Bring back braceros? ‘Those people will be treated like slaves’

One May morning in 1961, 21-year-old Manuel Alvarado strapped on his guaraches, stuffed three changes of clothes and a thin blanket into a nylon tote bag and said goodbye to his parents. He left their rancho La Cañada, Zacatecas, for North.

The United States has been kind and cruel to his farming family. His uncles regaled him with stories of the easy money available to legal seasonal workers (called braceros), which allowed them to buy land and livestock at home.

However, his father was one of the million-plus Mexicans deported in 1955 during Operation Wetbackthe Eisenhower administration's policy of mass removals in the name of national security and returning jobs to Americans.

“They sent my father to the border with nothing but the clothes on his back,” Alvarado, now 85, told me in Spanish as he sunk into a comfortable sofa in his daughter’s tidy Anaheim home.

Alvarado wasn't deterred by his father's abuse back then. He and his uncles and cousins ​​boarded a train bound for Chihuahua, where a Mexican health official checked everyone's hands at the recruiting office to make sure they were calloused enough for the hard work ahead. The Alvarados then crossed the border to a processing center near El Paso. There, American health inspectors routinely forced subjects to strip naked before subjecting them to blood tests, X-rays, rectal examinations, and a final dusting of their bodies and clothing with DDT.

What followed was an overnight bus ride to their final destination: tiny Swink, Colorado, where Japanese American farmers used to hire Alvarado's wealthier uncles, this time writing a letter of introduction to ease the transition. Alvarado remained there until November before returning home. For the next three summers he worked as a bracero.

“No regrets,” Alvarado said of those years.

He was wearing the standard Mexican grandpa outfit: a long flannel shirt, a blue hat, jeans and sneakers, as well as a salt-and-pepper mustache and a leather cell phone case hanging from his belt. Handsome Stetson was there when it was time for his portrait to be taken. Photos of his grandchildren decorated the living room, a statue of Mickey Mouse in a skeleton costume and a glass cabinet filled with commemorative glasses.

“We lived very poorly on the ranch,” Alvarado said, recounting how as a child he had to collect and sell firewood to help his parents. “If it weren't for the rain, there would be no harvest and there would be a lot of suffering. The Bracero program has helped a lot of people.”

Alvarado is a family friend. He knew my paternal grandfather, Jose Arellano, who grew up one ranch away from us and worked in the orange groves of Anaheim as a bracero in the 1950s, across the street from the elementary school my sister and I later attended. My Pepe was one of about 2 million Mexican men who benefited from a program that fundamentally changed the economies of both their home and adopted countries.

My father suggested that I talk to Alvarado after I asked him and my uncles about my Pepe's experience and they admitted that they knew nothing. I especially wanted to hear Alvarado's thoughts at a time when farmers are pleading with Donald Trump to stop the tsunami of deportations as crops rot in the fields – what the president admits is a problem.

“We can't afford to have no one for our farmers,” Trump told CNBC in August, musing in the same interview that he wanted to find a way to allow farm workers to work legally because “these people do it naturally” while “the people who live in the inner city don't do the work.”

That's why Texas Rep. Monica De La Cruz introduced the Bracero 2.0 Act this summer, arguing that the original program, which ended in 1964 after civil rights activists complained about the exploitation of migrant workers, “has created new opportunities for millions of people and provided critical support for Texas agriculture.”

When I told Alvarado about a possible revival, he sat down and shook his head.

“If this happens, these people will be treated like slaves,” the ex-bracero replied. – Just like what happened to us.

Although Alvarado's 86th birthday is two months away, he remembers those buoyant days as if they happened last week. What he was paid: 45 cents an hour in Colorado for harvesting onions and melons. Fifty cents for every box of tomatoes in Stockton next year. $2.25 a pound of cotton in Dell City, Texas, where a farmer's son desperately rode his bicycle into the fields to shout that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. The farmer then gathered everyone around his truck to hear about the tragedy on the radio.

Fourteen hours a day, seven days a week was the norm. Saturday evenings were spent traveling to the nearest town for provisions and a few hours of entertainment – movies, dancing, drinking. Farmers sometimes gave braceros free food, which was required by an agreement between the U.S. and Mexican governments. Most of the time they didn't.

“It’s impossible to even stand up straight at night,” Alvarado said, shuddering at the memory. His uncles made fun of him: “They told me: “Now you know that North it means you know how to win money. Learn to love it.”

But not everything went badly.

At Swink, the Japanese-American authorities provided Alvarado and his relatives with a private cottage, although bathing was limited to walking in irrigation canals or boiling water for themselves.”ranch style” The Hiraki family spoke to Mexican workers about their imprisonment by the U.S. government during World War II to show that racism could be overcome. In Texas, a white foreman prevented Alvarado and his group from harvesting cotton fields just before a plane sprayed the crops with DDT.

“The Americans were very kind,” Alvarado continued. Including the Border Patrol. “They approached us in the field. “Good morning everyone. Please let us look at your papers.” They always treated them with great respect.”

My father chuckled. “No, I don't believe it.”

Alvarado smiled at my father. “YeahLorenzo. Not like today.

“What I didn’t like were the Mexican bosses in California,” he continued. They were the ones who treated us like slaves. They kept shouting: “¡bend [Get to it]wet backs! — and then they used even worse words.”

As the years passed, it became increasingly difficult to obtain documents to legally work in the United States. Because La Cañada was so small, the Mexican government allowed only three of its residents to become braceros each year through a lottery. Japanese Americans in Colorado never sponsored Alvarado again after he turned down an offer to enlist in the military. He won the lottery in 1962, and the next two years he bought someone else's number.

In 1965, the people of La Cañada waited for the annual arrival of Mexican government officials to allocate spots for the bracelets. But no one came.

Alvarado laughed. “That's when people started coming North another way.”

That's exactly what he did: a few years later, he entered the country illegally to work in Pasadena restaurants, and then moved to Anaheim to work in Pasadena restaurants. sherry diaspora. He was eventually followed by his wife and eight children. They became citizens after a 1986 amnesty, and Alvarado often spoke about his past to his family “so they would know how people came here to make sacrifices so their children could learn and prepare for better things.”

All of his children bought houses with their working income. His grandchildren received higher education; two of them served in the army.

I asked him whether the guest worker program could succeed today.

“It wouldn’t be good and it wouldn’t make sense,” Alvarado said. “Why not let people stay here? They're already working. Deporting them is terrible. And then bringing in replacement people? The people who come will have no rights other than to come and be kicked out by the will of the government.”

In the 2000s Braceros filed a class action lawsuit after discovering that the US was withholding 10% of their income each year and transferring the money to Mexico. The Mexican government agreed to pay up to $3,800 to each surviving bracero living in the United States, but Alvarado never applied.

“The person doesn't know about these things or is just too busy to care,” he said. “Besides, I found my good life in my own way. But it reminded me that when you signed that contract, you had no options other than the grace the farmers gave you.”

Can Trump Find American-born Farm Workers? Alvarado's face scrunched up.

“They wouldn't hire people from here. They don't want it. I've never seen white people work with us Mexicans. White people have a different mentality, different expectations. They think differently than ranchers.”

“They want an easy job,” my father joked.

– No, Lorenzo, they don’t want to suffer.

Alvarado's soft voice became even gentler. “They shouldn't.”