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NEW YORK TIMES
Owed Back Pay, Guest Workers Comb the Past
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
FRESNO, Calif. — Here comes Abraham Franco now, 86 years old, skin
leathery and bronzed from decades of work in the fields, slowly bending
his small but sturdy frame into a metal chair at a faux wood office
table at the Mexican Consulate here.
He still could not quite believe the news: Decades after working as a
bracero, as thousands of Mexican guest farm workers were called in a
program from 1942 to 1964, the Mexican government had recently agreed to
a one-time payment, $3,500, of long overdue withheld wages.
The braceros are fading fast, some pushing or over 90, and are ever
reliant on family and friends to get by.
With two sons in tow, Mr. Franco unraveled a yellowing, fraying document
patched together with tape, one of the few he still has from that
long-ago era. Mexican immigration papers. Would this be good enough?
“No, these are stamped in Mexico, but we need something showing you were
in the United States then,” a consulate worker informed him and his
sons.
“Papi, you don’t have the check stubs they gave you?” his son Carlos
asked.
“I don’t know; we have to look,” Mr. Franco replied, and back out they
go, like so many others, on a fervent hunt through closets, shoe boxes,
dusty cases and disintegrating envelopes for fragments from the past
that could finally pay dividends in the present.
Scholars believe that more than 2.5 million people were braceros, which
is Spanish for “strong arms,” at a time when “guest worker program” did
not set off as fierce a debate as today.
Most worked three to six months a year in agriculture, the bulk of them
in California, with a smaller number in railroads. The program began
because of farm labor shortages brought on by the war, and it continued
afterward at the urging of growers until 1964.
The Mexican government took 10 percent of the wages paid to braceros,
supposedly holding it until their eventual return to Mexico.
In 2001, a group of braceros from the World War II era filed a federal
lawsuit against Mexico to recoup their money. Four years later, facing
pressure from former braceros in Mexico and their advocates, the
government announced a reparation program, but required braceros in the
United States to travel to Mexico to register, a difficult journey for
the elderly and infirm.
The settlement, which a federal judge will consider granting final
approval in February, prodded Mexico to apply its program to braceros in
both countries, eliminating the travel requirement.
They are spotted here and there, this aging community of unknown
numbers, leaning on canes and pushed along in wheelchairs, still
sporting the field attire of checkered and denim shirts and broad-brim
hats.
Many braceros like Jose M. Ortiz, 85, after life of squalor and
deprivation in the fields, struggle to make ends meet.
“I will pay off my debts,” he said, of the prospect of collecting the
settlement, which may not happen for another year as Mexico sorts
through claims. “I have a lot of bills, like the gas, to pay.”
Mr. Franco would like to share the sum with his 12 children, as
retribution for his long periods away from them working in the fields.
“It is for my family,” he said, adding, with a smile, “but I would like
to take a trip somewhere.”
Lazaro Gonzalez’s plans speak to the realities of his generation.
“All of us braceros are dead,” he said, clutching a cane and staring out
the big picture window of a house near here that he shares with his
children. “It would be for my funeral.”
All of them dream, perhaps few will collect.
Leonel Flores, an advocate for farm workers here, said he doubted that
very many former braceros still had the documents to meet the standards
of proof. In addition, he said, their documents are rife with erroneous
dates and spellings of names, the handiwork of braceros who hardly went
to school, if it all, and government bureaucrats on both sides of the
border.
“This says you were born in 1922, and this says you were born in 1921,”
Mr. Flores told Mr. Ortiz, holding aloft his Mexican birth certificate
and bracero identification card at a recent meeting of braceros. “That’s
an error that can get you rejected.”
Later, in an interview, Mr. Ortiz offered still another document, his
United States naturalization certificate, with a birth date indicating
1923.
“I feel bad because these are mistakes I did not make,” he said. So when
was he born?
“1923, I am pretty sure,” he replied.
Mr. Gonzalez had kept his papers, but they were lost in a home burglary
several years ago, a fate many braceros have suffered because criminals
know they are easy prey.
Still, he said, “Yes, I still have some, but I have to keep looking.”
Mr. Flores said local lawyers were documenting the problems in an effort
to persuade Mexican authorities to be more flexible.
But the government, representatives said, must balance an effort to
guard against fraudulent claims with “recognizing their civil rights,”
said Saleme Barceló, the consul general here.
She said the government was carefully scrutinizing required documents
proving they were Mexican citizens and had participated in the program.
“We are reviewing them case by case and telling them why they do not
comply or what they have to do,” she said. “They may still have time to
get their documents in order.”
The payout bonanza has rekindled memories of hard days.
On his kitchen table, Francisco Flores, 83, lays out a 1948 contract,
the proof he hopes will get him the money he always knew was there,
somewhere.
It spells out not only his wages, 50 cents an hour, but also, for good
measure, it answers, what price a limb?
For the loss of both hands, $1,000; $500 for an eye, $25 for the loss of
a digit, and so on. No, this was not easy work, picking, shoveling,
slicing, loading and hauling fruit and vegetables under a broiling sun
for 12 hours a day, more if the bosses demanded it.
Sweltering nights made rest, often just a few hours, impossible. Bunk
beds were stacked three high or more in cramped sheds. Food shortages
were common. Pesticides were sprayed on crops and workers with abandon.
“It was a miserable life,” Mr. Flores said.
The melons, Mr. Franco said, they were the worse, because they were the
heaviest fruit and the workers had to race to fill up transport trucks.
“We would run after the gondola carrying bags of melons,” he recalled.
“We were drenched in sweat.”
Many knew the Mexican government was taking 10 percent of their wages.
But few then asked for details, gratified at getting any job, especially
ones that paid much higher than anything in their home country.
Mr. Flores, though, kept almost everything, putting him in a good
position to collect now.
“I saw guys ripping up their pay stubs and I said, Wait, save all those
papers, some day it is going to be useful,” he recalled, showing off a
small black case stuffed with papers from a bygone era.
But for many others, it is all but hopeless.
Cirilo Perez-Torres, 86, lost all his papers years ago in a flood in his
home state of Guanajuato.
A consulate worker the other day handed him a slip of paper with the
phone number for the hot line, (877) 436-9359, established by the law
firm in the settlement for inquires.
“I remember everything, the fields, the places, the crops,” he said
afterward. “But they are not accepting my memories.”
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