SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS

November 30, 2008

Faces of our fathers: The braceros' legacy of labor, a cry for justice

By Joe Rodriguez, Mercury-News

Angela Leon de Orozco sat quietly in the bustling lobby of the Mexican consulate in San Jose, a black and white scarf covering her head. The 89-year-old widow remembered life after her husband, Jose, left their poor village as a "bracero" to harvest crops in the United States during World War II.

"When he left we had to survive the best we could," Orozco said in a voice that trembled as much as her hands. "We moved in with relatives, but our lives became a little better when he started sending money home."

But more than five decades later, one thing still rankles Orozco and about 20,000 ex-braceros believed to still be in the United States. Millions of dollars deducted from their paychecks by the U.S. government and handed over to the Mexican government, with a promise to pay upon their return, was never given back to them.

Stiffed in Mexico, Jose Orozco moved this amily north. Although he never collected those hard-earned deductions, he did earn a place in history with the so-called Bracero Program "” from the Spanish word brazo, which means arm. Operated by the United States and Mexico from 1942 to 1964, it was one of the largest and most controversial guest-worker programs ever. It changed the face of agricultural labor, culturally strengthened Latino communities in the United States even as it divided them politically, and jump-started a Mexican diaspora into the United States that hasn"t stopped.

Energy, optimism

There is a saying among Latinos in the West and Southwest: If you"re of Mexican heritage, you're probably related to a bracero. The guest workers arrived with such energy and optimism, and stayed in such great numbers, that their legacy has ascended by now from the fields, winding up even in government and in ivory towers. David Figueroa, the new Mexican consul general in San Jose, is the son of a bracero. So is Gregorio Mora Torres, a professor at San Jose State University.

"The bracero program really was responsible for the growth of Mexican San Jose," said Mora Torres, an expert in Mexican history. "It tells us the United States and Mexico are connected by economic, social and cultural links that date back to the 1940s and even before."

Some 200,000 to 300,000 braceros came from 1942 through 1946 as field or railroad workers. To lure them back home, the United States garnished 10 percent of their earnings and deposited the money into a fund in Mexico. Bracero advocates say the deductions totaled at least $32 million.

While some braceros collected the paycheck withholdings in Mexico, the overwhelming majority never got a centavo. The prevailing theory is that the money was ripped off by corrupt members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico unopposed for most of the 20th century.

Even after the war ended, the bracero program continued. As returning soldiers opted for college and better jobs in cities, U.S. farmers had become addicted to cheap labor. A second wave of braceros followed, although it"s not clear even today how many in this group had their wages garnished. Altogether, about 2.5 million braceros worked 4.5 million contracts over the program"s 22-year run.

Lawsuits launched

The Mexican banks that received the savings were consolidated into the rural development bank, Banrural, in 1976. By then there were no records of the forced bracero savings. However, Banrural in 1999 began accepting claims from former braceros in Mexico. Lawsuits then sprang up in San Francisco, Fresno and Chicago on behalf of braceros living here.

After decades of deceit, bitterness and legal disputes, the Mexican government has agreed to pay ex-braceros or their survivors $3,500 if they can prove Mexican citizenship and participation in the program. But that is an impossible requirement for many aging braceros, who had thrown away or lost their contracts, paycheck stubs and identification cards. Of the first 150 to apply in San Jose, only about 50 could meet the strict requirements. Moreover, some ex-braceros say the compensation is insultingly low.

"These are the same, old tricks that the government has been throwing at us from the beginning," said Plutarco Melero, an ex-bracero from Oakland. "And only $3,500 after 50 or 60 years? That"s what you would pay a slave."

He"s led regular meetings for about three dozen ex-braceros who might hold out for more, even if it means going to court. They believe $10,000 would be more fair, but they haven"t been able to sway the Mexican government. On a recent Saturday morning, the informal group filed into an empty retail building in East San Jose and paid $10 to $20 a head for dues. They sat around a tile fountain, mostly listening to Melero bring them up to date on their holdout.

Conflicted loyalty

Carmen Madrigal listened quietly, torn between her loyalty to the holdouts or applying by the Jan. 5, 2009, deadline.

Later at her home on a quiet, middle-class cul-de-sac in Fremont, she pulled out an ancient, bulging, leather pouch her late father, Juan Ramirez Gomez, had saved for decades at his home in Mexico.

"I found them only because I was looking for something to remember him by," Madrigal said. "I never imagined I might benefit from these documents."

Inside was a fascinating and sad collection of papers and paycheck stubs telling a story shared by two nations and tens of thousands of hardworking "arms" who were never properly compensated.

There was a formal letter of recommendation from a government official in Mexicali, just over the California border, describing Ramirez"s good character and fitness for hard work. He had saved his "mica cafe," a beige "alien laborer"s" identification card issued by the U.S. Department of Labor. There were a few contracts listing U.S. employers, rates of pay and working conditions. The paycheck stubs bring the harsh and exhausting bracero experience to life.

In one, 55-hour week in 1959 Ramirez picked fruits and vegetables for William Hubbard Growers of El Centro for 70 cents an hour. After deductions for meals and a $20 advance in pay, Ramirez took home $8.

Three years later, Ramirez was picking crops for Freeman Farms in Calipatria for 3 cents a pound and 85 cents an hour. He picked 407 pounds in one 52.5-hour week, grossing $56.83. After deductions "” $24.50 for meals and 90 cents for U.S. Social Security "” he pocketed $31.43.

Treatment disputed

Whether the braceros were exploited remains an open debate, even among them.

Manuel Perez, a member of the holdout group, can barely walk today on bowed, 76-year-old legs. One of the San Jose resident"s most lasting and haunting memories is being stripped naked and fumigated for lice, which he didn"t have.

"They had us lined up, spraying us as if we were animals," he said. But on the other hand, he said, farmers provided decent housing, food and transportation. "The meals they served us were actually good."

On another day in the lobby of the Mexican consulate in San Jose, ex-bracero Jose Navarro Ochoa waited in line and told a different story. He was 21 years old in 1963 and was hired on in Watsonville to pick strawberries.

"They told us we"d be paid 4 cents a box," said Navarro, whose completely white hair belies his heartiness at age 66. "But when we arrived in the fields they told us it was 2 cents a box. They also didn"t give us any water during the day. They didn"t want us to urinate in the fields and contaminate the fruit. In that heat, you couldn"t urinate if you didn"t drink water."

Navarro was one of the last braceros when the program ended in 1964. But for him and thousands more, unemployment back home brought him back to the United States as an undocumented immigrant where he could get work that paid him better than as a bracero.

"I kept coming back to work," Navarro said, "crossing the border as a mojado."

The word means "wetback," a derogatory term that gave name to one of the most notorious roundups in U.S. history.

Immigration sweep

The U.S. launched Operation Wetback in 1954 to stem an undocumented flow propelled by the huge popularity of the bracero program. When the contract quotas were filled, young men jumped the border into the willing arms of U.S. farmers.

Under Operation Wetback, more than 1,000 Border Patrol agents, accompanied in some cities by police squads, swept through farms and Mexican-American neighborhoods, demanding identification from "Mexican-looking" people, including U.S.-born Latinos and American Indians. The raids divided Latino communities. The leadership of older organizations, including the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum, supported Operation Wetback while younger activists opposed it.

Braceros whose contracts had expired but stayed without permission were prime targets. One of these deportees was Magdaleno Mora, the father of SJSU professor Gregorio Mora Torres.

With posters of Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa and César Chávez hanging on the walls, Mora Torres" office today looks like a mini-museum of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Silicon Valley would look a lot differently today without the braceros, he said.

Good, local numbers are hard to come by, but Mora Torres said 200 to 300 braceros arrived every year in the Santa Clara Valley during the war, followed by thousands every year during the second bracero wave.

"These are young guys, the risk-takers who will do anything to improve their lives," he said. "They also have time on their hands, some money in their pockets, so they look for entertainment, for Mexican food, for girls to dance with."

San Jose"s relatively small Mexican-American community adapted to the newcomers. More tortillerias and Mexican restaurants popped up. A Spanish-language movie house opened downtown. An entire Mexican business district grew up downtown. Young braceros met Mexican-American women at church or in dance halls. Life happened. Some fell in love, married, started families.

In the 1960s, Mora Torres explained, braceros who overstayed their contracts could apply for legal immigrant status if their employers sponsored them. After sneaking back into the country, his father was sponsored by Southern Pacific Railroad, the company for whom he had toiled as a bracero.

"It was a kind of built-in kind of amnesty" at the time for undocumented immigrants.

No help for bracero father

About a mile away from the professor"s office, another son of a bracero sits behind a cherry wood desk on the second floor of the Mexican consulate in San Jose.

At 38, David Figueroa a few months ago became head of the Mexican consulate in San Jose, near where his father, David Sr., had maintained railroad tracks in what was called the Valley of Heart"s Delight.

"Coming here was very emotional for me," Figueroa said, sweeping his hand toward Salinas, Santa Clara and Mountain View.

His father shopped in downtown San Jose on Sundays, enjoyed a restaurant meal and a movie. The guest-worker program seemed ideal for the single 20-year-old, but pitfalls were everywhere. Figueroa said his father and other braceros constantly guarded against robbery, not only for their pay, but also for their coveted contracts.

Figueroa"s father, who stayed in Mexico, lost all of his bracero credentials over the years. In a cruel irony, not even his son, a government official, can fix that.

"Unfortunately," Figueroa said with a diplomatic sigh, "he cannot qualify without the documentation."

One of Figueroa"s main responsibilities these days is processing the applications of ex-braceros. In the lobby downstairs, each ex-bracero can tell the story of a young man on a mission, who got cheated along the way but ended up here and better off. Even the ones whose applications fall short swear they"ll come back for a second try.

"What do you mean I don"t qualify?" Juan Sanchez said after an interviewer rejected his application. "I qualify because I came here as a bracero and I worked!" said the 65-year-old from Salinas. "I saw a lot of my buddies come and go during those years. The real disgrace is that a lot of them died before they could get their money back from the government."

Meanwhile, Angela Leon de Orozco signed her application with a frail hand as her son, Jose Luis, held her arm steady.

"It"s not about the money," he said. "It"s about the recognition of his work and bringing justice to these men and their families."

There is one more thing his bracero father might have appreciated after all these years: Four of his American-born grandchildren are college graduates.