Caught in the Middle: The Mexican State's Relationship with the United
States and Its Own Citizen-Workers, 1942–1954
DEBORAH
COHEN
The problem of braceros is . . . a problem . . .
of . . . hunger.
As long as Mexican workers [can]not find
work, food, [or] guarantees [on their own
soil], they will look for a resolution to their
tragedy in a foreign land because hunger admits
no hope.
ON 4 AUGUST 1942, the Mexican and United States governments closed a deal,
laying the foundation for what would be the first in a series of contract
labor agreements, lumped together in the vernacular as the Bracero Program.
Through this program in force from 1942 to 1964, men would leave families,
friends, and pueblos in Mexico and toil in United States agricultural fields.
They would do the planting and harvesting previously done by poor white,
black, and Latino domestic laborers now finding better paying industrial
jobs in a United States economy geared up for war production. This mid-twentieth-century
Mexican migration to the United States was at times sanctioned and regulated,
at others impeded and challenged by the Bracero Program. Examining it reveals
the Mexican state's relationship with the United States and its posture
toward its own citizenry. Increasing and increasingly visible pressure and
presence "from below" constrained the government's diplomatic power
and options vis-à-vis the United States as well as the space of engagement
available for mobilizing and demanding consensus at home.
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