next, we take to you the university of illinois. where professor maria loza teach as class on the latino labor movements, she discusses the broserro program, which brought thousands of guest workers for the agricultural industry. this is about 1:10.

>> this is we're almost towards the end of the semester and because we're almost towards the end of the semester i decided to talk to you guys today about what i researched. you guys had my piece on braceros. to start with i want us to think about the class today in two parts. one in which we're going to bracero history and i know we covered brassero history in sort of broad sketches. this time we'll talk about brassero history a little more in-depth.cero history a little in-depth. second thing we're going to do is tuck about the article. good? okay. i'm going to tell you guys a little bit about how i started being interested in bracero history. i always tell you guys i was a student like you guys in a class. mexican/american history. my adviser, my then-mentor was first my teacher.

matt garcia said to me, and to the rest of the class, find your oldest family member and collect an oral history. i thought an oral history was a basic interview i thought okay, that's fine. it's a little challenging when you come from immigrant families in which your grandparents are somewhere else. soy looked for my oldest family member and my oldest family member was not really that old, right? he was my uncle who had come in as a bracero. i grew up with my uncle. i grew up seeing my uncle every single day. he would talk every once in a while about his work in california, in texas. he would tell me stories and tell my whole family stories about what it was like to work picking cotten in texas. what it was like to pick cabbage in california. i thought to myself well i kind of sort of know this story. because i know my uncle, i've heard this story and i took it

back to the class and my teacher, matt garcia said this is extraordinary and i thought how is my uncle who i see every day, extraordinary? because sometimes you know, the people you see the most are not that extraordinary to you. and so i thought this is pretty interesting. i was really excited about doing oral history more than anything. i'll show awe picture of my uncle. that's my uncle. he actually was born in a little, little village called mara vias in guanojuato. my teacher asked me to explore the bracero program. what do we know about the bracero program? what do you guys know about the bracero program?

you read a little and we talked about it. gabby? >> i guess it's most traditionally understood like a guest worker program, workers from mexico would come to the u.s. due to a war-time kind of thing. workers were needed and a lot of citizens were at war, so -- they got a lot of guest workers from mexico. >> are you exactly right. it started as a war time in the war time it started in 1942. and what does guest worker mean? >> anybody? guest? worker? yes, maria? >> the moment that workers -- [ inaudible ] >> yes. that's exactly it. guest worker means temporary. they're on temporary labor contracts. which means they come in and they're recruited to work maybe a couple of months. and then they return. some of them have options to

return and can stay for multiple years, but guest worker means just that. why do you guys think that guest workers program and in specific the bracero program would be important now? just a question. yes, molly? [ inaudible ] the u.s. is constantly sort of thought about, enacted agreements for bringing in guest workers and we've seen guest workers. the bracero program didn't put an end to the guest worker program. we see that guest worker models are popular globally. so -- guest worker models are used across europe. across the middle east, and what do we know about the bracero program? i will tell you what we know. we know that it is, it was the largest guest worker program in the americas. it became a model for other

places. so when you think about guest workers and mexican guest workers coming in, you can think about the ways in which they shape other policies around guest workers, right? another question. how many of you actually have family members that came in through the bracero program? one? really? usually it's more. >> i don't know. >> you see? a couple. so the other thing that we know is that the guest worker program really impacted migration histories, right? if we go back to what is the bracero program, the bracero program was a binational agreement between mexico and the u.s. that allowed mexican male laborers to enter the u.s. on temporary work permits. that means they entered the u.s. quote-unquote legally. they had a legal permit. had the status, right? gabby was very correct with saying it was started due to a

perceived labor shortage brought on by world war ii. i use the word perceived because a lot of people have argued after the war ended, guest workers continue to come in. why did guest workers continue to come in after the war ended? >> took advantage. [ inaudible ] yes, yeah. exactly it became a cheaper mode of labor. and we know for a fact that there were two components to the first bracero program. railroad and agricultural. why did the railroad component end? yes. >> because railroads were real strong. [ inaudible ] >> railroad unions were very strong and railroad jobs were very good jobs. so yes, exactly.

okay, so the other thing we know is that 4.5 million contracts were issued. 4.5 million. that's a whole lot, right? it's not five, it's not ten. it's not 20, it's not 1,000 or 2,000. 4.5 million so we're talking about a gigantic wave of workers coming in. just to give you an idea of where the workers came from. the workers came from almost every state in mexico. and what you see in dark blue is every state that received mexican guest workers in the u.s. those are a lot of states, right? they're only a couple that didn't. why do you guys think that there are a couple on this side that did not receive mexican guest workers? any guesses? you guys didn't have it in your reading. guesses. why wouldn't they? >> is it possibly because they

had enough labor in states already that they didn't need to hire -- >> that's a good guess. >> it's a good guess. next guess? >> another good guess. we're getting closer. gabby? >> i don't know. kind of going off of like what marquis has been saying. also just like i feel like the cheap labor would have been like african-americans in that area because it's like the south and so like after like slavery was abolished quote-unquote, they would still like there. so i feel like that would have been the cheap labor. so they wouldn't have needed braceros in those areas because they already had a cheap labor workforce. >> you're all getting very, very close. >> the other thing you guys have not read. which is why i ask you these

questions. these other states actually also brought in guest workers, some of the guest workers that were brought in in those states were from jamaica and the british west indies. so there was another guest worker program that existed alongside the bracero program. another thing that happened along the same period is that puerto rican agricultural workers were also recruited. some of them went to those states and some of them went to the states that braceros went to. states like michigan, braceros could find themselves working along side puerto rican temporary workers. would they be considered guest workers? no, they were specifically recruited to come in and work temporary contracts as well. but because of their status, the colonial status, they could come in freely, and in some ways, you know, work some areas and avoid some of the red tape that the bracero program brought about.

but also endured heavy exploitation. how do we imagine that the bracero program impacted mexican migrations what are your guess is to how it would impact mexican migration. luis? >> they also brought like contracts they migrated to areas of the u.s. i believe for every like two million that came in it was double that for undocumented. the competition between them. with happens with the bracero program is that you see a rise of undocumented labor alongside documented labor program. the bracero program literally creates another wave. so when people start to talk about temporary guest worker program and talk about the reality of guest workers right now and when the guest workers are used as a potential solution to immigration policy and

immigration reform, you all need to remember that the bracero program didn't solve undocumented immigration it augmented undocumented immigration. that is one reality. what do we know about the period right before the guest worker program? the 1930s? [ inaudible ] [ inaudible ] >> repatriation. >> which is when the -- [ inaudible ] >> what what it does and what you're pointing out is there is a moment that when there's deportation what 1942 does in the 1940s is bring back mexican migration to areas like maybe michigan, illinois, in the midwest. where these sort of populations were hit so hard by

repatriation, so it reinvigorated mexican migration to states that been hit hard by immigration. traditional areas like texas, california, new mexico were once again reinvigorated because of the wave of migration and what else do we know about those ships? what else can you guess? it also transformed the gender dynamic, right? because they're all men coming into these areas. so some men were able to stay. not every man. this is not for to you stay some men were able to stay because they married mexican-american women. they also married white american women and they found avenues to stay in the u.s. and you know, other men simply went back to their communities. okay. so -- how do i connect this to

my own work, right? i'm going to tell you guys a little about the stuff i do. during graduate school i spent five years working on the bracero history project. right after i collected my uncles' oral history. i waited years, years, years, found myself back in graduate school and my adviser said you were once very interested in this history. are you still interested. and i said sure. you know i'm interested in guest worker history. i'm interested in some of these topics. and what i didn't know is that the national museum of american history had quite a huge collection of leonard nadal photographs, they had decided they were going to pursue an actual exhibit projectnd a digital archive. partnered up with this fancy university, george mason and they have a center for history and new media and they decided that this would be a great

project to start thinking about digital media. new history and start thinking about the way in which we interact with history. so the bracero history project began as i started graduate school at brown. what did we do? we started collecting oral histories and objects, so i was sent out to places like san bernardino, i was sent out to salinas. i was sent out to coachella to train communities to collect their own oral histories and i carried my heavy backpack with a scanner and a recorder to collect oral histories myself. when the opportunity came to collect oral histories in mexico i lobbied and decided i wanted to collect oral histories in states that weren't traditional sending states. when you think about the bracero history, the traditional sending states were michuocan.

jalisco and juanowuato. the yucatan in quintinaroo. i took them back to every other community that hen had been trained to deposit histories in oral archives, undergraduates in places like the channel islands decide ed decided to collect their own oral histories. it was a gigantic wave of collection all over the u.s. and people contributing to this project. we collected a little over 800 oral histories, making it one of the larger repositories of la n

latino history. the second thing we did is digitized people's documents, people, students, undergraduates stood there and scanned i.d.s, photographs, anything people would bring in was scanned and made sure it was preserved. what you find is that the archive has oral histories and it has digitized documents. but the other fantastic thing that came out of it is the national museum of american history created a traveling exhibit, "bittersweet harvest." and that was a small modest exhibit that got a lot of attention and got a lot of attention because many people who came from these communities, were ill pacted by these communities wanted to host this exhibit. i'll show you what the page looked like. can't see it that well. but in 2010 we won a national

public history prize because we were one of the best public history projects out there. if you go on there, you can actually type in something like juan loza and you can listen to my uncle. you can type in my name and listen to oral histories and i have the good, the bad and the ugly. the oral histories that i carried out when i was just learning methods and you will say wow this is terrible and i have better ones because i learned how to do my job much better. you can see other students like yourself were 19, 20 years old and were really committed to collecting these oral histories and went out with their backpacks all over their communities bpy ride. you learn by doing and there's times where you know -- i an a that assignment, just for enduring it. so bittersweet harvest this is a photograph of "bittersweet harvest." you can't see it that clearly. it opened up at the national

museum. it was composed of these lightweight panels, so they could travel all over the u.s. them alongside. displayed alongside national museums. >> which is fantastic. we were also fortunate enough. you can't really see it in the back there. there's bunkbeds. there's bunkbeds that we collected from a site, an old site where braceros actually lived. a camp. and when i saw it, i thought this is fantastic. we have a hat donated by a man who really wanted to honor his dad. and he really wanted to tell his father's story and he really wanted his father's hat to be preserved and we happily took it. so you can't see it, but it's right there. the original car that you saw, was my uncle's, made its way there, too. i thought how can i ask other people to donate their objects, if i don't push my own family to donate their objects?

>> you are in michuocan, sort of a central state. how do you guess you might hear about the program? yes. luis? >> yeah, that's one way. that's definitely one way a lot of people heard. [ inaudible ] >> that's another way. >> i feel like a lot of times it's like the u.s. sends like recruiters, i don't know if that would be the case, but i feel like that might be a thing. >> well, actually there was recruitment processes that went through the actual, actual city officials of these towns.

that pushed recruitment. yes? marquis? [ inaudible ] >> propaganda was big on both sides. the first years of the bracero program which you're seeing now, what you're going to see is pictures from the leonard nadal collection at the national museum. from these pictures you will see the 1950s, sort of -- you'll see the contracting through the prospective of leonard nadal in the 1950s, but the 1940s, the 1940s was a completely different period. in the 1940s you might walk out 1942, the first bracero who came out didn't necessarily know what they were going to get into. we have the beautiful stories of men who got on a train because

they were recruited. because they were told that this would be a fantastic program through propaganda. he had had no idea what they were in for. men who told me i was very scared when i jumped on that train, when i got on that train because i didn't know what to expect. i didn't know at all what to expect. >> what they found in the 1940s was this patriotic period of the bracero program. the country is at war, the braceros are coming in. people are telling the braceros that they are arms to there to feed the country in the time of war. they take on the patriotic discourse that's tied to the good neighbor policy and they're very, very excited to do their part, to do their part in this time of war. some of them would get off in places like stockton and they would actually be greeted by bands. i have wonderful oral histories

of men saying there was a band that greeted us and people that were excited that we got there. and really it was a moment of patriotism, right? after the war, that sends of patriotism quickly dispels, right? it's no longer there. by the 1950s what we see is a different phase of the bracero program, right? what do we know is happening in the 1950s? the recruitment is larger. the recruitment is, is being augmented in agricultural communities all over the southwest. midwest. we know that you know, as marquis said, growers become dependant on this labor. what we see is a very different phase of the program. i'll show you some photographs from the 1950s and i'll tell you that the process is similar. but the actual, the actual discourse is about their arrival in the u.s.

that's very different. they're actually, their lived experience in the u.s. is very different. so this is what a contacting center looked like. as you can see, you've now left your ton. you've left, is it morellia. you're on your way to the border. by the 150s, we know that the centers left the central states and moved to the northern states. why do you think that they would move from the central states to the northern states? >> closer to the border. >> that's exactly it. why else would growers want to be closer to the border? luz? [ inaudible ] >> most farm workers wanted. >> uh-huh. it's a good one. that is true.

what david said is true. why else? yes? >> i read that -- [ inaudible ] >> pay for -- >> it's true, all of these things are true. they're able to pull from undocumented labor when it's closer to the border. but what is also true about the bracero program is that growers are paying for their transportation. what does it mean when they actually moved basically these centers to the border? that means that the actual transportation costs are cheaper. and braceros are enduring in some way, they're subsidizing through their own travel, growers' profits, right? they're making sure that growers are able to profit to a greater degree. now they have to take out loans. they have to borrow money from sfrends so they can make it to

contracting stations to the border, at the border. we know that. we also know that the contracting centers are chaotic. some people tell stories about being there and sleeping on the floor for two weeks, other people tell stories that they were waiting for months what we know because of the archival record is that indigenous communities often found it hard and difficult to enter the contracting process. so imagine what it must feel like if you are not necessarily from morelia, but from another town not that far away and only speak a dialect. the contracting center becomes a site that's chaotic and it becomes a site that in which you'll see in the photographs a lot of folks just surviving and waiting their turn. luz? >> they said that --

>> workers who -- people who went to the contracting center was go into debt because they put their life on the line. because they honestly thought it would be like a profit for them. they would separatiessentially there with already debt. >> that's exactly what would happen. they would come in and they would come in in debt. they would start making money already in debt. marquis? >>. [ inaudible ] >> to even have a place to live while they were trying -- >> what marquis is referencing on campus is project 500 in 1968 where the university recruited 500 black and some latino students to come out to campus. you recruit students or recruit anybody and you don't give them

resources and you don't give them housing, what would you cause is chaos, right? you cause a lot of sort of human suffering. because people don't have the resources they need to survive on a day-to-day basis. yes, recruitment without a sort of infrastructure can become very kchaotic, right. in this case the infrastructure that was there was in place to exploit to exploit these guest workers. so we know that, we know that it's chaotic. what happens when you actually get into the actual sites? your name is called. somebody says you know, let's give awe name. manuel sanchez, your number is called, you can come on through. manuel has already gotten in debt. manuel may even have paid a

mordita. what is that? it's in your reading. it's a small bribe that people pay to try to get on the list, so they can try to get called. they may might pay a mordita. they're paying for their own transportation. they're subsidizing growers, right? the u.s. economy based on their cheap labor, right? so they get there a person might say to them, show me your hands. why would they look at their hands? why would the hands be important? maya? >> because they can look for callouses to see if they're hard workers. if you had soft hands, they might think you don't have any experience. so you can't work here. >> exactly. when people came back from the bracero program and they endured

exploitation and hardship. they came back with a new pair of blue jeans or a new pair of boots to their village, their town it spread like wildfire, many people wanted to come to the u.s. how would you keep a baker from coming to the u.s.? how could you keep a dentist from coming into the u.s.? the idea was that they wanted agricultural workers and they wanted people from these rural towns and villages. that was the ideal bracero. the bracero was a person who should have been from an agricultural country side. the idea is they can perform this work, they've done this work. to check their hands is to sort of check their resumé, right? to see can we see that you are who you say you are. many a tailor beat their hands up against rocks, and would rub their hands against rocks so they can develop callouses, what we learned is that bakers would often rub their hands on the

sidewalks so that they could develop callouses as they're sitting on a curb. because they understood what people in the contracting stations were looking for. and they were going to play the part. they were going to play the part, right? so you finally convince the person that you are an agricultural worker. the next step would be exams. so this is the processing center in monterrey what we see is a doctor. walking through. you can't see it that clearly. a doctor walking through. walking through and looking at braceros' bodies. they have to check their x-rays. they have to take x-rays i should say and check their chest to make sure they didn't have tuberculosis. the ideas is that these might be potential disease carriers as well. we need to keep u.s. communities

safe. they wanted to make sure that these men weren't carriers of any illnesses. the final part was probably the hardest part to record. because many braceros in the u.s., older gentlemen, would start to sob when they would tell this portion of the story. they had to strip completely and they were sprayed with ddt. what you see is an image of a guest worker being sprayed with ddt. and i would hear many men say to me -- i was treated like an animal. the saddest oral history i collected was a man in in salinas, california. who said to me, ms. -- he said senorita, senorita, miss, do you know if human rights existed then? >> i didn't know what to answer. what do you answer when someone says, do you know if human

rights existed then? and i said, i'm not sure. because i wasn't sure what he meant. and he said, because they treated me like an animal. so when did i have human rights? he began to sob and i didn't know exactly what to tell him. what would you tell somebody if they said did human rights exist then? because he felt he had no human rights. a you can tell from the reading that you read today, braceros organizers often thought that they were treated like cattle. you saw the beginning of the paragraph, even the organization that we'll talk about later. the organizer said we were treated like cattle. we were sent to the slaughterhouse, we were sacrificed like cattle. >> i don't know how i didn't connect these dots before, it's

crazy how much this connects to what we were talking about last class this idea of the hard worker narrative, having to show you're human enough to be here. this is like the exact process. where now it's like that's how it exists. for people. maybe not necessarily through a program. but still very much the same idea. what she's reminding us of is often immigrant groups, not just immigrant groups, but i should say immigrant groups, racialized groups, other groups had to demonstrate that they are worthy for civil rights, right? demonstrate that they are hard working, demonstrate that they are respectable so they can receive rights, civil rights, human rights. we have our own critiques. this is how they understood their reality as well.

christian? >> i think it relates to how this is a very good example of the the state and the majority over the minority. because it basically is from a perspective human rights is something that is given as opposed to natural laws and that's how people were exploited in the first place. >> yeah, people have to demonstrate that they're worthy of this, right? i'm glad that you're connecting the dots. i'll show you another image. this image is a really interesting image. a young man getting sprayed with ddt. the original nadal photograph showed the entire naked body. yes. >> ddt is a chemical that was sprayed, it's a toxic chemical that was sprayed on all of these men. so that it would, you should

hear the narratives. >> is it like poison? >> why is that the last part of the process? why was it necessary? i don't understand. >> they were thought of as folks carrying disease. >> what was it originally used for in. >> it's used for all sorts of things, it's a toxic chemical. >> many of them told stories of their eyes burning. after the spray, then remembering that it was not pleasant. it gave them prolonged issues with their eyes, skin. there's nothing that's been conclusively done about how ddt affected them long-term. these men, this actual moment was very significant for most of these men. because when we would go out and asked these men to participate in the bracero history project, we would show them some of these

images. one man said in a san jose, raised his hand and said, young lady you realize that we were naked. and i said yes, i know, the picture has been cropped so we can show it to the general public. and he said, i don't know why you need to crop this photo. the reality is, we were naked. and i think for him it was important that people know it was much more alienating than picture showed, right? for him the true testament was the whole naked body. not just a cropped version of the naked body. they finally go through this process, right. they receive a bracero contract. they might get sent off to different places. >> it's kind of different, i have a question -- [ inaudible ]

>> it's a very good question. there's a great scholar who just published her book last year, that really looks at how families dealt with the bracero program. specifically women. some women stayed and waited for remittances, other women found they never received remittances. >> money sent back. money sent back to mexico. these remittances were sent back and some women opted and some families opted to move closer to the border. you have braceros that actually not everyone, but some that decided to move their families to mexicali, so they could visit with their families, to juarez, so they could see their families. it would facilitate family

reunification. it shifted the gender dynamics in these small, small towns and villages across mexico. because some women argued that overnight all the and so women some women took that as an opportunity to sort of assert leadership roles that they had before, and some of them, you know, created new leadership roles for themselves, and the dynamics in these countryside tow towns in the cities shifteded and it's a really good question. so you think about where the bracero is. he finally gets a contract, there are some places that received larger quantities of braceros like california. california received a tremendous amount of braceros and the living situation could vary. you could see here, this is a barrack, and i say typical in that it's tight, but some of them would have single bets and some of them have bunk bed, but if you notice they're pretty

much elbow to elbow and this is how they slept. the personal space is super minimal. they don't have very much room for personal possession says. some men tried to create sort of, you know, their own separate space and demarkate separate space and it was quite challenging in this situation and i'll show you a couple of images of folks laboring. in places like salinas, they picked lettuce and they carried out a trem end us, tremendous amount of labor. the other thing is they're used what's called a cortito. what's a cortito? >> is it the small hole to make sure that people were watching them to make sure they were working from far away. >> that's exactly what it is. that's the cortito.

what does that translate to? >> little short -- yes. little short, handle hole. chavez successfully got rid of the shorthandel hole because it was so problematic. okay. so why would mexico even agree to this program? why do you guys think? >> from the beginning in the very first years, they seemed so patriotic and when they brought their -- when they migrated toward the u.s. they wanted to show oh, we are helping you and and they're showing patriotism by saying we fed america, and it basically showed oh, we're giving respect to the mother country because we're helping the u.s., basically. >> yeah. there's a sense of patriotism at the beginning. >> when worker exploitation rises, why do you think mexico would continue to allow this? >> yes. >> one thing, i guess this is more of a modern example still. i think of a lot of countries in

central and south america and mexico still allow these programs and, like, don't do anything as a government because of ribbons. so much of their annual, i think of even my own family is involved with remittances because in the u.s. we send money to el salvador because my cousin is going to college. because of that, the governments allow -- like, the mexican government allows exploitation in the u.s. and doesn't do anything about it and they know the u.s. won't do anything about it because they need the labor and they need to eat. >> dollars going into their country. >> it's dollars going into their country. remittances become very important to the mexican-american economy. this period normalizes the transnational family. so the idea that people can be away from their family for a year, two years, three years, work other in the u.s. this is the period where that becomes very, very normal, where that becomes ordinary.

so the other thing is that mexico sees this in a way in which they can modernize folks in the countryside. folks that, for instance, are agricultural workers. how would you read this image if you look at this? >> this is 1951. 1951 is a critical year because the bracero program is also during 1951 it's also renewed. so 1951, "hoy" magazine prints this on their cover and this tells you a bit about how sort of mexican middle class and the mexican elite feels about the bracero program. how do you think they feel about the program from reading this, becka? [ inaudible ]

>> yeah. >> they're seeing something. they're critiquing it, right? they're critiquing something, right? what are they critiquing? yes. >> it looks like in the middle like a small mexican boy and the two grown men on the side have the look on their faces and i would say americans, and it looks like they're taking the small boy and they'll raise him up to be what they want him to be and i guess the critique would be they're looking down on us and we're not up to their level so they'll, like, try to -- they'll try to bring us up to their level by exploiting these workers. like that will somehow benefit mexico. >> so you are on the money with part of your critique in that this does have a lot to do with this indigenous little boy, but the figure on your right side is

actually a charro. it's a little grainy on there, but it's a charro, and that's sort of representative of what the mexican middle-class fantasy is, right? that's a charro and on the other side you see a texas cowboy. i think of texas cowboy, but he could be a cowboy from somewhere else because of the boots, right? and so what you see is you see the child standing in the middle and the sort of rural mexican is depicted as indigenous, right? and so the idea here and the critique that the publishers of this magazine are making is that neither the charro nor the cowboy are looking out for the interests of the small child, right? neither one of them is. they're all, like you said, looking to take advantage of this child, right? they're looking to sort of exploit this child, right? and to perhaps raise them in a vision that would allow for them to exploit them because they're sitting there, sort of smiling

and cowering over him. does anybody else have any ideas of what this image could mean? no? >> yes, carlos. >> you said it yourself. you said that the mexican government about why they would agree with it, it was a way to modernize the people while working in agriculture, right? i'm guessing that's the significance behind having a charro there and i think that's what it is. the fact that they're looking at this -- at this kid and the fact that they portray the little, like, they portray the bracero as a small, innocent-looking kid and these guys look, like, very manipulative and it shows a little bit of the background that's going on. i don't know.

the story of his father, right? but his dad was part of this organization. the i.d. says alliance of national workers of mexico in

the united states of america. at the end of the day i was looking at all of the scans that we collected because that was part of what i did, right? the scans, make sure that we have all our oral histories and make sure everything is duplicated and make sure we don't lose anything, and i was struck by this i.d. because i'd never heard very much about this organization thinking what does this mean? it says afl, alianza de braceros on the side. it's got the stamp of a mexican union. this is not a typical bracero i.d. this is not something that the u.s. government issued or the mexican government issued. and so i looked at it, and i thought what the heck is this? work -- this is the work of historian, right? so i went back and i thought who the heck writes enough about braceros so i can read about what this means and i pull out a

book, it's steve pity's book, "a devil in silicon valley ""and i find a reference to this organization. just a couple of lines, and then i pull out another book, and there's a couple of lines, too. but who were these people? what do we know about these people? i didn't know very much about them. i didn't know what they did, who they were, and i figured, the work of historian, you go to the archive. marquise knows. ape lot of you know. a lot of you have recently been into the archive. so i went to the archive. i started a mexican archive, and i started looking for papers and looking for places where this organization might exist and i found some parts of where i can find information and primary sources on the organization, and i found letters that i can send to mexican presidents and then i hit the jackpot, in stanford, california, because ernesto had correspondence with this

organization. ernesto galarza with the letters from this organization. what do we know about this organization? now that you know something about this organization, who are these men? what do they do? >> it all started because they thought many of the braceros who were coming into the u.s. were not doing their job and not representing their mother country well enough so the person who founded alianza. i forget his name, was derecho? >> jose hernandez serrano and then there's lara jimenez. >> well, they basically started this because they wanted to reinsure to all of the braceros that you're coming in here to represent our country well, and you have to do your job well, and that starts slacking off and if you find a better job go to that job. you have to fulfill your

contract. >> they start off and really take on that patriotic discourse, right? they start off and they really believe that they're here, and they're sort of ambassadors in overalls and they're doing this fantastic work for mexico and the u.s. and they're doing something in a time of war and they are feeding the country at a time of war, right? when do they change their mind? when does it shift? >> i was just going to say that it started off as this nationalistic project essentially of kind of like who they were siing we're, like, mexicans and the u.s. is, like, good neighbor and we're going to do this right and then it comes -- it kind of comes to, like, the criminalization. you called it the criminalization of alianza because they start to, like, they want to advocate for the bracero worker because they realize that they're living in these horrible conditions and that's when it becomes, like, a criminalized thing, and i first thought it was crazy that, like,

both -- i don't know if it was both the mexican and the u.s. government, but, like, they were -- they were, like, arresting the people who worked for alianza because they were trying to advocate for their rights. it's always, like, the simplest thing. we just want, like, water, or just, like, a nice place to live and stuff like that. >> this organization is particularly interesting because we know from the record, we know from other books and we know from other things that braceros are resisting all the time. that there are braceros who walk out and they're braceros who protest as gabby said when they don't have their needs met and they don't have good quality of food and when they aren't getting paid and there is bracero resistance all over the place and this is a unique, unique organization in that. they don't just resist in the u.s. they believe that they can actually organize across -- across countries, right? transnationally, that they can organize mexico and they can organize in the u.s. and they can do the political work that

they want and it's just not predicated on their -- on their life and place in the fields, right? that they can do this for themselves across the country, right? across these countries. ernesto galarza is an interesting figure because ernesto galarza, he really comes to work for the national farm labor union, and he thinks to himself, there's so much sort of -- in the organizing world anti-mexican, anti-immigrant sentiment. galarza comes in as a young boy through the mexican revolution and does farm work. he sees himself in the plight of some of these men. he sees himself as a migrant, you know? he thinks of himself this way. >> he's really, really, you know, he's really an extraordinary person who from the fields goes to occidental college and gets a masters at

stanford and gets his doctorate to columbia. it's pretty extraordinary if you think in the 1940s what he's able to accomplish. able to accomplish really, troerd near things and he goes to start working for the national farm labor union and he decideses this might be the techet and this organization might help him access braceros, and he believes like them that he can organize them from the sending countries and he can organize them well and he with do something about it? >> what happens, why did he lose his commitment to them. >> gabby starts talking about how they lose interest in that they're potential allies and they can be organized well. >> doesn't he start losing interest because he realizes that alianza doesn't have an influence on the mexican government and so he kind of, like, i don't know how i perceived oh, it's kind of like, he has no hope in this.

nothing's going to go forward if they don't have influence with the mexican government. >> he also realizes that they're being scapegoated in mexico. they're being red-baited in mexico and they're being detained in mexico and they're also attempting to come in as guest workers and these are men who are guest workers. so a lot of their lively hood is predicated on them renewing these contracts and they're being blacklisted at the border so they can't enter and some of them as guest workers anymore and he starts to lose hope, right? before he loses hope completely in the summer of 1951, as he's organizing, you know, workers in the imperial valley. right before he loses hope, he thinks this might be the ticket, right? and he organizes them. he tries really, really hard and he sends out flyers and he works with the leadership of alianza. he tries really hard and what he finds is organizers and locals

of the nflu and why are these braceros coming in saying they're union members? how is this? there's such a great divide between american labor and mexican labor and even mexican documented labor the braceros that for this, this divide becomes challenging and the actual tensions and the ethnic tensions between mexican americans and mexican migrants. the tensions between, you know, americans and folks born in mexico. he also finds that the mexican government is augmenting their exploitation, right? he finds that the mexican government is augmenting their exploitation. gabby says it, right? gabby clearly tells us they're being detained. the mexican government isn't doing very much for them, right? ed mexican government leaves

them out in the cold, and this is not the first time, right? because there are multiple moments where workers, you know, try to do more and the mexican government did very little for them and some moments, consuls interceded a bit for braceros, but their power is limited, right? and so what do we know at the end of this article? what happens to the alianza? >> so galarza decides that after the strikes in the imperial valley fall apart that he can't organize these men, that it's not possible, you know? we gett ernesto serrano saying o them -- where does he it? he says that the distance on page 229, who can read the -- your distance, hernandez serrano who is part of the leadership of

alianza, sends a letter to galarza and says someone? >> he wrote, your distance is odd companero galarza. i don't know if you are retiring from the fight or you see our relationship is too insignificant to help reach your goal, but if it is this i am unsure if you will find another companero, that on principle alone will constantly step into the dungeons of a prison. >> hernandez serrano is detained and he writes galarza and he says that. he says your distance is odd companero and he literally pleads with him and says i am sure that you will not find another companero that will principle alone will step into the dufrnlonngeons of a prison.

he feels that his membership is scared that they can't move forward as a union and galarza shifts his goals and what we also know in the archive is that the correspondence dwindles and he actually carries out research for his book, strangers in our field. strangers in our field does something extraordinary. strangers in our field is an expose of all of the exploitation going on in the bracero program, and strangers in our field opens up a conversation about the exploitation in agriculture and literally, his research becomes the base of congressional hearings that in 1963 literally put an end to the bracero program solely based on practices and human rights. what happens? do you guys know what happens to

the alianza? you don't know what happens in this art beingel. what do you think happens in the alianza? >> once the bracero program ends there's not much for them to do, i guess. >> they pretty much disband and their presence is predicated on the fact that they're guest workers, right? there's no longer guest worker program. i know it's a sad story, but when we think about this, when we think about the bracero program and we think about the legacy of ernesto galarza and the alianza. what do we learn? what did you learn from galarza and learn from alanza, and what do you know about labor organizing? >> working together and knowing you're not the only organization

in of itself and reaching out to the other organizations like they did with the crn. they, you know, combined with that organization in order to work for, you know, the same goal, but in doing that also ensuring that you are working that you're not leaving out a certain group of people while you're working and on top of that -- i'm being very general here for purposes, but you know, and then on top of that not gaining too much negative light for the mexican government in a sense because they lost a lot of resources economically and systematically from that, and no other organizations really wanted to work with them because they have this negative perception about them already. so had they worked earlier then

maybe they would have had a better turnout earlier. >> what do you guys think about the actual writing of an organization that in some ways failed. is that a failure on the part of galarza, on the part of those braceros? is it a failure? luz, you're nodding. >> i don't think so. i feel as much as it didn't work out, unfortunately, it did, like -- what they were trying to do any what they were trying -- their main goal of helping out people who are not represented by, like, a huge mess or by, like the high -- people in high position. their existence showed that we, i guess minorities or people who are underappreciated we can fight for our own rights and regardless of whether they tell us we can't unionize, we can find loopholes or we can fight back and say no, we deserve our human rights. we don't have to show you that

we are human or hard workers like we were saying before. we are born with these human rights and we can fight for them. >> so resistance is worthy about writing about even if they don't necessarily accomplish their goals? gabby? >> i feel like just the fact that we're reading about it is, like, an answer that -- or the fact that we can ask the fact that what can we learn from, like, this organization would say it's not a failure because i feel like because we can learn from it and because -- not necessarily because it's been written about because there are a lot of things written about history that have been written out of history, but the fact that we can read about it and say what can we learn from this? and how it very unfortunately, does very much apply in 2015 in organizing for anything. so i would say no, it's not a failure. >> it's not a failure. >> christian? >> for me, i would definitely agree with lucero because they

exemplify the resilience that happen all the time, that we don't hear about because of mass media. i wouldn't use the word failure. i would use the word defeat. they didn't fail at what they did. they were stopped, and we have seen throughout this semester how government agencies whenever there is radical thought and whenever there is pushback on the exploitation and marginalization of a people, these people do resist and they do try to make their lives better and to help each other and this is a story and a narrative that doesn't really get explored and it doesn't get a lot of attention and it should. i don't think they were failures and a lot of other organization, unfortunately. >> what do you guys take for your own organizing strategies and i know a lot of you guys are organizing all sorts of things on employ qcampus, around black matter and recruitment. >> how we talked about before

how the groups on campus are having trouble, like, coming up with a middle ground. like, they're having trouble relating to each other and it kind of applies to this because they were talking about how alianza couldn't get support from anyone else and it was just kind of them and they weren't able to bend with it to relate to other people and here on campus, we have to, like, learn from this and do something different. like, we all have to find middle grounds and we all have to work together and we all have a common goal so why are we fighting each other, you know? >> gabby? what christian said struck me about the idea of defeat and how -- sometimes how you feel as a student and just seeing, for me specifically seeing what's, like, happened to the americans is not that there isn't, like, a pushback or that they are aren't strong or that all these things, and there is, like, so much

institutional power that has completely defeated what that is and, like, what they want to be, and then i think of how that applies to my own life, so i really like this concept of being defeated and, like, how i can see that just play out in, like, the lives of marginalized people and then within, like, academia and marginalized apartments and the authority that they're supposed to have, but don't have. >> very good. >> does anybody want to give us last words before the bell rings? marquise? >> i have the people behind me, and the only way that you can get past a lot of these issues and the ways that alianza decided to take part in that was through solidarity with organizations, solidarity with the people in order to bring down that system of power that was brought against them. so remember that there are strength in numbers, that working together is one of the most important ways to bring down the oppression. >> thank you very much.

you guys, this is a wonderful class. you guys did wonderfully. you all are winners. the best. with the house and senate back in session on tuesday, september 5th, we're taking a look at the work the members of congress are handling. the federal budget, tax reform, the debt ceiling and health care. join us for a review of what's ahead for congress thursday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span and c-span.org and listen on the free c-span radio app. >> today on american history tv, we take you into college classrooms across the country in our original series, lectures in history with the college and university classrooms around the country. next, a look at latino history and the civil rights movement. we start with the university of california san diego luis