Amid all drama with the upcoming elections, I couldn’t help but put my two sense into this situation. Why is it that many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are being discriminated against? No, not just the undocumented but the legal residents and citizens as well. I can assure that because I have a lot of Friends and relatives who are here legally and have been discriminated against. As I begin to write my senior thesis, I have come across many facts that I was not aware of before beginning to write my thesis. Let’s go back to the 1940’s World War II has begun. There is a shortage of workers in the United States, and there is a huge need for agricultural workers and who does the Unites States choose to create a contract with? Mexican Braceros. Millions of Bracero workers were rounded up, and brought to the United States upon signing a contract. The contracts would allow them to work in agriculture or railroad construction jobs.
After being transported to the United States they were then “inspected” to make sure they were healthy enough to work in the United States. What exactly where they required to do in order to meet those “healthy” standards? They were stripped down of all their clothing and sprayed with DDT, which was later banned in the united Sates because it was a dangerous pesticide to the environment, that harmful chemical should have never been sprayed directly to any any human. Although many simply see the Bracero Program as a good program that helped Mexican laborers, there is a lot more that most aren’t aware of. Most Braceros lived in shacks that contained hundreds of barracks with no mattresses on them. They would often come home after working 12 to 16 hours to repeat the same thing everyday except some Sundays they had off, which they would use to wash their clothing by hand. Some Braceros were even forced to work in the rain when they were sick, most of them were afraid of complaining about the unfair conditions and unjust payment because they world be threatened with being deported. As cruel as it seems, they where often denied entrance to local shops because they were Mexican, despite that they continued to work long hours in hopes of a better future.
One of the things that is overlooked the most, is perhaps the emotional distress they suffered. Many of them left their parents, wife and children behind, they felt lonely and depressed. They had left their homeland for a better future but spent long periods of time alone. Knowing the many sacrifices they made, I would like to say thank you to those Braceros who who gave us the reputation of being hard workers. Most importantly, I would like to say thank you to my grandpa, a hard working Bracero who set an example for my entire family. Next time someone mentions we are here to steal jobs, ask them if they remember who was there working in the agriculture and railroad businesses when they were in desperate need.
Refrences:
Bracero Stories. Dir. Patrick Mullins and Violeta Dominguez Lopez. 2008.
Documentary.
