Historical Perspective on Immigration “Merchants of Labor” by: Ernesto Galarza The Mexican...

Historical Perspective on Immigration

“Merchants of Labor”by: Ernesto Galarza

The Mexican Bracero Story

Prepared by: Jesus Hernandez

2/15/2013

Historical perspective“Merchants of Labor”by: Ernesto GalarzaThe Mexican Bracero Story

Mexicans who left their homeland in the six decades beginning in 1880…is one of the major mass movements of people in the western hemisphere.

Can you think of other mass human migrations in history? What were the economics involved?

…the power and influence of big money politics?


Historical perspective: For three and a half centuries Mexicans had lived within a caste-bound, immobile society molded on Spanish colonial traditions further confined by desert, jungle, sea and medievalism. In the 1920s:

• In the state of Jalisco, 96.2% of the farm families owned no land.

• In the state of Veracruz, 98.9% owned no land.

• In the state of Mexico, 99.8% of the countryside belonged to less than 1% of the rural families.


Finally a revolution:In 1910, a handful of disenfranchised intellectuals called upon the peons to “satisfy your needs with a hoe, if possible, and if not, with a gun.” Fighters like Emilio Zapata led peasants in the 1913 agrarian revolution. The land was seized and redistributed. In December 1920, the Ley de Ejidos restored the communal form of land ownership and use to its ancestral rank. Four decades later, over 100,000,000 acres of land changed hands!

By 1937, the result of the agrarian revolution had resulted in several Mexicos – the agrarian collectivism, rural yeomanry, incipient industrialism, foreign capital, the military caste, and the church – a stalemate among them had set in. Zapata was assassinated in 1918. The survivors of the old regime had kept much of their liquid cash as well as the choicest of lands. They moved into positions of vantage in the new order. In the 1920’s the nation was plunged into a struggle for power between rival generals and the fighting continued in the country side to discourage the ejido. The fighting was still taking toll on the peasants forty years after the constitutional measures for the breakup of the haciendas. In 1810 and again 1910 the revolution was one of people wanting in, not out; of the ground they lived on. Migration came only after defeat, and its goal for many was California.


Migration by drift:The end of the US/Mexican War in 1848 left the two countries a barrier to migration consisting of a desert 400 miles wide…rugged terrain through which neither rivers nor pleasant prairies made passage convenient. Northwestward, the Sierra Madre Occidental encloses the nation, its ranges backstopped by badlands of mesquite and sand. The narrow strip of coastal plain is also sealed on the northern end by desert. Furthermore, passage was barred by hostile tribes and the hot climate was uninviting to the people from the temperate uplands.

This barrier existed until President Porfirio Diaz and foreign capital introduced 15,000 miles of railways to carry gold, silver, copper, lead and other minerals abroad. Railroading competed for the indentured peons who were often ransomed from the haciendas to work on the railroad tracks. This progress of construction and transport became an escape valve to the north. At its far end was the dollar work, no more agreeable than the menial labor of the hacienda, but payable in hard currency that outmatched the peso 2:1.

As in all deserts, temperatures are very extreme; during the day, it can reach easily over 40ºC (104ºF) and close to 0ºC (32ºF) by nightfall, depending on the season, so the necessary precautions need to be taken when traveling in these locations. Access to some desert locations is limited and has to be done with extreme caution and preparations.


The “water balloon effect”Between 1911 and 1921 legal entries to the United States rose to nearly 250000; 1921 to 1930 it reached 459,287; and an additional 22,319 in the decade of 1931-1940.

“Wetbacks & Specials”: Wages played an important part in stimulating the flow of illegal labor when the U.S. began limiting the number of legal entrants. In the 1940s some farmers paid 60 cents a day without board or housing. The Mexican “wetback,” Department of Justice agents reported, “was at the mercy of the employers in terms of wages and housing.” The “wetbacks” were differentiated from the common run of illegals, serving in specialized operations and becoming stable, regular employees…often referred to as “specials.”

Gradually, wetbacks transitioned from the fields to canneries and processors where they obtained a social security card and other advantages. Eventually, many were enticed into other work in restaurants, hotels, construction, mills and factories. The Wetback tended to show all the adaptive powers of a capable human being, useful and exploitable in a variety of trades and occupations.


The “water balloon effect”The period of 1900 to 1940 was one of migration by drift, in contrast to the bracero program that began in 1942…resulting in: The creation of the “Un-commonwealth of California”• It began with the gold rush of the 1840s creating large fortunes and big cities

• With the decline of mining and the increase in farming, Mother Earth superseded the Mother Lode.

The right environment facilitated the momentum to rapid opening of the west• Mechanization of farm production was leaping forward able to sustain growing international trade.

• The locomotive brought a revolution in freight transportation allowing farming at a commercial scale.

• The end of the American Civil War…the Union was well consolidated.

• President Lincoln’s success in keeping the nation united reduced political barriers to accessing the mass markets developing is the east coast.

• Feudalism in Mexico was breaking up.

• The Mexican revolution of 1910 smashed the “hacendados” and hundreds of thousands of liberated poor migrated north.


The “un-commonwealth of CA”

In California, the “hacienda” concept had shifted from a political and social institution to an economic one.

• Aggressive Americans who supplanted the Mexican ranchero assembled huge private estates.

• The end of the 1848 war between the US and Mexico had left the workers on one side of the border and the capital and best land on the other…Migration undertook to correct that.

• The commercial agriculture in California with bursts and slumps of seasonal labor demand generated a response from the Mexican migrant…a massive dose of economic energy was the response.

1942-the spontaneous and irregular migration was replaced by one that was supervised and regulated by government…The Bracero Program.


The “Pooling of labor”George Santayana’s reminder: “Don’t forget, that among the raw materials of industry, one of the most important is man”-Chinese were first brought in to work on railways and mines. In 1886 Carey McWilliams estimated that 30,000 Chinese worked as harvest hands in CA.-Negroes were unsuccessfully tapped after the Chinese Exclusion Act.-Japanese were key farm labor force between 1890 and 1910 (72,000+) until bitter racial hostility erupted.-Filipinos were recruited in the 1920s…over 25,000 by 1930 until ill feelings brewed into riots against them in 1930.-Southern Americans (white and Negro) followed. 130,000 came to California –Not more than one generation could be counted on to accept farm employment under any terms…(sound familiar)


The Agricultural Labor Bureaus

The standardization of wage rates became the primary purpose of the labor bureaus.-Labor protests were dealt with systematic violence by the Associated Farmers, constituted in 1934 to “to foster and encourage respect for and to maintain law and order, to promote the prompt, orderly and efficient administration of justice.”-The 1928 strike of the Confederacion de Uniones Obreras was defeated by arrests and deportations. It led local authorities to use “extra-constitutional methods to deal with the strikers” Professor Robert Glass Cleland noted.-In 1947 Dr. Cleland wrote: “California’s industrial agriculture can exhibit all the customary weapons…gas, goon squads, propaganda , bribery.”


The impact of World War…The Manpower Crisis of 1042Agricultural manual labor was continuously being drained by manufacturing, transportation and service trades connected to the war effort.-This crisis led to the first migrant labor agreement between Mexico and the United States…the “Bracero Program” managed migration under Public Law 78 (1942-51).-Nov. 15, 1946, after victory in the war, US Department of State notified Mexico of it’s desire to terminate the agreement.-Employers continued to plead an acute need for Braceros and on their behalf recruitment was extended to 1949.-1947: Wage disagreement between the two governments threaten the “good neighbor policy” between the two nations.-Word was passed to braceros across the border that work was available and that the Mexican Government intended to close the boarder…threat to N. Mexican Agribusiness-Illegal immigration picked up crossing the border and ironically greeted with formality by Border Patrol agents who help truck them to the fields.

Historical perspectiveThe manipulation of theworking poor continues

Consider more recent responses to shortage of agricultural workers:-After the 1986 Amnesty, many immigrants that were not able to get legal status, left the country convinced that no one would hire them.-1988-89: Agricultural labor shortages caused the agricultural industry to advertise job opportunities south of the border causing a surge of immigrants to Washington State. Stranded immigrants needed to be bussed home after courts ruled that the industry had over-promised job opportunities causing more people to come than the number needed.-2010: WA Governor Christine Gregoire openly lobbied congress to ease off on deportations when the industry began to fear a labor crisis in the upcoming harvest season.- The Challenge: how to manage economic interests, politics and human capital with dignity for people trying to make a living?

Gracias…Thank You…

Understanding the history and multi-generational traumas of the Mexican American community can help appreciate and understand

current values and behaviors.

Historical Perspective on Immigration “Merchants of Labor” by: Ernesto Galarza The Mexican...

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