EL PASO TIMES

March 24, 2006

Line grows, but bracero sign-ups are over

Louie Gilot
El Paso Times

Now that the Mexican government has stopped registering former braceros for benefits, the Sin Fronteras migrant farmworker center in Downtown El Paso, home of the Bracero Project, should be deserted.

Far from it.

Every day this week, 200 to 300 people -- mostly elderly men in tattered cowboy hats -- crowded the center asking questions, requesting documents and complaining about the service.

Never mind that registrations, which took place in Mexico, not El Paso, ended March 10. New registrations will probably not start again for months or years, if ever, said Genaro Ernesto Almeida Pérez, the representative of the Mexican secretary of the interior in Chihuahua City.

Carlos Marentes, director of Sin Fronteras, said his organization is partly to blame for the chaos because the original documents that former braceros needed to register for the benefits are in 70,000 files at the center.

The project began collecting the documents and braceros testimonies to build an archive before the Mexican government decided last year to give former braceros, their widows or their children a one-time payment of about $3,500 per bracero.

So center workers have had to fish out old bracero contracts and pay stubs for those who wanted to register in Mexico.

"It created a problem. I can't deny it, but I never asked for this," Marentes said.

He pulled out a box with hundreds of micas cafe, the U.S. immigration card given to the braceros.

"This man came one day with the box from the interior of Mexico, and we said, 'We can't take it just like that, without information.' He said, 'You have to take it. I was paid a bus ticket to Juárez to give this to you,' " Marentes recalled.

Now many are trying to retrieve their old documents. Dubious organizations in Mexico, which claim to help former braceros but charge for their services, are harassing Marentes for the files, which he declines to give to anyone other than the persons they belong to.

Mexican government officials said 250,000 former braceros and relatives of late braceros registered for the benefits, including 18,000 in the state of Chihuahua.

The $27 million fund approved by the Mexican congress will only cover fewer than 8,000 payments.

So far, 78 people in Chihuahua have been paid, Almeida said.