Bracero Program

A Case Study

Historical Context

• The US government established the Bracero Program in 1942 to sponsor temporary guest workers from Mexico to work in the agricultural industry in California. Due to a temporary labor shortage, Congress approved an Emergency Labor Program that replaced men enlisted in the military with Mexican immigrants. Four million Mexican workers immigrated to California for the 22 years of the program’s existence.

Essential Question

• What was the impact of the Bracero Program?

See Mean Matter

See Mean Matter

Describe what you see.

Describe what the image means.

Describe how the picture answers the essential question.

Working on the Farm

• Citation: Belen Soto Moreno, "Working on the Farm," in Bracero History Archive, Item #3050, http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3050 (accessed July 13, 2010).

Employment

• Title: Mexican workers await legal employment in the United States, Mexicali (Mexico)• Publication: Los Angeles Times• Publication date: February 8, 1954

Moving Structures

• Title: Workers using horses to move a structure. • Publication date: 2009-08-05 • Citation: Belen Soto Moreno, "Workers," in Bracero History Archive, Item #3054,

http://braceroarchive.org/items/show/3054 (accessed August 3, 2010).

Wages

Headlines

• "More than 80,000 braceros pass through the El Paso Center annually. They're part of an army of 350,000 or more that marches across the border each year to help plant, cultivate and harvest cotton and other crops throughout the United States".

• Source: El Paso Herald Post, April 28, 1956

Connection to Illegal Immigration

• “As the U.S. Department of Labor relaxed regulations on Bracero housing, wages, and food charges in the mid-1950s, more farmers hired legal Braceros; admissions peaked at 445,200 in 1956.”

• Martin, Philip. “Was the Bracero Program a Failure?” History News Network. http://hnn.us/articles/27336.html

Cheap Labor

• “Employers were supposed to hire braceros only in areas of certified domestic labor shortage, and were not to use them as strikebreakers. In practice, they ignored many of these rules and Mexican and native workers suffered while growers benefited from plentiful, cheap, labor.”

• Source: http://braceroarchive.org/about

Essential Question

• What was the impact of the Bracero Program?