISSN: 01475479     EISSN: 14716445     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0147547906000056     Document Type: Review

References (78)

1. Research for this article, conducted from 1990-1993; 1995-1996; and 1997, was funded by: the Institute for the Study of Man, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew E. Mellon Foundation, the University of Chicago, and Mount Holyoke College. Writing time was supported, in part, by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. I would like to thank Vicky Hattam, Sue Cobble and the anonymous reviewers for important feedback. I am also indebted to the other members of the Learned Sisters Club, Lessie Jo Frazier and Laura Westhoff, for insightful critique and all-around support. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are the author's.
2. The oft-used, but mistaken figure for the number of men who participated in the Program is around 4.5 million. Rather, this is the number of contracts that were available; the number of men who came was almost 2 million.
3. For an extensive bibliography, see Deborah Cohen, Bordering Modernities: Race, Masculinity, and the Cultural Politics of Mexico-US Migration, unpublished manuscript.
4. This description of men as passive (feminized) is reminiscent of growers' portrayals of them before, during, and after the Bracero Program: "dumb and dirty" was how it was put. For one example of such depictions, see Henry P. Anderson, A Harvest of Loneliness: An Inquiry into a Social Problem (Berkeley, 1964), 63.
5. Here I refer to the Mexican and US states in aggregate because of space limitations. While these countries did have overarching visions of the Program that somewhat overlapped, in carrying out the policies, there were many different actors involved, with differing agendas and abilities to carry out those agendas. The differences in their positions vis-à-vis the Program, their competing priorities, and levels of corruption, depended on, among others: location within the United States and Mexico; prior local relationships; individual doing the job; and historical point in the Program. For example, while the Mexican consulates were responsible for advocating for braceros working in the United States and settling the disputes that arose, the positions each consul took varied dramatically - the consul for Arkansas pressured local US representatives to resolve the conflicts and scrutinized the results very carefully, the consular officials in California tended not to fight for migrants. Many consuls undoubtedly recognized the benefits that connections to local growers brought. As another example, within the Farm Placement Service, the agency charged with monitoring the agreement locally, some inspectors pushed hard to improve men's living and working conditions and respect the international agreement, even as the head of the Service in California Edward Hayes actively stymied the agreement's enforcement.
6. Capitalized yeoman farmers would own the means of production (the farm) and up-to-date equipment (such as tractors, combines), wield knowledge of agricultural science, and operate as a small business, as opposed to subsistence farming, agricultural wage labor, or big industrialized farms.
7. In Bordering Modernities, I paint a complex picture of the Mexican and US states' positions, as well as the relationship between local and national state actors, migrants, growers and communities involved in the Program by combining textual sources, oral interviews, and anthropological fieldwork. Specifically, I used the Departments of Labor, Agriculture, Public Health, and State papers (the US National Archives); the presidential archives at Mexico's Archivo General de la Nación; documents from the Mexican Foreign Relations Ministry (Acervo Histórico and the Oficina de Contrataciones of the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores), and those concerning education (the Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública). I also examined numerous Mexican and US-based newspapers; papers of union and civil rights activists/organizations, and did fieldwork in two Mexican villages, the city of Durango, and a Mexican migrant community in Chicago (1990-1993; 1995-1996; several months in 1997; 2003, 2004). Bordering Modernities interrogates the modern-premodern fault line to examine the lives of men whom the Bracero Program set up as Mexico's agents of modernity in Mexico, While denied that position in the United States, south of the border they were to be the protagonists whose labor, skills, and knowledge, upon their return, would make Mexico modern. Lest the reader think that only Mexico's modernity was in question, braceros' presence in the US fueled the debate about ours, as well. In tracing out the state level relations between these two (often contentious) neighbors, as well as the interactions that braceros had with each state and with communities in Mexico and the US, Bordering Modernities shows the critical purchase that the ability to claim to be modern had for Mexico-US relations, and the citizens and government of each country, and how braceros fit into this larger historical struggle over modernity.
8. For a more nuanced position on the 1940s as a bridge decade between the prominence of Eugenics and the full rise of Modernization Theory, see Bordering Modernities, Introduction, and "1940s: A 'Bridge' Decade," paper presented at the 2006 Latin American Studies Association conference; March 14, 2006. Due to space constraints, let me just say that Eugenics held that nonwhite societies/peoples were not only "behind" white peoples/societies in the march to progress, they could never achieve what industrialized white societies/people accomplished. In other words, biology mattered. This contrasted in one crucial way from Modernization Theory: although it too located certain societies/people "behind" others, all, regardless of where they were located, could, at least theoretically, eventually reap modernity's rewards - industrialization, democracy, hygiene, health, consumer products. Thus, biology did not fully determine economic prosperity. While different, both do similar work: they confer the status and rewards of being or becoming modern on particular countries and peoples within countries.
9. This exposure happened through the state publicity about the Program, recruitment mechanisms, and the highly-celebratory selection and induction process. For more on these, see Bordering Modernities, chapter 2.
10. When Ambassador to Mexico George Messersmith advocated a formal approach to migration (1942), Undersecretary of Foreign Relations Jaime Torres Bodet dismissed Messersmith's offer. While he acknowledged Mexico's unemployment problem, the Mexico of the 1940s, he asserted, was gearing up for industrialization and modernization of its agricultural sector. Voicing broad opinion, he claimed the county would soon need the men.
11. Two events weighed heavily in the Mexico's decision to participate. During the First World War, agents for US growers had gone to Mexico to recruit laborers, who had suffered under conditions of deprivation and many had returned without money; those who had stayed were "repatriated" after the US economy collapsed with the onset of the Great Depression. Mexico, not wanting a repeat of either, exercised its diplomatic influence to shape aspects of the program.
12. These conditions show the Mexican government's preoccupation with not disrupting its industrialization efforts and with targeting this Program toward agricultural expansion and development, and the workers it did not recognize as modern.
13. As Mexican officials found during an early Program study, "approximately forty-five percent of those (men) who lined up to be recruited [already] had work... (that) had nothing to do with agricultural activities." Blanca Torres Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, México en la Segunda Guerra, Vol. 19 (Mexico City, 1979), 253.
14. This pattern was confirmed in another investigation in 1950, finding a slightly higher percentage of migrants having engaged in nonagricultural activities. Lyle Saunders and Olen E. Leonard, The Wetback in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (Austin, 1951).
15. Quoted in Nelson G. Copp, '"Wetbacks' and Braceros: Mexican Migrant Laborers and American Immigration Policy, 1930-1960." (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1963),
16. Appendix V, 95. Moreover, Guillermo Martínez Domínguez found that those chosen during the early stage were, in order of importance, workers, artisans, and peasants, and earned on average between two and four pesos Mexicanos daily. "Los braceros mexicanos en los Estados Unidos, " in Revista de Economía, May 31, 1947.
17. Guillermo Martínez Domínguez, "Los braceros: Experiences que debe aprovecharse," Revista Mexicana de Sociología 10 (1948), 177-95.
18. Surviving braceros and their descendents have filed lawsuits in US courts, held protests outside the US embassy, and invaded the hacienda of the mother of Mexican president Vicente Fox in an attempt to resolve the issue. For more information, see Stephen Pitti, "Bracero Justice: The Legacies of Mexican Contract Labor," a paper presented at the "Repairing the Past: Confronting the Legacies of Slavery, Genocide, and Caste" Conference, October 27-29, 2005 at Yale University.
19. Guillermo Martínez Domínguez, "Los braceros mexicanos" Revista de Economía, May 31, 1947
20. . By the late 1950s, the dynamics seemed to have changed (at least in California). Sampling 1000 braceros working there, Henry Anderson found that about two thirds were married, with over half having four or more children. Almost forty-five percent were between twenty-one and thirty years old, over half with either no schooling or only one year; thus a majority were functionally illiterate. A Harvest of Loneliness, 62.
21. While US farmworkers could never demand a living wage (union campaigns were not successful long-term), a farm worker shortage and other opportunities for former farmworkers could have shifted the balance of power. By cutting off the supply of workers at the border, bringing farm laborers under other labor laws, and supporting union organizing, agricultural wages would have likely risen. Moreover, an increase in agricultural wages does not generally translate into a visible purchase price increase.
22. For more on social recognition-what I term social visibility - see Bordering Modernities, chapter 2,
23. and "Masculinity and Social Visibility: State Spectacle in the Construction of the Mexican Nation," Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe 16:1, 2005.
24. Samuel Carrillo, San Andrés; January 1996. While the names of the people I interviewed and their places of residence have been changed to protect their identity, both San Andrés and Santa Angélica refer to small villages located in the Mexican state of Durango.
25. "The World from Washington," Worldover Press: Sept 26, 1945, 4; in Ernesto Galarza Papers; Box 17: Folder 9: Braceros (conditions), correspondence, reports, statements, 1945 (1); Special Collections; Stanford University.
26. Ramón Avitia, Santa Angélica; November 1995.
27. Alvaro García, Santa Angélica; November 1995.
28. Aníbal Bañales, Santa Angélica; January 1996.
29. Bañales; Santa Angélica; January 1996.
30. García, Santa Angélica; December 1995.
31. Andrés Morales, San Andrés; October 1995.
32. Federico Garciniega, San Andrés; November 1995.
33. Tiempo, January 15, 1943: 33.
34. Quoted in Blanca Torres Ramírez, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 256.
35. This nation-building project is evidenced through rituals engaged in during the bracero selection process and other points along the way. See Bordering Modernities.
36. Morales, San Andrés; October 1995.
37. Samuel Carrillo, San Andrés; January 1996.
38. Alejandro Medina, San Andrés; November 1995
39. Paco Zermeño, San Andrés; November 1995.
40. Félix Avalos, Santa Angélica; October 1995.
41. Claudia Quesada, "El Mexicano, Nomás que Le Pongan Para Que El Agarre, Historia Oral de Don Carlos Quezada," in Jorge Durand, ed., Rostros y rastros, Entrevistas a trabajadores migrantes en Estados Unidos. (San Luis Potosí, 2002), 27.
42. Bañales, Santa Angélica; February 1996.
43. García, Santa Angélica; October 1995.
44. García, Santa Angélica; October 1995.
45. This is not to say that Mexican men did not meet and marry US women; they frequently did, abandoning wives and children without a means of financial support and pushing their wives to involve the Mexican government to find these men and pressure them to make good on their commitments (see the Protección y Asuntos Consulares papers, especially 1960 to 1964, housed at the Oficina de Contrataciones, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores archive in Mexico City). However, given the highly-male world these men lived in and how they described both that world and their interactions with women, I suspect that most "relationships" were based on financial remuneration.
46. "Memorandum on migratory labor in the Americans for the CIO"; Jan 3, 1947; in Ernesto Galarza Papers; Box 17; Folder 10: Correspondence, reports, statements, 1945 (2); Special Collections, Stanford University.
47. Claudia Quesada, "El Mexicano, Nomás que Le Pongan Para Que El Agarre," 27.
48. See chapter 2, Bordering Modernities.
49. Mauricio Herrera, San Andrés; September 1995.
50. Seasonal Farm Laborers Program: Sad Recollections, directed by Jorge Luis Vazquez; 26 minutes; Motor Films, Mexico, 2002; translation by director.
51. Seasonal Farm Laborers Program.
52. Seasonal Farm Laborers Programs.
53. Mauricio Herrera, San Andrés; September 1995.
54. Herrera, San Andrés; September 1995.
55. Herrera, San Andrés; September 1995, something I heard from other men.
56. Ignacio Ochoa Perdomo, interviewed for Seasonal Farm Laborers Program: Sad Recollections.
57. Ernesto Galarza, Strangers in Our Fields; Based on a report regarding compliance with the contractual, legal, and civil rights of Mexican agricultural contract labor in the United States, made possible through a grant-in-aid from the Fund for the Republic. (Washington, DC, 1956), 66.
58. Avitia, Santa Angélica; March 1996.
59. García, Santa Angélica; December 1995.
60. García, Santa Angélica; September 1995.
61. "Imported Mexican War Emergency Workers and the Community"; A Community Service Bulletin of the American Federation of International institutes, NY, NY; July 1945. Ernest Galarza papers; Box 17; Folder 9: Braceros (conditions), correspondence, reports, statements, 1945 (1). Special Collections, Stanford University.
62. James D. Cockcroft, Outlaws in the Promised Land: Mexican Immigrant Workers and America's Future (New York, 1986), like the migrants I spoke with, discussed issues of migrants' double day, 22.
63. Avalos, Santa Angélica; November 1995.
64. James D. Cockcroft, Outlaws in the Promised Land, 22.
65. Avitia, Santa Angélica; January 1996.
66. García, Santa Angélica; October 1995.
67. Bañales, Santa Angélica; September 1995. In the process of selecting braceros, Mexican officials scrutinized their hands for evidence of hard labor, work which the men themselves saw as making hands men's hands. Bordering Modernities, Chapter 2.
68. This same phrase is used by today's migrants in talking about household chores.
69. The Protección y Asuntos Consulares papers are littered with correspondence about how braceros tried to overcome problems with bosses and foremen, and how they were stymied by local US officials.
70. Ernesto Galarza papers; Box 18; folder 4: Braceros (conditions), health care and insurance, 1952-1956. Special Collections, Stanford University.
71. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ, 2003), 146.
72. Ronald Mize, "Workplace identities and collective memory: living and remembering the effects of the Bracero total institution," in Donna R. Gabaccia and Colin Wayne Leach, eds., Immigrant Life in the US, Multi-disciplinary perspectives. (London, 2003), 74.
73. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects; Neil Foley, White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley, 1999).
74. We can deduce as much from the near exclusive use of braceros in various markets: about ninety-five percent of all those harvesting tomatoes, ninety percent for lettuce, and eighty percent for citrus crops. See Paul Garland Williamson "Labor in the California Citrus Industry," (MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1947), 55;
75. quoted in Gilbert Gonzalez, Guest Workers or Colonized Labor? Mexican Labor Migration To The United States. (New York, 2005), 53. Page numbers for this refer to a prepublication copy in author's possession. Gonzalez says that braceros dominated the melon crop in Arizona (ninety-five percent), Michigan's pickle cucumbers (seventy-five percent), and cotton in New Mexico (ninety percent).
76. Labor Management Decisions 3:1 (1993), 1.
77. Galarza, Strangers in Our Fields, 66.
78. For an examination of patriarchy's similar fortitude in current migration, see my unpublished article, "Sex, Loyalty, and Betrayal: The Long Arm of Patriarchy in a US-Mexico Transnational Social World."