Braceros — soldiers in the fields

World War II-era program has impact to this very day. Exhibit opens March 24.

By Mariana Llamas-Cendon /Amigos805.com

The Bracero Program had a profoundly personal impact on the life of Jose Alamillo.

His father, grandfather and other family members left their homes in Mexico and joined more than five million other Mexican nationals to work the fields in the United States. The guest worker program was launched in 1942 at a time when the nation was suffering a severe worker shortage due to World War II.

But while it ended in 1964, the Bracero Program has left an indelible mark on both the United States and Mexico, leading to long periods of family separations, guest workers facing loneliness and struggling to fit into American society and opening the door to greater migration from Mexico to the United States.

The impact of the program will be examined during the traveling exhibit “The Braceros of Ventura County,” to be presented March 24-27 at the Museum of Ventura County. Presented in collaboration with California State University, Channel Islands (CSUCI), future exhibits are also planned throughout Ventura County, said Alamillo, associate professor and coordinator of the Chicana/o Studies Program at the university.

While the Bracero Program was designed as a short-term effort to provide workers to the United States during World War II, Alamillo said the vast majority of those workers, about 90 percent of them, remained after their contract had ended.

“It is an estimated number because many of them renewed their contract; many came one time and then went back and then renewed the contract again and came for second, third, fourth or fifth time,” he said.

“From our research that we have done in Ventura County among braceros we estimated about that almost 90 percent either returned (to the U.S.) after the program was terminated or maybe remained and skipped the contract. They didn’t go back (to Mexico),” Alamillo said. “One of the ways they were able to return is because the employers wanted them to return so they helped them legalize their status by offering them green cards, by writing a letter on their behalf and going through the process of getting their legal residence which is a green card.”

Alamillo is part of CSUCI’s Bracero History Project from which the Bracero-oriented project surfaced.

“We did several things. We put a call out to the community, primarily in the cities of Oxnard, Santa Paula and Fillmore, to see if any bracero wanted to be involved by offering to do interviews with the students and … share their memories and experiences of being a bracero,” he said.

Two town hall meetings were held: the first one, in the spring of 2008 in Oxnard; the second one, in the spring in 2009 in Santa Paula. Alamillo and his team were overwhelmed by the communities’ response.

“We received a huge crowd and more people wanted to get involved, being interviewed and so on. Currently we have over 90 interviews,” he said.

One interview that stuck in Alamillo’s mind is that of Señor Surate, a Purepecha indian from Michoacan.

“His family, being of Purepecha descent, were already marginalized in Mexico. They were in many ways discriminated by other Mexicans especially from the city so it was really hard for him being part of the Bracero Program, being indigenous, and not being fully literate. So how was he able to stay in contact with his family when he couldn’t write? He couldn’t receive letters so the isolation was much more severe, much more extreme for somebody like him,” Alamillo said.

The first exhibit of this project took place at CSUCI during fall semester of 2010 as part of the traveling exhibition “Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program, 1942-1964,” created by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.

“We had the exhibition because part of what we did is decide: ‘Ok, we are going to have interviews of all these braceros but what are we going to do with them?’ So we wanted to create an exhibition on the (memories) they had, and images or photos, whatever they could sort of donate or offer to us and we could duplicate,” Alamillo said.

Following the presentation March 24-26 at the Museum of Ventura County, the exhibit will travel to other cities in Ventura County.

“We thought the Museum of Ventura is a logical place to start but we expect the exhibition to travel to other places — to Santa Paula, to Oxnard, to smaller communities. So this is not the end of the exhibition, this is really the beginning of the traveling exhibition,” Alamillo said.

More than just a collection of images, interviews on video, memories and history, the exhibit, besides putting a face to those workers, is also portraying the hardship they and also their families had to face.

“We’re trying to show the impact it had on families focusing on the personal biographies of each of these braceros,” Alamillo said. “We selected nine interviews to really showcase what happened to them, how it affected them in a personal level and so we really provide kind of a glimpse of an individual family, and also how were they able to survive and endure not only during the bracero program but after.”

His grandfather’s interview will be also showcased during the exhibit.

Alamillo’s grandfather joined the Bracero Program in the 1950’s, at a time when Mexico was experiencing a huge drought so, as Alamillo explained, his grandfather was able to send money back home so that his family could make a living back in Mexico.

“Then there was an economic situation where my family could not sustain themselves and so then they had to go through the process of migration to the United States,” Alamillo said. “When my grandfather came he was able to make connections and essentially help us in settling down in this area because we had relatives who had also gone through the Bracero Program. So essentially through the program not only would they help to support the family economically but also to make connections with employers so that could get a job later after the program ended.”

Alamillo has mixed feelings regarding the impact that the program had on himself and his family because even though they were able to survive due to the money sent; they lost a very important emotional connection.

“On the other hand, the absence of the grandfather and uncles from the families had a huge impact because many of us. My dad, uncles, and I would say even myself, grew up without a father in Mexico,” Alamillo said. “We don’t have memories, at least I don’t, of my grandfather being there when I was there and my father was never around so my mother had to essentially raised a family of six without the help of a husband and that was really hard. It really had an impact on the father’s relation to the kids.”

Alamillo’s father also migrated to the United States, visiting his family (in Mexico) in rare occasions. A few years later his family, with the exception of Alamillo, the youngest at the time (6), reunited in California. Meantime, Alamillo remained in Mexico under his grandparents care until 1977 at the age of 8. The reencuentro with his father wasn’t easy.

“I think initially it was definitely distant for me because I just did not remember my father,” Alamillo confessed. “I was without my mom and older siblings and father for two years so it was really hard on me so when I did reunite with my family it was hard. It took a long time to establish a relationship with my father and my grandfather.”

In this respect, Alamillo considers that the Bracero Program “really institutionalized the fragmentation of the family in a sense. It really left families without the presence of a father or a husband an uncle or a grandfather.” He emphasized that remains the case today even without the existence of a Bracero Program. He is also empathetic regarding the situation that women had to endure.

“It was really, really hard on the women, on the wives, on the grandmothers so I think is important to recognize the suffering that mothers went through, who really had to endure the absence of the father, who did help economically but did not help in other ways,” he said.

Nevertheless, Alamillo pointed out the workers also had their share of suffering, loneliness, and challenges regarding facing a different culture and language, due to having a very basic academic education.

“Many didn’t go through formal schooling beyond the third grade or even second so the language barrier was also a hardship for many,” Alamillo said.

“They were missing their families or their mother or their wife and I think they also suffered of being in a strange land not knowing exactly where they going to go next and I think you’ll see that even at the level of how it did affect them psychologically,” Alamillo said. “It was their first time away from home and I think also they had to figure out ‘How am I going to do my laundry’ ‘Who’s going to cook for me?’ They also had to go through this change of having to do what was considered women’s work and so they had to really push themselves to be open to do things they didn’t know or wouldn’t ordinarily do if they had remained in Mexico.”

Bracero legacy

For Alamillo the Bracero Program’s contribution to America should be properly and publicly recognized not only because of their efforts during a time of war but, as Alamillo says, due to their contribution to the economic engine of our country.

“They really helped the United States not only fight a war overseas by essentially feeding the soldiers abroad but also feeding the domestic population at home. Also, I would say it really helped the United States to maintain a strong agricultural industry,” Alamillo said. “Without the braceros we could not have had the low prices of fruit and vegetables in this country.”

Nevertheless, when it comes to supporting a new guest worker program, Alamillo can’t see himself backing it up.

“I just cannot because fundamentally with a bracero program is that you create a second class citizen by essentially putting somebody under contract with different rights, or barely any rights, and different status than actual citizens. So what you are doing is you are not bringing workers to take advantage of the same rights of others, you are not allowing these workers to have full labor rights with good working conditions,” he said. “A better approach to me is to find a way to decrease the wage disparities of Mexico making it closer to that of the United States.”

One of Alamillo’s expectations regarding the exhibit is to educate people about the legacy of the braceros and to think broader about the future.

“Do we really want a new program in the same way that we had the bracero program? Or do we really want people to think about it by learning its history, by learning especially first-hand from those who lived it,” Alamillo said.

Alamillo wants to encourage visitors to the exhibit, whether they are citizens, non-citizens or are related somehow to the Bracero Program or not, to think about the contributions these people made to our county and country.

“Without the braceros we would not have such a beautiful green county with the rich agricultural legacy and I also want those who benefit from the agricultural industry to think about giving back, perhaps sponsoring a scholarship for the descendants of the braceros so that they continue with an education and really help their families. That’s really what I want,” Alamillo said.

Details:

“The Braceros of Ventura County,” a traveling exhibit in collaboration with California State University Channel Islands, illustrating the impact of the Bracero Program in Ventura County from 1942-1964, will be presented March 24-27 at the Museum of Ventura County, 100 E. Main St., Ventura. Tickets are $5, free for members. For more information, call 805.653.0323.

Click here to see interview with Encarnacion Alamillo

Click here to see interview with Manuel Aparicio