Evolution of the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement of 1942.
1960; Duke University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1533-8290
Autores Tópico(s)Mexican Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics
Resumoagreement, the first of several in the period 1942-1958, under which braceros, contract laborers from Mexico were be imported work on American farms. In later years, the farmers, many of whom disliked the document because it contained guarantees against the merciless exploitation of the newcomers, denounced it as a diplomatic triumph for the wily Mexicans, a sell-out organized labor, and part of a conspiracy by federal agencies to fasten upon farmers and farm workers far-reaching bureaucratic controls and restrictions. 1 Spokesmen for organized labor and some Mexican government officials, on the other hand, viewed it as part of a plan assist the corporate farmers in flooding the labor market in order prevent wages from rising above their outrageously low pre-war levels. To be sure, these criticisms reflected the interests of those who uttered them, but they were not without validity. Some in Washington and elsewhere who sympathized with the plight of American migrants did hope that the Mexican agreement would serve as an entering wedge for the extension of similar guarantees domestic farm workers. On the other hand, under the threat of labor shortage, the federal government was perhaps too ready accede the growers' entreaties for foreign workers. However, the story behind the inauguration of a program, which in 1957 supplied the southwestern farmers with over 436,000 laborers2 and today plays an important role in Mexican-American relations, is more complex than these criticisms would lead one believe. My purpose here is reconstruct the events of the two years preceding the first bilateral agreement in the hope of shedding more light on the origins of an undertaking which has become a permanent feature of American agriculture. Mexicans had worked in the fields of the
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