Faces of our fathers: The braceros' legacy of labor, a cry for justice (millions unpaid to workers)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_11104612

By Joe Rodriguez

Mercury News
Posted: 11/29/2008 07:00:00 PM PST

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."


Jose Navarro-Ochoa, of San Jose, holds his Alien Laborer's Identification Card also... (Maria Avila)

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.

FULL story AND video at link.

[EFerrari]

1. It's so strange that the Official Story seems to be that Mexican workers

all have stormed the American Dream. How ass backwards can officialdom be.

To take the dignity of their work away from these people is shameful but, not new. It's the history of this continent.